Revealing that which is concealed. Learning about anything that resembles real freedom. A journey of self-discovery shared with the world.
Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them - Ephesians 5-11
Join me and let's follow that high road...
There’s a very good reason that Virginia wants to disarm civilians with a rash of new, unconstitutional laws.
That’s because they seem to be modeling themselves after one of those
countries where the government cannot be publicly criticized without
great risk to the critic.
Fragile? You mean satanically corrupt shites, don't you?
Yet another new bill is on the table and this one criminalizes
criticism of certain government officials. The summary of HB1627,
proposed by Delegate Jeffrey M. Bourne, reads:
Threats and harassment of certain officials and property; venue. Provides
that certain crimes relating to threats and harassment may be
prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the victim is the Governor,
Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney
General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General
Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the
Court of Appeals of Virginia. In addition, threats to damage property
may be prosecuted in the City of Richmond if the property is owned by
the Commonwealth and located in the Capitol District. (source)
Oh, muffin. Have the people you’re oppressing been hurting your
feelings? Then, by all means, while you’re actively trying to dismantle
the Second Amendment, you should pass another unconstitutional law to
attack the First Amendment.
What exactly do the words “threats” and “harassment” mean in the terms of HB1627? I’m glad you asked. If you take a look at some other codes that have
been previously passed in Virginiastan, you’ll see that it can be
something as simple as foul language. Matt Palumbo wrote:
The bar for harassment is already as low as “vulgar language” in Virginia’s code 18.2-152.7:1: If any person, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, or harass
any person, shall use a computer or computer network to communicate
obscene, vulgar, profane, lewd, lascivious, or indecent language, or
make any suggestion or proposal of an obscene nature, or threaten any
illegal or immoral act, he shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.
Bourne’s bill proposes adding the following amendment: A violation of this section may be prosecuted in the jurisdiction
in which the communication was made or received or in the City of
Richmond if the person subjected to the act is one of the following
officials or employees of the Commonwealth: the Governor,
Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney
General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General
Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the
Court of Appeals of Virginia. Bourne’s Bill also changes the language of “he shall be guilty” to “he is guilty” of a Class 1 misdemeanor. It’s insane that a bill defining harassment so vaguely is already on
the books in Virginia – and it’s even more insane that someone is
proposing expanding it so that politicians can legally intimidate their
detractors with ease. (source)
Can you imagine the way this bill could be used to silence
detractors? It’s so vague that it could be enforced completely
arbitrarily.
If you say mean things on the internet, if you use swear words when
talking about our elected officials, or if you happen to suggest some
solutions like… I don’t know… is tarring and feathering considered
illegal and immoral?…then you could be guilty under this proposed law.
My comments section alone would fill an entire prison cellblock, not to
mention the comments sections of other websites.
When a government plays stupid games like trying to disarm a bunch of
gun-loving, rural-dwelling Virginians, that government is bound to get
stupid prizes like those same Virginians marching on the capital and
criticizing them on the internet.
People in public office open themselves up to criticism.
This is why we have a First Amendment. If anyone in the
state should be allowed to be criticized, it’s the Governor,
Governor-elect, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor-elect, Attorney
General, or Attorney General-elect, a member or employee of the General
Assembly, a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia, or a judge of the
Court of Appeals of Virginia.
By the very nature of running for public office, one should expect to
be the target of some verbal harassment. People who are so thin-skinned
as to make a law about why nobody should be able to say mean things to or about them have no business whatsoever in government.
I wonder if this petition to recall Governor Northam counts
as being abusive toward him? (Please take a moment to go sign it.) The
bad news is, the Virginia state congress has been working on another
bill meant to keep them in power by changing the rules for a recall. HB842 reads:
Removal of public officers; petition requirements; signature requirements. Clarifies
that the requirement that a petition for the removal of a public
officer be signed under penalty of perjury applies only to the person or
persons filing such petition with the circuit court. Registered voters
signing the petition for purposes of reaching the required number of
signatures shall not be required to sign under penalty of perjury. The
bill also increases the required number of signatures to a number of
registered voters in the locality equal to 25 percent, up from 10
percent, of the total number of votes cast at the last election for the
office, and requires the signatures to be collected within a 60-day
period. (source)
The hits just keep on coming in Virginia. Redistricting and a crapton of money from Michael Bloomberg during the election served to turn this state’s congress upside down. A legitimate protest has been meaningless to
the government of Virginia. The members of the legislature don’t care
what Virginians think and they’re arrogant enough to pass vaguely worded
laws to silence their constituents.
This is the very definition of tyranny.
Don’t think it can’t happen in your state.
What’s happening in Virginia is a cautionary tale and political road map for what will soon happen in the rest of the country.
First, they took over the legislature by redrawing districts and dumping in millions of dollars from out of state.
Then they began changing the rules so they can’t be recalled.
Then they began imposing draconian gun control measures.
Then they set about to make criticism of them illegal.
Could it be any more clear that every step of this was planned ahead of time?
Before we get to the article, this is how its done to rig the system from outsiders to the satanic network... DB The biggest flaw in the theory of government is that it requires the appointment of men to govern. In order to govern, the men need power.
In theory, we pay them a salary and naively place our trust in them to
accept their salary as full payment for their services and ignore the
obvious means of enhancing their family's wealth by using their power to
funnel additional money their way. The easiest way to do this is to
rig the contract procurement system. Not only is it easy to do, but you
can just lay there and take it, and let the community businessmen give
it to you. You don't even have to lift a finger to start the process.
Although it is always nice to insist on a kickback before signing any
no-bid contract, those contracts don't have much money involved, and the
kickback is hardly enough to make it rain at the local titty bar. The
real money is made on the huge government contracts supposedly immune
from shenanigans due to public announcements and public bidding as
required by local ordinances and regulations. The first thing you do is
make the regulations so complex that newbies and outsiders won't be
able to fill out all the forms properly. Better yet, make the forms
endless and totally ambiguous in what they are asking for, so that you
are the sole arbiter of which potential contractors have submitted
proper bids.
Next, set up departments you control to investigate things like the
ability of a potential bidder to actually perform the terms of the
contract. This is a hurdle a lot of established businesses might easily
leap, but any start-ups will only be able to show speculative
abilities, and their applications can then be tossed in the garbage, an
act that will greatly please the established bidders who have passed you
thick envelopes of cash in the past.
Better yet, create departments to vet the bidders on a social justice
scale. Are they committed to diversity? To protecting the
environment? Are they unionized? This will give you nearly total
control over the evaluation of bidders, as much of this sort of analysis
is totally subjective.
You can maintain the illusion that the $250 Million public contract was
let only after competitive bidding, but you can limit the number of
bidders to only those willing to pay you off so that your subjective
evaluations come down in favor of them as a bidder.
This process can work for many years. Most of the time it is never
prosecuted. But it eventually becomes public knowledge. Too many
people eventually get the message that it is pay to play, and one
finally gets pissed off enough about paying money and losing the bid to
another bidder with more available cash to spread around to go to the
Feds and bitch about it.
Nobody ever feels their salary actually compensates them for what they
go through at work. A little side-hustle fixes that feeling. If you
had smaller, less powerful government and larger, more powerful
corporations doing everything the smaller government no longer did,
you'd still be getting regularly ***-raped, but by corporate dept. heads
rather than gov. department heads.
"The complaint alleges corruption pouring into San Francisco from
around the world," said US Attorney for the Northern District of
California, David Anderson, who added that the complaint alleges
"corruption, bribery and side deals from one of San Francisco’s
highest-ranking public employees."
Nuru
faces 20 years in prison if convicted on all counts - including an
additional five years because he lied to the FBI about not keeping quiet
about the investigation as originally agreed upon when he was arrested
January 21st.
The alleged actions took place in 2018 and 2019 and were
documented during a long-running and broad investigation involving
undercover agents, informants, and extensive wire-taps. Other
figures Bovis or Nuru interacted with are described obliquely in the
complaint. Anderson said he’s certain individuals will recognize
themselves and encouraged them to come forward. “They have an opportunity to do the right thing —
for San Francisco and all of us,” he said. “If they are inclined to do
the right thing, they should … run to the FBI offices and disclose what
they know. Or we’ll do it the other way.” Bovis, Nuru’s partner in several of “five schemes” outlined today, is facing 20 years in prison. Both are free on $2 million bonds and will next appear in court on Feb. 6. Anderson and FBI special agent in charge Jack Bennett outlined “five
schemes.” The charges stem from the first and the four others are
“charged to show state of mind.” They are: 1. The Airport Scheme; 2. The Multimillion-Dollar
Mixed-Use Development Scheme; 3. The Transbay Transit Center Scheme;
4. The Bathroom Trailer and Homeless Shelter Scheme; 5. The Vacation
Home Scheme. -Mission Local
Locust swarms the size of “60 kilometers long by 40 kilometers wide” are sweeping through Africa, Spain, India, Australia. --------------- Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Billions of locusts are eating everything in sight in east
Africa right now, and every single day many more farms are being
completely wiped out. Unfortunately, authorities are telling
us that what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. In
fact, if extreme measures are not implemented immediately, authorities
are claiming that this locust plague could literally get “500 times”
worse in a few months. But it is difficult to imagine conditions
getting any worse than they are at this moment. Ravenous locust swarms
that are“the size of cities” are consuming crops at a staggering pace, and this could potentially cause famine on the African continent that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. It can be difficult to imagine a plague of “billions” of
locusts. After all, there are only about 7 billion people living on the
entire planet.
But this is actually happening. Right now “billions of locusts” are absolutely devastating east Africa, and each one can eat “its own weight in food every day”…
Billions of locusts swarming through East Africa could prove
disastrous for a region still reeling from drought and deadly floods,
experts have warned, amid increasing calls for international help. Dense clouds of the ravenous insects, each of which consumes its own weight in food every day, have spread from Ethiopia and Somalia into Kenya, in the region’s worse infestation in decades.
It would be hard to overstate what this is going to mean for the region. According to the FAO, this plague is an “unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa”…
The United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has described
the situation as “extremely alarming,” representing an “unprecedented
threat to food security and livelihoods in the Horn of Africa.”
We have seen starvation in Africa before. In fact, there was a time
when our airwaves were filled with images of starving African children. But if this plague continues to get even worse, the stage is being
set for a famine that is far greater than anything that any of us have
ever witnessed. The density of some of these locust swarms is absolutely crazy. According to officials, a single locust swarm can have “up to 150 million locusts per square kilometer”…
“A typical desert locust swarm can contain up to 150 million locusts
per square kilometer,” the East African regional body, the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development, has said. “Swarms migrate
with the wind and can cover 62 to 93 miles in a day. An average swarm
can destroy as much food crops in a day as is sufficient to feed 2,500
people.”
And it is important to note that some of these swarms are many times that size. In fact, one of the largest swarms in northeastern Kenya was measures to be “60 kilometers long by 40 kilometers wide”. In other words, that swarm was far larger than any major city on the entire planet. Spraying these locusts only has limited effectiveness, but it is one of the only things that can be done at this point. Unfortunately, Kenya only has four planes currently flying, and the same goes for Ethiopia. The UN is going to step in with 10 million dollars of additional funding, but that won’t really go too far…
The UN on Wednesday allocated $10 million for aerial spraying, with
humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock saying families across the region “now
face the prospect of watching as their crops are destroyed before their
eyes.”
The truly frightening part of this story is that we are being told that the worst is yet to come. If you can believe it, and I know that this sounds absolutely nuts,
but UN officials are actually warning that this plague of locusts could
get “500 times” larger when warmer weather arrives…
When rains arrive in March and bring new vegetation across much of
the region, the numbers of the fast-breeding locusts could grow 500
times before drier weather in June curbs their spread, the United
Nations says.
If what the UN is telling us is accurate, and I have no reason to
believe that it isn’t, then Africa is facing a nightmare of almost
unbelievable proportions. Yes, I keep warning that “the perfect storm” is here, but the scale of the plague that Africa is potentially facing is very hard to imagine. With hundreds of billions of locusts potentially eating crops all across Africa, what will be left for people to eat? Needless to say, many relief organizations are fearing the worst…
Save the Children’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa,
Ian Vale, said in a statement that their staff in Kenya are battling
swarms so thick they can barely see through them. “The impact on crops and pastureland will be severe. We are very
concerned that this will place vulnerable children even closer to the
brink of starvation,” he said.
Even before 2020 began, millions upon millions of Africans were dealing with “acute hunger”, and the outlook for the coming year was grim.
In light of growing speculation, most of it within less than official
circles, that the official theory for the spread of the Coronavirus
epidemic, namely because someone ate bat soup at a Wuhan seafood and
animal market... ... is a fabricated farce, and that the real reason behind the viral
spread is because a weaponized version of the coronavirus (one which may
have originally been obtained from Canada), was released by Wuhan's Institute of Virology (accidentally or not), a top, level-4 biohazard lab which was studying "the world's most dangerous pathogens", perhaps it would be a good idea for the same Wuhan Institute of Virology to remove the following "help wanted" notice, posted on November 18, 2019, according to which the institute is seeking to hire one or two post-doc fellows, who will use "bats
to research the molecular mechanism that allows Ebola and
SARS-associated coronaviruses to lie dormant for a long time without
causing diseases." The right candidate will:
Have obtained or is about to obtain a PhD in life science/biomedical related fields;
Have a reliable and rigorous work style, with strong independent scientific research ability and teamwork spirit;
Have strong English communication and writing skills, have research
papers published in the international mainstream academic journals
Have a cell biology, immunology, genomics and other relevant background experience is preferred;
The full job posting, which can still be found on the Wuhan Institute of Virology website can be found here (and screengrabbed below as it will be gone within a few hours). And google translated: Why is this notable? Because as it turns out, this is a job posting
for the lab of Dr. Peng Zhou (周鹏), Ph.D., a researcher at the Wuhan
Institute of Virology and Leader of the Bat Virus Infection and Immunization Group. Some more on Zhou's background from the Institute (google translated):
He received his PhD in Wuhan Virus Research Institute in 2010 and has
worked on bat virus and immunology in Australia and Singapore. In
2009 , he took the lead in starting the research on the immune
mechanism of bat long-term carrying and transmitting virus in the world.
So far, he has published more than 30 SCI articles, including the first
and corresponding author's Nature , Cell Host Microbe and PNAS . At
present, research on bat virus and immunology is continuing, and it has
received support from the National "You Qing" Fund, the pilot project of
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry
of Science and Technology.
Below is a list of several recent papers published by Dr. Zhou
Which brings us to the punchline: courtesy of the Wuhan institute of virology, here is a press release from Dr. Zhou's lab titled "How bats carry viruses without getting sick":
Bats are known to harbor highly pathogenic viruses like Ebola,
Marburg, Hendra, Nipah, and SARS-CoV, and yet they do not show clinical
signs of disease. In a paper published in the journal Cell Host
& Microbe on February 22, scientists at the Wuhan Institute of
Virology in China find that in bats, an antiviral immune pathway called
the STING-interferon pathway is dampened, and bats can maintain just
enough defense against illness without triggering a heightened immune
reaction. "We believe there is a balance between bats and the pathogens they carry," says
senior author Peng Zhou. "This work demonstrated that in order to
maintain a balance with viruses, bats may have evolved to dampen certain
pathways." In humans and other mammals, an immune-based over-response to one of
these and other pathogenic viruses can trigger severe illness. For example, in humans, an activated STING pathway is linked with severe autoimmune diseases. "In human history, we have been chasing infectious diseases
one after another," says Zhou, "but bats appear to be a 'super-mammal'
to these deadly viruses." By identifying a weakened but not
defunct STING pathway, researchers have some new insight into how bats
fine-tune antiviral defenses to balance an effective, but not an overt,
response against viruses. The authors hypothesize that this defense strategy evolved as
part of three interconnected features of bat biology: they are flying
mammals, have a long lifespan, and host a large viral reservoir. "Adaptation to flight likely caused positive selection of multiple
bat innate immune and DNA damage repair genes," Zhou says. These
adaptations may have shaped certain antiviral pathways (STING,
interferon, and others) to make them good viral reservoir hosts and
achieve a tolerable balance."
Wuhan has the first person in the global bat immunity research: "I rushed forward with a sword" Changjiang Daily Financial Media May 4 hearing last month as they
tied for first author made a "natural", in recent years, the Chinese
Academy of Sciences Wuhan virus after 80 young researchers Zhou Peng has
been in the "natural", "American Academy of Sciences ”And other
international authoritative magazines published 28 papers, becoming
academic stars. In an interview with reporters recently, he introduced
that young scientists do not rely on genius to hold, but rely on "super
confident". It is understood that Zhou Peng is the pioneer of global bat immune
system research. "Bats carry viruses but do not get sick. They have not
been researched by scientists before, and certainly have specificity
different from other species, but this is like you know the beginning
and Ending without knowing how the story happened. " After more
than 10 years of research, Zhou Peng discovered that an antiviral immune
channel called "interferon gene-stimulating protein-interferon" in the
bat's body was inhibited, so that the bat could just resist the disease
without triggering a strong immune response. The results were published
in Cells, Hosts and Microorganisms, which aroused the attention of the
academic community. Zhou Peng, a student of undergraduate bioengineering, experienced
SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in his junior year, which made
him interested in the virus: "A small virus makes the world mess."
He was admitted to the Wuhan Institute of Virology of the Chinese
Academy of Sciences at the postgraduate level, and studied under Shi
Zhengli, a bat expert. Focusing on the virus carried by the bat, then I was wondering if the bat's immune system is special. " After graduating from the PhD, he entered the Australian Animal
Health Laboratory and became the first person in the global bat immunity
research. "I went through 4 years of trial and error, groped in the
dark, and hit the South Wall numerous times. I still remember a 'darkest
moment' 'In the local cold winter, I was holding the frostbite knee,
sitting at the beach, and asking myself why this was the case.' He began to learn Australian jokes and inspired himself. In 2016,
during postdoctoral studies at Duke University-National University of
Singapore Medical School, he was concerned that a certain interferon in
bats is always maintained at a high level. This paper became the cover
article of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Bat
Immunity "This door was opened, and more and more people in the world
are paying attention to this field." Our generation, when we were in
college, watched "The Forrest Gump" and "Redemption of Shawshank" and
taught us stupidity and perseverance. I I feel like I am carrying a
sword and rushing forward. " After returning to China in 2016, Zhou Peng returned to his alma mater to become a little-known young researcher. "In
the long run, bats carry the virus without getting sick. It is hoped
that humans can learn how to fight the virus, but this is still far from
industrialization. Far, the road ahead is long, and we must
remain 'super confident' and continue to move forward. "(Reporter Li Jia
correspondent Chen teased Li Li intern Luo Yameng)
Peng Zhou, Ph.D., researcher, team leader of bat virus infection and
immunity. He successively obtained bachelor's and doctoral degrees from
Henan University (2004) and Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy
of Sciences (2010). During his doctorate, he was sent to the Australian
Animal Health Laboratory for study. He then carried out research work
at Duke-Nus Medical College in Australia and Singapore. He has long been
engaged in the research of new virus epidemiology and bat antiviral
immunity, revealing that bats carry SARS, MERS, and Ebola for a long
time but do not have their own immune mechanisms. Currently he is hosting and undertaking 3 projects of the National
Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences
Special project and a major national science and technology project - a
major project for the prevention and control of infectious diseases.
Currently published 28 SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe,
PNAS and other articles SCI papers, including Nature, Cell Host Microbe,
PNAS and other articles published by the first or corresponding author.
It is at the forefront of the world in the field of bat and virus
research.
So to summarize:
One of China's top virology and immunology experts was and still works at China's top-rated biohazard lab, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which some have affectionately called the real Umbrella Corp.
Since 2009, Peng has been the leading Chinese scientist researching
the immune mechanism of bats carrying and transmitting lethal viruses
in the world.
His primary field of study is researching how and why bats
can be infected with some of the most nightmarish viruses in the world
including Ebola, SARS and Coronavirus, and not get sick.
He was genetically engineering various immune pathways (such as the STING pathway in bats) to make the bats more or less susceptible to infection, in the process potentially creating a super-resistant bug.
As part of his studies, Peng also researched mutant Coronavirus strains that overcame the natural immunity of some bats; these
are "superbug" Coronavirus strains, which are not resistant to any
natural immune pathway, and now appear to be out in the world.
As of mid-November, his lab was actively hiring inexperienced
post-docs to help conduct his research into super-Coronaviruses and bat
infections.
Peng's work on virology and bat immunology has received
support from the National "You Qing" Fund, the pilot project of the
Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the major project of the Ministry of
Science and Technology.
* * * Something tells us, if anyone wants to find out what really caused
the coronavirus pandemic that has infected thousands of people in China
and around the globe, they should probably pay Dr. Peng a visit.
Or at least start with an email: Dr Peng can be reached at peng.zhou@wh.iov.cn, and his phone# is 87197311.
yeah, following those orders of the CIA/FBI and their murder of citizens plays hard on the soul at night. Very hard. Also, shooting down unarmed people just because your Adrenalin got the better of you carries with it deep scars. You always see their faces...asking WHY? ------------- Authored by Matt Agorist via The Free Thought Project, In 2019, according to
the Officer Down Memorial Page, 47 police officers were shot, 7 killed
in a vehicular assault, and three died from assault. Another 77 cops
died as a result of car crashes, heart attacks, and illnesses. Absent
from the database of fallen officers, however, are the 228 cops who
ended their own watch. This number is a giant leap from the year before
and the fourth consecutive year that it’s risen. As the number of officers killed in the line of duty
decreased by 20%, the number of cops taking their own lives has
increased 35%. The website Blue H.E.L.P. (Honor. Educate. Lead. Prevent.) has already recorded five officer suicides in 2020.
The mainstream media often portrays the unfortunate random killing of
police officers as analogous to a larger “war on cops.” The reality is
that there is a concerted public relations effort underway, on the part
of law enforcement, with the intention of stemming the growing public
calls for more oversight and accountability. If law enforcement were genuine about wanting to save the
lives of cops, they would begin by attempting to put focus on the out of
control epidemic of police suicides, which dwarfs the number
of cops fatally shot the line of duty. Cops are killing themselves at a
rate 4 times higher than they are dying in the line of duty and this
subject seems entirely taboo. Over the past three decades, the number of on-duty police killings
has decreased substantially. Instead of attempting to fix the glaring
problems in policing, law enforcement has invested itself in attempting
to distract and divide the public. With the help of mainstream media,
they attempt to portray themselves as victims of a rabid and out of
control anti-police campaign which is violently and systematically
targeting cops. But this is simply not true. If people really care about cops, then it’s incumbent upon
them to focus on the true threats to officers’ lives and not just buy
into the spin machine. The public must realize the dire situation, and extreme scope of the
mental health epidemic currently facing law enforcement. There’s an
extremely high rate of suicide, a domestic violence crisis and much higher rates of addiction in
policing than the general public. It’s clear that the mental health
issues affecting law enforcement should be a top priority if we hope to
stem the number of citizens and cops being killed by police in America. In an interview with The Free Thought Project, former LAPD officer
Alex Salazar pointed out why many of his friends ended their own lives:
People are tired of being killed by these cops. They operate with a
gang-like mentality similar to the military, in that they are pawns in a
larger game, but perceive themselves as warriors for a righteous cause.
Cops often turn to suicide after they lose control of their personal
lives. They are taught to be control freaks and to be always be in
control and it often ends in tragedy. When I was a LAPD officer I had at least 6 partners and supervisors
included who “ate” their guns. This police propaganda crap is occurring
because they’re desperate and cops backs are up against the wall. They
will resort to ANY tactic or issue and use it to inflate the situation. I
perceive in the not so distant future some of these cowboy “John Wayne”
types will instigate a fear driven attack against activists.
We have seen this fear driven attack play out many times over the years. This isn’t about ‘us vs. them,’ or attacking police; it’s
about the necessity of purging a critical sickness from U.S. policing in
an effort make the streets a safer place for citizens and police alike. We need to start looking at this increasing rate of officer suicides
and realize the underlying problems attributing to them. If we can begin
to correct those problems, the cops shooting citizens rate may start to
fall too. According to other experts in the field, cumulative exposure to
trauma, horrific accidents and shootings can lead to mental health
struggles that too often go untreated. A report by Blue H.E.L.P. reveals
the rate of PTSD and depression for police and firefighters is five
times higher than the civilian population. A report commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation showed that officers’ highest risk of death is by suicide with most deaths in California and Texas. Critics believe the lack of resources for mental health also adds to
lives being lost. Mental health experts say the barrier that keeps
officers from seeking help are shame, fear of being off the job and the
stigma behind it. Perhaps if cops were better trained at dealing with
their own mental health issues, they’d be less likely to kill those with
similar problems. * * *
The biggest polluters and CO2 emitters are CHINA AND INDIA. And it is these TWO COUNTRIES Der Greta refuses to take to task. She and her handlers only pick on western countries that combined, do not come within 1% of the pollution from either China or India.
Well Greta...we are waiting.
The USA and Europe are clean energy compared to communist nations
Via JohnSolomonReports.com, Former vice president Joe Biden’s extraordinary campaign memo this
week imploring U.S. news media to reject the allegations surrounding his
son Hunter’s work for a Ukrainian natural gas company makes several
bold declarations. The memo by Biden campaign aides Kate Bedingfield and Tony Blinken specifically
warned reporters covering the impeachment trial they would be acting as
“enablers of misinformation” if they repeated allegations that the
former vice president forced the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who
was investigating Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden worked as a
highly compensated board member.
Biden’s memo argues there is no evidence that the former vice
president’s or Hunter Biden’s conduct raised any concern, and that
Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin’s investigation was “dormant” when the
vice president forced the prosecutor to be fired in Ukraine. The memo calls
the allegation a “conspiracy theory” (and, in full disclosure, blames
my reporting for the allegations surfacing last year.) But the memo omits critical impeachment testimony and other
evidence that paint a far different portrait than Biden’s
there’s-nothing-to-talk-about-here rebuttal. Here are the facts, with links to public evidence, so you can decide for yourself.
Fact: Joe Biden admitted to forcing Shokin’s firing in March 2016.
It is irrefutable, and not a conspiracy theory, that Joe Biden bragged in this 2018 speech to
a foreign policy group that he threatened in March 2016 to withhold $1
billion in U.S. aid to Kiev if then-Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko
didn’t immediately fire Shokin. “I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving
here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m
leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not
getting the money,’” Biden told the 2018 audience in recounting what he
told Poroshenko “Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone
who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations
event.
Fact: Shokin’s prosecutors were actively investigating Burisma when he was fired.
While some news organizations cited by the Biden memo have reported
the investigation was “dormant” in March 2016, official files released
by the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, in fact, show there was
substantial investigative activity in the weeks just before Joe Biden
forced Shokin’s firing. The corruption investigations into Burisma and its founder began in
2014. Around the same time, Hunter Biden and his U.S. business partner
Devon Archer were added to Burisma’s board,
and their Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm began receiving regular $166,666
monthly payments, which totaled nearly $2 million a year. Both banks records seized by the FBI in America and Burisma’s own ledgers in Ukraine confirm these payments. To put the payments in perspective, the annual amounts paid by
Burisma to Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s Rosemont Seneca Bohais firm
were 30 times the average median annual household income for everyday
Americans. For a period of time in 2015, those investigations were stalled as
Ukraine was creating a new FBI-like law enforcement agency known as the
National Anti-Corruption Bureau ((NABU) to investigate endemic
corruption in the former Soviet republic. There was friction between NABU and the prosecutor general’s office
for a while. And then in September 2015, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine
Geoffrey Pyatt demanded more action in the Burisma investigation. You
can read his speech here. Activity ramped up extensively soon after. In December 2015, the prosecutor’s files show, Shokin’s office
transferred the evidence it had gathered against Burisma to NABU for
investigation. In early February 2016, Shokin’s office secured a court order allowing
prosecutors to re-seize some of the Burisma founder’s property,
including his home and luxury car, as part of the ongoing probe. Two weeks later, in mid-February 2016, Latvian law enforcement sent this alert to
Ukrainian prosecutors flagging several payments from Burisma to
American accounts as “suspicious.” The payments included some monies to
Hunter Biden’s and Devon Archer’s firm. Latvian authorities recently confirmed it sent the alert. Shokin told both me and ABC News that just before he was fired under pressure from Joe Biden he also was making plans to interview Hunter Biden.
Fact: Burisma’s lawyers in 2016 were pressing U.S. and Ukrainian authorities to end the corruption investigations.
Burisma’s main U.S. lawyer John Buretta acknowledged in this February 2017 interview with
a Ukraine newspaper that the company remained under investigation in
2016, until he negotiated for one case to be dismissed and the other to
be settled by payment of a large tax penalty. Documents released under an open records lawsuit show
Burisma legal team was pressuring the State Department in February 2016
to end the corruption allegations against the gas firm and specifically
invoked Hunter Biden’s name as part of the campaign. You can read those
documents here. In addition, immediately after Joe Biden succeeded in getting Shokin
ousted, Burisma’s lawyers sought to meet with his successor as chief
prosecutor to settle the case. Here is the Ukrainian prosecutors’ summary memo of one of their meetings with the firm’s lawyers.
Fact: There is substantial evidence Joe Biden and his office knew about the Burisma probe and his son’s role as a board member.
The New York Times reported in this December 2015 article that
the Burisma investigation was ongoing and Hunter Biden’s role in the
company was undercutting Joe Biden’s push to fight Ukrainian corruption.
The article quoted the vice president’s office. In addition, Hunter Biden acknowledged in this interview he
had discussed his Burisma job with his father on one occasion and that
his father responded by saying he hoped the younger Biden knew what he
was doing. And when America’s new ambassador to Ukraine was being confirmed in 2016 before the Senate she was specifically advised to refer questions about Hunter Biden, Burisma and the probe to Joe Biden’s VP office, according to these State Department documents.
Fact: Federal Ethics rules requires government officials to avoid taking policy actions affecting close relatives.
Office of Government Ethics rules require
all government officials to recuse themselves from any policy actions
that could impact a close relative or cause a reasonable person to see
the appearance of a conflict of interest or question their impartiality. “The impartiality rule requires an employee to consider appearance
concerns before participating in a particular matter if someone close to
the employee is involved as a party to the matter,” these rules state.
“This requirement to refrain from participating (or recuse) is designed
to avoid the appearance of favoritism in government decision-making.”
Fact: Multiple State Department officials testified the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine created the appearance of a conflict of interest.
In House impeachment testimony,
Obama-era State Department officials declared the juxtaposition of Joe
Biden overseeing Ukraine policy, including the anti-corruption efforts,
at the same his son Hunter worked for a Ukraine gas firm under
corruption investigation created the appearance of a conflict of
interest. In fact, deputy assistant secretary George Kent said he was so concerned by Burisma’s corrupt reputation that he blocked a project the State Department had with Burisma and tried to warn Joe Biden’s office about the concerns about an apparent conflict of interest. Likewise, the House Democrats’ star impeachment witness, former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, agreed the
Bidens’ role in Ukraine created an ethic issue. “I think that it could
raise the appearance of a conflict of interest,” she testified. You can read her testimony here.
Fact: Hunter Biden acknowledged he may have gotten his Burisma job solely because of his last name.
In this interview last summer,
Hunter Biden said it might have been a “mistake” to serve on the
Burisma board and that it was possible he was hired simply because of
his proximity to the vice president. “If your last name wasn’t Biden, do you think you would’ve been asked to be on the board of Burisma?,” a reporter asked. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Probably not, in retrospect,” Hunter
Biden answered. “But that’s — you know — I don’t think that there’s a
lot of things that would have happened in my life if my last name wasn’t
Biden.”
Fact: Ukraine law enforcement reopened the Burisma
investigation in early 2019, well before President Trump mentioned the
matter to Ukraine’s new president Vlodymyr Zelensky.
This may be the single biggest under-reported fact in the impeachment scandal: four months before Trump
and Zelensky had their infamous phone call, Ukraine law enforcement
officials officially reopened their investigation into Burisma and its
founder. The effort began independent of Trump or his lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s
legal work. In fact, it was NABU – the very agency Joe Biden and the
Obama administration helped start – that recommended in February 2019 to
reopen the probe. NABU director Artem Sytnyk made this announcement that
he was recommending a new notice of suspicion be opened to launch the
case against Burisma and its founder because of new evidence uncovered
by detectives. Ukrainian officials said that new evidence included records
suggesting a possible money laundering scheme dating to 2010 and
continuing until 2015. A month later in March 2019, Deputy Prosecutor General Konstantin Kulyk officially filed this notice of suspicion re-opening the case. And Reuters recently quoted Ukrainian officials as saying the ongoing probe was expanded to allegations of theft of public funds. The implications of this timetable are significant to the
Trump impeachment trial because the president couldn’t have pressured
Ukraine to re-open the investigation in July 2019 when Kiev had already
done so on its own, months earlier. For a complete timeline of all the key events in the Ukraine scandal, you can click here.
