Partisan coverage, but we’re fighting a largely-hidden war. In times of conflict, objective reporting seems to go out the window.
Our role in this involves unmasking the corruption in the world and the harm being perpetrated against people, the other kingdoms, and the planet itself, but without descending into the trenches. Not easy when available reportage is coming from the trenches.
Painting our “opponents” as evil is simply something we’re going to have to walk back later. In my view, balanced, neutral reporting is what’s needed, even at a high-adrenaline time such as this – especially at a time like this.
Take what resonates with your heart and leave the rest. Or, if you like, just get a sense of the direction of events and skip the details. Ascension, which all of this release of negativity serves, is, again in my opinion, more important.
WHO (Accidentally) Confirms Covid is No More Dangerous Than Flu. Head of Health Emergencies Program “Best Estimates” Put IFR at 0.14%
Kit Knightly, Off-Guardian.org, Oct. 8, 2020
(https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/08/who-accidentally-confirms-covid-is-no-more-dangerous-than-flu/)
The World Health Organization has finally confirmed what we (and many experts and studies) have been saying for months – the coronavirus is no more deadly or dangerous than seasonal flu.
The WHO’s top brass made this announcement during a special session of the WHO’s 34-member executive board on Monday October 5th, it’s just nobody seemed to really understand it.
In fact, they didn’t seem to completely understand it themselves.
At the session, Dr Michael Ryan, the WHO’s Head of Emergencies revealed that they believe roughly 10% of the world has been infected with Sars-Cov-2. This is their “best estimate”, and a huge increase over the number of officially recognised cases (around 35 million).
Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman, later confirmed the figure, stating it was based on the average results of all the broad seroprevalence studies done around the world.
As much as the WHO were attempting to spin this as a bad thing – Dr Ryan even said it means “the vast majority of the world remains at risk.” – it’s actually good news. And confirms, once more, that the virus is nothing like as deadly as everyone predicted.
The global population is roughly 7.8 billion people, if 10% have been infected that is 780 million cases. The global death toll currently attributed to Sars-Cov-2 infections is 1,061,539.
That’s an infection fatality rate of roughly or 0.14%. Right in line with seasonal flu and the predictions of many experts from all around the world.
0.14% is over 24 times LOWER than the WHO’s “provisional figure” of 3.4% back in March. This figure was used in the models which were used to justify lockdowns and other draconian policies.
In fact, given the over-reporting of alleged Covid deaths, the IFR is likely even lower than 0.14%, and could show Covid to be much less dangerous than flu.
None of the mainstream press picked up on this. Though many outlets reported Dr Ryan’s words, they all attempted to make it a scary headline and spread more panic.
Apparently neither they, nor the WHO, were capable of doing the simple maths that shows us this is good news. And that the Covid sceptics have been right all along.
UPDATE 9/10/20: In the interest of thoroughness, a desire to rely on primary sources, and not depending purely on mainstream sources (which may remove or amend articles), I decided to find the actual video of Dr Ryan’s remarks.
For some reason, although this was an important WHO meeting during an allegedly hyper-serious pandemic, the video is hard to find. The only place you are able to see it is the WHO’s own website, and even then you have to scrub through almost 6 hours of footage. Well, I did that, and you are welcome.
You can’t embed the WHO’s stream, but I can tell you to go to this page, click “Session 1” and skip to 1:01:33 to hear the exact quote:
“Our current best estimates tell us that about ten percent of the global population may have been infected by this virus. This varies depending on country. It varies from urban to rural. It varies between different groups.”
Janet Ossebaard – The Fall of The Cabal
Hit graphic to watch video
Hunter and Joe Biden Reuters
Media, Big Tech let Bidens sin and grin while vilifying The Post: Goodwin
Michael Goodwin, New York Post, October 20, 2020
(https://nypost.com/2020/10/20/media-big-tech-let-bidens-sin-and-grin-goodwin/)
Sportswriter John Feinstein, after legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight alternately called him a pimp and a whore, had a memorable response: “I wish he’d make up his mind so I’d know how to dress!”
Something similar is going on with The Post’s breakthrough reports of the Biden family business secrets. The media Praetorian Guards are throwing up defenses faster than Bobby Knight hurled insults.
One day, The Post is accused of spreading Russian disinformation for reporting on emails contained on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. The next day, the paper is accused of being cruel because Hunter has obvious dependency and psychological issues.
What’s next — that poor Joe Biden was duped into getting involved in Hunter’s deals because of early-stage dementia?
Oops, can’t go there, at least not yet. That has to wait until he’s sitting in the White House and Donald Trump is banished. Then it will be safe to let the facts come out.
Any port in a storm, sailors say, and that’s what we’re witnessing as Big Media and Big Tech unite to protect Joe Biden, a k a the “Big Guy,” from anything resembling the truth. Their desperation is extraordinary when you remember that neither of the Bidens has claimed the laptop and devastating emails are fakes. So why is the media making those claims and tech using that as an excuse to censor The Post’s reports?
The usual suspects — the New York Times, CNN and the Washington Post — are shooting the messenger instead of doing their own reporting. If they were even modestly curious, they would learn that Joe Biden was helping his family get rich for years and even participated in setting up plans to partner with a Chinese firm in acquiring American infrastructure projects. That was the deal where Hunter, in emails and reportedly in other communications, referred to his father as “the big guy” and “the chairman.”
Protecting Biden while depriving Americans of the truth would seem to be an odd position for reporters, editors and social media masters who profit from controversy and preen that they have a public trust. “Democracy dies in darkness” the Washington Post says even as it refuses to shine a spotlight on the Bidens’ scams.
In fact, Washington political reporters have an inglorious history of hiding inconvenient truths about presidents. The agreement not to photograph FDR’s crippled legs is one example, the refusal to report the many White House affairs of JFK is another.
All that supposedly ended with Watergate. Afterward, every reporter in America grew up wanting to bring down a president, preferably a Republican one.
[The Golden Age of Gaia does not agree with the Post’s characterization of President Obama and awaits the full details being known.]
Until Barack Obama came along. What can only be described as a tacit agreement among White House reporters and their bosses prohibited any serious inquiries that would damage their favorite president. The see-no-evil cloak would lead Obama to delude himself into boasting that “We’re probably the first administration in modern history that hasn’t had a major scandal in the White House.”
That was never true, but a scandal without the press spreading the news is like a tree falling in the forest. If nobody hears it, did it really fall?
In that vein, consider a 2014 scene from the White House briefing room, when ABC’s Jonathan Karl ever-so-politely asked then-press secretary Jay Carney whether Hunter Biden’s seat on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma amounted to a conflict of interest.
Clearly prepared for the question, Carney replied that “Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president.” He then referred Karl to the vice president’s office. There the story died.
But we now know Carney’s answer was false, at least the claim that Hunter’s role wasn’t an endorsement by the vice president. Imagine if Karl had used some of that snarling energy he unleashes at the Trump administration every day to plow through the smoke screen.
He might have broken the story six years ago about Hunter Biden’s worldwide influence-peddling that The Post and others are now revealing. Karl might have discovered then that the vice president was not only aware of his son’s grifting, but was also using his office to help his son’s business. He might also have learned about the windfall that Jim Biden, Joe’s brother, got from government connections.
In that case, Obama would have had to amend his scandal-free boast to say “with the exception of my crooked vice president.”
The lack of curiosity that Karl displayed in 2014 is the same somnolence that he and his ilk have about Biden’s frequent absences from the campaign trail.
Imagine if Trump had called a “lid” on four consecutive days, as Biden did this week, ostensibly to prepare for Thursday’s debate.
That will make five days out of the last six when the Democrats’ nominee hasn’t made public appearances or answered questions. Hillary Clinton was a workhorse by comparison.
Then again, the debate is not likely to be difficult for Biden. Count on biased moderator Kristen Welker of NBC and MSNBC to grill the president with hostility while feeding Biden soft questions.
She’ll ask Trump, for the umpteenth time, if he believes in climate change and demand he denounce white supremacists. She’ll steer clear of his economic and foreign policy success lest she be seen as helping him.
If she asks Biden about his son’s business interests, he’ll deny any knowledge and she’ll let him get away with it.
I’ll be delighted if she proves me wrong.
Mitch McConnellAP
McConnell slams ‘reprehensible’ censoring of Post’s Hunter Biden articles
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday denounced as “reprehensible” the censorship by Twitter and Facebook of The Post’s reporting on Ukraine- and China-related documents retrieved from a hard drive that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden.
“I think suppressing information is reprehensible,” the Kentucky Republican said during a visit to his home state.
“Whether one approves of the information or not, if you selectively suppress information, that’s censorship,” McConnell said. “And in this country, we’ve always advocated a competition of ideas. All the ideas aren’t necessarily good, but you debate them out. But you don’t deny people access. So I think what they’re doing is reprehensible.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday said they will hold a hearing Tuesday to subpoena Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to answer for the company’s decision to block distribution of The Post’s articles about alleged links between Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son’s foreign business deals.
Senate Republicans, who hold a majority on the committee, hope to compel Dorsey’s appearance next Friday.
“This is election interference and we’re 19 days out from an election. It has no precedent in the history of democracy,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told reporters in a Senate office building hallway.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who on Wednesday also requested a Federal Election Commission investigation, said “the most powerful monopolies in American history are attempting to control the news and interfere in a federal election.”
“This is not some random blog. This is the newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton, for heaven’s sake. What’s really at stake here is a free press in this country and I have to say, this is really alarming,” Hawley said.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “We’re going to finally have an accounting that’s long overdue. These social media platforms have a dominance in our lives. They’re newspapers, they’re TV stations, radio stations, they’re publishers.”
“You may be a Democrat, saying, ‘I don’t want to hear the New York Post.’ It could be you tomorrow,” Graham warned.
The Post’s initial censored story Wednesday described an email indicating Hunter Biden introduced his vice president father to an executive at Ukraine energy firm Burisma, despite Joe Biden saying he never discussed his son’s “overseas business dealings” with him, including Hunter’s reported $83,000-a-month job at Burisma.
Twitter blocked users Thursday from sharing a second-day story from The Post that describes Hunter Biden’s alleged pursuit of a China business deal.
Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said Wednesday that Facebook was taking action to reduce distribution of the initial Post article so it can be “fact checked.”
Twitter, meanwhile, said without evidence that the material may have been hacked and locked down many accounts that shared the initial article, including the personal account of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who has 1 million followers.
“The Big Tech censorship we are witnessing is the kind of thing you see from rogue regimes and totalitarian states. @Twitter & @Facebook should be ashamed,” White House communications director Alyssa Farah tweeted Thursday.
The hard drive was shared with The Post by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a personal attorney to President Trump, after he received it from a Delaware computer repairman. The repairman says he legally accessed the content under an abandonment contract clause when Hunter Biden did not collect a damaged laptop within 90 days.
Hunter Biden has not denied that he provided the laptop to the repair shop and Joe Biden has not definitively ruled out meeting the Burisma executive, with his campaign only saying no such meeting was on his “official schedules.”
Republican lawmakers and Trump on Wednesday cited the article censorship in calls for reform of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a foundational internet liability shield for sites that host third-party content.
Supporters of reforming Section 230 say tech giants should lose protections if they operate as a publisher rather than as a neutral platform.