U.S. News, Politics & Government
Historic: Judge Rules NSA Domestic Spying Exposed By Edward Snowden Was Illegal
Activist Post – A federal appeals court has ruled that the NSA’s historic controversial domestic spying program was illegal, one of the same programs NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden released details on to journalists in 2013. The landmark decision added that the spying program was even potentially unconstitutional.
The court’s ruling was written by Judge Marsha Berzon, who expressed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, didn’t allow for the bulk collection of phone users’ call records, as the U.S. government falsely claimed at the time.
The metadata collection exceeded the scope of Congress’s authorization,” she wrote in her ruling.
The main problem, according to Berzon, was that FISA did not allow for bulk collection, only targeted collection of known suspects. The law “required the government to make a showing of relevance to a particular authorized investigation before collecting the records,” Berzon wrote.
Judge Berzon went on to state that there is no evidence that the spying program actually did anything to prevent a single case of terrorism, and that U.S. officials misled the public about the program’s effectiveness.
“To the extent the public statements of government officials created a contrary impression, that impression is inconsistent with the contents of the classified record,” she wrote.
Snowden posted about the ruling, saying that, “I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them. And yet that day has arrived.”
Trump orders review to defund NYC, other ‘anarchist’ cities
After slamming President Trump for acting “like a king”, NY Gov Andrew Cuomo has mercifully allowed more businesses in the Empire State to finally reopen, even though COVID-19 cases haven’t seen anything approaching the kind of resurgences that officials have warned about.
Unlike pretty much every other state at this point (even neighboring New Jersey finally caved), New York hasn’t allowed the return of indoor dining. The issue is prompting an outpouring of rage directed at Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who have allowed protesters to gather night after night, while crushing the city’s small businesses. Adding insult to injury, de Blasio caved to the teachers union and spared more than 20,000 city employees who had been set for layoffs.
Gyms finally reopened in NYC Wednesday after city officials forced businesses to get cleared by the health department. Gyms around the state were allowed to reopen Aug. 24, but the delay until Sept. 2 was unique to New York City.
On Thursday, with the country focused on vaccine news, Cuomo announced that the state would allow casinos and malls to reopen on a limited capacity on Sept. 9. But restaurants in NYC would remain closed for the foreseeable future.
While de Blasio pushes for Cuomo and him to cooperatively develop a timeline for the return of indoor dining in NYC, Cuomo responded with a thinly veiled taunt, again reminding NYC leaders that “they have no legal authority to make that decision” on fully reopening restaurants. While he suggested that he’s “amenable” to reopening restaurants, he insisted that the city needs to have a well-thought-out plan that must be approved by the governor.
DOJ To File Antitrust Charges Against Google Within Weeks: Report
ZeroHedge – The Department of Justice will is preparing to slap Google with an antitrust case over the next several weeks, according to the New York Times – which insists, based on five sources, that Attorney General Bill Barr “overruled career lawyers who said they needed more time to build a strong case against one of the world’s wealthiest, most formidable technology companies.”
The Times is suggesting, based on leaks, that Barr is rushing the case for political purposes and the charges are premature.
The Google case could also give Mr. Trump and Mr. Barr an election-season achievement on an issue that both Democrats and Republicans see as a major problem: the influence of the biggest tech companies over consumers and the possibility that their business practices have stifled new competitors and hobbled legacy industries like telecom and media. -NYT
Some 40 lawyers working on a DOJ antitrust inquiry into Google parent Alphabet were reportedly told to wrap up their work by the end of this month, according to three of the five leakers, who we’re guessing are part of the 40-lawyer team – as “most of the 40-odd lawyers who had been working on the investigation opposed the deadline.” Others said they would not sign the complaint, while several left the case over the summer.
Barr has shown a “deep interest” in the Google investigation, requesting regular briefings on the DOJ case, and “taking thick binders of information about it on trips and vacations and returning with ideas and notes.”
The Times notes that antitrust action against Google has bipartisan support from a coalition of 50 states and territories, though Democrats and Republican state attorneys general conducting their own investigations are split on how to move forward.
Republicans have accused Democrats of slow-walking the work in order to bring charges under a potential Biden administration, while Democrats have accused Republicans of wanting Trump to receive credit – a disagreement which could limit the number of states participating in prosecuting the Silicon Valley giant.
FBI raids Pennsylvania nursing home where hundreds caught coronavirus, dozens died
NBC – Federal and state investigators raided a Pennsylvania nursing home Thursday where hundreds of residents and staff members tested positive for coronavirus and dozens have died, authorities said.
Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the state attorney general’s office and other agencies executed the search warrant at Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center northeast of Pittsburgh, said Scott Brady, U.S. Attorney for Pennsylvania’s Western District.
The Mt. Lebanon Rehabilitation and Wellness Center, another nursing home in the Pittsburgh area operated by the same company that owns Brighton, was also searched by authorities on Thursday, NBC affiliate WPXI reported.
Brady did not offer details about the search warrant but he encouraged anyone with information about suspected fraud, abuse or victimization to contact a regional COVID-19 task force.
Last month, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said that the facility was under investigation over reports of “deeply troubling” conditions and practices.
Washington Post promises there will be catastrophic violence if Biden does not win
WND – The Washington Post has taken fearmongering to a whole new level, projecting that all election scenarios but a Joe Biden landslide will result in violence and chaos in the streets.
Georgetown University professor Rosa Brooks authored the Thursday article titled, “What’s the worst that could happen? The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis.”
The “experts” gathered by the Transition Integrity Project (co-founded by Brooks) war-gamed what they determined to be the four most likely scenarios.
They were “a narrow Biden win; a big Biden win, with a decisive lead in both the electoral college and the popular vote; a Trump win with an electoral college lead but a large popular-vote loss, as in 2016; and finally, a period of extended uncertainty as we saw in the 2000 election.”
“A landslide for Joe Biden resulted in a relatively orderly transfer of power. Every other scenario we looked at involved street-level violence and political crisis,” Brooks wrote.
It’s almost like the group was trying to both create a self-fulfilling prophecy and generate fear within the American public of a Trump second term.
The experts who played out the Republican side in the Transition Integrity Project’s war game rank among the most vocal of the NeverTrumpers, including conservative commentator Bill Kristol and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele.
On the Democratic side, participants included former Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, former interim Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
What do all these people have in common? They hate Trump, and they assume the worst about him.
The people engaging in violence right now are left-wingers like Black Lives Matter activists and members of antifa.
The Washington Post painted a hypothetical in which Trump refuses to step down, citing his refusal to say whether he’ll honor the election results.
Instead of holing himself up in the White House as The Post suggested, however, Trump has simply said he may have to challenge the outcome legally.
WATCH: Tearful Salon Owner Says ‘Mrs. Pelosi Owes the Entire Country an Apology’
Breitbart – Salon owner Erica Kious told a Zoom press conference on Thursday that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was lying to say she was “set up,” and that she should apologize to America and to small business owners and workers struggling to survive.
Pelosi was caught on surveillance camera attending Kious’s salon earlier this week for a private hair appointment indoors with a stylist, Jonathan DeNardo. San Francisco and Alameda counties are still not allowing salons to reopen indoors due to going coronavirus restrictions.
Pelosi was criticized for breaking rules her party created, and failing to lead by example.
A spokesperson for the Speaker said she did not know that she was breaking the rules, and blamed the salon for the violation.
On Wednesday, Pelosi doubled down, telling reporters she fell for a “setup” and that the salon owner should apologize to her.
The Pelosi camp energetically pushed the idea that Kious had acted out of political motives, circulating a letter from an attorney for DeNardo that accused Kious of operating her salon at other times during the shutdown, and of making “vitriolic and incendiary comments” about Pelosi. Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, posted the letter on Twitter with the hashtag “#Setup”.
Economy & Business
The Economy Continues To Unravel Despite All Stimulus Measures
Activist Post – Since the pandemic lockdowns were first implemented in the US I have been more concerned with the government and central bank response than the virus itself. As I have noted in past articles, the pandemic restrictions and subsequent economic and social crisis events they help to create will cause far more deaths than Covid-19 ever will. Not only that, but the actions of the Federal Reserve continue to con the American public into believing that there is some kind of “plan” to stop the crash that THEY engineered.
The only agenda of the Fed is to increase the pain in the long term; they have no intention of actually preventing any disaster.
This is evidenced in comments by voting members of the Fed, including Neel Kashkari who recently argued for the enforcement of hard lockdowns for at least six weeks in the US, all because the US savings rate was going up. Meaning, because Americans are saving more in order to protect themselves from economic fallout, Kashkari thinks we should be punished with an economic shutdown that would force us to spend whatever we have been able to save.
Fed members and government officials demand hard lockdowns, depleting public savings and destroying small businesses. Then, the public has to beg the Fed and the government for more and more stimulus measures so that they can survive. The people and the system become dependent on a single point of support – fiat money creation and welfare. Yet, the evidence suggests that this strategy is failing to do much of anything except stall the inevitable for a very short time.
If the goal was really to reduce the pain of the pandemic as much as possible, then the strategy should be to keep the economy as open as possible and let the virus run its course. By initiating lockdowns, all we are doing is extending the economic damage over the span of years instead of months. We can deal with the comparatively minimal deaths associated with the virus; we cannot handle the disaster that is about to befall the financial system.
The small business sector appears to be the most fragile element of the economy right now. The PPP loans that were supposed to shore up small businesses failed miserably, with data showing only 13% to 19% of applicants getting a loan of any kind. Over 64% of small businesses that received a loan are also worried about being approved for loan forgiveness. In other words, of the few small business owners that got a PPP loan more than half do not have the ability to pay the loan back if they end up not qualifying for exemption.
This problem does not seem to be affecting the corporate sector, however. International companies are enjoying incredible cash infusions from the Fed through overnight loans as well as Fed stimulus propping up stock markets (at least for now). Tech companies in particular are enjoying a rush of investment as the assumption in the daytrading world is that the central bank will not allow these companies to fail.
Maybe they are right, but stock markets today DO NOT reflect the health of our system in any way. Stock tickers are a placebo, a Pavlovian trigger for the public, a tool to make people believe that the situation is improving merely because share values are going up. This is not the case.
2017 PC Mag Article “We Need to Prepare for the 5G Job Apocalypse” Couldn’t Predict Additional Job Loss from COVID Lockdowns
Activist Post – Cities worldwide AND entire countries have taken action to ban, delay, halt, and limit 5G installation AS WELL AS issue moratoriums due to biological environmental and safety risks.
Security experts have warned for many years about how easy it is to hack which could lead to catastrophic events. Opposition has also stemmed from 5G being used for constant surveillance which is how it’s been used in China.
Another issue that’s been discussed – how it will eliminate millions of jobs in a multitude of industries. Of course, now that global lockdowns have been imposed, we should expect to hear even more from technocrats about a “robot tax” and universal basic income, as foreshadowed in this article from PC Mag.
Science & Technology
University Partners With Maker of “Pandemic Drones” to Install COVID Detection and Social Distancing System
Activist Post – As American COVID concerns continue to increase, at least one school district has required students and staff to wear Bluetooth-enabled armbands to monitor temperatures. Some colleges are requiring students to install contact tracing apps on their devices. At least one university is paying scientists to collecting and analyzing human waste for contact tracing.
And at least one university has installed technology to scan, monitor, and alert students when they aren’t social distancing. Alabama State University has contracted with Draganfly, a company also known for using their technology to develop “pandemic drones.”
The company is also currently working with the University of South Australia and has plans for a “global early warning system.”
As recounted by CNN:
Each thermal scanner costs about $20,000, and each social distancing rig costs about $10,000, according to a representative for Draganfly, the company that makes these stations. The stations at ASU are paid for through money received from the CARES Act.
CNN also offered some rather Orwellian quotes from University president Quinton Ross Jr.:
“Here at Alabama State University it’s really embracing a culture shift,” Ross said, regarding the mandatory mask mandate, and testing of all students, faculty and staff before they returned to campus.
Amazon Drone Deliveries: The Greatest Threat To Privacy Americans Have Ever Seen
Americans have not seen a greater threat to our privacy than the move towards drone deliveries. This includes Amazon Ring doorbells surveilling families and neighborhoods under the guise of public safety a few years ago.
According to an article in the LA Times, the FAA cannot wait for Amazon to use drones to deliver packages to households across the country.
“This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA’s confidence in Amazon’s operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world,” David Carbon, an Amazon vice president who oversees Prime Air, said in a statement.
Amazon joins a growing list of companies using drones to deliver packages to Americans.
“Wing, with partners Walgreens and FedEx Corp., has been conducting limited drone deliveries under a similar FAA approval in Virginia since last year. UPS flies medical supplies within a hospital campus in Raleigh, N.C. Other smaller companies and start-ups are also seeking expanded FAA approvals.”
It has become commonplace for the mass media to pander to Big Tech. In fact the LA Times went out of its way to praise drone deliveries.
“Amazon and other companies hoping to revolutionize the retail world with drones have made significant strides in recent years. They’ve invented new devices and shown, at least on a limited scale, that they’re capable of flying relatively long distances and carrying the payloads necessary for packages.”
One thing became clear after reading approximately 10 news articles about the FAA approving Amazon’s drone delivery fleet. Not a single news article would address the giant elephant in the room: Privacy.
Drone deliveries threaten the privacy of EVERYONE.
What will happen to Americans privacy once private companies begin flying down our streets? Drones will fly over people’s yards while voyeuristic pilots invade everyone’s privacy. Was someone taking a shower or getting undressed in their window? Don’t worry, Amazon will have real-time video of it. Was someone sunbathing in their backyard? Amazon will know.
If someone is smoking marijuana in their home or yard, Amazon will know. When someone is looking at porn on the computer and it’s facing a window, Amazon will know. The list of how delivery drones will destroy everyone’s privacy is nearly endless.
Why would a federal agency be excited to let corporations create drone delivery fleets, besides the obvious privacy concerns?
Health
FDA Wants to Ban NAC Now That It Combats COVID-19
Mercola – N-acetylcysteine (NAC) has a long history of use as a first-aid remedy for acetaminophen poisoning. Emergency room physicians will administer it in cases when you’ve taken an overdose of Tylenol or other acetaminophen products. The way it neutralizes the toxic effects of the drug is by recharging glutathione, thereby preventing liver damage.
Interestingly, NAC may also be useful against COVID-19, as explained by pulmonologist Dr. Roger Seheult in the MedCram lecture above. By raising glutathione, it helps combat oxidative stress, which is a main factor in the cytokine storm associated with COVID-19.
A recent literature analysis1 linked glutathione deficiency to COVID-19 disease severity, leading the author to conclude that NAC may be useful both for prevention and treatment. NAC may also combat the abnormal blood clotting seen in many cases, and helps loosen thick mucus in the lungs.
FDA Cracks Down on NAC
Interestingly, with COVID-19 treatment as a new indication, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now suddenly cracking down on NAC, claiming it is excluded from the definition of a dietary supplement, as it was approved as a new drug in 1985.2 As such, NAC cannot be marketed as a supplement.
You certainly would not suspect this looking at the supplement market. As reported by Natural Products Insider,3 there are no fewer than 1,170 NAC-containing products in the National Institutes of Health’s Dietary Supplement Label Database.
Be that as it may, July 29, 2020, FDA announced4 it has issued warning letters to seven companies that market NAC as a remedy for hangovers. According to the FDA:
“A hangover can occur after alcohol intoxication. Alcohol intoxication, like all poisonings, causes dose-related dysfunction and damage, ranging from mild impairments to death … The products outlined in these letters, which are labeled as dietary supplements, are unapproved new drugs and have not been evaluated by the FDA to be safe and effective for their intended use.”
Members of the Council for Responsible Nutrition have expressed concern that the warning letters may indicate the FDA is considering targeting NAC more widely.
While the FDA makes no mention of COVID-19 in its warning letter, the timing of its crackdown on NAC marketed for hangovers is interesting, seeing how news of its potential benefits against the viral infection have come into circulation, and research is now underway to assess whether it might be used in the treatment of COVID-19.
FDA skipping phase 3 trials on COVID vaccines, turning the American people into guinea pigs for Big Pharma’s high-profit medical experiments
Dr. Leonard Coldwell – The arrogance of those who worship vaccine science is on full display now. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just made a commitment to authorize millions of new covid-19 vaccines before the already corrupted phase three trials are complete. The arrogance is so brazen, President Donald Trump is putting the military in charge of rolling the vaccine program out. The Department of Defense has already awarded a $138 million contract for prefilled syringes, as if safety and efficacy studies do not matter at all.
A senior Trump administration official said that they are “very confident that by year end we will have tens of millions of vaccines put into American arms.” The official told CNN that under Operation Warp Speed, vaccine manufacturing will begin by the end of summer. “In many cases it’s already underway,” the official said. “We’re acquiring the equipment, we’re setting up the space, we’re acquiring, in some cases, the raw materials to do it. We have project teams that are assigned to go out to each manufacturing site.”
FDA clearing the way for hasty, untested vaccine that will constitute WAR CRIMES
FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn is under intense political pressure to get millions of vaccine doses out before the 2020 election and has said the agency will authorize a new covid-19 vaccine for emergency use before the Phase Three clinical trials are complete. The emergency use authorization will not be a full approval, said Hahn, who will approve the vaccines as long as the drug company representatives overseeing the process are convinced that the postulated benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks of a hypothetical infection.
This is not going to be a political decision,” Hahn said, in a pathetic display of doublespeak. “This is going to be a science, medicine, data decision.” The Phase Three trials typically involve thousands of patients and take multiple years to conduct. The emergency use authorization will push millions of vaccinations into healthcare workers and into other demographics of people who are determined to be “at greatest risk.” Ironically, vaccine injury is statistically more prevalent in people with weakened immune systems – the same group of people determined to be “at greatest risk.”
There will be no recourse or compensation for these vaccine injuries, nor will there be a system to detect and differentiate symptoms caused by the vaccines from real time infections. This is why new covid-19 outbreaks will be blamed on the “un-vaccinated” – pushing lawmakers and private companies to come up with new ways to coerce the un-vaccinated population to submit.
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