Patrick's Notebook

from RT.com

As the CDC urges Americans to mask up against the Delta variant, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist has argued that more data is needed about the strain’s infectiousness. His mask-free nation is hovering at zero Covid deaths per day.

Anders Tegnell said on Friday that there was “a lot we do not know” about Delta and cautioned against drawing “far-reaching conclusions” about the coronavirus strain. He noted that the variant had been circulating in Sweden “for quite some time” with little effect, particularly in high-risk settings such as nursing homes.

His comments were made in response to newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggesting the Delta strain is more transmissible and could potentially cause more severe illness. The New York Times and other media outlets ran stories reporting that the CDC now believes the Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox – but this comparison didn’t seem to impress Tegnell. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Pepe Escobar

The race is already on to build and extend Afghanistan’s shattered infrastructure as rival powers advance competing initiativesAfghan security forces start operations against Taliban between the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Over a week ago the excruciatingly slow Doha peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban resumed, and then they dragged on for two days observed by envoys from the EU, US and UN.

Nothing happened. They could not even agree on a ceasefire during Eid al-Adha. Worse, there’s no road map for how negotiations might pick up in August. Taliban supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada duly released a statement: the Taliban “strenuously favors a political settlement.”

But how? Irreconcilable differences rule. Realpolitik dictates there’s no way the Taliban will embrace Western liberal democracy: They want the restoration of an Islamic emirate. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Hannah Cox

No matter which party is in power, the government cannot be trusted to label ‘truth’ or ‘fiction’ any more than Facebook or Twitter canMisinformation is much more destructive when it emanates from a monopolistic “Ministry of Truth”

This week, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Anthony Fauci squared off in the public arena yet again.

The two have frequently sparred over pandemic policy in Congressional committee hearings over the past year and a half, and their debates have often been contentious. But this interaction involved a particularly frazzled Fauci. In the brief exchange, Fauci looked around for assistance in the room, called Paul a liar, and shouted “you don’t know what you’re talking about!” as Paul proceeded to question him.

In his opening statement, Paul referenced an academic paper that further calls into question the origins of the COVID-19 variant that upended the world. “We hypothesize that the direct progenitor of SARS-CoV may have originated after sequential recombination events between the precursors of these SARSr-CoVs,” stated the numerous scientists and doctors who authored the research. » Read the rest of this entry «

By Newser Editors and Wire Services

Investigation finds NSO Group spies on journalists, activists using Pegasus spyware Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz

An investigation by a global media consortium based on leaked targeting data provides further evidence that military-grade malware from Israel-based NSO Group, the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire outfit, is being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, and political dissidents, the AP reports. From a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations, journalists were able to identify more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries who were allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. They include 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, and several heads of state.

Amnesty also reported that its forensic researchers had determined that NSO Group’s flagship Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. The company had previously been implicated in other spying on Khashoggi. The source of the leak—and how it was authenticated—was not disclosed. While a phone number’s presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it believed the data indicated potential targets of NSO’s government clients. In one case highlighted by the Guardian, Mexican reporter Cecilio Pineda Birto was assassinated in 2017 a few weeks after his cell phone number appeared on the leaked list. “Stop what you’re doing and read this,” tweeted Edward Snowden of the report. “This leak is going to be the story of the year.” » Read the rest of this entry «

by Michael Snyder

When one major political party starts labeling the other major political party as a “national security threat”, that should set off major alarm bells because that means that total tyranny is very near. Needless to say, Democrats and Republicans have always had bitter words for one another, but when you start calling the other side a “national security threat” that is taking things to an entirely different level. Al-Qaeda was a “national security threat”, and so we invaded Afghanistan. ISIS was a “national security threat”, and so we bombed them into oblivion. The full weight of U.S. power is often used to “neutralize” national security threats, and so when a former Department of Homeland Security official went on MSNBC and said that the Republican Party is now a more serious national security threat than either Al-Qaeda or ISIS, that sent chills down the spines of a whole lot of people…

Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, made the comment during a Thursday interview on MSNBC’s “The Reid Out.”

“I’ve spent my whole career not as a political operative. I’ve never worked on a campaign in my life other than campaigning against Trump. I’m a national security guy. I’ve worked in national security against ISIS, al Qaeda and Russia,” Taylor said.

“And the No. 1 national security threat I’ve ever seen in my life to this country’s democracy is the party that I’m in — the Republican Party. It is the No. 1 security national security threat to the United States of America,” he said.

» Read the rest of this entry «

by Jonathan Turley

“Robust content modification” seems the new Orwellian rallying cry in our society

We have previously discussed the extensive censorship programs maintained by Big Tech, including companies like Twitter and Facebook taking sides in major controversies from gender identification to election fraud to Covid-19. The rise of corporate censors has combined with a heavily pro-Biden media to create the fear of a de facto state media that controls information due to a shared ideology rather than state coercion. That concern has been magnified by demands from Democratic leaders for increased censorship, including censoring political speech, and now word that the Biden Administration has routinely been flagging material to be censored by Facebook.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is working with Facebook to flag “problematic” posts that “spread disinformation” on COVID-19. She explained that the Administration has created “aggressive” policing systems to spot “misinformation” to be “flagged” for the social media companies.

Obviously, anyone can object to postings. There is a greater danger when the government has a systemic process for aggressively flagging material to be censored. The real problem however is with the censorship system itself. We have seen how there needs to be little coordination between political figures and the media to maintain controlled narratives in public debates and discussions. » Read the rest of this entry «

by Ryan Matters

Internet giants cover-up for Big Pharma, suppress alternative medicine and bury inconvenient facts

According to research done by We Are Social, the average internet user spends over 6 and half hours online every day.

The internet is both a blessing as a curse. On the one hand, it gives us access to knowledge and technology that improves our lives, but on the other hand, it’s an addictive and dangerous mind-control tool that can be exploited to influence your choices and manipulate your thinking.

The COVID pseudopandemic has seen internet censorship rise to an unprecedented level. The controllers and their minions are scrambling to silence anyone who dares to question the efficacy of vaccines or the existence of Sars-Cov-2.

Let’s recap: In the space of a few months, thousands of YouTube channels and millions of Facebook posts have been deleted. The former president of the United States’ Twitter account was removed, and, Greenmedinfo, a site that aggregates research on natural remedies, had both their Facebook and Instagram accounts deleted losing over half a million followers. » Read the rest of this entry «