Author Archives: marcia

Appreciate Your Plant Family!

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Plants can recognise their relatives, make decisions, and even COUNT, scientists say

  • Prince Charles  was roundly mocked for saying he talked to plants years ago
  • And now it appears plants may be smarter than even the Prince of Wales thought
  • Plants can count, make decisions, recognise relatives and remember events

By Sophie Freeman for Daily Mail

Published:

If  he were that sort of chap, Prince Charles would be within his rights to deliver a right royal ‘I told you so’.

For in the years since he was roundly mocked for saying he talked to plants – and that they ‘responded’ – evidence has grown that he may have been on to something.

And now it appears plants may be smarter than even the Prince of Wales thought.

According to researchers, plants can count, make decisions, recognise their relatives and even remember events.

For in the years since he was roundly mocked for saying he talked to plants ¿ and that they ¿responded¿ ¿ evidence has grown that he may have been on to something. Pictured: Stock photo of houseplants on a window

For in the years since he was roundly mocked for saying he talked to plants – and that they ‘responded’ – evidence has grown that he may have been on to something. Pictured: Stock photo of houseplants on a window

According to researchers, plants can count, make decisions, recognise their relatives and even remember events. Pictured: A gardener pruning a Hibiscus Plant

According to researchers, plants can count, make decisions, recognise their relatives and even remember events. Pictured: A gardener pruning a Hibiscus Plant

And while they may not have a brain, they can learn in a similar way to humans and animals, say scientists.

Professor Umberto Castiello said: ‘Although the idea that plants may behave in a cognitive way may baffle the public, many of us are genuinely amazed by the complexity of plant responses.

‘Evidence is accumulating supporting notions that plants can communicate, remember, decide, and even count – all abilities that one would normally call cognitive if they were observed in animals.’

Professor Castiello said many studies show their cognitive abilities. One found Venus flytraps can ‘count’ the number of steps their prey made.

Scientists observed that the plant trapped prey only when an insect triggered it twice within 20 seconds. This means the plants can remember the first signal for a short time. The reason why plants need to ‘count’ the steps of its prey could be to avoid wasting energy by responding to random raindrops or windblown debris.

Another experiment showed the flowering plant Mimosa pudica can remember being dropped.

The plant was dropped from 6in 60 times in a row and by the end of the experiment it no longer folded its leaves in a defensive response as it realised being dropped from that height would not hurt.

‘The plant “realises” that being dropped is normal,’ Professor Castiello, from the University of Padua in Italy, wrote. ‘More astonishingly, this reflex lasts up to a month which demonstrates the acquisition and expression of a long-lasting memory.’

And shrubs can recognise their kin too as they release more chemicals when planted near their relatives which helps them stave off predators.

It is even thought plants can manipulate competitors when resources are scarce. Plants experiencing a lack of water can share this information with nearby shrubs by sending signals via their roots.

This prompts a nearby plant – its competitor – to start conserving water and this behaviour ultimately benefits both.

Professor Castiello concluded: ‘The question should no longer be if plants are cognitive organisms but how plants make use of their cognitive capacities.’

 

from:    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8680155/Plants-recognise-relatives-make-decisions-COUNT-scientists-say.html

Card-ing Your Way Out of Police Stops

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pba cards courtesy cards
Images from Getty, Shutterstock, and Katie Way  | Collage by Cathryn Virginia
Identity

The Little Cards That Tell Police ‘Let’s Forget This Ever Happened’

Some cops give their friends and family union-issued “courtesy cards” to help get them out of minor infractions. The cards embody everything wrong with modern policing.
KW
September 2, 2020,

 

 

Mike, a white man in his 50s, was in a bad spot: He was stuck idling in traffic on New York City’s Riverside Drive, running late for a meeting, and he needed to get to the Upper East Side pronto. Hopping on the shoulder to bypass the other cars wasn’t the right thing to do, he told VICE, but he’d seen other people get away with it before.

Mike, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy, said he knew it was risky—especially because the borrowed car he was driving didn’t have a license plate, let alone a registration under his name. He decided to roll the dice anyway. Right away, bad news: a traffic checkpoint, and cops pulling people over.

“That was probably the tightest spot I could’ve been in,” Mike said. “Because [the offense] could’ve been ‘driving without a plate,’ ‘driving with no registration…’” By driving on the shoulder, too, Mike was driving illegally in at least three different ways.

Despite that, he felt confident as the cop approached his car and told him to roll down his window. Instead of pulling out his driver’s license, Mike simply introduced himself and produced something better. “I just basically happened to have one of their PBA cards on me,” he said, referring to the small, plastic “courtesy” cards issued by the Police Benevolent Association, which usually have an officer’s name, phone number, and signature on the back.

The cards are designed to be presented in a low-stakes police encounter, like a traffic stop, as a laminated wink-and-nudge between officers that says, “Hey, would you mind going a little easy on this one?” When a cop is handed a PBA card, they can call the number on it to verify the relationship between the cardholder and the issuer, then decide whether it means they should give the cardholder a break.

According to Mike, the officer looked at the card, then let him go without asking for ID or the car’s registration. “By knowing somebody and having that connection, it worked,” Mike said.  …

Though Mike’s story may seem like it comes from a less-scrutinized, outdated era of law enforcement, PBA cards are still used and accepted in the present, without much oversight. They serve as a physical example of how cops are able to exercise the law largely as they feel, personally, is right.

…

According to John Driscoll, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, PBA cards aren’t quite carte blanche to flout the law. Driscoll, a former NYPD officer himself, told VICE that, in his experience, the cards are most likely to work in one’s favor during traffic stops for minor infractions, like speeding or a busted tail light—and not in more serious cases, like drunk driving.

When a PBA card is presented, it’s up to the officer how they want to factor it into a stop. “Some officers, I think they’d summons their own mother,” Driscoll said. “The card doesn’t mean anything to them. Other people [are less that way]; we have wide discretion when it comes to issuing summonses, so officers exercise that all the time,” he said, in order to let PBA cardholders off the hook for minor infractions if they so choose.

Screen Shot 2020-08-08 at 11.47.37 AM 2.png

Screenshot via eBay

…But because cops can also use discretion to over-apply the law violently to vulnerable populations, PBA cards and the privileges they confer are darkly emblematic of how certain people are favored in situations in which others are endangered or hurt by police.

The existence of these cards is a concrete example of a larger, often more insidious problem in American policing: Discretionary decision-making allows police to pick and choose who the law really applies to—and who gets a pass.

…Black Americans have filed lawsuits against police officers in Aurora, Colorado, and Shreveport, Louisiana, alleging discriminatory and violent treatment during broken taillight stops, fortunately without deadly consequences.

In 2015, Sandra Bland was pulled over in Prairie View, Texas, for failing to signal while changing lanes; after a state trooper threatened her with a stun gun, Bland was taken into custody, where she was found dead three days later. There are many other accounts of police choosing violence against the people they pull over for minor traffic infractions, particularly if they aren’t white.

To illustrate how discretion permeates issues of policing large and small, David Correia, an associate professor at the University of New Mexico and co-author of Police: A Field Guide, also pointed to over-policing in the “crime-infested” neighborhoods overwhelmingly populated by Black and brown people living at or below the poverty line; and the proven inability of so-called “chokehold bans” to curb the police use of chokeholds.

…

In practice, Correia and Wall said those who are able to “get off easy” from an encounter with the police typically look and act a lot like Mike, an affable white person who respects police authority and is careful to address them with friendly deference—to act the part of the sheepish, apologetic innocent who understands that the cop is “just doing their job.” (And, given the publicly available data on the demographics of the NYPD and New Jersey state police, the majority of police issuing cards are likely white officers.)

…Officer discretion is at the core of modern policing—it vests cops with the power to choose if, when, how, to whom, and to what extent they will apply the law. The school resource officers who handcuff disabled children for acting out in class are free to do so because they’ve determined, using discretion, that it is necessary. The cop who returned a scared, naked teenager to Jeffrey Dahmer after the 14-year-old boy escaped the murderer’s house? Also exercising discretion.

Literature on discretion that’s favorable to the police effectively states that this decision-making power can’t be limited, because to do so would curb their ability to react in the moment and enforce the law. …

Kelling goes on to advocate for training that teaches cops about how to think, rather than how to act, in the field—how to identify disorder and criminal potential, without placing firm limits on how to act once a supposed threat is identified. This mindset has unsurprisingly been linked to racial profiling and the criminalization of unhoused populations, something Kelling himself expressed concerns about.

…

Cops have serious social incentives to respect PBA cards—the way they handle being presented with one reflects the respect they have for a fellow officer. This dynamic is demonstrated with surprising accuracy, Driscoll said, in a storyline of The Sopranos.

In the 2001 episode “Another Toothpick,” Tony Soprano brandishes a New Jersey State PBA card when a Black police officer pulls him over for speeding. “I think I had dinner with your boss last week,” Soprano says slyly as he flashes the card (which bears the name of real-life former PBA president Michael J. Madonna).

After a tense exchange, the officer tickets Soprano anyway. A few scenes later, Soprano runs into the cop working at a garden supply store: Once word of his refusal to let Soprano off the hook got back to his superiors, the cop’s hours were cut and he was forced to get a second job to recoup the lost income.

“I love The Sopranos,” Driscoll said. “I laughed at that one!” But he said the potential disrespect communicated by ignoring a fellow cop’s PBA card was no joke.

…

Police unions tend to be tight-lipped when it comes to discussing PBA cards. The phenomenon is mentioned in the media as early as 1936, in a profile of a former police commissioner in the New Yorker, and references to PBA cards continued to crop up in New York–area newspapers throughout the 20th century, generally in connection with forgery and extortion. One motorcycle patrolman died by suicide after he was found guilty of distributing fraudulent courtesy cards. But for the most part, you’d be hard pressed to get a cop (or even a PBA cardholder) to discuss the custom in detail.

Because of this silence, it’s tough to get a read on how many PBA cards there are in circulation, and who exactly is holding them.

—

To Wall, though, courtesy cards are just the opposite: They’re “a window into the larger maze” of the foundational principles of policing, like discretion, that make the entire institution so unreformable. He believes they reflect the biases, prejudices, and institutionally supported pecking order of policing on the whole.

“Policing was never meant to be held accountable in the first place, not in a meaningful, substantial way,” Wall said. He cautioned against focusing too much on the injustice of PBA cards. “Be careful that the outrage [doesn’t] become directed in too narrow a way. The real outrage should be directed at the nature of policing itself.”

Correction: This story originally stated that David Correia is an associate professor at the University of Mexico. He is actually an associate professor at the University of New Mexico. We regret the error.

Follow Katie Way on Twitter.

from:    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7gxa4/pba-card-police-courtesy-cards?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Systematic Destruction of the Food Supply

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Engineered Food Shortages and Famine to Justify ‘Reset’ of US Food System

September 3, 2020

Chicago soup kitchen in 1931, Wiki
YouTube personality ‘Ice Age Farmer’ points to signs that food shortages are coming as California has ordered meat processing plants to shut down over an ‘outbreak’ of COVID-19 ‘cases’ of workers testing positive. In Michigan, when Governor Whitmer issued orders for mandatory COVID-19 testing for migrant workers, many of them walked off the job. In the past five years, venture capitalists and corporations have invested almost $10-billion to replace traditional food-source systems with synthetic food produced in laboratories. Strange explosions in food-storage facilities, fires, and wind storms across the world will further affect food supplies. Without farm labor, food will rot in the fields, and with stored food being destroyed, food prices will skyrocket. People will face hunger. Many will starve. The rest will beg the government and the corporations for food. -GEG

Rockefeller Foundation document:

Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System

Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System

from:    https://needtoknow.news/2020/09/engineered-food-shortages-and-famine-to-justify-reset-of-us-food-system/

Time To Look at the REAL Numbers! or we Have Been Schnookered AGAIN

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CDC: 6% Of US COVID-19 Deaths List COVID-19 As Only Cause Of Death

– by Staff Writer

CDC

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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) this week released a report that shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

In the latest update, the CDC pointed out that only 6% of deaths related to COVID-19 listed COVID-19 as the only cause of death. The vast majority of patients that were listed as COVID-19 related deaths also suffered from serious comorbidities.

CDC

The CDC is reporting 167,558 COVID-19 related deaths in the United State as of August 28, 2020.  Out of the 167,558 COVID-19 related deaths, only 10,053 (6%) mentioned COVID-19 as the only cause according to the CDC’s new numbers. The other 94% of the COVID-19 related deaths had comorbidities associated with those deaths.

For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups here.

Some of the comorbidities found in the database include :

Respiratory diseases, Circulatory diseases, Sepsis, Malignant neoplasms, Diabetes, Obesity, Alzheimer disease, Vascular and unspecified dementia, Renal failure, Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events,  Influenza, and pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Adult respiratory distress syndrome, Respiratory failure, Respiratory arrest, Other diseases of the respiratory system, Hypertensive diseases, Ischemic heart disease, Cardiac arrest, Cardiac arrhythmia, Heart failure, Cerebrovascular diseases, and Other diseases of the circulatory system

CDC

CDC Source Links

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?#Comorbidities
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Conditions-contributing-to-deaths-involving-corona/hk9y-quqm/data

Source: CDC

from:    https://firststateupdate.com/2020/08/cdc-6-of-us-covid-19-deaths-list-covid-19-as-only-cause-of-death/

“Thank You For Asking”

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DHS Braces For ‘Potential EMP Attack’ As Presidential Election Nears 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a new report warning about a “potential” electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the U.S.

DHS’s warning published Thur. (Sept. 2), or about 60 days until the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, indicates there are “evolving threats against the American homeland, most recently highlighting efforts to combat an Electromagnetic Pulse attack which could disrupt the electrical grid and potentially damage electronics.”

The department released an EMP status report via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that said the “key actions to address known EMP-related vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.”

CISA said an EMP attack could “disrupt, degrade, and damage technology” embedded in critical infrastructure systems. Widespread blackouts could be seen if an EMP was to damage the nation’s electrical grid, resulting in additional flare-ups of socio-economic turmoil.

“EMP attacks are part of the emerging threats against our nation and demand a response,” said Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.

“That is why DHS is taking these contingencies very seriously, working diligently to mitigate our risks and equipping our state and local partners with the resources they need to do the same. We’ve made significant progress and look forward to work ahead,” Cuccinelli said.

CISA Director Chris Krebs said top priorities of the agency is to mitigate threats associated with EMPs:

“Over the past year, we have worked with interagency and industry partners to identify the footprint and effects of EMP threats across our National Critical Functions, and are developing sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the Nation’s resilience to EMPs,” Krebs said.

To combat these emerging threats, President Trump signed an executive order in March 2019, delegating power to the White House for EMP preparedness.

We recently quoted Peter Vincent Pry, ex-chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, who wrote an op-ed that said the virus pandemic from China has “exposed dangerous weaknesses in U.S. planning and preparation for civil defense protection and recovery, and those weaknesses surely have been noticed by our potential enemies: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and international terrorists.”

Pry warned that “China has been planning to defeat the U.S. with an EMP and cyber “Pearl Harbor” attack for a quarter-century.”

DHS nor CISA gave any more information on ‘evolving EMP threats’ on the American homeland. There was not mention of whether the threat could be from a solar storm or EMP weapons. However, the EMP status report did mention DHS is currently running EMP pilot tests to assess EMP vulnerability on infrastructure:

“Finally, DHS is partnering with other federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal, and territorial entities and the private sector to field test a more resilient critical infrastructure. There are a number of field demonstration (or pilot) projects planned and underway by both DHS and DOE to assess EMP vulnerability and then deploy, evaluate, and validate EMP mitigation and protection technologies.

“One such pilot is the San Antonio Electromagnetic Defense Initiative, designed to show how an entire region can become resilient against an EMP. These pilots are multisector, multifunction efforts, seeking to ensure key capabilities continue to function in a post EMP environment and that by maintaining those key functions we can expedite a full recovery. Working with federal interagency partners, DHS will play a major role in ensuring communications systems remain operational and, by ensuring key systems which are protected against EMP, are also protected against other threats such as cyber-attacks.” – EMP status report

One EMP-expert and friend-of-the-site summed up the report perfectly:

“We recognize the threat and we’re working on it and you don’t need to know any more than that, thank you for asking…”

The warning comes just two months before the U.S. presidential election…

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dhs-braces-potential-emp-attack-presidential-election-nears?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

Sweden UnMasked

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September 4, 2020 TLB Staff

ER Editor: Sweden won, hands down. Why is this so hard to accept? Why another fake, non-problem over the wearing of masks?

To recap:

  • REAL CASES of actually sick people were declining BEFORE lockdown in March;
  • the lockdown wasn’t necessary therefore, just massively destructive;
  • there’s been no second wave;
  • new ‘cases’ are just healthy people with trace amounts of coronavirus RNA in their systems. And it’s summer. So now masks must be the new bone of contention. And this isn’t going away.

Today on Twitter we came across this short video clip, probably taken in the north-west of England (Liverpool region) on public transport judging by the accents. The police officer is a member of the British Transport Police. Yet if you live in Wales, apparently masks aren’t compulsory there. What gives???

TWEET FROM SIMON DOLAN

It is noteworthy in the AFP piece cited below that Nordic countries except Sweden changed their mask policy in … MID-SUMMER.

********

No mandatory masks in Sweden, yet contamination continues to drop!

LE LIBRE PENSEUR

The question greatly perturbs and disturbs the pro-maskers: why does Sweden, a country of more than 10 million inhabitants, not require the wearing of masks, not lockdown and yet have fewer deaths and a significant drop in contagiousness and new cases? Moreover, how can we blame them since they’ve only followed WHO recommendations!

In reality, this has an important relationship with the principle of herd immunity because they have let the virus circulate, so a large part of the population must be immunized.

The same is true in Germany, where masks are not compulsory in schools either, and yet the country has managed its epidemic much better than France. Some Landers impose it in the corridors but not in the classroom, which demonstrates once again the absurdity of such an approach since the pupils stay very little time in the corridors and whole hours in the classrooms.

One thing is certain, this pandemic has shown us just how crazy our leaders are…

****

(ER: This report comes from AFP, which we issue an MSM warning for!)

In a masked Europe, Sweden once again goes it alone. But unlike many European countries that are seeing an upsurge in new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.

Sweden, which has attracted attention with its less strict strategy against the coronavirus, finds itself once again isolated in its fight against the epidemic, continuing for the time being to sulk the mask.

While Paris has made it mandatory to wear a mask in all its streets, in Stockholm, few wear it in supermarkets, offices, buses and subways. Only a handful bend to its use.

Instructions for social distancing and regular hand washing

If the Swedish health authorities consider it insufficiently effective, they insist on social distancing and regular handwashing.

“I find it a bit strange. In Sweden, which is a small country, they think they know better than the rest of the world,” says Jenny Ohlsson, manager of an accessory store in the Swedish capital, where you can find all kinds of colorful fabric masks. (ER: Why would AFP, to give a ‘contrary view’, interview a lady, a non-medical person, who makes her living from selling masks? This is extremely poor journalism.)

Unlike the arrangements imposed in the rest of Europe, Sweden has not confined its population and has kept its cafés, bars, restaurants and businesses open, asking everyone to “take responsibility”.

A questionable balance sheet but declining figures

The toll is questionable: with more than 5,800 deaths and 84,000 cases, Sweden is among the most affected countries in relation to its population.

But, unlike many European countries that are experiencing a resurgence of new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.

The dangers of the mask?

Faced with this trend, health authorities see no reason to change their strategy, including with regard to masks, for the moment.

Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the face of this assumed Swedish strategy, considers that its effectiveness remains to be proven. Misused or mishandled, the mask could also contaminate the person wearing it, he defends.

“There are at least three weighty reports, from the World Health Organization, the ECDC (European Health Agency) and The Lancet that the WHO cites, all of which state that the scientific evidence is weak,” explains the researcher.

KK Cheng, an epidemiologist at the Birmingham Institute of Applied Health Research, denounces the logic of the “irresponsible” and “stubborn” approach.

“If those who think like him are wrong, it costs lives. But if I’m wrong, what harm does it do? “pleads this proponent of wearing the mask.

Improvement of conditions in retirement homes

Anders Tegnell prefers to emphasize the decline in numbers since the improvement of conditions in retirement homes, which recorded a large number of deaths at the beginning of the epidemic, combined with increased compliance with recommendations such as teleworking.

“Trying to replace these measures with masks won’t work,” he says. “Several countries that have introduced masks are now experiencing a sharp upsurge,” he told public television in mid-August.

Nordic neighbors turn around

If Sweden’s northern neighbors have long avoided wearing masks, they all changed course in mid-summer. (ER: And the question should be why, since respiratory viruses lose significant power during summer months in mid-latitude countries? Who is pushing this policy on these governments?)

Finland now recommends the wearing of masks in public places, Norway advises it on public transport in its capital Oslo, and Denmark has made it mandatory on public transport and cabs.

In June, some twenty doctors and researchers signed an op-ed piece in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet asking Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Public Health Agency to reconsider health policy on masks.

Faced with this call, which has been regularly repeated since then, the authorities say they are “keeping an eye on” the issue and could introduce the measure if deemed necessary.

It remains to be seen whether the transmission of Covid-19 in Sweden will continue to decrease.

In front of Jenny Ohlsson’s mask store, Gilbert Sylwander, a 69-year-old Stockholmer, contemplates the choice of colors available to him.

The sexagenarian says he has confidence in the strategy led by the Swedish Public Health Agency.

What if he had to wear a mask tomorrow? “Of course I would,” he says, “just to be polite to others.”

from:    https://www.europereloaded.com/no-mandatory-masks-in-sweden-yet-contamination-continues-to-drop/masks mandatory masks

Sweden

See the USA On The Rioting Tour

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Black Lives Matter Protester Arrested In Washington Was Also At Riots In Portland And Kenosha

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

A Black Lives Matter protester arrested during riots in Washington over the weekend had also attended riots in Kenosha and Portland, police said Monday, as the Justice Department announced it would be probing whether organizations are paying individuals to move across the country.

Seattle-based Jeremy Vajko, 27, was arrested on Saturday night amid clashes between law enforcement officers and rioters. According to the Metropolitan Police Department, he drove recklessly near the Hay-Adams Hotel and drove “into a crowd of over 100 individuals.”

Vajko, who reportedly worked for Microsoft until May, was released from jail on Sunday and his charges have since been dropped. He has insisted that his “Snack Van” is used to hand out food and water and to help transport medics.

“The van is just full of free water, food, and medical supplies for the homeless and protesters,” Vajko tweeted Thursday. “I even gave water to the people that destroyed my van.”

Washington Police Chief Peter Newsham said during a press briefing on Monday with Mayor Muriel Bowser that Vajko’s van had been sighted previously in during clashes in both Portland, the nexus of the riots, and Kenosha.

“There was a van that was driving recklessly, potentially could have hit pedestrians and officers in the area,” Newsham said of Saturday’s incident in the nation’s capital, without mentioning Vajko’s name.

“We have intelligence to suggest that van was also at some of the violence we saw in Portland, Oregon, and some of the violent activity we saw in Kenosha,” he said.

The police chief noted that his officers are being assisted by the federal government to investigate whether there is “an organized, funded attempt to create violence in our city.”

“This isn’t just Washington, D.C. We’ve seen violence in other cities and to the extent that that is coordinated, us in law enforcement, we have a responsibility to find out if it is and then answer that question ‘Who?’—and hold them accountable,” Newsham said.

He said that 70 percent of individuals arrested in recent days were from outside Washington, D.C. Bowser noted that weapons were brought into the capital by “outside agitators” to “destroy property in the District.”

Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Chad Wolf said late Monday that the heads of organizations believed to be behind the recent riots in the United States are being probed by the Department of Justice (DOJ).

DOJ officials are “also targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country,” Wolf added, without specifying which groups.

Wolf said many of those arrested in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were from outside the city.

“So we know they’re moving around, we’ve seen them in D.C., in Sacramento, and elsewhere. We know they’re organized. We have seen similar tactics being used from Portland and other cities across the country as well,” he said.

A White House spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement:

“The president is highlighting questions that need answers such as who may be funding travel and lodging for organized rioters. For example, violent rioters in Kenosha who were arrested hailed from 44 different cities. An investigation is underway to determine who is funding these organized riots happening across the country.”

from:    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/black-lives-matter-protester-arrested-washington-was-also-riots-portland-and-kenosha?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter

With VS Of — The Difference a Preposition Makes

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conspiracy
Call it Conspiracy You Tell Me

NOW WAIT A MINUTE… THE CDC’S NEW NUMBERS

August 31, 2020 By Joseph P. Farrell

I’ve been getting tons of emails on this one, and, granted, it’s about that story we’re all sick of hearing about, it is nonetheless intriguing. So thanks to you all who passed it along and shared it. I had so many people sending it to  me that it vaulted to the top of the finals box. The CDC appears to have released an interesting set of numbers which, if true, raise lots (and lots[and lots]) of questions:

Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics

Now, here’s the clincher, the whopper doozie squating in the middle of all of this:

Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.

Wait a minute, of all the deaths being reported, only 6% are due to the virus itself without other factors (co-morbidities)? (Emphasis added)

Now, if you’ve been following this whole story carefully, very early on many in alternative media were raising serious questions about the numbers of reported deaths, and many were claiming that people who were dying with covid were being reported as having died of covid, and here we appear to have a back-handed admission that this was so.

A further ramification of these new numbers is that if the percentage of deaths from the virus alone as a percentage of deaths with complicating factors is so small, the percentage of deaths relative to the whole population is even smaller.

And if that’s the case, then there seems to me to be a further implication, especially for those calling for mandatory vaccines against the virus: why is a vaccine needed for a virus that now appears, by these latest numbers, not to be nearly the dreaded pandemic we were led to believe? Or is there some other agenda behind that? Or conversely, why is there a call for a expensive vaccine research and mandates, when the dreaded (and inexpensive) hydroxychloriquine seems to have, by some sources’ lights, an effective therapeutic and in some cases curative effect?

At the minimum, these new numbers raise some disturbing questions, and appear to corroborate at least to some degree those early skeptics’ views of the basis of the numbers being reported. Time will tell, of course, what other new numbers from the CDC might indicate, or, as the case may be, backpedal, on these latest statistics.

In the meantime, Kamaula Harris is calling for nationwide mask mandates, while others push the meme that it will “never go away,” raising the prospects that “they” want to keep everyone masked… forever. The question is why. Why – with previous planscamdemics (think SARS from a few years ago) – were no such draconian measures instituted? And why institute them now?

Bottom line: the CDC’s numbers raise disturbing questions and implications.  This is a case of “you tell me”…

See you on the flip side.

from:    https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/08/now-wait-a-minute-the-cdcs-new-numbers/

Surgeries & Masks

Posted on by
Joseph P. Farrell says:
August 27, 2020 at 9:25 pm

For the “commenter” on the live feed chat who was snarkily asking about masks and surgeries, I urge you to consider the following:

Very interesting research: [Arthur Firstenberg is the author of *The Invisible Rainbow*].

Arthur Firstenberg on facial masks:
“As a person who went to medical school, I was shocked when I read Neil Orr’s study, published in 1981 in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Dr. Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester. And for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries.

They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections from March through August 1980 with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years.

And they discovered, to their amazement, that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks.

Their conclusion: ‘It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all’ and that wearing a mask during surgery ‘is a standard procedure that could be abandoned.’

I was so amazed that I scoured the medical literature, sure that this was a fluke and that newer studies must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease.

But to my surprise the medical literature for the past forty-five years has been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves spread bacteria and viruses.

• Ritter et al., in 1975, found that ‘the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination.’

• Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. ‘Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.’

• Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. ‘No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used,’ they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.

• In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.

• A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that ‘The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use.’

• Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that ‘surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anaesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.’

• Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.

• Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that ‘no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks.’

• Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. ‘Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist,’ wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.

• Webster et al., in 2010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.

• Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found ‘no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.’ Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.

• Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that ‘none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not.’

• Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that ‘there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection.’

• Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that ‘there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that face masks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.’

Schools in China are now prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising. Why? Because it was killing them. It was depriving them of oxygen and it was killing them. At least three children died during Physical Education classes — two of them while running on their school’s track while wearing a mask. And a 26-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung after running two and a half miles while wearing a mask.

Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55.

All 13 states that have death rates higher than 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.

‘We are living in an atmosphere of permanent illness, of meaningless separation,’ writes Benjamin Cherry in the Summer 2020 issue of New View magazine. A separation that is destroying lives, souls, and nature.”

Arthur Firstenberg
August 11, 2020

from:   https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/08/news-and-views-from-the-nefarium-august-27-2020/