Dirksen Federal Courthouse, 219 S. Dearborn St. | Rich Hein/Sun-Times
Federal prosecutors have made the rare move of seeking dismissal of a three-year-old drug indictment following testimony from a former Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor who said drugs in Chicago are “typically trafficked by Latino people.”
The comments seemed to stun defense attorneys and catch the attention of U.S. District Judge John Blakey, who on Friday agreed to toss charges pending since 2019 against Leonel Hernandez-Rodriguez, Feliberto Flores-Ramos, Charlie Dotson and Francisco Carranza-Rosales.
The unusual move came more than a month after Keith Billiot, who is now retired but worked as a supervisory special agent for the DEA, testified about his role in the case during a March evidentiary hearing. He later walked back his comment following intense cross-examination, telling the judge race was “irrelevant” to the DEA’s work.
Billiot explained during the hearing what had led him to believe Flores-Ramos and Dotson had been involved in a drug deal Jan. 31, 2019. After naming other factors, including the behavior of the suspects, Billiot went further, according to a court transcript.
“In the city of Chicago for the five-and-a-half years that I worked here, typically — not always, but typically it is people of Latino descent are the ones that are supplying people of African American descent or Caucasians, or whatever,” Billiot said, according to the transcript. “But it’s the — the fact of the matter is that the drugs come up from Mexico or come in from Colombia but they come through Latino countries into the cities throughout the U.S. and therefore they’re typically trafficked by Latino people. So all of that, when you put all of that together, it indicated a narcotics transaction to me.”
Defense attorneys in the case — Thomas Anthony Durkin, Gal Pissetzky, Michael Leonard and Robert Rascia — all moved to strike Billiot’s testimony. Blakey said he’d strike the comment about race and added, “I’m going to permit vigorous cross examination on the issue, so fire away.”
Billiot could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney John Lausch, said that, “after reviewing the matter internally, we decided that moving to dismiss the indictment was the best course of action in this case.”
A criminal complaint in the case said law enforcement saw Flores-Ramos leave a home in the 6500 block of South Kenneth the afternoon of Jan. 31, 2019, holding his hand against the left side of his jacket in a way that suggested he was hiding something.
It said Flores-Ramos then got in a Dodge Caliber and traveled to 63rd and Kilbourn while investigators followed. The Dodge parked behind a white Buick sedan, Flores-Ramos got out and climbed into the Buick’s passenger seat with his hand still pressed against his jacket, according to the complaint.
Dotson was allegedly in the Buick’s driver’s seat.
Investigators soon drove toward the Buick and parked next to it, records show. After ordering Dotson and Flores-Ramos out of the car, authorities said they spotted an open bag filled with what turned out to be $34,000 cash on the front passenger floorboard. The feds also said a closed backpack in the back seat later turned out to contain a kilogram of cocaine.
The other defendants were found at the home on South Kenneth, where the feds say they also found eight kilograms of cocaine and $600,000 cash in a dishwasher.
Flores-Ramos admitted after his arrest that he’d gone to sell cocaine to Dotson, according to the complaint.
Still, during the March hearing, Billiot found himself defending his comments about the ethnicity of typical drug suppliers in Chicago. He noted he’d also pointed out other key factors in the investigation.
“So it was not the mere fact — and to be quite honest with you, I’m offended by the whole racism thing,” Billiot told Durkin. “It was not the fact that a Latino person met with a Black person. Absolutely not. Is that clear enough, sir, please? Can we get beyond that please?”
“I started with the probable cause that we developed upon your client and went all the way through the chain of events, sir,” Billiot continued. “That’s including the car, the car is running, the lights are off. Why would that be, sir? So I painted the picture of the entire probable cause that we saw, all the — the things that we saw. We didn’t generate those things. The client — the defendants here did but I simply testified as to what we saw. There is no racism involved in this.”
Blakey also questioned him about the comment, asking whether the ethnicity of the defendants played any role in his decision-making.
“It’s irrelevant,” Billiot eventually told the judge. “Someone’s ethnicity — the clearest way for me to say this is someone’s ethnicity is irrelevant to us in all respects.”
But Billiot pushed back once more against Durkin, telling the defense attorney, “this inference of racism is so phony.”
“You know nothing about me,” Billiot said. “Nothing. For you to infer that I’m a racist, I’m the godfather of an African-American child. She is — she is the daughter of a police officer and soldier who is one of my closest friends.
“There is nothing racist about what we do or how we do it. Nothing.”
Skip The Scoop | Seek Understanding
Top Scientists In The World Warned The Public Against Mass mRNA ‘Vaccination’ | 60 Percent Of Israel’s 514 Hospitalized Patients With SEVERE Covid-19 Symptoms Are Fully Vaccinated
A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta
More Than Half of Israeli COVID-19 Patients Vaccinated as ‘Breakthrough Cases’ Rise
In Israel’s COVID-19 wards, nearly 60 percent of the country’s 514 patients hospitalized with severe or critical CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus symptoms are fully vaccinated, according to an Aug. 16 report.
The figures were reported as doctors are continually learning which vaccinated patients are most vulnerable to severe illness, amid growing concerns about instances of the COVID-19 vaccines providing less protection against the worst forms of the disease.
“There are so many breakthrough infections that they dominate, and most of the hospitalized patients are actually vaccinated,” said Uri Shalit, a bioinformatician at the Israel Institute of Technology, Science reported.
For the majority of patients experiencing breakthrough infections, about 87 percent were 60 or older and received two vaccine doses at least five months ago. The findings show that “breakthrough cases” are not a rare event as the term implies.
Noa Eliakim-Raz, the chief of the COVID-19 ward at Rabin Medical Centre in Petach Tikva, said the majority of hospitalized vaccinated patients are unhealthy, immobile and already required nursing care prior to infection.
Israel is among the world’s highest vaccination levels, with some 5.4 million people—or 78 percent of those 12 and older—fully vaccinated. The vast majority received the Pfizer shot. The country is, however, showing one of the highest infection rates in the world, potentially a sign of waning vaccine immunity as the Delta variant of the CCP virus spreads. . . . .
Once Again, Despite Covid mRNA ‘Vaccination’ in UK Reaching 90% Of Population | “UK’s Covid cases rise again with 33,904 positive tests, marking a 15% week-on-week jump”
UK’s Covid cases rise again to 33,904 after 15% week-on-week jump – as hospitalisations and deaths creep upwards
- It is the third consecutive day that the rolling seven-day average of daily coronavirus infections has risen
- Meanwhile, hospitalisations and deaths are still creeping upwards, according to the Department of Health
- Both measures lag weeks behind because of how long it can take for the infected to become severely ill
- Another 111 fatalities were recorded today, up 6.7 per cent on last week, the Government figures showed
- And 773 infected patients were admitted to hospital on August 14 – up 8.6 per cent on the previous Saturday
Britain’s daily Covid cases are not showing any signs of slowing down yet, official figures suggested today.
Department of Health bosses posted another 33,904 positive tests, up 14.5 per cent on last Wednesday’s figure of 29,612 — despite swabbing levels remaining flat.
It is the third consecutive day that the rolling seven-day average — which offers a more accurate picture over the true state of the crisis because daily counts can fluctuate heavily — has risen. . . . .
Here Are The UK Covid-19 ‘Vaccination’ Numbers Reported By The BBC
“How is the rollout going?
So far, more than 47 million people have had a first vaccine dose – nearly 90% of the adult population – and nearly 41 million – 77% of adults – have had both doses.
The number of first doses administered each day is now averaging about 39,000 – far below a peak of some 500,000 in mid-March.
An average of more than 160,000 second doses are now being given a day. The delivery of second doses had been accelerated in response to the emergence of the Delta variant, first identified in India.” [Full BBC Report]
Yet, UK’s Positivity rates continue to rise as ‘vaccinations’ rise. [The Daily Mail Article]
Texas Supreme Court sides with GOP, allowing arrest of absent House Democrats
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of Texas sided with Republican leadership in Texas, allowing for the arrest of absent House members going forward.
The opinion orders district courts to rescind their temporary restraining orders given to Texas House Democratic members who have broken quorum since July.
“The legal question before this Court concerns only whether the Texas Constitution gives the House of Representatives the authority to physically compel the attendance of absent members. We conclude that it does, and we therefore direct the district court to withdraw the TRO,” the opinion, given by Justice Jimmy Blacklock, reads.
It comes a week after Speaker of the House Dade Phelan signed arrest warrants for 52 House Democrats still absent from the second special session of 2021.
The Texas Sergeant-at-Arms has been delivering civil arrest warrants to House Democrats’ offices and some of their homes in attempt to achieve the quorum lawmakers need to advance legislation, but to date the House has still not had a quorum. . . .
Stunning Poll Reveals Trump Would Win Election Held Today, as Nearly 1 in 10 Democrats ‘Regret’ Their 2020 Vote.
Stunning new poll numbers from Rasmussen Reports suggest nearly 1 in 10 Democrats regret their vote in the 2020 Presidential election, with 12 percent of ‘Moderates’ saying the same, and 14 percent of Black Americans expressing regret.
Furthermore, asked how people would vote if a presidential election were held today, just 37 percent said they would vote for Joe Biden, down from 45 percent who said they did. Forty-three percent said they would vote for Donald Trump.
The Rasmussen Reports numbers shine a new light on just how poorly Joe Biden has performed in his first few months as President of the United States. . . .
Where’s Joe? Biden Hides at Camp David While Kabul Burns
Biden hides at Camp David from his own failures, but he can’t hide forever.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki cut short her vacation plans this week, and one of the first things she had to do was admit that she doesn’t “have an exact time” for when Presidentish Joe Biden might return from Camp David.
“The president will return to the White House,” Psaki told reporters at Tuesday’s White House press conference. But apparently, she’ll have to circle back on when that might be.
If I had to guess, Biden is busy getting new and/or longer plugs. Did you see the glare off the back of his scalp when he stormed away after his brief statement on Monday? There’s a big burn-in spot on my TV from watching it.
ASIDE: I’m not making fun of Biden for being bald. I’m making fun of Biden’s notorious vanity despite his average looks and comically obvious attempts to hide his age.
Later today, Biden is set to do a sitdown interview from the comfort of Camp David… with former Clinton operative and permanent Democrat-operative-with-a-byline, George Stephanopoulos.
Expect Stephanopoulos to do two things.
First, he actually will ask a pointed question or two. That’s his style.
Second, Stephanopoulos will nod his head along in virtual agreement with whatever mendaciously nonsensical goo pours forth from Biden’s mouth. That’s his style, too. . . .
Jerusalem Is on Fire
Source: Jonathan Feldstein
For three days straight, more than a million Jerusalem residents and people living in suburbs endured choking smoke. There was a huge danger to people, wildlife, as well as property. Homes and landmark businesses have burned down.
Entire communities were evacuated as the fires raged ever closer. There was even a threat, somewhat unimaginable, that Jerusalem’s largest hospital in the historic Ein Kerem neighborhood was at risk of being evacuated. Because of fierce determination and heroism of firefighters and security personnel, there was no loss of human life.
There’s never been a time in recent memory that Jerusalem and its residents have been threatened like this. This week, as some flames were put under control new new fires ignited. The important thing was to put out the fires and protect people and property. In Judaism, protection of and saving lives is the most important injunction. However, burning along with the land and the trees is the suspicion that terrorist arson may be involved. That was also suspected in fires that took place earlier in the summer. It will no doubt be investigated, but it’s hard to prevent when a Palestinian Arab terrorist looks for new ways to cause harm. Other fires in northern Israel this summer also threatened life and property. These were caused by Hezbollah’s terrorist rockets fired from Lebanon landing in open areas. . . . .
T-Mobile Says Data on Over 48 Million People Stolen by Hackers
Data on nearly 8 million T-Mobile customers was stolen by a hacker, the company said late Tuesday.
A preliminary analysis also signaled that information on just over 40 million additional people who applied for credit from T-Mobile was also stolen.
No phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information was compromised for most people, according to the company. However, the phone numbers, account PINS, and names of about 850,000 prepaid customers were exposed.
The discovery came after a hacker claimed in an online forum this month that they had stolen data from T-Mobile.
The company became aware of the claim and launched an investigation.
Cybersecurity experts tapped by T-Mobile identified an access point believed to be used by the hacker and closed it.
This week, experts verified that some data was accessed by hackers, and began coordinating with law enforcement.
“While our investigation is still underway and we continue to learn additional details, we have now been able to confirm that the data stolen from our systems did include some personal information,” the company said.
The stolen data includes customer names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and driver’s license information.
T-Mobile is now offering two years of free identity protection services and plans to publish a webpage soon that includes recommendations for what current, former, and prospective customers should do in the wake of the breach. . . .
Taliban Tweets About Working Out and Eating Ice Cream Because This Situation Isn’t Absurd Enough
When you lose a fight, depending on how big of a dick your opponent is, you might get taunted for losing. Your opponent will rub it in your face just because they can. These tweets are a crotch chop to America and our incompetent president. (h/t Twitchy)
[via Google translate] elements”#طالبان They practice sports in Jim Hall at the Presidential Palace in #كابل
The gym tweet is not the “own” the Taliban think it is because they look ridiculous. For starters, it’s a pathetic looking gym. You would think the presidential place would have more state of the art equipment. But also, using machines and ellipticals doesn’t scream “look at how badass we are” like they think. If anything, they were just excited to be working out with something other than various-sized rocks.
The ice cream tweet is an obvious troll at both President Biden and the American media who stans Biden eating ice cream. A person with an ounce of self-awareness would look at this photo and realize it’s what they look like when they ask Biden “one scoop or two.” Instead, it will just make the press corps wonder if Biden is still making sure he’s going out for a sundae in these troubling times.
Of course, while this is going on, images of bloodied Afghans contradict Taliban’s claims of moderation:
Reports that Taliban fighters have beaten women and children at a checkpoint in Kabul emerged on Wednesday as the group attempted to consolidate its control after a rapid takeover of the country.
And also this:
To recap. Our president, besides being both incompetent and an embarrassment, is also a liar. And the Taliban is laughing at us.
But hey, at least there are no more mean Trump tweets. We’ve got that going for us. . . .
Tyrannical Governments Always Practice Gun Control | “Taliban reportedly confiscating weapons from Afghan civilians”
The Taliban are collecting weapons and ammunition from civilians in Kabul following their swift takeover of Afghanistan.
A Taliban official told Reuters that people no longer needed weapons for personal protection because “they can now feel safe” since the insurgents have taken over.
“We understand people kept weapons for personal safety. They can now feel safe,” the official said.
“We are not here to harm innocent civilians.”
The news came as reports emerged that a woman had been shot dead Tuesday for not wearing a burqa in public — after insurgents vowed to usher in a new “inclusive” era that honors “women’s rights.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said Tuesday they would honor women’s rights within the highly restrictive Sharia law.
Mujahid also vowed to grant amnesty to Afghans who worked for the US and the Western-backed government, saying “nobody will go to their doors to ask why they helped.” . . .
Man charged with attempted murder of two Chicago police officers after allegedly dragging one 40 feet with car
The 35-year-old struck two officers and almost hit a third on Friday in Englewood, police say.
A man has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly driving into two Chicago police officers, dragging one of them, Friday in Englewood on the South Side.
Jermaine Little, 35, was pulled over by police for a traffic violation around 7:30 p.m. in the 6300 block of South Michigan Avenue, Chicago police
Little then put the car in reverse and dragged one officer 40 feet before pinning the officer between the car and a viaduct, according to police and the Chicago Fire Department.
The officer fired at, but didn’t hit, the driver, police said. The officer was hospitalized in good condition.
Police said another officer was hit and a third officer was nearly hit by the car.
Little allegedly drove off but was arrested Tuesday in the Gresham neighborhood. Police said they recovered a handgun.
Little, of South Shore, also faces a count of unauthorized use of a vehicle as a weapon and aggravated assault to an officer.
He was expected to appear in court later Wednesday. . . .
‘Joe’s leading lambs to slaughter’: Trump tears into Biden for abandoning Afghans to the Taliban
‘Joe’s leading lambs to slaughter’: Trump tears into Biden for abandoning Afghans to the Taliban and says fall of Kabul was a ‘coup of incompetent people’ and makes the border ‘look like baby food’
- Trump attacked Biden’s ‘disaster’ foreign policy in his second Fox interview within 12 hours and said Biden’s bad decisions began ‘when he was born’
- The former president spoke with Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday
- He said the Taliban are ‘great negotiators’ and ‘naturally tough’ but insisted Biden ‘let them gain 19 steps out of 20’ in their takeover of Afghanistan
- He suggested that Biden should have bombed US military bases after leaving
- In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump said he told Mullah Baradar his village would be attacked if the Taliban failed to stick to a peace deal
- He said the problem was not leaving Afghanistan but ‘the way they withdrew’
- And he condemned Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, said he had no faith in him and blasted: ‘He spent all of this time wining and dining our senators’
- It comes as Taliban turned their guns on Afghans trying to flee to Kabul airport
- Trump has kept up a running commentary on Joe Biden’s handling of the crisis. . . .
Rubio Demands Biden Ban TikTok Over Chinese Communist Party Connection
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday called for the banning of Chinese video sharing platform TikTok after China acquired a stake and board seat in a subsidiary of the platform’s parent company.
Rubio issued a statement demanding President Joe Biden block the app from U.S. mobile devices, citing the Chinese government’s recent acquisition of a 1% stake and one of three board seats in Beijing ByteDance Technology, a subsidiary of TikTok parent company ByteDance. The subsidiary owns licenses to operate video-sharing platform Douyin and news service Toutiao within China.
“The Biden Administration can no longer pretend that TikTok is not beholden to the Chinese Communist Party,” Rubio said. “President Biden must take immediate action to remove ByteDance and TikTok from the equation.”
The Trump administration attempted to ban TikTok in August 2020, claiming China was using the app to illegally harvest user data, but the ban was never enforced due to several court orders. Biden repealed the ban in June 2021, instead directing the Commerce Department to evaluate the platform and determine whether it posed a national security or economic risk. . . .
CDC Creates Center to Forecast Disease Outbreaks, Issue Warnings
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will launch a new outbreak analysis and forecast center, picking a group of outsiders from academia and the private sector to lead the new initiative.
The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics is meant to help predict how disease spreads and act on it in in real time. It will also be charged with improving the Atlanta-based agency’s data tools, the CDC said in a statement. The goal is to have the center operational in 2022, said spokesman Ben Haynes.
Given the timing, the new center may end up focused as much on future outbreaks as on Covid-19, though the pandemic is almost certain to still be ongoing next year. The center’s leaders include:
- Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard University epidemiologist who will be the director of science
- Dylan George, an executive with Ginkgo Bioworks Inc. and a former Obama administration official who will be director of operations
- Caitlin Rivers, a Johns Hopkins University professor who has studied the U.S. Covid-19 response and will be associate director
- Rebecca Kahn, a Harvard University researcher who will be the center’s senior scientist . . . .
Biden administration urges COVID booster shots after 8 months
Health officials recommended people receive a booster shot eight months after their second dose of COVID-19 vaccine, ‘to maximize protection.’
“Based on our latest assessment, the current protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death could diminish in the months ahead, especially among people who are at higher risk or were vaccinated during the earlier phases of the vaccination rollout,” according to a statement issued by Biden administration health officials. “For that reason, we conclude that a booster shot will be needed to maximize vaccine-induced protection and prolong its durability.”
Pending an FDA evaluation of the effectiveness and safety of the boosters, the statement said, the Biden administration plans to begin rolling out such shots starting the week of Sept. 20 to people who have already received two doses of vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. Health officials believe the best time to get such a booster is eight months after the second dose of those vaccines, the statement said.
The first to receive boosters will be those who got the earliest doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, a group that largely consists of healthcare workers and nursing home residents.
The statement added that health officials expect booster shots will also be needed for those who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That vaccine did not roll out until March, and the statement said more data was needed to assess when those shots might be necessary. . . .
Apple says researchers can vet its child safety features. It’s suing a startup that does just that.
When Apple announced new technology that will check its US iCloud service for known child sexual abuse images, it was met with fierce criticism over worries that the feature could be abused for broad government surveillance. Faced with public resistance, Apple insisted that its technology can be held accountable.
“Security researchers are constantly able to introspect what’s happening in Apple’s [phone] software,” Apple vice president Craig Federighi said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “So if any changes were made that were to expand the scope of this in some way—in a way that we had committed to not doing—there’s verifiability, they can spot that that’s happening.”
Apple is suing a company that makes software to let security researchers do exactly that.
In 2019, Apple filed a lawsuit against Corellium, which lets security researchers cheaply and easily test mobile devices by emulating their software, rather than requiring them to access the physical devices. The software, which also emulates Android devices, is sometimes used to fix those problems—but it has also been used to sell or exploit the flaws.
In the lawsuit, Apple argued that Corellium violated its copyrights, enabled the sale of software exploits used for hacking, and shouldn’t exist. The startup countered by saying that its use of Apple’s code was a classic protected case of fair use. The two-year case was reportedly settled just last week—days after news of the company’s CSAM technology became public.
On Monday, Corellium announced a $15,000 grant for a program it is specifically promoting as a way to look at iPhones under a microscope and hold Apple accountable. On Tuesday, Apple filed an appeal to continue the lawsuit.
In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Corellium’s chief operating officer Matt Tait said that Federighi’s comments do not match reality.
“That’s a very cheap thing for Apple to say,” he says. “There is a lot of heavy lifting happening in that statement.”
“iOS is designed in a way that’s actually very difficult for people to do inspection of system services.”
He is not the only one disputing Apple’s position.
“Apple is exaggerating a researcher’s ability to examine the system as a whole,” says David Thiel, chief technology officer at Stanford’s Internet Observatory. Thiel, the author of a book called iOS Application Security, tweeted that the Californian company spends heavily to prevent the same thing it claims is possible.
“It requires a convoluted system of high-value exploits, dubiously sourced binaries, and outdated devices,” he wrote. “Apple has spent vast sums specifically to prevent this and make such research difficult.”
Surveillance accountability
If you wanted to see exactly how Apple’s complex new tech works, you can’t simply look inside the operating system on the iPhone that you just bought at the store. The company’s “walled garden” approach to security has helped solve some fundamental problems, but it also means that the phone is designed to keep out visitors—whether they’re wanted or not.
(Android phones, meanwhile, are fundamentally different. While iPhones are famously locked down black boxes, all you need to do to unlock Android is plug in a USB device, install developer tools, and gain the top-level root access.)
Apple’s locked-down approach means researchers are left locked in a never-ending battle with the company to try and gain the level of insight they require.
There are a few ways that Apple and security researchers can potentially verify that no government is weaponizing the company’s new child safety features, however.
Apple could hand over the code for review—though this is not something it has said it will do. Researchers can also try to reverse engineer the feature in a “static” manner—that is, without executing the actual programs in a live environment.
Realistically, however, all of those options have at least one major problem in common: They don’t allow you to look at the code running live on an up-to-date iPhone to see how it actually works in the wild. Instead, these methods still rely on trust not merely that Apple is being open and honest, but also that it has written the code without any significant errors and oversights.
Another option would be to grant access to the system to members of Apple’s security research device program in order to verify the company’s statements. But that group, made up of researchers outside of Apple, is a highly exclusive, constrained program with so many rules on what researchers can say or do that it doesn’t necessarily solve the problem of trust.
That leaves really only two options for researchers who want to peer inside iPhones for this kind of thing. First, hackers can jailbreak old iPhones using a zero-day vulnerability. That’s difficult, expensive, and can be shut down with a security patch.
“Apple has spent a lot of money trying to prevent people from being able to jailbreak phones,” Thiel explains. “They’ve specifically hired people from the jailbreaking community to make jailbreaking more difficult.”
Or a researcher can use a virtual iPhone that can turn Apple’s security features off. In practice, that means Corellium.
There are also limits as to what any security researcher will be able to observe, but a researcher might be able to spot if the scanning goes outside of photos being shared to iCloud.
However, if non-child abuse material makes it into the databases, that would be invisible to researchers. To address that question, Apple says it will require two separate child protection organizations in distinct jurisdictions to both have the same CSAM image in their own databases. But it offered few details about how that would work, who would run the databases, which jurisdictions would be involved, and what the ultimate sources of the database would be.
Thiel points out that the child abuse material problem that Apple is trying to solve is real.
“It’s not a theoretical concern,” Thiel says. “It’s not something that people bring up just as an excuse to implement surveillance. It is an actual problem that is widespread and needs addressing. The solution is not like getting rid of these kinds of mechanisms. It’s making them as impermeable as possible to future abuse.”
But, says Corellium’s Tait, Apple is trying to be simultaneously locked down and transparent.
“Apple is trying to have their cake and eat it too,” says Tait, a former information security specialist for the British intelligence service GCHQ.
“With their left hand, they make jailbreaking difficult and sue companies like Corellium to prevent them from existing. Now with their right hand, they say, ‘Oh, we built this really complicated system and it turns out that some people don’t trust that Apple has done it honestly—but it’s okay because any security researcher can go ahead and prove it to themselves.’”
“I’m sitting here thinking, what do you mean that you can just do this? You’ve engineered your system so that they can’t. The only reason that people are able to do this kind of thing is despite you, not thanks to you.”
Apple did not respond to a request for comment. . . .
Governor Abbott Proves Once Again That The mRNA Covid Shot Does Not Prevent Infection, Incubation and Transmission Of Covid-19
“Governor Abbott is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, in good health, and currently experiencing no symptoms. Everyone that the Governor has been in close contact with today has been notified. Texas First Lady Cecilia Abbott tested negative.”
“Lasting immunity found after recovery from COVID-19” Without Any Vaccines | NIH
January 26, 2021
To better understand immune memory of SARS-CoV-2, researchers led by Drs. Daniela Weiskopf, Alessandro Sette, and Shane Crotty from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology analyzed immune cells and antibodies from almost 200 people who had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and recovered.
Time since infection ranged from six days after symptom onset to eight months later. More than 40 participants had been recovered for more than six months before the study began. About 50 people provided blood samples at more than one time after infection.
The research was funded in part by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and National Cancer Institute (NCI). Results were published on January 6, 2021, in Science.
The researchers found durable immune responses in the majority of people studied. Antibodies against the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, which the virus uses to get inside cells, were found in 98% of participants one month after symptom onset. As seen in previous studies, the number of antibodies ranged widely between individuals. But, promisingly, their levels remained fairly stable over time, declining only modestly at 6 to 8 months after infection. . . .
[ NIH Article ]
Elon Musk says he supports COVID-19 vaccines after questioning safety
Tesla chief Elon Musk expressed support for COVID-19 vaccines despite previously raising questions about their safety and saying he wouldn’t get the jab himself.
The world’s second-richest man tried to clear up his vaccine views on Twitter after drawing ire last month for his vocal skepticism about two-dose regimens.
“To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically,” Musk tweeted Wednesday. “The science is unequivocal.”
The 49-year-old electric-car tycoon sparked controversy last month by saying there was “some debate” about the safety of the second of two shots people must get to complete their Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations.
Musk claimed there had been “quite a few negative reactions” to the second doses as he encouraged elderly and immunocompromised people to take the vaccines.
While allergic reactions to Pfizer’s vaccine have been more frequent after the second dose than the first, they’re still rare overall with just 4.5 incidents reported for every million doses administered, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show. . . .
‘I’M NOT AT RISK’ Elon Musk slams Bill Gates as a ‘knucklehead’ and ‘stupid person’ – and defends vow not to take coronavirus vaccine
20:48, Updated: 21:12,
ELON Musk called Bill Gates a “knucklehead” on Monday and insisted he won’t take a coronavirus vaccine.
The 49-year-old SpaceX and Tesla CEO slammed his fellow billionaire and revealed his shocking plans on the New York Times podcast “Sway.”
Speaking to the host Kara Swisher, Musk slammed Gates – who has voiced support for a coronavirus vaccine – as “a stupid person.”
Musk added: “Gates said something about me not knowing what I was doing.
“It’s like, ‘Hey, knucklehead, we actually make the vaccine machines for CureVac.'”
CureVac, a company Gates has invested in, has machines manufactured by Tesla.
Musk also defended his decision not to vaccinate himself or his children, according to RT.
“I’m not at risk for COVID, nor are my kids,” said Musk, when asked if he would get the vaccine.
Covid-19 A Child Killer? Think again. | “Pediatric Flu Deaths During 2019-2020 Reach New High” by CDC
June 4, 2021 – CDC reported 1 new seasonal flu-related death in a child that occurred during the 2019–2020 season last week, bringing the total number of flu deaths in kids reported to CDC for that season to 199. Prior to 2019-2020, the 2017-2018 season had the highest reported number of pediatric deaths, with 188 pediatric deaths reported. This tragic milestone underscores the importance of vaccinating children.
Among the 199 reported pediatric flu deaths:
- 44% (87) occurred in children younger than 5 years old
- 12 occurred in children younger than 6 months and thus too young to get a flu vaccine
- 56% (112) deaths occurred in children 5-17 years old
- Of the 183 pediatric deaths that occurred among children with known information on medical conditions, 78 (43%) had a pre-existing medical condition.
- Only 22 percent of children eligible for influenza vaccination and for whom vaccination status was known were fully vaccinated against flu. This is consistent with data from previous seasons.
Most of the reported deaths last season (122) were associated with influenza B virus infections. The 2019-2020 season was heavily influenza B virus predominant during most of the season, but there was a surge of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses that occurred later in the season, before the COVID-19 pandemic began and influenza virus circulation dropped quickly. While influenza A(H3N2) viruses are often associated with more severe illness in older people, last season is a reminder that influenza B viruses can also be associated with serious illness and death, especially in children. . . .
[ Full CDC Article ]
Tennessee Seizes Thousands of Counterfeit COVID-19 Vaccination Cards Shipped From China
The counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards that Memphis seized come with a CDC logo on the top, in Memphis, Tenn., in August 2021. (U.S. Customs And Border Protection)
Over 3,000 fake COVID-19 vaccination cards from China have been seized in Memphis, Tennessee en route to other cities in the United States.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) caught a shipment from Shenzhen, China to New Orleans, Louisiana, which contained 51 blank counterfeit vaccination cards, CBP said in a press release on Aug. 13. “It was the 15th such shipment of the night,” they said.
The FBI warned on March 30 that buying, selling, or using a counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards is a crime, and violators will face a fine and up to five years in prison.
The White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients also warned on Aug. 13 that it is “a crime” to falsify COVID-19 vaccination cards, amid new restrictions handed down by several major cities.
After New York City announced it would mandate vaccine passports at certain businesses starting next month, and a growing number of colleges and universities across the country are requiring vaccination for students to attend in-person classes, there has been a surge in fake vaccination cards. . . .
COVID-19: China Owes the World $35 Trillion in Compensation
The “lab leak” hypothesis has never looked more credible. If the virus did escape from a lab in Wuhan, then the Chinese regime owes the world at least $35 trillion in compensation.
That’s according to Christian Whiton, a man who previously served both George W. Bush and Donald Trump. With the greatest of respect to Mr. Whiton, my father owes me “compensation” in the form of at least eight, if not nine, birthday presents, but he will never cough up (Dad, if you’re reading this, my apologies); the same, I argue, can be said for China.
Now, before I am accused of being facetious, remember this is the Chinese regime we are dealing with. For more than 18 months, the regime has lied repeatedly. At the time of writing this piece, more than 4.33 million people have lost their lives to the virus.
Instead of offering answers and agreeing to cooperate with further investigations, the Chinese regime has opted to double down on its lies. The virus, according to Beijing, likely originated in the United States, not Wuhan. This is the level of dishonesty and depravity we are dealing with here. If we can’t get one honest answer, how are we ever going to get $35 trillion worth of compensation?
In Whiton’s defense, he admits that the chances of receiving compensation are non-existent. As for the actual sum of $35 trillion, Whiton writes, although it’s very difficult, if not impossible, to put a “number on human suffering, let’s say that China should pay $5 million for every life it may have extinguished.” Now, let’s say 7 million people, in total, lose their lives “before the pandemic ends,” then the Chinese regime finds itself “on the hook for $35 trillion in damages.” With 7 million people dead, though, who, one wonders, would actually be compensated? “Their loved ones, obviously,” some will inevitably shout. But what if the deceased had no loved ones? Also, what about survivors with long-term COVID, or the people who lost homes, jobs, and business? Surely, they also deserve to be compensated. . . .
Biden reps ‘most diabolical presidency and party, probably since slavery’: Mark Levin
Conservative commentator Mark Levin has an absolutely scathing take on President Biden and the state of the Democratic Party.
Speaking on “Life, Liberty & Levin” last Sunday, the writer and political commentator unloaded on President Biden as engineering the “most diabolical presidency and most diabolical Democratic Party, probably since slavery,” in reference to the Democratic strongholds in the slave-holding South. Levin featured Stephen Moore and Stephen Miller as guests when he launched into his takedown of President Biden specifically but also the Democratic Party in general.
Levin referred to “Marxist” changes in the federal government as a “massive de-growth movement dress[ed] up as climate change and the Green New Deal.” He went on to accuse Democrats in Congress of working with Biden’s guidance and blessing to create a permanent change in America’s basic structure, from a limited government, economically liberal model to an ultra-centralized far-left regime, delivered into existence by way of massive “infrastructure” and “voting rights” bills that are fully intended to impact far more than their titles would indicate.
The goal of all this, according to Levin, would be to effectively shut the Republican Party out of power — permanently. With a permanent monopoly on elections and the various mechanisms of government power, the Democratic Party would be mostly free to reshape and distort the United States into whatever image it wanted. This would impoverish Americans and create dependency on the government — controlled by the Democratic Party.
“The economics of that, how that’s going to impoverish so many Americans in the war on success, the destruction of the voting system to make it [so] only one party can ever win, blowing out the Republican state legislatures so they have no say on it,” Levin said. . . .
.
Taliban Enters Kabul, President and Diplomats Flee
KABUL (Reuters)—Taliban insurgents entered Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani left Afghanistan on Sunday, bringing the Islamist militants close to taking over the country two decades after they were overthrown by a U.S.-led invasion.
It was not yet clear where Ghani was headed or how exactly power would be transferred following the Taliban‘s lightning sweep in recent weeks across Afghanistan. Their advance accelerated as U.S. and other foreign troops withdrew in line with President Joe Biden’s desire to end America’s longest war, launched in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
By evening, the Taliban said they had taken control of most of the districts around the outskirts of the capital.
The U.S. Embassy said there were reports the capital’s airport, where diplomats, officials and other Afghans had fled, had come under fire.
“The security situation in Kabul is changing quickly including at the airport. There are reports of the airport taking fire; therefore we are instructing U.S. citizens to shelter in place,” an embassy security alert said.
Hundreds of Afghans, some of them government ministers and government employees and also other civilians including many women and children, crowded in the terminal desperately waiting for flights out.
“The airport is out of control… the (Afghan) government just sold us out,” said an official at the scene who declined to be named for security reasons.
American diplomats were flown from their embassy by helicopter to the airport as Afghan forces, trained for years and equipped by the United States and others for billions of dollars, melted away.
Ghani’s destination was uncertain: a senior Interior Ministry official said he had left for Tajikistan, while a Foreign Ministry official said his location was unknown and the Taliban said it was checking his whereabouts.
Some local social media users branded him a “coward” for leaving them in chaos.
Taliban fighers reached Kabul “from all sides”, the senior Interior Ministry official told Reuters and there were some reports of sporadic gunfire around the city.
A Kabul hospital said more than 40 people wounded in clashes on the outskirts were being treated, but there did not appear to be major fighting.
Insurgents entered the presidential palace and took control of it, two senior Taliban commanders in Kabul said. The Afghan government did not confirm this.
During Sunday, the government’s acting interior minister, Abdul Sattar Mirzakawal, said power would be handed over to a transitional administration. He tweeted: “There won’t be an attack on the city, it is agreed that there will be a peaceful handover”.
However, two Taliban officials told Reuters there would be no transitional government. The Taliban said earlier it was waiting for Ghani’s Western-backed government to surrender peacefully.
SHARIA
Many Afghans fear the Taliban will return to past harsh practices in their imposition of sharia, or Islamic religious law. During their 1996-2001 rule, women could not work and punishments such as stoning, whipping and hanging were administered.
The militants sought to project a more moderate face, promising to respect women’s rights and protect both foreigners and Afghans.
“We assure the people, particularly in the city of Kabul, that their properties, their lives are safe,” Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen told the BBC, saying a transfer of power was expected in days.
Many of Kabul’s streets were choked by cars and people either trying to rush home or reach the airport, residents said.
“Some people have left their keys in the car and have started walking to the airport,” one resident told Reuters. Another said: “People are all going home in fear of fighting.”
Early on Sunday, refugees from Taliban-controlled provinces were seen unloading belongings from taxis and families stood outside embassy gates, while the city’s downtown was packed with people stocking up on supplies.
U.S. officials said diplomats were being ferried by helicopters to the airport from its embassy in the fortified Wazir Akbar Khan district. A NATO official said several European Union staff had moved to a safer location in Kabul.
U.S. troops were still arriving at the airport, amid concern heavily armed Afghan security contractors could “mutiny” because they have not been assured Washington is committed to evacuating them, a person familiar with the issue said.
European nations, including France, Germany and the Netherlands, also said they were moving their diplomats to the airport and working to get citizens as well as some Afghan employees out of the country.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he had discussed the rapidly evolving situation with Britain, Canada, Denmark and the Netherlands.
AMERICAN EVACUATION
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier in Washington that the embassy was being moved to the airport and has a list of people to get out of harm’s way.
Asked if images of helicopters ferrying personnel were evocative of the United States’ departure from Vietnam in 1975, Blinken told ABC news: “Let’s take a step back. This is manifestly not Saigon.”
A NATO official said the alliance was helping to secure the airport and that a political solution was “now more urgent than ever”.
Russia said it saw no need to evacuate its embassy for the time being.
Earlier on Sunday, the insurgents captured the eastern city of Jalalabad without a fight, giving them control of one of the main highways into landlocked Afghanistan. They also took over the nearby Torkham border post with Pakistan, leaving Kabul airport the only way out of Afghanistan still in government hands.
“Allowing passage to the Taliban was the only way to save civilian lives,” a Jalalabad-based Afghan official told Reuters.
A video clip distributed by the Taliban showed people cheering and shouting “Allahu Akbar” – God is greatest – as a convoy of pickup trucks entered Jalalabad with fighters brandishing machine guns and the white Taliban flag.
Iran said it had set up camps along the Afghan border to provide temporary refuge to Afghans fleeing their country.
Biden on Saturday authorised the deployment of 5,000 U.S. troops to help evacuate citizens and ensure an “orderly and safe” drawdown of military personnel.
Biden said his administration had told Taliban officials in talks in Qatar that any action that put U.S. personnel at risk “will be met with a swift and strong U.S. military response.”
He has faced rising domestic criticism after sticking to a plan, initiated by his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan by Aug. 31.
“An endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me,” Biden said on Saturday.
(Reporting by Kabul and Washington bureaus Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Philippa FletcherEditing by William Mallard, Andrew Cawthorne and Frances Kerry)
Don’t Call It ‘Breastfeeding’ When You Can Refer to It as ‘Parent’s Milk’
More maddening and epic stupidity from the language cops, who are trying to erase the very notion of “gender” from the English language. The American Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine has issued guidance on the proper terminology when speaking or writing about the act of breastfeeding.
You and I and other rational, logical people might think that “breastfeeding” is a perfectly acceptable term to use, especially since only women have biologically functional breasts. Not so, says the academy.
“ABM recognizes that not all people who give birth and lactate identify as female and that some of these individuals identify as neither female nor male,” the group said in a document posted on July 29.
They may not “identify” as female but that’s hardly the point. No other gender — pretend, self-created, or otherwise — can feed a baby from their breasts except females. . . .
Georgia Fulton County Elections Chief Ralph Jones Resigns – He Ran the Late Night Ballot Dump Operation in Atlanta
Ralph Jones resigned from his Election position in Fulton County on Friday.
Jones was one of the county officials onsite at State Farm Arena on Election Night, as the counting of ballots continued past midnight.
Those hours became a fixation of the Trump campaign’s efforts to discredit Fulton County’s handling of the election. In his position, Jones became a target of the former president’s supporters who sought to prove an Election Night conspiracy at the arena.
Back in early December we first learned the name of the individual who told election workers to go home on Election night so he and some hand-picked workers could pull ballots out from under tables and jam thousands of Biden-only ballots through tabulation machines.
A short time later, the CFO of the Secretary of State’s office, Gabe Sterling, claimed that nothing was out of the normal in Fulton County on Election Night. Sterling lied in an interview with Newsmax and said that there was an election poll watcher in Fulton County when they were jamming thousands of ballots into voting tabulation machines on election night. This poll watcher, Sterling said was Ralph Jones. But this was a lie because Jones worked for Sterling and the elections department of Fulton County. Jones was not an independent observer. Jones also was pushing thousands of ballots through the tabulation machines himself on Election Night.
Gabe Sterling and Secretary of State Raffensperger were lying. The actions in Fulton County on Election Night were criminal.
Raffensperger and his gang were notified of the ballot stuffing in Fulton County on Election Night and they did nothing. They tried to cover it up.
Anyone who committed crimes in Georgia in the 2020 Election should be in jail. This starts with the corrupt Governor Kemp and his CFO Sterling and everyone else they covered up for and lied about. They all should be in jail. Are there any law enforcement personnel in Georgia who enforce the law? . . .
Henry County Judge Surprises Many with New Ruling in Fulton County Mail-in Ballot Inspection Case
Henry County Chief Judge Brian Amero late last week ordered that all parties involved in the Fulton County mail-in ballot case appear in court next month — for reasons unspecified.
According to court documents, Amero ordered the parties to appear at 9 a.m. September 20 in Courtroom A of the Henry County Courthouse in McDonough.
Garland Favorito of VoterGa.org is a petitioner in this case.
The Georgia Record reported late last week that Amero’s ruling surprised people.
“Amero was expected to issue a ruling to allow the ballot inspection to continue at a higher level of imagery than previously used to detect counterfeit ballots. Instead, he ordered a hearing on Sept 20th, 38 days from now. The ruling is a setback for those wishing to prove election fraud occurred in the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. Amero seems to be running out the clock,” The Georgia Record reported.
“Amero allowed ‘progressive’ law firm Perkins Coie to Pro-hac vice (join the case from out of state) in the Michael Daugherty election legality complaint and then dismissed the case in recent weeks. This ruling we understand will be appealed by Daugherty.”
Petitioners in a lawsuit to inspect Fulton County mail-in absentee ballots from the November 3, 2020 election added new claims last month. They provided new evidence they say proves the hand recount audit conducted after the election, “was riddled with massive errors and provable fraud.”
At a press conference last month in Roswell, Georgia, Favorito and other organizers of the lawsuit, said there was “a whopping 60 percent” error rate in Fulton County’s hand count audit held on November 14 and 15, 2020.
Most of the new allegations and evidence are based on VoterGA data team analysis of Fulton County’s mail-in ballot images from the November 2020 election, which were made available after the petitioners won a court order on April 13 and VoterGA lobbying efforts led the Georgia General Assembly to make all images public.
There were several significant findings from VoterGA’s data team in Fulton County for the November 2020 election and the subsequent hand count audit. Of 1,539 batch files containing 100 mail-in ballots each, 923 – or 60 percent – contained votes incorrectly reported in the official November 3, 2020 results as compared to the reported audit totals.
At least 36 batches representing 4,255 mail-in ballots were redundantly added into the audit results, including extra vote totals of 3,390 for Biden, 865 for Donald Trump and 43 for Jo Jorgensen.
What a Piece of Work – We Caught Him Again: Self-Described Colorado ‘Republican’ Matt Crane Caught at Dominion Party with Democrat Leaders and Eric Coomer
What a piece of work.
The critic of our article on the obvious questionable election results in Colorado neglected to disclose that his wife worked for Sequoia and Dominion Voting Machines for more than a decade.
Today we’ve uncovered that he also failed to mention attending a party with top Democrat schemers and Dominion employees.
We reported on February 12th the suspect and questionable results in Colorado in the 2020 election.
One individual by the name of Matt Crane responded to our post and claimed to be a “strong conservative and very proud republican” in an email to top Republicans. He challenged our report but never reached out to us. He did, however, have the gall to reach out to state Republicans and disparage our report. One of those who received his email provided it to us. We responded to Crane’s email in another article.
We weren’t really sure why a ‘conservative and very proud republican’ (as Crane referred to himself) would write the email Crane sent out. We mentioned this in our post and provided in our rebuttal three things never addressed by Crane:
- Colorado had a greater than 85% voter turnout and that is way over the national average of 50-55% in Presidential elections.
- Obama and then Hillary held the record for most votes in the state at around 1.3 million but Trump beat Hillary’s record by thousands of votes. However, Biden had half a million more votes than Hillary at 1.8 million which makes no sense when you acknowledge the poor results, poor attendance, and lifeless rallies of the Biden campaign. No way Biden beat Obama, Hillary, or President Trump.
- Thirdly, the state’s population increased by less than 200,000 since 2016. None of this makes sense.
We then discovered that there is more to this Matt Crane individual than he was telling us. He was the former Clerk and Recorder in Arapahoe County. We located support for this in various articles, even one report that mentions the woman who took his job:
Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder Joan Lopez had no elections experience prior to being elected clerk. And it’s showing — frequently — in ways that should make every resident question her ability to fulfill her duties.
The article goes on to mention how the new Clerk and Recorder blocked individuals on Twitter:
But she didn’t just block me. At least three fellow constituents were also blocked, including former Deputy Secretary of State Suzanne Staiert and Lisa Flanagan-Crane (Lopez’s predecessor’s wife).
Then we uncovered that Ms. Lisa Flanagan-Crane, Matt Crane’s wife, claims on her Linked-In profile that she worked for Sequoia and Dominion:
We also know that Ms. Flanagan-Crane worked with Eric Coomer at Dominion and were both named on the Dominion proposal with Colorado in 2015 that was removed from the Colorado Secretary of State’s site after the 2020 election and before the election was certified.
Advertisement – story continues below
We do know Matt Crane is not an unbiased “strong conservative and a very proud Republican.” We know his wife worked for Dominion. We also know that when he wrote about us as “actively trying to mislead people” he was projecting on us what he himself was actively trying to do. What a piece of work Mr. Crane is. Shame. . .
To Many Americans, It’s Apparent That Fraud In Election 2020 Cost Donald J. Trump The Presidency | Video: 16 Minutes 29 Seconds
For many Americans there’s an overwhelming sense that our 2020 election was stolen. Election 2020 was probably one of the most confusing in modern history. In one of the most watched videos, many of the contentious allegations are discussed. Hearings were held in many states and insuring election integrity is still ongoing.
Next Up, Vaccine Resistant COVID Lambda Variant From Central and South America, The 2022 Mid-Term Lock-down and Mail-In Ballot Variant
Old COVID narrative = A “Delta Variant” transmissible regardless of vaccinated status, but presumably with the vaccine you won’t get as sick… or so they say. However, not content with the vaccine results so far….
…Now we get the new COVID narrative – A “Lambda Variant” that is not only infectious and transmissible regardless of vaccinated status (just like Delta), but the Lambda Variant is also resistant to any antiviral immunity, meaning the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t work against it.
New York Post – As the US struggles to suppress the rapidly advancing coronavirus Delta variant, new evidence has emerged that the latest Lambda mutation — ravaging parts of South America — won’t be slowed by vaccines.
In a July 28 report appearing on bioRxiv, where the study awaits peer review prior to getting published, researchers in Japan are sounding the alarm on the C.37 variant, dubbed Lambda. And it’s proven just as virulent as Delta thanks to a similar mutation making them even more contagious.
The strain has been contained in 26 countries, including substantial outbreaks in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Ecuador.
“Notably, the vaccination rate in Chile is relatively high; the percentage of the people who received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine was [about] 60%,” the authors write.
“Nevertheless, a big COVID-19 surge has occurred in Chile in Spring 2021, suggesting that the Lambda variant is proficient in escaping from the antiviral immunity elicited by vaccination,” they warn. […] “In addition to increasing viral infectivity, the Delta variant exhibits higher resistance to the vaccine-induced neutralization,” the authors said. “Similarly, here we showed that the Lambda variant equips not only increased infectivity but also resistance against antiviral immunity.” (read more)
Despite the Lambda variant coming from South and Central America, the Biden administration is keeping the U.S. Southern border open specifically to entice, well, Southern and Central American migrants… Huh, go figure.
If you are cynically thinking this sounds suspiciously like a new “mid-term 2022 lockdown and mail-in ballot variant“… well, you would not be alone.
These folks are nothing, if not predictable. . . .
Man Charged With Murdering 18-Year-Old 2 Days After Being Released From Prison Due To COVID-19: REPORT
A New Jersey inmate allegedly shot and killed an 18-year-old man two days after he was released from prison due to concerns over COVID-19, NJ.com reported.
Convicted burglar Jerry Crawford, 25, was released on parole on Nov. 4, 2020, the New Jersey Department of Corrections told NJ.com, as part of an effort to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus in the state’s prisons. The state let out over 2,000 inmates in November 2020 due to rising deaths and infections in its penitentiary system.
Crawford, along with Yusuf Waites, 23, was charged on July 23 for shooting and killing David Scarborough in Bridgeton, New Jersey on Nov. 6, 2020, two days after he was released from prison. Waites had been released from prison on Oct. 10, less than a month before the murder, according to NJ.com. . . .
Former CBP Chief: Potentially 40K COVID-Positive Illegal Aliens Released into U.S. by Biden’s DHS
Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan says President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has released potentially 40,000 coronavirus-positive illegal aliens into the United States.
Morgan, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said during a press call that “there’s an enormous amount of facts that this administration is willingly and knowingly releasing illegal aliens into border towns and cities with individuals actively carrying and transmitting the virus.”
Specifically, Morgan said the administration has released upwards of 170,000 border crossers and another roughly 100,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) into the U.S. since January 20.
Based on conservative estimates of reported coronavirus positivity rates among border crossers, Morgan said the Biden administration has potentially released tens of thousands of coronavirus-positive border crossers into the U.S:
At a 15 percent positive rate, being conservative, that’s more than 40,000 positive-covid cases that have been released into the United States and that is just the cases that we know about from those who have been tested. And we know that everybody being released, they’re not being tested. We know that. We’ve heard story after story.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas is directing the release of up to 80 percent of families who have illegally entered the United States … so Border Patrol apprehends a family and they’re releasing them as fast as they possibly can into local communities. [Emphasis added]
When a family is released into local communities, DHS is not testing them … so what’s DHS Secretary Mayorkas’ solution to all of this? ‘Eh, it’s up to the local communities to deal with it. It’s your issue and your problem to deal with now.’ [Emphasis added] . . .
EU Countries Making COVID-19 Vaccines Mandatory
Some European countries are now making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory, requiring vaccine passports to access basic services. Reporting by Joanne Robson . . .
Los Angeles Councilmembers Introduce Motion to Ban Ghost Guns
Los Angeles City councilmembers Aug. 3 introduced a motion to ban the purchase and possession of ghost guns in the city.
Ghost guns, also known as kit guns, are sold as partially assembled guns that can be completed using purchased parts. The unfinished parts are not legally required to have serial numbers or a background check to purchase and are often sold at gun shows or online.
Councilmembers Paul Koretz and Paul Krekorian requested an ordinance banning the possession, purchase, sale, receipt and transportation of all frames, receivers and firearms that are unfinished and non-serialized in the city.
Koretz said in a statement that shootings and homicides have increased 30 percent since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shootings are up 43 percent, he said, with over 40 percent of guns confiscated by the ATF and a third of crime guns recovered by the LAPD in Los Angeles were ghost guns last year.
“With such staggering numbers and the sharp increase in hate crimes, we cannot turn a blind eye on a backdoor that allows criminals to gain access to firearms when they would otherwise be denied through the front door,” Koretz said.
Krekorian said in the statement that ghost guns are deliberately designed to avoid tracing. . . .
He Fits Right In With Biden’s Own Past | “Biden ATF nominee accused of racism, hiding statements from lawmakers”
President Biden’s choice to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has come under additional pressure this week due to alleged racism and failure to disclose some public remarks to the Senate committee weighing his nomination.
Late last month, the gun policy news site The Reload reported on racist comments David Chipman allegedly made while a supervisor at the ATF office in Detroit. A current ATF official told the website that Chipman “made some comments that he was surprised by the number of African Americans who have made it onto a specific promotional list.”
“His insinuation was that they had to have cheated,” the official added to The Reload. “Which is kind of despicable.” The official went on to say that “Chipman did not leave Detroit on the best of terms. His reputation was that he was not nice to people.”
Fox News reported in June that Chipman had confirmed in written responses to senators’ questions that two Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaints had been filed against him, but added that “both complaints were resolved without any finding of discrimination, and no disciplinary action was taken against me.”
On Wednesday, a black former ATF agent claimed that Chipman argued that the agent must have cheated on a promotion exam because he had performed so well.
“He said, ‘Hey, a lot of African Americans qualified to be promoted on this certification list; they must have been cheating,’” the unidentified former agent told The Reload. “And then he had to go and find one. I happened to be that one.”
The former agent added that he was cleared after an investigation by the Justice Department Inspector General’s Office. However, he claimed that the experience dissuaded him from seeking to move up at the ATF. . . .
Delta Variant “Not a Game Changer,” says Dr. Martin Kulldorf | American Thought Leaders | Video: 10 Minutes 56 Seconds
Harvard Medical School professor Dr. Martin Kulldorf says that the Delta Variant of COVID-19 is not something to be worried about, saying that while cases are going up, deaths are continuing to go down because of vaccinations and natural immunity. He says that lockdowns are not the answer and in fact may cause more collateral damage.
[ Epoch TV ]
Antonella Marty: How Socialist, Communist Ideology Took Over Cuba, Latin America
“Communism destroys the incentives. It destroys the most important essence of the human being … liberty,” says Antonella Marty, director of the Atlas Network’s Center for Latin America. At FreedomFest in South Dakota, we sat down with Marty to discuss the spread of communist and socialist ideology in Latin America—from Cuba to Venezuela to her home country of Argentina—and the connections between socialist regimes, terrorist networks, and violent crime. Subscribe to the American Thought Leaders newsletter so you never miss an episode. You can also follow American Thought Leaders on Parler, Facebook, or YouTube. If you’d like to donate to support our work, you can do so here. Follow Epoch TV on Facebook and Twitter. . . .