Today's News: October 06, 2020

World News

Iran: US gov’t, not just Trump, blamed for Soleimani killing

Al Jazeera – Iran blames the United States government, not just President Donald Trump, for the killing of Major-General Qassem Soleimani, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said.
Soleimani, thought to be the second most powerful man in Iran, was travelling with a convoy carrying an Iraqi commander and others on January 3 near Baghdad airport when a US drone strike ordered by Trump hit them.

Singapore offers ‘pandemic baby bonus’ to boost births

BBC – Singapore is offering a one-off payment to encourage people to have babies during the coronavirus pandemic.
The worry is that citizens are putting off parenthood as they struggle with financial stress and job layoffs.
Details of the amount that could be paid have yet to be released. It is in addition to several hefty baby bonuses offered by the government.
Singapore has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, which it has struggled to boost for decades.
It is in stark contrast to some of its neighbours such as Indonesia and the Philippines, which are facing the prospect of a massive spike in pregnancies from their coronavirus lockdowns.
“We have received feedback that Covid-19 has caused some aspiring parents to postpone their parenthood plans,” Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said on Monday.
Mr Heng said more details about amounts and how they will be paid would be announced at a later date.
Singapore’s current baby bonus system provides eligible parents up to S$10,000 ($7,330, £5,644) in benefits.
Singapore’s fertility rate touched an eight-year low in 2018, according to government data, at a rate of 1.14 births per woman.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Resistance Grows Across the U.S. as Constitutional Sheriffs Meet in Virginia

Health Impact News – County sheriffs, police officers, pastors and attorneys fighting Covid19 lockdowns, business closings, mask mandates and unconstitutional gun laws met in Lynchburg, Virginia on September 30 to share their strategies.
The constitutional training conference was sponsored by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) founded by former sheriff Richard Mack.
US citizens were also invited to attend to learn more about how their elected sheriff is the first line of defense in their county who fight for the constitutional rights of their constituents and what they can do to preserve liberty.
Many remember Mack successfully sued, along with six other sheriffs, the federal government on the grounds that the Brady bill violated the US Constitution and destroyed state sovereignty. As he puts it:
“I sued the Clintons and lived to tell about it.”
“I feel this is the most important meeting in America since the constitutional convention,” he said of the conference.
“The people are the rightful masters of Congress, legislators and courts. It is our duty to fight those who would pervert it. There are so many traitors in our midst (for instance, the ‘covid dictator governors’) and we must make them irrelevant.”
What can concerned citizens do? Take action in the countryside of America, county by county, one sheriff at a time. Work with chiefs of police, talk to health departments, and activate the churches.
Sheriff Dar Leaf of Barry County, Michigan cited the words “a well-regulated militia” in the Constitution.
“A militia existed before the government did,” he said.
“We are the chief law enforcement officers in our county. People look to us. Children are not getting this information.”
Referring to the policemen who tased, handcuffed and arrested Alecia Keys in Logan, Ohio for not wearing a mask as she watched her son play school football, “Those guys never read the Constitution.”
“We are the last stand,” said Sheriff Mike Carpinelli of Lewis County, New York.
He didn’t go along with Governor Cuomo who signed the New York SAFE (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement) Act, noting New York has the highest gun homicides in the US.
When citizens rallied at the state capital, Carpinelli said he was the only sheriff there.
The other sheriffs told him, “Look kid, it was nice knowing you.”
But he was reelected. When he objected to the “covid edicts passed by the governor” he was warned “I am afraid your philosophy is affecting the men of your agency.”
He stood his ground.
“I stand with strength, not because of my badge, but because of God and Christ.”
Sheriff Scott Jenkins of Culpepper, Virginia, in his third term serving a population of 5,200 said,
“Sheriffs are one of America’s last hopes.”
He could not disagree more with Second Amendment restrictions banning assault weapons. He asked conference participants if they could recall incidents where assault weapons were used in a crime.
No hands went up.
He asked if anyone could remember one being used in a defensive act and several hands were raised. “The goal is to start with weapons they say are crazy.”
Americans have a right to gather and assemble, he said, and covid does not change this, yet law enforcement are charging people in parking lots.
“It’s a sad day in America.”
He said thousands of citizens in his county have been screened and vetted who have concealed carried permits but he cannot think of one incident where any of them have committed a crime.
Yet the state legislature wanted to make them criminals. He said he had the right to swear in a posse and auxiliary deputy.
“I am a sheriff thinking day and night what I can do to serve the citizens of my county. Their rights are being treaded upon.”
The right to keep and bear arms “is a God given right, a law of nature. Any creature will defend their life. It’s up to us to keep it.”
Most sheriffs started as police, he said.
“Don’t focus on the day you won’t have a paycheck or title. Think of the principles and honor to serve.
We have sheriffs elected by the people who make their own determination and not the mayor who decides what is right for people in a crisis. We take our oath seriously.”

Law Enforcement’s “Starlight” Program Is Really A Fusion Center Public Surveillance Program

Activist Post – The Dallas Police Department’s “Starlight” program is really a Fusion Center-run public surveillance program.
A recent WFAA-TV article explains that phase two of the Dallas police department’s Starlight program is expanding to seven more retail businesses.
The initiative is part of a public-private partnership involving DPD, Safer Dallas Better Dallas, Motorola Solutions and some local businesses. With the Starlight Program, business owners add flashing blue light, signage and install surveillance cameras that allow DPD 24/7 and real-time access to the video.
As the above video explains, law enforcement is using retail business surveillance cameras to look for ‘signs of criminal or illegal conduct.’
Looking for signs of criminal conduct could be something as simple as someone avoiding looking at retail surveillance cameras or obscuring one’s face to hide their identity.
“The Real Time Crime center can assess the scene and provide responding officers with up to the second information about what is going on, who the offenders are, who the complainant is,” said Major James Lewis.
Without much explanation, police admit that they are using real-time surveillance cameras to assess the scene or look for suspicious activity.
A “Safer Dallas” news release sheds some light on what Fusion Centers may be assessing.
“The software embedded in the system has the ability to recognize anomalies that might indicate a crime in progress, such as a camera being covered or tampered with, sudden movements by individuals in view of the camera,” police said.
So if a person was to look up and notice that a Homeland Security-run surveillance camera was monitoring their every movement and attempted to avoid being surveilled, would that person be flagged by their software?

NBC town hall panned as ‘Biden infomercial’: ‘Undecided voters’ didn’t seem so ‘undecided’

Fox – NBC’s town hall featuring Joe Biden did not receive the warmest reception on Monday night.
The outdoor, televised event, which aired on both NBC and MSNBC, took place in the swing state of Florida and moderator Lester Holt told viewers that all of the Miami attendees were “undecided voters.”
Holt kicked off the town hall by asking him to react to President Trump’s departure from Walter Reed Medical Center and grilled him by asking if he was “surprised” by Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis; if he thought the president’s medical team were “forthcoming” with information about his condition and whether he “trusts” their assessment; if he had “a moment of pause, of worry” when he first heard about the diagnosis following the first presidential debate; if he would “pledge to transparency” as president regarding his own potential health issues. and if he believes Trump “bears responsibility” for contracting the coronavirus.
Then the “undecided voters” were able to speak to the former vice president one-on-one. Of the roughly eleven voters who were able to ask questions, one was described as “leaning” towards Biden, one was described as a “registered Republican” that was also “leaning” towards Biden, one was described as a former registered Republican who “voted for Hillary Clinton” and other one voted for Clinton in 2016 but he, too, according to Holt, voted for Republicans “in the past.” None of the attendees were described as a Trump voter or “leaning” towards voting for the incumbent president.
All of their questions were primarily focused on Biden’s plans as president rather than tough questions that challenged the candidate on his 47-year record.

Oprah Winfrey: America’s Racial ‘Caste System’ Was the ‘Template for Nazi Germany’

Breitbart – Billionaire multimedia mogul Oprah Winfrey described America’s “caste system” as “the template for Nazi Germany” in an interview with Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, for the latest episode of her Apple TV series, Oprah’s Book Club.
Wilkerson, an alumnus of the New York Times, characterized Caste as an analysis of what she describes as a race-based American “caste system.”
“How did you decide to focus the book on three cast systems, India, Nazi Germany, and the United States? I think a lot of people get riled up and offended that you’re comparing the caste system here to Nazi Germany, yet we discover that we were the template for Nazi Germany,” Winfrey said.
Adolf Hitler drew inspiration from American eugenicists in formulating the Nuremberg laws, noted Wilkerson and Winfrey. Neither acknowledged Margaret Sanger’s prominence in America’s eugenicist movement.
America’s racial “caste system,” Winfrey alleged, includes “systemic racism” and “microaggressions.”
Wilkerson explained the rationale behind her deliberate omission of the terms “racism” and “racist” in her writings, describing the terms as broadly ineffective and overused literary tools of persuasion in the context of her political polemics:
In the stories that I did for the New York Times, I didn’t use the word. In The Warmth of Other Suns, word does not appear. I pointedly stand here, sit here, stating that I don’t use the word and it’s for a reason. I think that it’s a word that is often misunderstood. It’s a word that has many different meanings to different people, even though social scientists have a singular definition for it, which would be prejudice plus the power to enforce that prejudice institutionally.
I don’t use the word because I think that we stop hearing what it means when we’ve heard something for so long, and which can be misinterpreted by so many different people.
I believe that [Caste] is a focus on the infrastructure of our divisions. It’s a focus in on what lies beneath, what we think we see, and it focuses us on the structure of a thing and that allows us to see how race has essentially been the cue and the signifier of where a person fits in that hierarchy.
Oprah Winfrey also falsely accused President Donald Trump of praising white nationalists in Charlottesville as “very fine people,” echoing the falsehood upon which Joe Biden’s latest presidential campaign was launched.
All episodes of The Oprah Conversation, Winfrey’s second eponymous series on Apple TV, have focused on racial politics. And the billionaire media mogul isn’t showing signs of letting up on this kind of political fare.
“Whiteness still gives you an advantage, no matter what,” declared Winfrey in the first episode of The Oprah Conversation. She described “white privilege” as a social force affording advantages to whites at the expense of blacks. She later warned how “whiteness” can be used “as a weapon.”

Woke Oregon Professor Blames ‘White Christians’ for West Coast Wildfires

Breitbart – An Oregon State University professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies has alleged “white Christians” are to blame for West Coast wildfires because of their “denial of climate science.”
As revealed by the attentive folks at Campus Reform in an October 2 essay, Prof. Susan Shaw has insisted that “the West is burning while most white Christians turn away from the root causes of the devastation.”
Shaw writes that “the intensity and scope of these fires are a result of climate change” and its spread is due to the fact that “many Christians, especially white Christians, have embraced denial of climate science.”
“Just over half of white mainline Protestants agree that climate change is a crisis or major problem,” Shaw declares. “Only 44% of white evangelicals say the same. Nearly a quarter say it’s not a problem at all.”
The problem is not just religious but is also political, Shaw predictably asserts.
“The disturbing link between white evangelical support for Trump and disregard for climate change that disproportionately affects poor people of color around the world should probably not be all that surprising,” writes Shaw, who states that her “current research interests are in feminist studies in religion.”
“Not surprisingly, more than 70% of Democrats accept that human activity causes climate change, while only 22% of Republicans do,” Shaw laments. “Scholars suggest that politics more than religion may drive these beliefs, especially in such a partisan context as we presently have.”
Shaw fails to mention the role of forest management in the rampant spread of the fires. Last month, NPR observed that “California and Oregon in particular are far behind stated goals of treating millions of acres of forests and wild lands through restoration projects, selective thinning of trees and brush and prescribed burning.”

Economy & Business

Grocery Stores Are Prepping for a Second Wave and Holiday Food Shortages

Activist Post – Just a few days ago, I wrote an article (The Supply Chain Is Broken and Food Shortages Are HERE) detailing the disruptions to the US supply chain and explained how food shortages are coming to the United States. In fact, I pointed out how they are already here, but many Americans simply don’t know it yet.
After all, mainstream media hasn’t been telling them about the disruptions to the supply chain as a result of COVID lockdowns and questionable strikes nor is it telling them about how many crops have been destroyed as a result of wildfires in the west of the country, straight-line winds in the middle, or flooding and hurricanes in the south.
The mainstream media says the supply chain is just fine.
The mainstream media has been largely silent and has focused more on telling its readers and viewers that the supply chain is just fine.
That is, until recently.
The CNN article states:
That’s why Southeastern Grocers bought its Thanksgiving turkeys and holiday hams over the summer, months before inventory planning normally begins, the company’s CEO Anthony Hucker told the Wall Street Journal. Associated Food Stores started stockpiling cleaning and sanitizing products so it always has inventory in its warehouse, and with cold season around the corner, grocery wholesaler United Natural Foods has already loaded up on herbal tea and cold remedies, the company told the Journal.
Early on in the pandemic, grocery stores were focusing on stockpiling weeks of supplies for shoppers, but now food sellers are focusing on the long-term, aiming to stockpile supplies for months instead.
Grocers have been stocking “Pandemic Pallets” to prepare for the second wave
What is a pandemic pallet?
Grocery stores are stocking pallets with items they fear may run low in the coming months. Keeping these pallets stored in the warehouses, most of them are stocked with cleaning items and paper products, cold medicines, dry goods, and food staples like rice, pasta, and legumes – all the things that they ran out of quickly the last time around. And, with the holidays right around the corner, many stores are stockpiling holiday foods like cranberry sauce.
An article published on Business Insider reported:
“Pandemic Pallets” are gaining more traction, with grocers preparing for worst and stocking the wooden storage structures with items that could be in high demand around Thanksgiving, and even Christmas, according to the Wall Street Journal. The goods being stockpiled on the pallets range from cleaning supplies to dry goods, the report said.
While the pallets vary in nature, their overall purpose remains the same: ensuring grocery stores will be able to handle demand if shoppers begin to “panic buy” as they did in March if COVID-19 cases spike in the winter. In the past week, coronavirus cases have risen in 21 states, as reported by CNN. In countries abroad, a second wave of infections has led to the return of lockdown orders.
An article from CNN: “Worried about more shortages, grocery stores are stockpiling goods,” starts out: Grocery stores across the United States are stocking up on products to avoid shortages during a second wave of coronavirus.
The article goes on to say that most household items, like paper towels, Clorox wipes continue to be difficult to keep in stock. This is due to people stockpiling the items due to the COVID pandemic. People are cleaning and sanitizing their homes much more often, hoping to keep the virus away. Stores nationwide are stocking up in preparation for not only a second wave of COVID but also for the coming holidays.

Energy & Environment

Air pollution particles in young brains linked to Alzheimer’s damage

The Guardian – Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
If the groundbreaking discovery is confirmed by future research, it would have worldwide implications because 90% of the global population live with unsafe air. Medical experts are cautious about the findings and said that while the nanoparticles are a likely cause of the damage, whether this leads to disease later in life remains to be seen.
There is already good statistical evidence that higher exposure to air pollution increases rates of neurodegenerative diseases, but the significance of the new study is that it shows a possible physical mechanism by which the damage is done.
The researchers found abundant pollution nanoparticles in the brainstems of 186 young people from Mexico City who had died suddenly between the ages of 11 months and 27 years. They are likely to have reached the brain after being inhaled into the bloodstream, or via the nose or gut.
The nanoparticles were closely associated with abnormal proteins that are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease. The aberrant proteins were not seen in the brains of age-matched people from less polluted areas, they said.
“It is terrifying because, even in the infants, there is neuropathology in the brain stem,” said Prof Barbara Maher, at Lancaster University, UK, and part of the research team. “We can’t prove causality so far, but how could you expect these nanoparticles containing those metal species to sit inert and harmless inside critical cells of the brain? That’s the smoking gun – it seriously looks as if those nanoparticles are firing the bullets that are causing the observed neurodegenerative damage.”
Maher said the work provides hypotheses that could now be tested. For example, brain stem damage would affect the movement control and gait of young people and this should correlate with pollution exposure if the nanoparticles are the cause.

Health

Success — FDA Finally Issues Amalgam Warning

Mercola – Just four weeks after we celebrated our 10th annual Mercury Awareness and Mercury-Free Dentistry Week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a long-overdue safety communication on amalgam.
In an astounding about-face to its previous stance, the FDA issued a warning that mercury fillings may adversely affect pregnant women, children and other susceptible individuals, and should be avoided by these groups.
The safety communication1 was posted September 24, 2020, and with this, we have suddenly achieved an incredibly important goal that we’ve had our sights on for the last decade!
Goal Achieved: FDA Releases Amalgam Safety Communication
As noted in the FDA’s statement:
“Today, the FDA is issuing updated recommendations concerning dental amalgam and potential risks to certain high-risk individuals that may be associated with these mercury-containing fillings …
The FDA has found that certain groups may be at greater risk for potential harmful health effects of mercury vapor released from the device [amalgam]. As a result, the agency is recommending certain high-risk groups avoid getting dental amalgam whenever possible and appropriate.”
Groups identified by the FDA as being at increased risk for harmful effects from dental mercury fillings include:

- Pregnant women and their developing fetuses
- Women who are planning to become pregnant
- Nursing women and their newborns and infants
- Children, especially those younger than 6
- People with pre-existing neurological disease such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease
- People with impaired kidney function