"No trace of truth" by John Kaminski, 28 March 2020
We’re all imprisoned by lies
from our trusted leaders
The fatal embrace of humanity turns out to be the control of worldwide media by misanthropes who simply don’t believe in the beauty of life.
Their concoction called ‘the new normal’ is the perpetual erasure of obvious truth. Thus, the people who created this so-called epidemic now threatening the whole world are surely not the ones who are going to fix it.
We are awash in a sea of unnatural disasters. The people who claim to be protecting us appear to be the ones trying to kill us. This is the ultimate sickness of nonbelief. If you don’t believe in the beauty of life, only darkness will guide your actions. Those who believe in the darkness continually brag about it.
The one great thing about the contrived epidemic that has everybody confined to their houses is that there is no reason to watch TV anymore because no truth can be found there. Thus I have finally ditched my TV and I no longer have to put up with all those ads for things nobody ever needed.
Everything relevant seems to be being blocked these days, if not by YouTube, then by Google. And if not by those two, then by other imitators who follow their lead.
They are emulating the precedents set by television to exclude everything important to your health and freedom and replacing it with the objectives of their advertisers, specifically by the Big Pharma shysters who dominate their airwaves with their billions in ads for toxic medicines, constantly developing new drugs which supposedly make you feel better but invariably diminish your health and sometimes even cause new diseases, as is the case with statins and most vaccinations.
This is why, two decades ago, I left the newspaper business — no trace of truth there. Even the few newspapers not owned by Jews are subject to their evil intentions, for they may deprive any publication of its advertisers — and consequently destroy its business — simply by putting the word out that any media outlet advocating for individual health, liberty and freedom is ‘anti-Semitic’. In fear and trembling of going broke, the victimized publications quickly fall into line and continue to obscure the truth.
The two Bobs
Two of my most trusted advisers are both named Bob. The Bob from way down South sent out a complex email to 21 people in late January full of relevant YouTubes with such fragrant titles as “Is the Coronavirus event 201?” and “International Espionage at Center of Coronavirus Outbreak.” He received delivery messages saying none of these emails ever went through. He sent them again and the same thing happened. In the meantime all his other emails went through to their intended recipients.
The next month, he sent it again as an attachment, and again it did not go through. This month, when it finally did go through, all but one of the YouTubes was blanked out for the usual various reasons. This type of censorship also has frequently happened to me, particularly when my story involves a certain ethnicity which happens to dominate worldwide media.
The first two pages of a Google search for vaccine dangers are exclusively press releases from the CDC.
You have to go to page 3 of Google to find this. https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/485771-texas-lawmakers-call-for-investigation-into-cdcs-handling-of-released-a
At almost the same time last week, my friend the Bob up North sent around an astonishing email which told me something I already knew but hadn’t really registered in my mind with the impact it deserved.
The Centers for Disease Control is not only a government organization under the Department of Health and Human Services but also a private organization funded by mammoth grants from Big Pharma, giving credibility to the vicious rumor that the CDC creates diseases and vaccines at the same time.
In addition it is also a 501(c)(3) public charity, just like the criminal Clinton Foundation. The email from Bob up North put it this way.
“The CDC Foundation receives charitable contributions and philanthropic grants from individuals, foundations, corporations, universities, NGOs and other organizations to advance the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This is NOT a government-funded organization. It is not exclusively a government-funded – very curious.”
And the email added:
“I have serious questions as to what is being driven by the CDC in conjunction with John Hopkins University who takes $1.8 billion from Bloomberg. The CDC and John Hopkins are either deliberately trying to create an economic depression, or are sublimely ignorant of the consequences of their scorched earth policy.”
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/disease/cdc-is-a-private-organization-not-government/
So I tried to find more information about this on Google but wouldn’t you know, the first three pages of a Google search were all press releases from the CDC.
We desperately need an investigation of the CDC, which creates medical crises where otherwise none would exist.
Was this panic contrived?
In their terrified confusion, most of the people in the world now commanded to stay in their homes and wait for whatever novel solution their government has prescribed for them have yet to make the connection that the people who created this problem are now the ones who are saying they are going to fix it. Doesn’t that strike you as extremely odd?
Not to mention suspicious?
Yet most people don’t see it.
Will we ever know what exactly happened in Wuhan, China? Perhaps the most suspicious element in this demonic fairy tale is the question of how the world was stricken at more or less the same time.
How was that possible?
How could a virus supposedly emanating from the wild foods market in Wuhan suddenly infect hundreds of people in India and Iran at the same time? This had many of us thinking that 5G was the real culprit, since the deadly 5G radio waves all strike the planet at the same time, whereas any kind of flu must be transported by person to person contact, or at least by residue.
This can’t happen simultaneously all over the world.
Now they want you to stay in your houses so you won’t see them installing 5G in the schools, which is a death sentence for the next generations, Sure enough, when I drove past my local high school yesterday, there were three cable TV trucks hovering around a fenced in enclosure nearby containing several giant aerials.
They tell the public to stay in their homes so they won’t drive past their schools and figure out what’s going on. The addition of 5G to their schools will be the final nail in the coffin of future generations.
5G portends great incidence of brain cancers and chromosomal DNA damage. In other words, serious damage to human health.
The effect of 5G on a child is ten times great than on an adult. Men who carry cellphones in their pockets have significantly lower sperm counts.
Investigate the CDC and Big Pharma. They create crises where none need to exist.
They suppress news implicating vaccinations as often lethal poisons. They created the autism epidemic by putting poison adjuvants in their vaccines, such as aluminum and mercury.
The WHO discovered that the smallpox vaccine actually caused smallpox. The polio vaccine actually caused cancer.
The CDC, which takes large contributions from Big Pharma, creates patented diseases at the same time it creates the vaccines.
Communism arrives in USA
This whole lockdown extravaganza of course is a big step toward Communism. The government handing out checks to people for not working is the obvious indicator of this. Like a drug pusher on the corner of the slum you live in, the first dose (or doses) is (or are) free.
But subsequent checks will come at a price that will be too high to pay if you have any interest in keeping your freedom of speech.
Bill Gates has said he won’t be happy until everyone in the world has been vaccinated against the Coronavirus. Bill Gates owns the patent for the Coronavirus, which means it is not a naturally occurring disease.
The menace of media
Bad news has always generated sales of everything meant to improve our safety, but it also generates alienation, which is what the banks want. This is why bankers prefer Communism, which was amply demonstrated during World War II when President Roosevelt said nice things about Joe Stalin for killing 66 million non Jews.
The secondary effect of bad news creating public impotence is that it delegitimizes the family as the go-to people, because they have all become clueless in the face of worldwide threats.
Trust your government. They’ll give you a paycheck for staying home that for some will exceed what they make at their regular jobs.
This government is not going to fix this problem because this government created the problem. They way they are going to fix it is to create an even bigger problem with the addition of metals to the vaccines they invent to fix the first problem which will make everyone more susceptible to 5G radiation which will eventually kill them.
You can read a lot about this at https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com
Our government has become blatantly corrupt where leaders routinely lie to their people, and this is expected if not exploited by political hangers on who profit from this cynical chicanery.
Try not to throw up as mainstream media outlets warn against taking legitimate medicines and insincere politicians insist this virus is permanent.
Now Israel has created a vaccine for this imaginary menace that will poison an entire population in vain, because informed opinion keeps coming back to the opinion flues are caused by electricity, and that 5G is the obvious culprit.
It’s about what you believe
The older I get the more I think that well being depends on the matter of belief. Most everyone who has read my stuff knows I take issue with the self-serving historicity of all religions, but I don’t think that’s the real issue in this time of terrible trial for the human species.
The real issue is the difference between belief and nonbelief.
Consider the difference between believers and nonbelievers. The former expect to find light at the end of their tunnel, while the Jews can only look forward to the darkness that they try to inflict on everyone else.
Their ultimate objective is to kill everyone who does not believe as they do, which is to rip off everyone first and ask questions later, if there is anybody left. And when they have killed everyone off, their only option then will be to kill themselves.
This is the path that non believers are leading the world toward. It is no way to raise your children.
It is true that we all die. Since it is true of every species that lives, to deny this is lunacy. But even though you can’t save yourself, you can save somebody else. And in this fact resides the beauty of life.
Killing others to improve your own position will only lead to the eventual destruction of everyone and everything. This is the course our government appears to have chosen, and the bamboozled lemmings glued to their TVs fail to see it for what it is.
--MORE--"
RELATED:
"The COVID19 Pandemic is the Beginning of Medical Martial Law" by The Conscious Resistance, March 28, 2020
Derrick Broze breaks down how we are experiencing another 9/11 moment, where the world radically shifts and free humans lose their privacy and liberty.
Show notes:
- Trump signs $2T coronavirus relief package
- H.R.748 – CARES Act
- Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority
- The CDC will set up a coronavirus ‘surveillance and data collection system’ as part of the $2 trillion stimulus bill, which President Trump just signed into law
- DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency
- COVID-19 Could Provide Cover for Domestic Surveillance Expansion
- Rhode Island Police to Hunt Down New Yorkers Seeking Refuge
UPDATE:
Henry Makow says the Covid 9/11 Planned-emic is Another Live Drill
The very important blog and videos expose the New York Times and ABC New as rot-rank liars (something to consider when reading the slop the Globe picks up below), and the post makes the case that what is being reported is a simulation. The crisis is based on a monstrous lie, as is all that has flowed forth from it. It was independently investigated as much as is possible, and the anomalies from that tour are astounding. It is time for President Trump to call an end to the drill, if he can. If not, then we are likely looking at dark days ahead and imminent death.
ALSO SEE:
"..... The reason I say this is because of what I saw when the rose-colored sunglasses came off regarding the President of the United States. Kind of woke me up a bit.
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/OU5QHRZWQVG6BDKT333WTGPLZ4.jpg)
Workers and members of the National Guard build a makeshift morgue outside of Bellevue Hospital Wednesday in New York City. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Photographer: Eduardo Munoz Alva)
It's not like I can take sanctuary in my state, either (I noticed there was not a thank you for President Trump as he approved a disaster declaration and ordered federal assistance to support recovery efforts here). It is simply a matter of time. I am non-essential, dear readers, and will soon be restricted to the house.
Of course, I didn't help matters going out at 6 am this morning. I donned the snow gear and sealed it over my boots. Took the winter jacket and had my shirt and sweatshirt pulled up over my nose before tying the hood under my nose. Put on winter gloves and fumbled with my coffee and change. Swore. Guy was coming straight at me and I veered sharply, and I mean sharply, out of his way with a 90-degree turn. The clerk told the old guy he was talking to (no social distancing) that they had stopped selling lottery tickets until this abates. Hope Baker can do without that loot as well (of course, liquor stores are essential).
Ironically, that brings me to today's piece of $h!t mouthpiece:
"Cutbacks for some doctors and nurses as they battle on the front line; Hospitals and medical practices are deferring pay and raises as they get hit with sudden shortfalls" by Rebecca Ostriker Globe Staff, March 27, 2020
Emergency room doctors at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have been told some of their accrued pay is being held back. More than 1,100 Atrius Health physicians and staffers are facing reduced paychecks or unpaid furloughs, while pay raises for medical staff at South Shore Health, set for April, are being delayed.
These financial cutbacks, coming in response to sudden shortfalls during the coronavirus outbreak, have triggered an outcry from doctors and nurses who are already working grueling shifts in demanding working conditions, including the risk of infection from patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.
“This is at a time when many of us have moved out to live like lepers separate from family to prevent spreading infection, and have already been working huge extra hours trying to scrape together [personal protective equipment] and otherwise brace for COVID-19,” said Dr. Matt Bivens, an ER doctor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford.
Okay, I would like to comment here regarding this recent money grab. The PTB are now undercutting the very frontline personnel they need to carry this forward if it is an exercise. Or a distortion of seasonal flu. Or a US bioweapon. Doctors en mass may start blowing the whistle.
That's the problem with these sick psychopaths foisting this all upon us. They overreach. They can't help it. That's why evil eventually loses, always. Tyrants seem invincible for a time, but they always fall. Always.
The burdens of the current health care crisis have fallen especially hard on front-line medical workers. Widespread shortages of protective masks, gloves, and other gear have put not only them at risk of infection, but their family members as well. An alarming rise in the number of hospital workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 is depleting institutions of much-needed personnel, forcing both those staff and often their co-workers into quarantine.
Top executives at hospitals and medical practices defend the financial cutbacks, saying their institutions are not immune to the loss of revenue being felt everywhere in the country during the pandemic. To make way for critically ill patients and comply with new state directives stopping “nonessential” procedures, they have canceled elective surgeries, an important source of revenue. Other sources of revenue, including physician visits, are also being canceled as patients stay away during this time.
They give up their salary for the year and next?
They have certainly squirreled away enough riches to survive, no?
I also want to apologize to all squirrels out there for the metaphor. That was unfair to you, and I apologize.
“Like many other health care and physician organizations, the economics of the care we provide has changed quickly and dramatically,” wrote Dr. Alexa B. Kimball, chief executive of the Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians group practice at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in an e-mail Thursday to doctors that was obtained by the Globe. “I wish I had better news to convey as I know all of you are making sacrifices every day in all sorts of ways.”
Here is the other thing: the last thing I want when I go to the doctor is for him to be angry.
In that e-mail, the physicians group announced that effective April 1, it is suspending employer contributions to the retirement plan for doctors in the group, as well as at an affiliated group that staffs many other hospitals in the state, Associated Physicians of Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians at BIDMC. There are 1,600 doctors in both groups, and the majority of them are affected by the cutback, according to a company spokesperson.
So they are going to f*** you, too.
The physicians group also told ER doctors this week that it is withholding and deferring half of their quarterly “bonuses” scheduled for March 30, according to another e-mail shared with the Globe. Those payments, which can reach tens of thousands of dollars per quarter, are based on extra shifts or additional patients the ER doctors took on months earlier, according to the doctors.
“The bonus is just pay we’ve earned,” Bivens explained. “It’s analogous to re-branding ‘overtime pay’ as ‘your bonus.’" Meanwhile physicians in other specialties in the group will not be receiving bonuses at all on March 30, according to the e-mail.
Oh, this fever is about to break!
When asked about the deferments, Kimball said in a statement: “Like hospitals, physicians are battling on two fronts — facing severe financial issues and a public health crisis on the front lines. Like many others, we need relief from federal and state sources to support our doctors who selflessly take care of our patients.”
Oh, they want a bailout! That should keep them quiet then!
The financial cutbacks come as Congress has authorized close to $200 billion in support for health care institutions as part of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill that President Trump signed on Friday.
Even so, the Massachusetts Medical Society on Friday sent a letter to Governor Charlie Baker urging him, in part, to consider “direct financial support, grants, no-interest or forgivable small business loans for physician practices, deferment of medical student loan payments, and other health care business grants to assist practices.”
A spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association called for direct federal and state funding to support the health care industry. “No doctor, no nurse, and no hospital cleaning person should lose their job or should lose their pay,” he told the Globe.....
All about getting $$$$ amidst financial cutbacks for health care providers -- and our $y$tem was already $hit.
--more--"
Related:
"Battling and recovering from the pandemic will leave an indelible mark on how we live and work. Here are some of the biggest lessons learned so far from leaders of local companies and institutions:"
That's the "message from the top," got it?
Father Richard Flaherty stands for a portrait from behind the door of the St. Anthony Shrine in downtown Boston. (Erin Clark/Globe Staff)
Actually, that is a good place for him. He and his will do no harm from there.
(flip to below fold)
"Virus’s long reach imposes a heart-wrenching isolation on all of us" by Evan Allen Globe Staff, March 28, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has upended life as we knew it. The economy is in freefall, schools and businesses are closed, entire countries are locked down, and we are all afraid to come within six feet of each other because any of us could be infected. Every day, the death toll climbs, and the dying go alone. Even joy is strange. Neighbors belt ballads out their windows, wild harmony across empty streets. Children leave each other messages in sidewalk chalk. A man spots a little girl waving from behind a fence, and lifts his bulldog aloft so she can see. We are forced apart, staring out at the world from the ramparts of our private fortresses, trying to come to terms in our own ways.....
--more--"
The Globe turns to Dr. Arthur Kleinman(!) for answers to the hoop dreams interrupted and the hopes and fears as comforting has been cut short. Just pray, he says.
"Unprecedented crisis is met with extraordinary resolve: Mass. residents united in support of coronavirus restrictions" by Victoria McGrane and Matt Stout Globe Staff, March 28, 2020
Look at the Globe stroking our ego like Trump's cabinet does to him (allegedly).
While it has upended life in Massachusetts in a few short weeks, the novel coronavirus has also united residents both in fear of physical harm and financial loss, and in their resolve to follow the difficult isolation measures urged by public health officials, a new poll by Suffolk University and The Boston Globe found.
The survey reveals an extraordinary sense of shared purpose in the face of an unprecedented crisis, with Massachusetts residents nearly unanimous in their support for the severe restrictions that Governor Charlie Baker has imposed on life in the state to help slow the highly contagious virus.
Really?
More than 90 percent of respondents said they back decisions to close bars, dine-in restaurants, and non-essential businesses. Ninety-six percent said they support closing local schools, and 94 percent said they have been strict about observing social distancing.
I don't know who they are calling. Must be their small circle of friends.
The near-universal support for these measures paired with majorities who say they are worried about their personal financial situation suggests that most people in Massachusetts are willing to make some personal sacrifice for the greater good, and more than half of respondents said they believe they could emotionally endure at least a few more months of the current situation.
“The thing that surprised me was how long people are willing to stick this out,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, which conducted the poll. “Are they fearful and worried and concerned? Absolutely. But they’re willing to hunker down and do what it takes to survive this thing."
“There’s no way we’re necessarily going to be able to magically kill it,” one poll respondent, Rebecca Cugini, 36, of Uxbridge, said of the virus. “I’ve prepared for it to last for months. We’re adapting.”
The hunkering down will end long before that when supplies quickly dry up. That's about 2-3 weeks away.
The united front presented by Massachusetts residents stands in contrast to the inconsistent rhetoric coming out of Washington, where President Trump has veered to suggesting he might place New York under a mandatory quarantine, wanting other parts of the country go back to work, and even having the national economy restart by Easter.
New York should have been quarantined long ago, before this crisis.
There was a vast disconnect between how respondents judged the performances of the federal government, and state and local governments.
Eight in 10 approved of how Baker is handling the crisis, and strong majorities felt they were getting the information they need from state and their municipal governments.
I'm one of two, where are you?
Although the survey was statewide, 65 percent approved of how Mayor Martin J. Walsh is handling the outbreak in Boston, while eight percent disapproved, and 25 percent were undecided.
Meanwhile, just 28 percent approved of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, and just over half of those polled felt they were getting the information they needed from the federal government.
Do I approve of what the President of the United States has done? Not really, but I don't blame him at all. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place like the rest of us. They should have told us.
In the midst of crisis, most respondents see their neighbors in Massachusetts as magnanimous. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they think people here are mostly generous and kind to others, compared to 23 percent who saw fellow Bay Staters as mostly selfish and looking out for their own interests.
That 23 percent must be Bo$ton and the beltway.
Fear was a through-line in the poll, which surveyed 500 Massachusetts residents by landline and cellphone from March 24-27 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Yes, we are all afraid, very afraid -- and angry.
Among respondents, the illness itself posed the bigger threat, as 61 percent said they are more worried about their physical health than their financial well-being, while 32 percent said the opposite.
That's an instinctual reaction, and ju$t thing kind of thing that will willingly allow looting by the ruling cla$$, as we are witnessing now.
Three out of four of people surveyed ranked their level of fear as “above average” or higher compared to other major crises they’ve lived through. More than 17 percent said the pandemic had triggered “the highest level of fear” they’d experienced, and 20 percent reported an “extremely high level of fear.”
More than 75 percent said they are at least somewhat worried they or someone else in their family will get infected with the virus.
Mike Kyle, a 32-year-old contractor from Pepperell, lived that fear in recent weeks, when he started battling a fever and his asthma became inflamed. On Monday, he was able to get tested for coronavirus 45 minutes away in Haverhill, where a physician took “a thin little, mean-looking swab” and put it in his nose. “They put it past your nasal cavity up in your sinus,” he said.
Like they were collecting your DNA or something.
He then spent the next three days holed up in a room away from his family. “Not being able to go upstairs and kiss my wife, hold my daughter, change diapers — that was the hardest part,” he said.
He struggled to occupy himself while he waited for the results. “I restrung one guitar, I tuned [two] of them. I gave myself a haircut. I started doing a model. I tried everything.”
Come Thursday, he got his “God sent” results: negative. He plans to return to work Monday, and while people are most concerned about the health of their families, for many, the pandemic also has sparked financial anxiety. The poll found that 63 percent of people are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about their personal financial situation or employment, and 36 percent said the health crisis already has diminished their regular income.
??????
He is "essential," huh?
Lisa Kennedy of Chelmsford is among them. To make ends meet, the 54-year-old said she normally combines her disability payments with odd jobs — cleaning houses, organizing closets, babysitting, but those have quickly dried up, and she’s asked her utility companies for flexibility in making payments. They’re giving an extra two months, she said.
“I can’t panic. I will do what I can,” she said. Kennedy said she’s 14 years into recovery from addiction, an experience that has helped her navigate the country’s new reality.
“I’ve lived a life of isolation when I was in active addiction. It feels like that: isolated, almost waiting for something to come get you,” she said. “Because I lived so many years like that, I’m good with my spiritual side, I know I’ll be OK. If I react calmly, wash my hands, stay safe, stay home, stay away from other people, then I’ve done everything in my power. That’s how I get through each day.”
In Rhode Island, it is going to be a guardsman with a cop, and how does isolation help an addict? AA doesn't really work then?
Poll respondents described the psychic toll the pandemic is taking on them, even as they support the measures that have transformed their daily lives.
David Strasburger of Somerville believes tough measures are crucial, but he misses going to temple each week, which he called “a really important mental reset” for him, and while the 54-year-old high school physics teacher wishes he could have friends and family over for dinner, he also misses “being close to strangers and acquaintances. I really miss being able to stop on the way home and sit at a bar, elbow-to-elbow, with people I don’t know.”
Strasburger said he is a relatively patient person, and so believes he can put up with a long shutdown, if necessary, “but it makes me really sad.”
Maybe this rare moment of joy will brighten his mood:
Wedding guests held onto the chuppah as Rabbi Claudia Kreiman, senior rabbi at Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, married Elisheva Dan and Mara Weitzman in Griggs Park. (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff)
Oh, so the gay Jewish wedding Gay can go on with no social distancing for the chosen ones.
Man, is this agenda ever starting to stink of Bolshevism.
You know, the greatest mass-murders in all human history, carried out by guys like Kaganovich and Yagoda. It's the same crowd calling the shots here now.
“I’m just a little lonelier, more than anything else," added Sue Lindmark, 70, of Littleton.
Lindmark spends most winters with friends in Hilton Head and the summer with family at a New Hampshire campground, but she flew back early from South Carolina, and now wonders if her spring and summer will be upended, too.
She said she hasn’t seen any of her 11 grandchildren beyond video chats. She misses outings to the local senior center.
“I like my house, I like my home,” she added, “but I’m 70 years old. How many more years can I have? I’m going to enjoy it, but I feel like I’m afraid of stepping out of Massachusetts out of fear of not being able to get in.”
While some respondents said they most miss going to the gym or eating out, 49 percent said they miss seeing family members or friends in person the most, the poll found.
Less than half?
Really?
That's the worst!
David Mobley, 75, has lived alone in Medfield since his wife died six years ago. He is struggling with the isolation, though frequent calls from his two adult sons help, as do his regular Al-Anon meetings, which have moved to Zoom. He is thankful for the kind neighbors whose young children he can see zipping around on their bikes when he goes for walks.
Why are they out bike-riding, and you would think he would be used to the isolation.
The hardest thing, he said, has been the shutting of the senior centers, which played a central role in his day-to-day life. “I was doing Zumba three times a week, and i was just loving it,” said Mobley. “I was the only guy. I loved the attention,” he joked.
Was he laughing?
I'm not, and those senior centers are in the process of being repurposed (more on that below).
Mobley worries about his pension, and the financial well-being of his sons, both of whom got married last year. In the back of his mind, lurks another fear: “That I would go before I got a chance to see grandchildren,” a life event he yearns for, and which triggers good memories of his wife, who knit baby quilts for each son before she died of a long-running illness.
“Lord," Mobley said, “let me live to have this experience.”
The Trump-et shakes with great discord; an agreement broken; lifting its face to heaven, the bloody mouth shall swim in the blood (57).
--more--"
Anybody smell a stench?
"While the world retreats from coronavirus, nature catches its breath; Air pollution has dropped significantly as travel, economic activity ground to a halt" by David Abel Globe Staff, March 28, 2020
It’s an antidote to the cooped up, post-COVID-19 world: a walk or run to get some sun and breathe the spring air, and yes, it’s no illusion born of captivity, the air is actually fresher.
Pollution — in a remarkably short time — has abated. In the past few weeks, satellite measurements have found that emissions from cars, trucks, and airplanes have declined in metropolitan Boston by about 30 percent, while overall carbon emissions have fallen by an estimated 15 percent.
Such a sudden drop has few precedents in the modern era, a testament to the scale of societal disruption caused by the virus.
“It was like a magic wand was waved,” said Lucy Hutyra, a Boston University associate professor who studies emissions, “but viruses are not a very good solution for climate change.”
OMG!!
This sick, genocidal fucks are happy that the climate agenda is being advanced as you struggle to breath under medical martial law! Maybe the Georgia Guidestones are not that far off after all. It will be a wonderful world for the mass-murdering ruling cla$$ once the herd has been thinned with a great cull, yay!
“We have cleaner air now, but this isn’t how we want cleaner air,” said Priyanka deSouza, an air quality data analyst at MIT’s City Scanner project, which measures emissions and other pollution in urban areas.
Really, MIT?
She and others emphasized that pollution levels are likely to climb back, and quickly, when the shutdown ends and America’s love of the car asserts its grip again.
These air emissions specialists also raised concerns that pollution could get worse.
Yeah, if we restart everything and allow you to live freely we will destroy all this good work.
I wonder if the gaseous private planes spewing toxic spew have stopped.
One reason: The Trump administration this week announced that it was relaxing a range of environmental rules, allowing factories, power plants, and other large emitters to decide on their own whether to comply with federal requirements for air and water pollution.....
Yeah, blame the President of the United States.
That gaseous spew is getting so f***ing old!
--more--"
Related:
Whales face more fatal ship collisions as waters warm
The lockdown makes it tough for groups to help so its a good thing sea traffic has been stopped in its tracks.
Another positive side effect of the pandemic (puke) is the demand for local food. I'm so glad the Globe has come around to local food rather than supporting the large agri-combines like they have for most of their existence. I interpret that positive story as a warning to us hill folk. The city folk will soon be coming to steal our food. Better load your gun.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Looking for hope, uplift, or just a distraction from virus fears? Read on.
It's the New York Times reporting from Atlanta, and they can shove their hopeful and uplifting distractions.
"As much of the country has closed everything but food stores and medical facilities, many places down South remain open. Bars, sporting events, and sit-down dining rooms are closed, but in many towns, employees of the local plant that closed for two weeks can still work out at the gym or get their nails done, hair trimmed, 15 minutes in the tanning bed, and supplies for their backyard pool. Southern governors have resisted “stay-at-home” orders that would close virtually all businesses, and in a country as large as the United States and even in an individual state, different responses can make sense with a virus like this one spread through close contact, said Brian Bossak, a professor who teaches epidemiology and public health courses at the College of Charleston....."
Oh, I should have moved out of New England a long, long time ago.
Coronavirus may add billions to the nation’s health care bill
If the New York Times cowflop is correct, then Obummercare is a total failure, a total failure.
"Virus in America: ‘Off the charts’: Virus hotspots grow in middle America" by Kat Stafford and Martha Irvine Associated Press, March 28, 2020
DETROIT — The coronavirus continued its unrelenting spread across the United States with fatalities doubling in two days and authorities saying Saturday that an infant who tested positive had died. It pummeled big cities like New York, Detroit, New Orleans, and Chicago, and made its way, too, into rural America as hot spots erupted in small Midwestern towns and Rocky Mountain ski havens.
That makes me think it is either a flat-out f***ing lie or seasonal flu.
Elsewhere, Russia announced a full border closure while in parts of Africa, pandemic prevention measures took a violent turn, with Kenyan police firing tear gas and officers elsewhere seen on video hitting people with batons.
Prepare for that here, Americans.
Worldwide infections surpassed the 660,000 mark with more than 30,000 deaths as new cases also stacked up quickly in Europe, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. The US leads the world in reported cases with more than 120,000. Confirmed deaths surpassed 2,000 on Saturday, twice the number just two days before, highlighting how quickly infections are escalating. Still, five countries have higher death tolls: Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and France. Italy alone now has more than 10,000 deaths, the most of any country.
Is the JHU information simply Event201 simulation or real?
Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker said Saturday that an infant with COVID-19 died in Chicago and the cause of death is under investigation. Officials didn’t release other information, including whether the child had other health issues.
“If you haven’t been paying attention, maybe this is your wake-up call,” said Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike.
Oh, I've been up since the beginning of the month, or do you fail to see the jump in activity. This is a fight to the death.
New York remained the worst-hit US city. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said defeating the virus will take “weeks and weeks and weeks.” The UN donated 250,000 face masks to the city, and Cuomo delayed the state’s presidential primary from April 28 to June 23.
As President Trump made his way to Norfolk, Va., to see off a US Navy medical ship sent to New York City to help, he suggested imposing some kind of quarantine for New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut, all hit hard by the coronavirus, but he later tweeted that he intended to issue a “strong travel advisory” instead.
Oh, the flak from his base must have been enormous then -- especially after what he said about Rep. Massie.
It wasn’t entirely clear whether he had the power to impose such a quarantine for the three states, and the idea was met with confusion and anger from their governors. Cuomo said on CNN that it would be illegal, economically catastrophic, and unproductive since other areas are already seeing a surge.
What TOTAL ASSHOLES are they!!
They are complaining about the guy for not taking action, and then when he does take action they complain about that!!
Fine, let your citizens die! You tinpots shut everything down, not him.
Still, some states without known widespread infections began to try to limit exposure from visitors from their stricken neighbors.
Rhode Island National Guard troops were instructed to go door to door in coastal communities to find New Yorkers and advise them about a mandatory 14-day quarantine for people from the state, and in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis ordered anyone arriving from Louisiana to self-quarantine and said law enforcement officers would set up checkpoints to screen cars from the state.
More on that FRIGHTENING DEVELOPMENT below.
Louisiana has surpassed 3,300 infections with 137 dead from COVID-19, according to the health department. Governor John Bel Edwards said the region was on track to run out of ventilators by the first week of April.
Cases also have been rising rapidly in Detroit, where poverty and poor health have been problems for years. The number of infections surged to 1,381, with 31 deaths, as of noon Saturday. The city’s homeless population is especially vulnerable, officials said.
“At this time, the trajectory of Detroit is unfortunately even more steep than that of New York,” said Dr. Teena Chopra, the medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the Detroit Medical Center. “This is off the charts,” she said.
What is that, a computer model?
Chopra said many patients have ailments like asthma, heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. She also acknowledged that in Detroit, one of the nation’s largest African-American cities, there is a distrust among some in the community of the medical system and government due to systemic racism.
“In Detroit, we are seeing a lot of patients that are presenting to us with severe disease, rather than minor disease,” said Chopra, who worried about a “tsunami” of patients.
I suppose the f***-up in Flint didn't help, either.
Trump approved a major disaster declaration for Michigan, providing money for the outbreak. He has done the same for New York, Massachusetts, Colorado, Louisiana, and Illinois.
All those governors who have slandered the President of the United States greedily take the money without so much as a thank you. What a$$holes!
Cases in Chicago and suburban Cook County accounted for about three-fourths of Illinois’ 3,026 total as of Friday. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot closed popular lakeshore parks after people failed to practice social distancing, despite a statewide shelter-at-home order.
GOD BLESS the REAL RESISTANCE!
The governor of Kansas also issued a stay-at-home order to begin Monday, as the virus takes hold in more rural areas where doctors worry about the lack of ICU beds.
It's closing in on you like a noose.
A cluster of three counties in rural Indiana have surging rates of confirmed cases. One of them, Decatur, population 26,000, has 30 cases with one confirmed death and another suspected, said Sean Durbin, the county’s public health emergency preparedness coordinator. Several cases were traced to large gatherings earlier in the month, including a religious retreat and a high school basketball tournament.
They are coming for you.
The disease threatens to be devastating for close-knit communities where everyone knows everyone, Durbin said, adding that he was a friend of the person believed to have died from the virus as well as others currently in critical condition.
We are all dead. Better find a Quiet Place and not make a sound.
The county health department has already run out of personal protective equipment, Durbin said. The last supply from the federal stockpile arrived more than a week ago and contained just 77 N95 masks and two dozen face shields.
And those were defective.
“I wish there was a stronger word for disappointed,” he said. “I’m calling on them to do better.”
Blaine County, Idaho, a scenic ski haven for wealthy tourists, now has around 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the highest rate per capita outside the New York area. Two people have died.
If you see celebrity coming, run as fast as you can the other way.
For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks, but for others, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, the virus can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and lead to death.
More than 135,000 people have recovered, according to Johns Hopkins.
My printed paper turned those last paragraphs towards German and Spain.
--more--"
Related: Alone on the road, a trucker’s long haul as America fights the virus
The New York Times rode shotgun to the Rhode Island border:
"Rhode Island to New Yorkers: If you come here, stay indoors" by Amanda Milkovits Globe Staff, March 28, 2020
/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/MYJYLGHHL5FI5JZ3INNSDESKBI.jpg)
William Randall of the Rhode Island Air National Guard (left) and Westerly police Officer Howard Mills approached a home while looking for New York license plates in driveways, to inform the homeowners of self-quarantine orders. (David Goldman/Associated Press)
WESTERLY, R.I. — At a time when life and work and routines are changing every day, Rhode Islanders awoke Saturday to this: The sight of National Guardsmen, in camouflage and surgical masks, tracking down and corralling dangerous interlopers: New Yorkers.
On the orders of Governor Gina M. Raimondo, people escaping from the Big Apple to Little Rhody to avoid the coronavirus outbreak won’t get off easy: They have to self-quarantine for two weeks and provide personal contact information to the state Health Department.
Why did the Globe omit that the totalitarian governor is a DEMOCRAT?
Oddly enough, she is the LEAST POPULAR DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR in the WHOLE NATION!
All of a sudden, her order makes sense!
Those who fail to isolate themselves face fines and, for repeat offenders, a possible jail sentence.
??????!!
Authorities are emptying the jails due to threat, so WTF?
The National Guard, State Police, and local officers were out in force Saturday to implement the order, swarming bus and train stations, highway rest stops, and even coastal neighborhoods, going door-to-door, looking for New York residents who believe they will be safer in Rhode Island as New York’s outbreak grows exponentially, with more than 50,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.
I'm sure glad there is NO CRIME in Rhode Island!
They found one couple, refugees from Westchester County, in their cozy hideaway on Atlantic Avenue near Misquamicut State Beach, along with the woman’s 22-year-old daughter from Virginia. When the pair saw a National Guardsman and Westerly police officer outside, they pulled out their defense: a March 14 receipt from the local Home Depot to prove that they had already been in the state for two weeks, and therefore shouldn’t have to be quarantined any longer.
Their PAPERZ!!
They found a friendly ear in Westerly Officer Matthew Hayden, who was accompanied by National Guard Tech Sergeant Timothy Williams. This neighborhood was Hayden’s beat, and he had already noticed their car and knew they had been there since mid-March.
So he took down their names, dates of birth, and addresses, and handed them a packet of information about COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. (They declined to give the Globe their names because their employers don’t let them talk to the media.)
Despite their two-week stint in Rhode Island already, the family plans to stay inside, hunkered down with their elderly dog, leaving their house only to shop for food, but Hayden warned them that if they drove with New York plates, State Police would pull them over. "You can tell them you’ve already had contact with the Westerly Police Department if they want to call and confirm,” Hayden said.
As they headed back inside, the man said he’d make copies of the material in the packet and keep a copy on the dashboards of both of their vehicles to prove he had already met with police.
Looks like Steve was right.
Westerly Police Chief Shawn Lacey said officers would look for New York license plates at about 1,000 homes, keeping an eye out for cars with the front plate removed whose owners had backed them into their driveways. Officers also are contacting hotels and motels.
Meanwhile, on I-95 northbound, Rhode Island State Police and the National Guard were camped out at the rest area between Exits 2 and 3, stopping all vehicles with New York plates, to go through the same routine: tell them to self-quarantine for two weeks while in Rhode Island, and record their personal information.
Similar scenes are occurring on Route 165 in Exeter, Route 78 in Westerly, and at the Pell Bridge in Newport, according to State Police Superintendent James Manni. On Friday, when the procedure began, troopers stopped 190 vehicles.
The policy prompted an annoyed Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor, to threaten to sue Rhode Island; he called the stops “unconstitutional” and “a reactionary policy” in an interview on CNN on Saturday night; however, it appeared he had the details wrong, telling anchor Ana Cabrera that the state was “not letting anyone in until they take a test to see whether or not they have the virus,” which is not the policy.
OMG, he finally discovered the Constitution!
Welcome aboard, governor!
National Guard public affairs officer Captain Mark Incze said the New Yorkers are understanding, although nervous. “Overall, people are kind of uncomfortable, not at ease with the state of the nation,” he said. “Obviously, people leaving New York are in a state of being frightened, and [getting] the contacts takes a little longer.”
Manni agreed. "We are very careful not to violate anyone’s constitutional rights,” he said. “The troopers are professional and patient. We recognize there is a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety. ... The people from New York totally understand.”
This whole thing is a massive violation of rights, but at least they are careful about it.
The Westerly family is a case in point. New York was “going crazy,” they said. They feel safe here, even as the number of Rhode Island cases continues to grow, and the state recorded its first two deaths over the weekend. They believe Rhode Island is about two weeks behind New York in the spread of the illness.
So the three of them have settled into their house near the ocean, with their old dog in his bed in the living room, working from their light-filled home, and watching the waves. New York seems far away.
It's totally out of sight, the same as Freedom and Liberty.
--more--"
Of course, that's just "conspiracy talk":
"Social media: A single gesture behind Trump fuels an online conspiracy theory" by Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel New York Times, March 28, 2020
At a White House briefing on the coronavirus March 20, President Trump called the State Department the “Deep State Department.” Behind him, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dropped his head and rubbed his forehead.
Some thought Fauci was slighting the president, leading to a vitriolic online reaction. On Twitter and Facebook, a post that falsely claimed he was part of a secret cabal who opposed Trump was soon shared thousands of times, reaching roughly 1.5 million people.
A week later, Fauci — the administration’s most outspoken advocate of emergency measures to fight the coronavirus outbreak — has become the target of an online conspiracy theory that he is mobilizing to undermine the president.
That fanciful claim has spread across social media, fanned by a right-wing chorus of Trump’s supporters, even as Fauci has won a public following for his willingness to contradict the president and correct falsehoods and overly rosy pronouncements about containing the virus.
That's another reason today is my last Sunday Globe. Forking over $6 to read this New York Times shit-slop every week isn't worth it.
An analysis by The New York Times found more than 70 accounts on Twitter that have promoted the hashtag #FauciFraud, with some tweeting as frequently as 795 times a day. The anti-Fauci sentiment is being reinforced by posts from Tom Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch, a conservative group; Bill Mitchell, host of far-right online talk show “YourVoice America”; and other outspoken Trump supporters such as Shiva Ayyadurai, who has falsely claimed to be the inventor of e-mail.
Many of the anti-Fauci posts, some of which pointed to a seven-year-old e-mail that the doctor had sent praising Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, have been retweeted thousands of times. On YouTube, conspiracy-theory videos about Fauci have racked up hundreds of thousands of views in the past week. In private Facebook groups, posts disparaging him have also been shared hundreds of times and liked by thousands of people, according to the Times analysis.
One anti-Fauci tweet Tuesday said, “Sorry liberals but we don’t trust Dr. Anthony Fauci.”
The torrent of falsehoods aimed at discrediting Fauci is another example of the hyperpartisan information flow that has driven a wedge into the way Americans think. For the past few years, far-right supporters of Trump have regularly vilified those whom they see as opposing him. Even so, the campaign against Fauci stands out because he is one of the world’s leading infectious disease experts and a member of Trump’s virus task force, and it is unfolding as the government battles a pathogen that is rapidly spreading in the United States.
Looks to me like the New York Times is losing the information war and propaganda battle and is now whining about it. F*** them!
It is the latest twist in the ebb and flow of right-wing punditry that for weeks echoed Trump in minimizing the threat posed by the coronavirus and arguably undercut efforts to alert the public of its dangers. When the president took a more assertive posture against the outbreak, conservative outlets shifted, too — but now accuse Democrats and journalists of trying to use the pandemic to damage Trump politically.
Yeah, we hit a nerve there so the pre$$titutes start hollering CONSPIRACY THEORY!
“There seems to be a concerted effort on the part of Trump supporters to spread misinformation about the virus aggressively,” said Carl Bergstrom, a professor of biology at the University of Washington who has studied misinformation.
Sort of the way the pre$$ and ma$$ media engaged in a concerted effort to push the WMDs in Iraq lie, right?
Adding that Fauci is bearing the brunt of the attacks, Bergstrom said: “There is this sense that experts are untrustworthy, and have agendas that aren’t aligned with the people. It’s very concerning because the experts in this are being discounted out of hand.”
YUP, and the last thing they would do is tell us about them.
The Trump administration has previously shown a distaste for relying on scientific expertise, such as when dealing with climate change, but misinformation campaigns during a pandemic carry a unique danger because they may sow distrust in public health officials when accurate information and advice are crucial, said Whitney Phillips, an assistant professor at Syracuse University who teaches digital ethics.
“What this case will show is that conspiracy theories can kill,” she said.
Yeah, the mass-murdering War on Terror is based on one -- namely, 19 hijackers with boxcutters (19, huh? On 9/11. And now we have COVID-19. Hmmm. What a mind fuck).
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases did not respond to a request for comment on the misinformation being directed at Fauci, who has said he plans to keep working to contain the coronavirus.
First they ignore you (check), then they fight you (check, this article), then you win (soon now).
“When you’re dealing with the White House, sometimes you have to say things one, two, three, four times, and then it happens,” Fauci said in an interview with Science magazine this past week. “So, I’m going to keep pushing.”
The online campaign is an abrupt shift for Fauci, an immunologist who has led the institute since 1984. He has long been seen as credible by a large section of the public and journalists, advising every president since Ronald Reagan and encouraging action against the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
He just lost all credibility!
In recent weeks, much of the online discussion of Fauci was benign or positive.....
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Of course, you will never guess who it is that is spreading misinformation or disinformation:
"As virus spreads, China and Russia see openings for disinformation" by Julian E. Barnes, Matthew Rosenberg and and Edward Wong New York Times, March 28, 2020
Oh, look, it is the lead government propaganda outlet projecting its own behavior onto others again. That's another reason this is my last Sunday Globe. This swill is past old, it's fetid and rank.
WASHINGTON — China and Russia have both seized on the novel coronavirus to wage disinformation campaigns that seek to sow doubts about the United States’ handling of the crisis and deflect attention from their own struggles with the pandemic, according to US intelligence officials and diplomats.
You have to read this article by reversing the United States and Russia/China wherever you see it. Then the article is 100% truthful.
Related:
"Spain, where stay-at-home restrictions have been in place for nearly two weeks, reported 832 more deaths Saturday, its highest daily count yet, bringing its total to 5,690. Another 8,000 confirmed infections pushed that count above 72,000, but Spain’s director of emergencies, Fernando Simón, saw a ray of hope, noting that the rate of infection is slowing and figures “indicate that the outbreak is stabilizing and may be reaching its peak in some areas.” Doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers in Spain’s worst-hit regions are working nonstop and falling ill at an alarming rate. More than 9,000 health workers in the country have been infected. “We are completely overwhelmed,” said paramedic Pablo Rojo at Barcelona’s Dos de Maig hospital. “Seven or eight (patients transported today) and all with COVID-19. ... And the average age is decreasing. They’re not 80 years old anymore, they are now 30 and 40 years old. Sometimes you become a bit paranoid, you don’t know any more when you pick up the phone if you have cleaned your hands, if you’ve sanitized them or not. You touch your face with your hands,” Rojo said. Spain has struggled to get coronavirus tests and protective gear for health workers. The government has started flights to transport the supplies directly from China to reduce waiting times. As the epicenter has shifted westward, the situation has calmed in China, where some restrictions have been lifted. Six subway lines restored limited service in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, after the city had its official coronavirus risk evaluation downgraded from high to medium on Friday. Five districts of the city of 11 million people had other travel restrictions loosened after their risk factor was downgraded to low....."
"China sent a plane loaded with medical personnel and supplies Saturday to help Pakistan fight the spread of the coronavirus in one of the world’s most populous nations. Across the Middle East and elsewhere, the outbreak has raised concerns that health systems strapped by multiple wars, refugee crises, and unstable economies won’t be able to handle a growing numbers in cases. Iran is battling the worst outbreak in the region and state TV said Saturday another 139 people had died from the virus. That pushed the total fatalities in Iran to 2,517 amid 35,408 confirmed cases. China has sought to portray itself as a global leader in the fight against the outbreak, which began a few months ago in its Wuhan province. The plane carrying aid to Pakistan was met at the capital’s airport Saturday by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureishi, who greeted the arriving Chinese doctors and officials. China had previously sent ventilators and masks to Pakistan, a key link in China’s ambitious multi-billion-dollar One Road Project linking south and central Asia with China. China is also a key military supplier for nuclear-armed Pakistan, having supplied the country with missiles capable of carrying atomic weapons. Pakistan, with a population of 220 million, has 1,408 confirmed cases of the virus, including 11 deaths from COVID-19. Most of the infected people there were travelers returning from neighboring Iran."
That's the role the U.S. has abdicated.
Also see:
"Citing the coronavirus, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday postponed a nationwide vote on proposed constitutional amendments that include a change potentially allowing him to stay in office until 2036. Putin didn’t set a new date for the plebiscite originally scheduled for April 22, saying it would depend on how the pandemic develops in Russia. He also announced during a televised address to the nation that the government doesn’t want Russians to go to work next week, except for those in essential sectors. Stores, pharmacies, and banks will stay open, he said. Russian authorities reported 163 more virus cases in the country Wednesday from a day earlier, bringing the national total to 658. That marked a significantly bigger daily increase from previous days, when the number of new infections grew only by several dozens. Russia’s comparatively low number of cases given its size and shared border with China raised questions and doubts about the veracity of official statistics. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told Putin Tuesday that the low number could reflect insufficient screening in Russia rather than the actual scale of the outbreak and said the situation was “serious.” Kremlin critics have accused the authorities of manipulating coronavirus statistics to ram the constitutional vote through at any cost — allegations that the government has rejected."
Why would Russia and China want to deflect attention from that?
Looks like it is the US government and the NYT mouthpiece that is attempting to divert attention from its struggles with this misinformation!
Kremlin-aligned websites aimed at Western audiences have trafficked in conspiracy theories to spread fear in Europe and political division in the United States, officials said, noting that Russia’s diplomats and state-run news media have arguably been more restrained.
China has been more overtly aggressive. It has used a network of government-linked social media accounts to spread discredited, and sometimes contradictory, theories, and China has adopted Russia’s playbook for more covert operations, mimicking Kremlin disinformation campaigns and using and amplifying some of the same conspiracy sites.
The campaigns show how both countries turned to a typical authoritarian tactic of spreading propaganda to undermine their shared adversary, the United States, rather than addressing public criticism of their own problems.
Screw you, New York Times! We can see the reflection in the mirror and who you are really talking about. What a pos "newZ organiZation."
In the days to come, China is likely to back off the public spread of disinformation through its Foreign Ministry and network of embassies and further embrace the more subtle Russian-style approach, relying on its intelligence services to spread disinformation about the origins of the virus and China’s handling of it, senior US intelligence officials assessed.
That's what our do, dipshit.
Washington and Beijing have reached a tentative détente, other US officials said, that calls for both sides to halt public attacks on each other about the virus, but officials are skeptical that the uneasy truce will hold.
One senior US official said China had signaled to the United States that it would throttle back its disinformation in the face of criticism from European countries and the US State Department. Other officials said China was merely shifting tactics, finding its disinformation campaign was less effective than it had hoped, and President Trump has moved toward conciliation, holding a telephone call with President Xi Jinping of China Thursday night in which the two leaders “agreed to work together to defeat the coronavirus pandemic,” according to a White House summary of the conversation.
This stuff is becoming f***ing laughable! This is what comes from the bowels of the New York Times these days!
Diplomats and official accounts from Russia and China as well as Iran have sharply increased their dissemination of disinformation about the coronavirus since January, even repeating and amplifying one another’s propaganda and falsehoods, including anti-American conspiracy theories, said Lea Gabrie
There they go again. Methinks they doth protest and point the finger way, way too much!
China has a long history of propaganda and efforts to cajole the world into following its own narrative on geopolitical issues like Taiwan, Tibet, or Hong Kong. While it pushes its policies and views, some openly anti-American, it rarely puts enormous resources behind fringe conspiracy theories, but that has changed during the pandemic, intelligence officials and outside experts said. In a highly coordinated campaign, Chinese officials and institutions have spread talking points centered on two narratives: that the United States is to blame for the origins of the virus and that the Communist Party has successfully contained the virus after a hard-fought campaign, affirming the superiority of its system.
So now the NYT is going to call China a liar even though the whole world is WOKE to the fact that the BUG was a US BIOWEAPON! The lab tests have proven it, and is that why the New York Times is running interference for the US government with this slanderous slop?
I mean, if the AMERICAN PEOPLE FOUND OUT that the COVID-19 VIRUS was LOOSED from a US BIOWEAPONS LAB they might chase those responsible down in the streets and lynch them!
Chinese officials appeared to have relied on borrowing falsehoods pushed by anti-American organizations cultivated by the Kremlin that have an audience in Western countries. Some of the sites have received Russian money, according to experts.
What about Israel's Hasbara?
On March 12, for instance, Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, posted a link on Twitter to what he described as a “very much important” article that falsely described American origins of the coronavirus. The article was from Global Research, a group based in Montreal that presents itself as a think tank but largely traffics in conspiracy theories.
I invite the reader to go examine the Global Research website for themselves since the New York Times called them out. The very fact that they did and wrote this screed of propaganda indicates they are shitting their pants because no one believes them anymore.
At least a dozen other Chinese embassies retweeted Zhao’s post. All told, more than 12,000 accounts have retweeted it, and more than 20,000 users have liked it.
The tactics are “a significant departure from how the Chinese have operated in the past,” said Laura Rosenberger, director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a project of the nonpartisan German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Why is there still a German Marshall Fund, and why is it directed by some Jew?
--more--"
More China bashing by the Jew York Times, this time using the youthful assets the CIA employs to destabilize the place:
"Coronavirus crisis awakens a sleeping giant: China’s youth" by Vivian Wang and Javier C. Hernández New York Times, March 28, 2020
Students have flooded social media to organize donations for Chinese doctors battling the coronavirus epidemic. Workers have marched in the streets to demand compensation for weeks of unemployment during citywide lockdowns. Young citizen journalists have taken to YouTube to call for free speech.
It's just what I said it is, more of the same.
The coronavirus outbreak has mobilized young people in China, sounding a call to action for a generation that had shown little resistance to the ruling Communist Party’s agenda.
Unlike here in AmeriKa, where the kids are scolded if they don't stay home and protest the tyranny. The JYT double standards are sickening.
For much of their lives, many young Chinese have been content to relinquish political freedoms as long as the party upheld its end of an unspoken authoritarian bargain by providing jobs, stability, and upward mobility. Now the virus has exposed the limits of that trade-off.
OMG!!!
The JYT is DESCRIBING AMERICA, not China!!
Angry and agitated, many young Chinese are pushing back on the government’s efforts to conceal its missteps and its resistance to allowing civil society to help.
Some have spoken out about the cost of secrecy, taking aim at censorship and the muzzling of whistle-blowers. Others, by organizing volunteers and protests, have tested the party’s hostility to independent groups. Still others have sought to hold opaque state-backed charities to account by exposing how public donations were funneled first to government offices instead of hospitals.
The outbreak has prompted a generational awakening that could match the defining effects of World War II or the 2008 financial crisis and disrupt the social stability on which the Communist Party depends.
That is why we are all being ordered to imprison ourselves in our homes.
“These recent events have made some people see more clearly that criticizing their country does not mean they don’t love their country,” said Hannah Yang, 34, a Beijing resident who created a channel on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app, to share screenshots of censored articles and social media posts. More than 14,000 people have joined.
“One day, there will definitely be a narrative about the recent events in China,” she said. “And at the very least, we can let other people know exactly what happened here.”
That is why I continue to blog everyday until I hear a ‘‘knock on my door.’’
As the virus continues to spread globally, similar questions — about trust in government, economic security, a way of life — are sure to face young people in many countries, but they have special resonance in China for a generation that is largely unfamiliar with the poverty and turmoil that came to characterize the country in the decades after the Communist Revolution.
Unlike the college students whose pro-democracy protests prompted the government’s Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, this generation — brought up in a roaring economy, saturated with official propaganda — has shown little opposition to the status quo.
Until now, and even now there is little from youth. As long as they get to keep their phone.
The coming months will test whether the party can assuage young people’s newfound concerns or if the pressure will build into broader discontent that chips away at the government’s legitimacy.
China’s recent success in reducing coronavirus infections has helped renew nationalist fervor, despite the severe lockdowns and travel restrictions put in place by the government. If the party is able to restart the economy quickly and restore daily life while countries like Italy and the United States struggle to do so, its promotion of a strong, centralized state could gain even more traction, but if the pandemic sets off a global recession that saps demand for Chinese goods and ends decades of economic growth in the country, resentment toward the party could build. Already, many young people are concerned about their job prospects as the fallout from the government’s containment efforts threatens to cause the first contraction in China’s economy since 1976.
The New York Times isn't talking about China, they are talking about the U.S.!!
“This episode has been traumatic and disruptive to many young people and led them to reflect on their experience and future prospects,” said Xueguang Zhou, a sociologist at Stanford University who has written about the Chinese government.
Turned them into Bernie voters, did they?
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has vowed to protect workers and get factories back on track. His government is ramping up nationalistic propaganda, portraying its handling of the virus as a model for other countries, and it is squelching dissent, targeting citizen journalists who sought to share unfiltered accounts of the crisis in Wuhan as well as critics like Ren Zhiqiang, an outspoken property tycoon who called Xi a power-hungry “clown.”
Xi is like Trump.
Still, the scars of the pandemic, which has killed more than 3,000 people in China, will not easily fade.
And a mere mention of COVID-19 in the future will trigger a flood of those feelings.
Carol Huang, 28, was once largely indifferent to politics, accepting that most people seemed supportive of the party and Xi, but recently, Huang, who is from Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the outbreak began, has taken to battling supporters of the party on social media and defending Chinese journalists who have criticized the government’s response to the outbreak.
I'm tired of this self-serving slop passing itself of as news.
“The government thinks, ‘Either you listen to me, or you go to hell,’ ” she said. “There’s no neutral ground. This is what I’m trying to change on social media.”
Other Chinese Internet users — nearly half of whom are under 30, according to official statistics — have chipped at the party’s narrative in less direct ways.
Some, like Yang in Beijing, have set up “cybergraveyards” to compile news and commentary related to the virus that have been scrubbed off the Internet by government censors. At several universities, students organized mass campaigns on social media to solicit donations for hospitals in Wuhan, posting testimonials from doctors and nurses describing a lack of supplies.
Several tech-savvy volunteers analyzed data from the Wuhan Red Cross and the Wuhan Charity General Association, two government-backed charities that controlled donations meant to help fight the outbreak. They found that the organizations had funneled more money and masks to government offices than to hospitals, and they publicized the details on social media.
It's the same here. Wealth and power get tested right away. The rest of us are to be held under medical martial law and rounded up.
As the outbreak worsened in January and officials in Wuhan imposed a lockdown, Lin Wenhua, a freelance videographer in the city, pivoted from producing advertisements to using his camera to document the crisis.
Lin, 38, posted videos of his conversations with doctors and nurses who described not having time to rest, and with homeless workers displaced by the epidemic. He attracted a following of more than 5 million people on Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media sites, even as several of his videos were deleted by government censors.
Go try watching the one she has up.
“Human nature has been magnified in this crisis,” he said. “You see warm and kind characters, but you also see especially ugly ones.”
I will say this, it has helped clarify who and what are evil in this world.
A few young people have channeled their experiences on the ground into explicitly political appeals.
Li Zehua, a former host on China Central Television, the state broadcast agency, traveled to Wuhan to cover the outbreak as a citizen journalist, interviewing stranded migrant workers and crematory workers. In his last video, Li, 25, urged his peers to learn more about China’s history.
“I’m not willing to disguise my voice, nor am I willing to shut my eyes and close my ears,” he said before two men in plainclothes entered his apartment and the video was cut off. “I hope more young people can stand up!”
That happened in San Francisco, too, but it wasn't Trump, it was the Democratic city that did that!
Li has not been heard from since, nor has Chen Qiushi, another young citizen journalist in Wuhan.
Still, despite widespread criticism of authorities’ early mishandling of the virus, those calling for less censorship and centralized control still probably represent a minority in a country where strident patriotism is fostered at a young age.
Here, too.
Far wider reaching is the anxiety over the outbreak’s economic toll.
In recent weeks, some young people have joined protests to demand compensation for the disruption caused by the virus and the ensuing government lockdowns.
I sure as hell hope they are practicing social distancing!
Peng Lun, 28, a clothing seller in the southern city of Guangzhou, joined hundreds of people recently as they marched in the streets demanding reductions in rent for shop owners. He said he and his wife were running out of money for food and shelter.
“Nobody is buying anything anymore,” he said. “How are we supposed to survive?”
One can only wonder if Americans will have the balls to do the same, or whether we will cower in our closets until the Maoists and the Stalinists drag us out.
Experts said China’s economy is likely to be the deciding factor in whether young people’s social and political engagement would last. While social media activity can be fleeting or censored, unemployment is harder to paper over, said Fengshu Liu, a professor at the University of Oslo who has studied Chinese youth.
I hope the American and state governments got that message, and I suspect they did. That's why we need a medical gown covering martial law.
--more--"
If only we were Sweden:
"In the coronavirus fight in Scandinavia, Sweden stands apart" by Christina Anderson and Henrik Pryser Libell New York Times, March 28, 2020
All these New York Times articles are another reason to stop buying Sunday Globes.
STOCKHOLM — When the coronavirus swept into Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark scrambled to place extensive restrictions on their borders to stem the outbreak. Sweden, their neighbor, took a decidedly different path.
While Denmark and Norway closed their borders, restaurants, and ski slopes and told all students to stay home this month, Sweden shut only its high schools and colleges, kept its preschools, grade schools, pubs, restaurants, and borders open — and put no limits on the slopes.
In fact, Sweden has stayed open for business while other nations beyond Scandinavia have attacked the outbreak with various measures ambitious in scope and reach. Sweden’s approach has raised questions about whether it’s gambling with a pandemic, COVID-19, that has no cure or vaccine, or if its tactic will be seen as a savvy strategy to fight a scourge that has laid waste to millions of jobs and prompted global lockdowns unprecedented in peacetime.
By Saturday, Norway, population 5.3 million, had more than 3,770 coronavirus cases and 19 deaths; Denmark, population 5.6 million, reported 2,200 cases and 52 deaths; Sweden, with 10.12 million people, recorded more than 3,060 cases and 105 deaths.
A recent headline in the Danish newspaper Politiken encapsulates the question ricocheting around Europe: “Doesn’t Sweden take the corona crisis seriously?”
There is no evidence that Swedes are underplaying the enormity of the disease rampaging across the globe. The country’s leader and health officials have stressed hand washing, social distancing, and protecting people older than 70 by limiting contact with them, but peer into any cafe in the capital, Stockholm, and groups of two or more people can be seen casually dining and enjoying cappuccinos. Playgrounds are full of running, screaming children. Restaurants, gyms, malls, and ski slopes have thinned out but are still in use.
The state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, said in an interview that Sweden’s strategy is based on science and boiled down to this: “We are trying to slow the spread enough so that we can deal with the patients coming in.”
Sweden’s approach appeals to the public’s self-restraint and sense of responsibility, Tegnell said.
“That’s the way we work in Sweden. Our whole system for communicable disease control is based on voluntary action. The immunization system is completely voluntary, and there is 98 percent coverage,” he explained.
“You give them the option to do what is best in their lives,” he added. “That works very well, according to our experience.”
Sweden’s method flies in the face of most nations’ stricter strategies. India is attempting a lockdown that affects 1.3 billion people. Germany has banned groups of two or more people, except for families. In France, residents are asked to fill out a form stating the purpose of each errand when they leave their homes; each trip requires a new form. Britain has deployed police officers to remind residents to stay home.
Related:
"Authorities sent a fleet of buses to the outskirts of India’s capital on Saturday to meet an exodus of migrant workers desperately trying to reach their home villages during the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown. Thousands of people, mostly young male day laborers but also families, fled their New Delhi homes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day lockdown that began on Wednesday and effectively put millions of Indians who live off daily earnings out of work. Construction projects, taxi services, housekeeping, and other informal sector employment came to a sudden halt. Modi said the extreme measure was needed to halt the spread of the coronavirus in India, which has confirmed 775 cases and 19 deaths, and where millions live in cramped conditions without regular access to clean water. India’s finance ministry announced a $22 billion economic stimulus package that will include delivering grains and lentil rations for three months to 800 million people, around 60% of the world’s second-most populous country, but thousands of India’s most vulnerable, who fear dying not of the disease caused by the new virus but rather of starvation, have decided not to wait. The government of Uttar Pradesh state, which borders New Delhi, also dispatched medical teams to screen bus passengers at city bus stops....."
"The number of confirmed coronavirus infections worldwide topped 660,000 on Saturday as new cases stacked up quickly in Europe and the United States and officials dug in for a long fight against the pandemic. The latest landmark came only two days after the world passed half a million infections, according to a tally by John Hopkins University, showing that much work remains to be done to slow the spread of the virus. The virus already has put health systems in Italy, Spain, and France under extreme strain. Lockdowns of varying severity have been introduced across Europe, nearly emptying streets in normally bustling cities, including Paris, where drone photos showed the city’s landmarks eerily deserted. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is in quarantine at home after her doctor tested positive for the virus, appealed to her German compatriots to “be patient” in an audio message. Her chief of staff said Germany — where authorities closed nonessential shops and banned gatherings of more than two in public — won’t relax its restrictions before April 20....."
"Another member of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Cabinet has developed symptoms of COVID-19, as the number of people with the coronavrius to die in the United Kingdom passed the 1,000 mark Saturday. Scottish Secretary Alister Jack said he had symptoms of the disease and was self-isolating a day after the prime minister and Britain’s health secretary revealed they tested positive for the virus and were experiencing mild symptoms. Johnson, 55, is the highest-profile political leader to have contracted the virus. The editor of the respected British medical journal The Lancet published a scathing editorial Saturday that criticized the government for doing too little, too late to protect public health and leaving the United Kingdom’s public health system “wholly unprepared for this pandemic.”
That's interesting because his own health office downgraded the pandemic on March 19, and I will break bread with the French below.
Still, while Sweden may appear to be an outlier in Scandinavia and in much of the wider world, it is too soon to say whether its approach will yield the same results as other countries, and Swedish authorities could still take stronger action as coronavirus hospitalizations rise.
In explaining Sweden’s current strategy, experts point to other underlying factors: The country has high levels of trust, according to historian Lars Tragardh, and a strict law in the Constitution prohibits the government from meddling in the affairs of the administrative authorities, such as the public health agency.
Maybe the U.S. government and its mouthpiece media shouldn't have lied us into wars after all.
“Therefore, you don’t need to micromanage or control behavior at a detailed level through prohibitions or threat of sanctions or fines or imprisonment,” Tragardh said in a phone interview. “That is how Sweden stands apart, even from Denmark and Norway.”
The government has deferred to the agency’s recommendations to fight the virus, which had infected more than 600,000 people and killed more than 27,000 worldwide by Saturday. If the health agency were to say that closing borders and shutting down all of society was the best way to go, the government would most likely listen.
Tragardh said Swedes’ level of trust was manifested in other ways: Not only do citizens have confidence in public institutions and governmental agencies and vice versa, but high social trust exists among citizens.
They have us beat there. I don't trust not one of my fellow citizens. Well, maybe one.
Sweden initially banned gatherings of 500.
Early in the outbreak, some event organizers suggested they would try to get around the crowd limit by allowing precisely 499 ticket holders into their venues. (That stopped when cases of COVID-19 were confirmed among staff members.)
Tegnell, the state epidemiologist, said that is why bans don’t work: “People find ways around the rules.”
He also said he did not believe Sweden was a maverick and did not understand neighbors’ strategy.
“Closing borders at this stage of the pandemic, when almost all countries have cases, to me does not really make sense,” he said. “This is not a disease that is going to go away in the short term or long term. We are not in the containment phase. We are in the mitigation phase.”
The infection curve in Sweden has started to rise sharply, and Friday the government tightened the limit on crowds to no more than 50 people.
Oh, so they are finally coming around!
--more--"
What are they doing about getting their daily bread in France?
"Daily bread? In France, fighting virus one baguette at a time" by John Leicester Associated Press, March 28, 2020
LE VESINET, France — In France, the fight against COVID-19 is being waged one baguette at a time.
No longer just a mere staple, the iconic loaf and the French daily ritual of buying it have become loaded with moral, civic, and public health considerations that could never have been imagined before the new coronavirus turned life upside down.
In a nation in lockdown, popping out for a fresh baguette is proving a handy excuse for people to get out of the house. There is one notable exception: a town on the Mediterranean coast where the mayor has banned people from doing just that, to keep them indoors, but eschewing the crusty comfort of a fresh-baked baguette has become significant, too — a small sacrifice in this new era where sacrifices are being asked of many. For some, not buying bread daily and instead staying indoors to try to stay healthy has become an act in itself, a gesture of solidarity with the French doctors and nurses fighting to save lives in stressed emergency wards.
Take off the Yellow Vest first.
For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.
Trying to steer a path between their love of bread and beating the virus, some in France are now buying baguettes by the armful and freezing them. That would have been a gastronomic no-no in normal times, but defrosting and reheating is now a pragmatic, civic-minded, and health-conscious compromise, certainly better than no baguette at all.
Sacre Bleu!
The French have baked long loaves for centuries and coined “baguette” — or stick — around 120 years ago in Paris. Millions of French consume billions of baguettes each year, and not just as fuel. Diners use hunks of bread as tools for pushing food around their plates and onto their forks. The crust makes the bread easy to grip; its airy internal sponge soaks up sauces and the bloody juices of cooked meats. A baguette’s saltiness accentuates flavors, while its doughy neutrality tames the tang of the most pungent cheeses.
“It’s indispensable. You need bread to push your food stuffs, to give them taste, for nourishment. It is good for everything,” masked shopper Yves Lagrellette said this week as he made what has now become his weekly baguette run in Le Vesinet, west of Paris. He bought five in one go, for freezing. He used to buy one daily.
When the government locked down France earlier this month, shutting down schools and stores deemed nonessential and forcing families indoors, it also gave bakers special dispensation to work every day of the week if they wish.....
--more--"
One thing the coronavirus did do was starve the Yellow Vests out of the streets, cui bono?
"Russia gets oil firm in Venezuela; Move counters US sanctions" by Vladimir Isachenkov Associated Press, March 28, 2020
MOSCOW — Russia’s Rosneft oil company said Saturday that it’s halting operations in Venezuela and selling its assets there to a company fully owned by the Russian government, a move apparently intended to protect Russia’s largest oil producer from US sanctions while Moscow continues supporting Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro.
The sale follows the United States’ imposing sanctions on two Rosneft subsidiaries in an effort to cut a critical lifeline Russia extended to Maduro after the US government made it illegal for Americans to buy crude from Venezuela.
Rosneft — led by Igor Sechin, a longtime associate of President Vladimir Putin of Russia — said that its move means that “all assets and trading operations of Rosneft in Venezuela and/or connected with Venezuela will be disposed of, terminated, or liquidated.”
It said in a statement that it “concluded an agreement with the company 100% owned by the government of Russian Federation, to sell all of its interest and cease participation in its Venezuelan businesses,” including multiple joint ventures, oil-field services companies and other activities.
The sale could help shield Rosneft by handing over control over the Venezuelan operations to a fully state-owned venture that, unlike the state-controlled Rosneft, isn’t answerable to private investors.
In February, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the Rosneft subsidiary based in Geneva that sells crude to European customers. US authorities vowed to keep applying pressure, and hit a second Rosneft subsidiary with sanctions earlier this month.
And they have.
Rosneft spokesman Mikhail Leontyev said the company’s decision was aimed at ‘‘protecting the interests of our shareholders.’’
Do they need protecting?
He added that Rosneft expects the United States to now waive sanctions against its subsidiaries.
‘‘We really have the right to expect American regulators to fulfill their public promises,” he said.
How naive is he!
Konstantin Kosachev, the Kremlin-connected head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russian parliament, reiterated that Russia’s view is that “unilateral US sanctions against Venezuela are unlawful and inhumane.”
‘‘Moscow and Caracas will remain partners amid the US sanctions against Venezuela,’’ he said.
The United States was first among nearly 60 nations to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaidó a year ago as Venezuela’s rightful leader. The coalition considers Maduro illegitimate, after 2018 elections widely deemed fraudulent because the most popular opposition candidates were banned from running against him.
--more--"
Invading Venezuela would be like invading Vietnam or Afghanistan, readers.
"Taliban attack Afghanistan amid growing coronavirus threat" by Mujib Mashal and Najim Rahim New York Times, March 28, 2020
KABUL — The Taliban on Saturday attacked several provinces in northern Afghanistan, overrunning large parts of one district even as American diplomats expressed optimism that a peace process stalled over the release of prisoners was getting back on track.
Insurgents launched major assaults in three northern provinces — in Kunduz, whose capital was overrun by the Taliban repeatedly in recent years, as well as in Faryab and Badakhshan.
Some of the worst fighting occurred in Badakhshan province, where insurgents took control of much of the district of Yamgan and inflicted heavy casualties on Afghan forces in another district, Jurm.
The fighting rages despite an appeal for a cease-fire on humanitarian grounds to slow the spread of the coronavirus across the country.
Though the Taliban say they have begun a public health campaign to combat the virus, they also have launched more than 300 attacks in the past week in the roughly dozen Afghan provinces that have reported positive cases. The capital, Kabul, as well as the western city of Herat, which has the largest number of cases as it shares a porous border with the badly hit Iran, have gone under partial lockdown.
No need for us to stay then, sorry.
“During the day, we fight coronavirus. At night, our brothers, the Taliban. In the morning, we hold meetings on coronavirus. In the afternoon, on security,” said Naqibullah Faiq, who is a doctor and the governor of Faryab province, where the Taliban have tried to overrun the Almar district in days of fighting.
“This might be the dumbest war in the world’s history — that the world is going to quarantine, and we are busy fighting each other,” he said.
In the Jurm district, officials initially feared that the Taliban had killed dozens of Afghan forces after the attacks left more than 30 soldiers unaccounted for, but around noon, 20 of the missing soldiers made their way to the district center, according to Abdullah Naji Nazari, a member of the provincial council in Badakhshan.
“They told me that the Taliban killed 10 of the unaccounted soldiers, and three soldiers were taken prisoner,” Nazari said.
Do the lies from authority ever stop?
The violence continues even as US diplomats and Afghan officials reported progress on plans to release prisoners and on preparations for direct negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Both steps are laid out in a deal signed between the Taliban and the US last month, but those steps were delayed by disagreements and complicated because of travel restrictions around the pandemic, and both appear to be bargained over down to the wire.
See: 21st-Century Pentagon Papers
They have been lying since day one, and the pre$$ has transmitted their lies no questions asked -- and still does!
As part of the deal, up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners must be freed in exchange for a thousand Afghan prisoners held by the insurgents. After the government of President Ashraf Ghani vehemently disagreed, details of a phased release have been ironed out with the Taliban in negotiations held over the past week via video conference.
The prisoner release is expected to begin on Tuesday. Yet, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s national security council on Saturday said they believed the Taliban didn’t really have 1,000 Afghan prisoners in their control to fulfill the exchange. The Taliban, in return, claimed their prisoners at the Bagram prison, a former American detention facility transferred to the Afghan government, had all of a sudden started experiencing brutal treatment, the kind “not seen in the past years.”
Yeah, Bagram was a U.S. torture chamber, but all that has been flushed down the ma$$ media memory hole.
--more--"
It's just page after page of dead, folks.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Meanwhile, back at home:
"Some nursing homes could be used for coronavirus treatment centers as Mass. reports more than 1,000 new cases" by John Hilliard, Tim Logan and Robert Weisman Globe Staff, March 28, 2020
At least a dozen skilled nursing facilities across the state could soon be emptied of their residents and converted to treatment centers for COVID-19 patients, as health officials reported more than 1,000 new cases and nine additional deaths from the contagion.
Where are they going to go, and who will take care of them?
Massachusetts now has 4,257 confirmed coronavirus cases after the largest one-day increase since the outbreak began, according to the state Department of Public Health. Forty-four people have died.
As hospitals brace for a surge of patients, the first transition for nursing homes is underway in Worcester, where officials on Saturday began relocating 147 residents from Beaumont Rehabilitation and Skilled Nursing Center into a number of other eldercare facilities in Central Massachusetts. Officials there hope to finish the moves by Wednesday and the nursing home will be repurposed for coronavirus recovery soon after.
WHY?
Why are they UPENDED the LIVES of OLD PEOPLE who are in surroundings they recognize?!
To "repurpose?"
It’s an unusual, complex move that underscores the immense scale of a crisis that threatens to overwhelm Massachusetts hospitals, and it’s expected to happen at a number of nursing homes around the state in the coming weeks as the number of coronavirus cases continues to rise.
“These measures are being taken to ensure capacity at acute care hospitals to address the anticipated surge in demand in coming weeks,” Marylou Sudders, the state secretary of health and human services, wrote in a letter to skilled nursing facilities Friday. “We understand this is not an easy thing to ask residents, families and nursing facilities to do.”
EVIL F***!
State and industry officials are working to identify other sites ― both operating nursing homes and recently closed ones ― to handle an influx of patients. Unlike hotels or university dorms, licensed nursing homes have trained medical staff and equipment, such as oxygen, that can help patients recover without filling hospital beds badly needed to serve patients with more severe symptoms.
Still, it’s a complicated maneuver. Nursing home residents are by definition a vulnerable population and moving them to new facilities on short notice is risky. Salmon Health & Retirement, which owns the Beaumont center, plans to move about 50 residents to sister facilities it operates in Westborough and Northbridge, while the rest will go to other skilled nursing facilities in the area that have excess capacity.
Yeah, SOMETHING ELSE is GOING ON!
“We have plenty of bed availability in Worcester, so they’re going to stay local,” said company president Matt Salmon, who also said the move would help keep current residents separate from new patients recovering from coronavirus. “I was scared to death that we were going to have infected or recently infected patients coming back into the building to commingle with healthy residents.”
Family members of several Beaumont residents — who said they haven’t been able to visit the facility for about two weeks — said Saturday that the move happened very fast and with virtually no communication from the nursing home.
What will you do when they say, sorry, your loved one died from COVID-19?
Peter Nelson, whose mother is in her late 80s and has lived in a Beaumont memory care unit for about two years, said he first learned she would be moving from a video Salmon posted on Facebook Friday afternoon. Nearly 24 hours later, Nelson still had no idea where exactly his mother would be going, or when, or if she had already been moved.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things in a situation like this,” he said. “It’s not hard to understand. The right thing is to reach out to every family before you start moving people around.”
It's pretty obvious that our leaders DO NOT CARE ABOUT US AT ALL!
THEY ARE EVIL!
Tara Gregorio, president of the Massachusetts Senior Care Association, a trade group for more than 350 nursing homes in the state, said her members are talking with state health officials about what other moves might make sense.
Existing nursing homes may be easier to set up as recovery centers because they’re licensed and have a staff and infrastructure in place, but they’re also looking at recently shuttered facilities that could be quickly adapted. Staffing would likely involve a mix of existing nurses, temp agencies, and hospital workers who’ve been furloughed from elective surgery departments that are now shut down.
I'm just wondering how those workers feel about being drafted into the fight.
As for the hospitals this is designed to help, a spokesman for UMass Memorial Health Care said they appreciate the sacrifices Beaumont and its residents are making.
You have no idea what further "sacrifices" will be coming!
The preparations came as the number of COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts increased by more than 31 percent since Friday, when 3,240 cases were reported, and nine more people died. Officials described the victims as a woman in her 60s from Essex County; a Suffolk County woman in her 80s; a man in his 80s from Worcester County; a Norfolk County woman in her 80s; a man in his 70s from Hampden County; a Hampden county man in his 80s; a Norfolk County man in his 80s; a woman in her 50s in Worcester County; and a woman in her 90s from Hampden County.
Two Woburn women, 89 and 92, respectively, had died from the virus, the city’s mayor said.
“Both were beloved mothers and grandmothers and will be deeply missed by their families,” Scott Galvin said.
All elderly, all probably with underlying health conditions, but they all died of COVID-19.
More than 35,000 people have been tested for the disease, an increase of about 19 percent over Friday’s total.
President Trump, meanwhile, approved a disaster declaration for Massachusetts that allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reimburse 75 percent of costs incurred by local governments, state agencies, and certain nonprofit organizations that respond to the crisis.
Not even a thank you from local or state leaders. That is how ungrateful they are to the President of the United States.
Governor Charlie Baker, speaking at a Red Cross center in Dedham, urged healthy people to donate blood to address a severe shortage brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
Is he kidding?
In those cramped quarters at the hospital?
The nation’s blood supply relies heavily on individual donations, which have fallen off dramatically since social distancing restrictions were put into place. Hundreds of drives have been canceled.
“This really is a way for people to save lives," Baker said. "It’s pretty much as simple as that.”
They are LITERALLY COMING FOR your BLOOD!
The city of Boston also opened a testing site for first responders at Suffolk Downs. The site is operated by the Boston Public Health Commission and the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center.
“Boston’s first responders are on the front lines of this public health crisis, and we will continue to do everything we can as a city to keep all residents safe and healthy,” Mayor Martin Walsh said.
--more--"
Related:
"She has been making do by waving to her in her fourth-floor bedroom window, but recently, her mom said she didn’t want to talk by phone....."
They are coming to take your beloved elderly away and you will never see them again. The cold-hearted and evil authorities will tell you they died of coronavirus, sorry. Should have learned the lesson from Italy.
Also see:
Nurses in protective gear at the drive-through coronavirus testing facility at Cape Cod Community College. (John Tlumacki/Globe staff)
That's the next frontier in coronavirus testing as the coronavirus becomes a testing ground for telemedicine’s potential.
No dining in restaurants, but what about takeout lines?
Dan Doherty (middle), vice president and director of operations for Kelly's Roast Beef, informed people on Revere Beach that the restaurant was no longer offering takeout service because of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)
Where is the social distancing?!!
Mayor Brian Arrigo of Revere used a bullhorn Saturday to warn crowds on Revere Beach about the COVID-19 pandemic. (Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff)
Crowds?
A Massachusetts State Police Trooper dispersed motorists on the Lynnway who were trying to reach the drive-through at Starbucks on Saturday. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)
One good thing about the coronavirus is it has made us forget all about the OT scandal and related corruption.
Here are some more photos from Tlumacki that have been scrubbed from the web:
Page B3:
"PERFECT PERCH -- A mourning dove rested on a post near a marsh off Lynnfield Street in Peabody (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)"
That's a verbatim quote from beneath the photo in my printed paper, and what was he doing outside anyway?
Page B12:
"PHOTO OP -- Peter Georgakas snapped a picture of his bernadoodle Hana after they took a walk on the Charles River Esplanade (Erin Clark/Globe Staff)."
He is some sort of doctor, apparently.
Does Chinatown count?
With everything going on, she is worried about the damn census!
I'm skipping the Globe Local section to because the coronavirus pandemic will exacerbate some of the most worrisome trends in American life — unless we take action.
Apparently, we are not all equal like that skank Madonna claims, and the lesson of the coronavirus pandemic is that competence matters:
White House adviser Jared Kushner attends a teleconference with governors at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters. (Pool/Getty)
He looks bored, doesn't he?
A civil liberties pandemic
He's the only one at the Globe asking about them, and he should be shunned for it!
The November election is in jeopardy — save it with mail-in voting
You can already smell the vote fraud!
Looks like the football season will also be cancelled, and who can laugh at the comics these days?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
In "Other News":
Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is losing its reservation
Their land is being stolen by order of the US Secretary of the Israel, 'er, Interior,
Two Berkley teens killed in fiery car crash; third teen injured
What were they doing out of the house?
One person shot, four people arrested in Dorchester
What were they doing out of the house, and where are the authorities going to put them?
In jail?
Man, teen arrested on gun charges in Roxbury
They took his gun, let him go.
Edgartown woman identified as Mashpee murder victim
The first domestic victim of the lockdown!
Colleges team up to celebrate Women’s History Month
Thankfully, the Equal Rights Amendment survived and the fight goes on!
