Category: VOX

BREAKING: CHINA TO QUARANTINE CITY OF SHENZHEN IN GUANGDONG PROVINCE, CAUSING “MAD RUSH” TO HONG KONG

BREAKING: China to Quarantine City of Shenzhen in Guangdong Province, Causing “Mad Rush” to Hong Kong

Infected citizens now fleeing to other nations

Mike Adams | Natural News – FEBRUARY 7, 2020

This is a breaking news update from Natural News, translated from the Chinese language Liberty Times Net website, which has produced some of the best reporting on the coronavirus pandemic outbreak.

According to the report, the communist Chinese government has just announced the imminent quarantine of the city of Shenzhen in the Guangdong Province, causing a “mad rush” of Chinese citizens fleeing to Hong Kong to try to escape the quarantines before the international community blocks all flights from Hong Kong. This effort will, of course, only serve to accelerate the spread of the virus internationally.

There are roughly 25 million people in the greater Shenzhen municipal area, so this is a significant increase in the number of Chinese citizens who will soon be living under military-enforced quarantine. (Currently over 50 million, soon to be at least 75 million and growing…)

Here’s the translated text that explains this. Just remember, automated machine translations from Chinese to English are very difficult, so the English appears quite broken:

Shenzhen News Network reported that the Shenzhen Municipal People’s Government said on the 7th, all communities will be 100% closed management, if there are confirmed cases of residential “hard isolation” for 14 days, and organize “regulatory service team” to do key ethnic groups tracking, where there is a history of close contact with the case 100% of the implementation of centralized isolation, households also want to take temperature and other measures.

According to Hong Kong’s “Position News” reported that Shenzhen city from the 8th began to seal the city after the announcement of the news, 7 days from the emergence of a large number of people want to pour into Hong Kong, from the scene film can be seen at 10:28 p.m., shenzhen port before the appearance of long lines of taxis, are to load the people of Shenzhen into Hong Kong, long car long about 1 km.

The same story also reports that the hard quarantine of Shenzhen begins on Feb. 8th (tomorrow), which is why people are panic fleeing today, while they can still get out: (another important reminder to always have a bugout bag)

Comprehensive Chinese media reports, the Shenzhen Municipal Government announced that from February 8 on the city’s people’s vehicles fully implement control, in the “vehicle epidemic control checkpoint” vehicle control, and foreign vehicles to sacrifice “advance declaration measures”, the first time the public driving through the “vehicle epidemic prevention checkpoint”, must be at least 1 day in advance of the Internet registration declaration, approval before passing.

https://www.brighteon.com/440295cb-ff15-4c57-a9dd-8b207652113a

THE WUHAN QUARANTINE HAS BEEN BREACHED… “HONG KONG IS FINISHED”

Shenzhen, in Southern China, is very close to Hong Kong. This explains why Shenzhen residents are fleeing to Hong Kong, no doubt bringing more infections with them. Many residents will attempt to take flights out of Hong Kong in order to escape the draconian quarantine, which means of course that some of these people will be inadvertently spreading the coronavirus pandemic to yet more countries, including the United States, which still accepts flights from Hong Kong and China.

According to the Liberty Times Net story, observers in Taiwan are now saying, “Hong Kong is finished” and are demanding that flights from Hong Kong be cut off in order to protect Taiwan and other Asian countries from the exploding pandemic. Some of the quotes in the story include, “”The people of Hong Kong are dead, Taiwan will soon be cut off…” and “next week becomes the crazy influx of Hong Kong people into Taiwan.”

We pray for the people of Hong Kong in this desperate time. They are good people, and they don’t deserve this madness from communist China.

CHINA’S QUARANTINE EFFORTS NOW ACCELERATING THE SPREAD OF THE PANDEMIC

It brings up an important point in all this. As China is chasing the outbreak with ever-expanding quarantines, the citizens who live in those areas are attempting to flee before the quarantine, causing a mass exodus of infected individuals who would have otherwise probably just stayed home if not for the draconian quarantine measures enacted by the Chinese government. In effect, the quarantines are accelerating the spread of the virus to other countries due to this “fleeing” effect.

Much of this likely stems from the fact that China is now running door-to-door roundups of citizens, medically kidnapping them and throwing them into “quarantine prison camps” with bars on the windows of each room. Nobody wants to end up a prisoner in one of these “death hospitals.”

The coronavirus pandemic is currently spreading at the rate of roughly a 20% increase per day, achieving sustained, exponential growth that has spread to three cruise ships, dozens of countries and an ever-expanding list of mainland Chinese cities.

The initial attempt to quarantine the Wuhan region in order to stop the coronavirus has clearly failed. Yet the WHO, the CDC and the totally discredited mainstream media are still lying to the public, falsely claiming this outbreak is “under control” and “poses no risk to America.” Those claims are malicious, dangerous lies that even the CDC’s own scientists are contradicting in their public statements.

In addition, multiple health experts are now on the record confirming this pandemic has broken containment and will spread globally.

Any media source saying this is “no big deal” is actually trying to make the pandemic worse by keeping people uninformed and unprepared.

https://www.brighteon.com/0208e343-0c03-45b7-a4fe-eb84836571a3

 

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Pope Francis endorses wealth redistribution, calls for an end to tax cuts for the ‘richest people’

CAP

Pope Francis blasted the practice of tax cuts for the rich as part of a “structure of sin” and lamented the fact that “billions of dollars” end up in “tax haven accounts” instead of funding “healthcare and education.”

Speaking at the seminar set up by the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences  the Pope criticized “the richest people” for receiving “repeated tax cuts” in the name of “investment and development.” These “tax haven accounts” impede “the possibility of the dignified and sustained development of all social agents,” claims the Pope.

He added that “the poor increase around us” as poverty is rising around the world. This poverty can be ended if the wealthiest gave more.

“The 50 richest people in the world have an equity equivalent to 2.2 billion dollars. Those fifty people alone could finance the medical care and education of every poor child in the world, whether through taxes, philanthropic initiatives or both. Those fifty people could save millions of lives every year,” the Pope said.

Though Pope Francis believes poverty is a major current issue, something he has spoken about before, he tried to remain hopeful by saying the world’s problems today are “solvable.”

“The main message of hope I want to share with you is precisely this: these are solvable problems, not ones from a lack of resources. There is no determinism that condemns us to universal inequity. Let me repeat: we are not condemned to universal inequity,” he said.

Though the Pope spoke of the dangers of “extreme poverty” in his economic speech, reports suggest that extreme poverty is falling every year around the globe.

Still, a higher tax rate for wealthier individuals is a popular idea with some parties in both the US and UK, and the gap between rich and poor is certainly widening. A recent Oxfam report indicated the richest one percent of the world’s population has twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, or 6.9 billion people.

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Trump Administration Will Remove Anti-Trump Deep State Operative Alex Vindman from NSC Following His Role in Sham Impeachment

by Jim Hoft February 6, 2020

In November Chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Ron Johnson (R-WI) blasted Lt. Col Vindman in an 11-page letter written to ranking member of the House Intel Committee Devin Nunes and Rep. Jim Jordan.

Senator Johnson wrote the Congressman a letter to provide his first-hand information and perspective on events relevant to the impeachment inquiry.

Johnson traveled to Ukraine with special envoy Kurt Volker, spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in person and spoke to President Trump about the hold on military aid — unlike all of the ‘witnesses’ Schiff has dragged in to testify using fourth-hand information.

Johnson clearly suggested Vindman was behind the leaks ‘outside his chain of command.’

During his trip to Ukraine Vindman told Ukrainians to ignore President Trump — Vindman actually thinks he is superior to Trump even though he is an inferior official in the intel department.

Vindman, during his closed-door testimony also flatly denied he knew the identity of the whistleblower (Eric Ciaramella); however, it is believed he was the primary source for Eric Ciaramella.

Vindman’s boss Tim Morrison testified that Vindman was untrustworthy, was a leaker who thought he was in charge.

On Thursday night news broke that Vindman will be removed from the National Security Council!
Good riddance!

Bloomberg reported:

The White House is weighing a plan to dismiss Alexander Vindman from the National Security Council after he testified in President Donald Trump’s impeachment inquiry, preparing to position the move as part of a broader effort to shrink the foreign policy bureaucracy, two people familiar with the matter said.

Any moves would come after the Senate on Wednesday acquitted Trump on a near party-line vote at the conclusion of the two-week impeachment trial. The White House intends to portray any house-cleaning as part of a downsizing of the NSC staff, not retaliation, according to the people.

 

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CITIZEN JOURNALISTS WHO EXPOSED BEIJING’S LIES IN WUHAN SUDDENLY VANISH

Citizen Journalists Who Exposed Beijing's Lies In Wuhan Suddenly Vanish

Chicoms cracking down on truth about coronavirus crisis

Zero Hedge – FEBRUARY 7, 2020

As we reported late Thursday evening, the death toll from the viral outbreak on mainland China has surpassed 600.

With global markets once again in the red, Bloomberg reports that Beijing has silenced two of the citizen journalists responsible for much of the horrifying footage seeping onto western social media.

As BBG’s reporter explains, Chinese citizen journalists Chen Qiushi and Fang Bin have effectively been “the world’s eyes and ears” inside Wuhan (much of the film produced by American news organizations has consisted of drone footage).

In recent days, SCMP and other news organizations reporting on the ground and publishing in English have warned that Beijing has stepped up efforts to censor Chinese social media after allowing citizens to vent their frustrations and share news without the usual scrutiny.

On Wednesday, China said its censors would conduct “targeted supervision” on the largest social media platforms including Weibo, Tencent’s WeChat and ByteDance’s Douyin. All in an effort to mask the dystopian nightmare that life in cities like Wuhan has become.

But that brief period of informational amnesty is now over, apparently. Fang posted a dramatic video on Friday showing him being forcibly detained and dragged off to a ‘quarantine’. He was detained over a video showing corpses piled up in a Wuhan hospital. However, he has already been released.

Chen, meanwhile, seems to have vanished without a trace, and is believed to still be in government detention. We shared one of Chen’s more alarming videos documenting the severe medical supply shortages and outnumbered medical personnel fighting a ‘losing battle’ against the outbreak.

The crackdown on these journalists comes amid an outpouring of public anger over the death of a doctor who was wrongly victimized by police after attempting to warn the public about the outbreak. Beijing tried to cover up the death, denying it to the western press before the local hospital confirmed.

The videos supplied by the two citizen journos have circulated most freely on twitter, which is where most in-the-know Chinese go for their latest information about the outbreak. Many “hop” the “great firewall” via a VPN.

“There’s a lot more activity happening on Twitter compared with Weibo and WeChat,” said Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch. There has been a Chinese community on Jack Dorsey’s short-message platform since before President Xi Jinping rose to power, she added, but the recent crackdown has weakened that social circle.

Chen has now been missing for more than 24 hours, according to several friends in contact with BBG News.

Chen has been out of contact for a prolonged period of time. His friends posted a message on his Twitter account saying he has been unreachable since 7 p.m. local time on Thursday. In a texted interview, Bloomberg News’s last question to Chen was whether he was concerned about his safety as he’s among the few people reporting the situation on the front lines.

It’s all part of the great crackdown that Beijing is enforcing, even as the WHO continues to praise the Communist Party for its ‘transparency’.

“After lifting the lid briefly to give the press and social media some freedom,” said Wang about China’s ruling Communist Party, the regime “is now reinstating its control over social media, fearing it could lead to a wider-spread panic.”

With a little luck, the world might soon learn Chen’s whereabouts. Then again, there’s always the chance that he’s never heard from again.

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PHONY liberal media turns Republican Romney into HERO for sticking it to Trump (just like it did McCain & Bush)

CAP

Zachary Leeman is a US-based journalist and author of the novel Nigh.

 

Mitt Romney is the latest token Republican being hoisted up on the shoulders of the mainstream media thanks to his “courageous” decision to defy Donald Trump by voting with Democrats to impeach the president.

You would think the Utah senator single-handedly defeated Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and then rescued a few kittens out of trees on his way home the way the media is writing about him.

The New Yorker declared that the former presidential candidate “seized” a chance to “rewrite his own place in history” with his impeachment vote.

An opinion piece in the Washington Post deemed the decision “courageous,” and Twitter was full of love for the man once eviscerated by liberal commentators for simply saying “binders full of women.”

The lionization of Romney is nothing new. The mainstream media always keeps a few token Republicans around, and they usually have one they deem worthy of their praises, so long as that person happens to fit with the current agenda, and the current agenda is opposing Trump, so Romney is temporarily safe from the usual scorn his party affiliation and faith receive.

Others have also found themselves walking down that path of praise, past mockery cast aside so they can be deemed heroes for daring to break from Republican ranks and oppose the president.

John McCain

Romney has been crowned the new McCain.

“Like McCain before him, Romney rebukes Trump,” Roll Call wrote after Romney’s impeachment vote.

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Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin applauded Romney’s impeachment vote speech by calling it “McCain-esque.”

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McCain wasn’t always liked though. When he ran against Barack Obama in 2008, the late Arizona senator was painted as an over-the-hill Republican grouch with racist policies. The Pew Research Center found in the weeks leading up to the election, negative stories about McCain were three to one. Obama, meanwhile, had the opposite problem. Only about a third of stories written about him were negative.

Google McCain’s name today and you’d be hard-pressed to find a bad word about him. Why is that? Could it be his time spent as a prisoner of war in Vietnam? No, it’s because he was one of Trump’s most consistent Republican critics.

The New York Times, the same paper that ran an editorial in 2008 accusing McCain of possibly running racist ads, published piece after piece defendingMcCain from Trump attacks. Quite a flip.

Like Romney, McCain was a defeated political opponent later praised as an elder statesman and protector of all things good simply because he didn’t like Trump.

Anthony Scaramucci

He may have only served as the director of communications in the White House for eleven days, but that hasn’t stopped Scaramucci from turning himself into a self-appointed expert on the president.

Once one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, Scaramucci did a complete 180 degree turn in recent months and now appears to oppose everything he once promoted. What’s ironic about him now appearing on CNN and MSNBC or writing op-eds for Huffington Post and Washington Post about how he saw the wrong in his views is the same left-wing media he now frequents is the reason he was out of a job in the first place.

Scaramucci was fired after an interview with the New Yorker where he said some pretty vulgar things about White House officials, including Steve Bannon. Scaramucci thought the comments were off the record and was just as shocked as everyone else when he saw them in print.

George W. Bush

Before the possibility of Trump becoming president was ever a reality, George W. Bush was sold by the mainstream media as the worst Republicans had to offer. He was blasted as racist, incompetent, cowardly, on and on it went. The hysteria over Bush was so bad conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” — sound familiar? — to describe the extremeness that came with critiques of the man.

Leftists like Michael Moore blasted Bush and higher-ups in his administration as war criminals for starting the war in Iraq. Former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote an entire book about prosecuting Bush for murder, and he’s the same guy who wrote ‘Helter Skelter’, the book about cult leader Charles Manson!

A film was even released fantasizing about Bush’s assassination, ‘Death of a President’, and it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival. And before there was ever a push for Nancy Pelosi to impeach Trump, she was being pushed to impeach Bush. It was hard to imagine at the time that any politician could ever inspire the vitriolic hate that Bush did.

Then Trump came into the picture and knocked W.’s brother Jeb out of the running for president. George W. Bush in turn criticized Trump. He even defended the media as “essential to democracy” while Trump popularized terms like “fake news” in his war with the press.

Bush went from a threat to democracy to an “unlikely savior,” as the New York Times so subtly put it. He has been so redeemed in some eyes that more loyal leftists have become a tad uncomfortable with the man ranking on ‘most admired’ lists and hanging with celebs like Ellen DeGeneres. They have taken to trying to remind people of the good old days where people fantasized about everything from the man in prison to in the grave on a daily basis.

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Will the Real Eric Ciaramella Please Stand Up? Numerous Photos Misidentify Real Deep State ‘Leaker’ – These Images Were Deep Fake Verified

CAP

by Joe Hoft February 6, 2020

A number of individuals have been labeled and identified on the Internet as the anti-Trump Deep State ‘whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella.  Below we identify a few of the individuals who were misidentified as Eric Ciaramella.

Yaacov Apelbaum put together information regarding the many individuals misidentified as Deep State’s Eric Ciaramella. 

Below is a list of some of those individuals as well as a picture of the real leaker, Ciaramella.

On October 30th, Paul Sperry announced at RealClearInvestigations.com in a post that the so-called ‘whistleblower’ in lying Adam Schiff’s fake impeachment sham is none other than Eric Ciaramella. This was old news to us at TGP as well as Dan Bongino and others on the web. (We first reported on Ciaramella on October 11th.)

But in Sperry’s post, he notes the exact pronunciation for Ciaramella’s name – (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah) –

Bongino suspected that Sperry was trying to hint at something as the pronunciation of a name is not usually included in posts like Sperry’s. What Bongino suggested was that there is a connection between Sperry’s article and the Grassley and Johnson letter – Char-a-MEL-ah is the same ‘Charlie’ in the Strzok and Page communications.

This is why Schiff wanted to keep his identity hidden. Not only because Ciaramella is a clearly a leaker and is culpable for crimes due to his leaking but because he was spying on President Trump in the White House and was involved in the Russia collusion scam as well.

As we reported on October 11th, in a hit piece on conservatives in July, 2017, Yahoo reported that Mike Cernovich targeted an individual who worked for former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster, claiming the individual wanted to ‘sabotage’ President Trump.  The article also said the individual claimed he is ‘pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia’.

Cernovich reported in June, 2017, that McMaster promoted Ciaramella in spite of his connections to Susan Rice in Obama’s White House:

West Wing officials confirmed to Cernovich Media that Eric Ciaramella, who worked closely with Susan Rice while at NSC, was recently promoted to be H.R. McMaster’s personal aide. Ciaramella will have unfettered access to McMaster’s conversations with foreign leaders.

Others noted Ciaramella was Obama’s NSC Director for the Ukraine.  This connects him and his team at the NSC to Joe Biden. Biden was Obama’s lead in the Ukraine so it’s implausible that Ciararmella and his team were not connected to Biden.  Schiff’s leakers are connected to Biden also.

Fool Nelson on Twitter was one of the first to out Ciaramella –

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Another Internet sleuth, Greg Rubini, may have been the first to identify Ciaramella.  Rubini however noted that Ciaramella was in the White House at an event and was seated directly behind Melania Trump –

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This turned out to be incorrect as the individual in the picture above with Melania Trump was not Ciaramella. The individual identified as Eric Ciaramella is Hugo Verges, he is French President Emanuel Macron’s advisor for Latin America. This image was taken prior to the state diner on April 24, 2018.

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IT’S OFFICIAL . . .

By Mark Dice – 2/6/2020

Mitt Romney in 2012: “I’m the Republican candidate for President!” Liberal media: “Romney is a racist, homophobic, war mongering, sexist tyrant!” Mitt Romney in 2020: “Orange man bad!” Liberal media: “Mitt Romney is a God!!!”

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THE CORONAVIRUS OUTBREAK SHOWS “NO SIGNS OF SLOWING” AS CREMATORIUMS BURN BODIES 24 HOURS A DAY

The Coronavirus Outbreak Shows “No Signs Of Slowing” As Crematoriums Burn Bodies 24 Hours A Day

We have entered a time of great chaos for the entire planet, and this virus certainly has the potential to greatly accelerate that chaos

Michael Snyder | Economic Collapse – FEBRUARY 6, 2020

The outbreak of this mysterious new coronavirus is getting more frightening with each passing day. 

As you will see below, even the mainstream media is admitting that the number of cases shows “no signs of slowing” even though the Chinese government has implemented draconian measures in a desperate attempt to contain the virus.

Many in the western world continue to insist that this disease is not any more dangerous than the common flu, but the Chinese never locked down entire cities for the flu before.

In recent days, the images that have been coming out of China have been absolutely horrifying.

If these images are accurate, people are literally dropping dead in restaurants, in shopping malls and in public transportation hubs.

Dr. Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Act, joins Owen Shroyer on The Alex Jones Show to expose the 2019 Wuhan coronavirus as an offensive biological warfare weapon that the World Health Organization (WHO) already knows about.

At the epicenter of this outbreak, crematoriums in Wuhan are burning bodies 24 hours a day as they try to keep up with the flood of dead bodies coming in, and the workers at those facilities are completely and totally overwhelmed.

When I last posted an article about this pandemic on The Economic Collapse Blogthree days ago, there were 14,637 confirmed cases and the death toll had risen to 305.

Since that time, both numbers have nearly doubled…

The death toll and number of people infected by the Wuhan coronavirus continues to grow, with no signs of slowing despite severe quarantine and population control methods put in place in central China.

The number of confirmed cases globally stood at 28,256 as of Thursday morning, with more than 28,000 of those in China. The number of cases in China grew by 3,694, or 15%, on the previous day. There have been 563 deaths so far, all but two of which were in China, with one in the Philippines and one in Hong Kong.

Can you imagine how bad things are going to get if the numbers keep roughly doubling every three days?

Of course many are extremely skeptical that the official numbers that the Chinese government is giving us are accurate.  Anecdotal reports seem to indicate that the situation is far worse than we are being told, and that includes firsthand testimony from a funeral home worker in Wuhan…

One worker at the Caidan Funeral Home, in suburban Wuhan, has claimed employees are working “24/7” to deal with the bodies, reports Epoch Times.

The worker said staff are exhausted and are working without proper equipment.

Identified only as Mr Yun, he said: “90 percent of our employees are working 24/7 … we couldn’t go back home.”

Chillingly, he claimed: “All Wuhan cremation chambers are working 24 hours.”

According to Mr. Yun, his facility needs “at least 100 body bags” every single day.  If every other cremation center in the city is handling a similar workload, that would strongly indicate that the true death toll is far, far larger than the official numbers we are being given.

Video footage that has been circulating on social media also seems to back up Mr. Yun’s claims…

Meanwhile, videos from workers dealing with the crisis have been circulating on social media, including one from a worker at a Wuhan funeral home who shared footage of more than 10 bodies lying on gurneys, lined up for cremation.

Some netizens also shared videos they shot within different hospitals in Wuhan, showing bodies waiting to be transferred from the hospitals to funeral homes.

Here in the western world, a lot of people are not taking this crisis very seriously yet.

But over in China things are happening that are absolutely crazy.

If you can believe it, Chinese authorities have actually started locking some victims inside their own homes…

The clip shows two officers padlocking the door while asking the resident inside, “Do you have enough rice and vegetables at home?“

“I think so,” responds the person inside.

“OK, so don’t come out,” responds the officer, adding, “We are locking your door from outside. Don’t come out. It’s good for everyone.”

Eventually the police will go back and check on those victims.

If they are no longer living, they will be put in body bags and shipped off to a crematorium.

Could we soon see similar things happen in western countries?

Let us hope not, but it has become quite clear that this is a very serious outbreak.

Out of all the stories I have come across, perhaps the most heartbreaking of all is the story of a woman that passed the virus on to her newborn baby…

A Chinese baby has been diagnosed with coronavirus just 30 hours after a woman who had tested positive for the deadly disease gave birth in the epicenter city of Wuhan, according to state media.

Doctors at the Wuhan Children’s Hospital on Wednesday cited the case as evidence that pregnant women infected with the virus may be able to pass it to their unborn children, according to state broadcaster CCTV.

Can you imagine how heartbroken that mother must be right now?

Unfortunately, it looks like it won’t be too long before this is a true global pandemic.  At this point, Singapore and South Korea both have more than 20 confirmed cases…

Singapore announced a new confirmed case of the coronavirus today, bringing its total to 25.

South Korea also confirmed four more cases today, bringing the national total to 23.

And here in the United States we now have our 12th confirmed case…

Wisconsin has confirmed its first case of coronavirus, state officials said on Wednesday.

The new patient, of undisclosed age and gender, is the twelfth confirmed case in the US after testing positive for the virus at University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison.

As I keep stressing, we still don’t really know how bad this outbreak will eventually become in the western world.

We have entered a time of great chaos for the entire planet, and this virus certainly has the potential to greatly accelerate that chaos.

But this outbreak could also fizzle out soon, and then it would be regarded by most people in western countries as a “false alarm”.

For now, we will continue to carefully watch the latest developments each day.  The World Health Organization says that there are “no effective remedies” for this virus, and the number of cases continues to escalate.  China has already been completely gripped by panic, and if this outbreak continues to spread it is only a matter of time before more nations are paralyzed by fear as well.

 

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Not a great look: Failed Iowa caucus app is deeply linked to self-declared winner Buttigieg… and Hillary Clinton

CAP

By Danielle Ryan

An app supposedly meant to ensure quick reporting of the Iowa caucus results was developed by a firm deeply tied to the Democratic establishment and went kaputt at the crucial moment. What are the chances?

It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but Americans can be excused for their distrust of the system after what happened in 2016 – and the facts that have been dug up on the group behind the failed Iowa app won’t do much to quell their suspicions.

The firm in question, rather ironically, is called Shadow Inc. —  and, according to Federal Election Commission filings, it was paid thousands of dollars by Pete Buttigieg’s campaign for “software rights and subscriptions” in July 2019.

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Fast-forward to February 2020, and the app has failed to deliver any reliable results in Iowa, Buttigieg has prematurely declared himself the winner — and #MayorCheat is trending on Twitter.

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Adding to the suspicions surrounding the Iowa debacle is the fact that the company’s CEO, CTO and COO, among others, all previously worked for Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign, according to their LinkedIn profiles. For supporters of Sanders, convinced the DNC is attempting to rig the primary process against him for a second time, the conspiracy theory writes itself.

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Shadow Inc was launched in 2019 by ACRONYM, a digital non-profit founded by one Tara McGowan, who happens to be a huge fan of Buttigieg, tweeting her excitement over his candidacy back in January 2019.

Despite declaring that it“launched” Shadow last year, ACRONYM has suddenly tried to distance itself from the company in the midst of the Iowa debacle. Yet, only a couple of weeks before the caucus disaster, McGowan herself was tweeting proudly about what ACRONYM was “building” together with Shadow. McGowan, by the way, is married to a top Buttigieg advisor.

Raising even more questions, there are rumors that Clinton’s former 2016 campaign manager, Robby Mook, was indirectly involved with the Shadow app. While Mook himself says he doesn’t “know anything” about it and there is no indication that he was involved in its actual development, investigative journalist Lee Fang tweeted that it was Mook’s security company, Defending Digital Democracy, which “vetted” the Iowa caucus app for “integrity.” The New York Times also reported that Mook’s company was involved in testing the app.

Iowa caucus disaster: ‘Technical glitch’ spawns conspiracy theories & Democrats have only themselves to blame

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It’s not like Sanders supporters haven’t been burned by this sort of thing before. It is now widely accepted that the DNC was secretly working to thwart Sanders’ campaign in 2016, in an effort to ensure establishment favorite Hillary Clinton would face off against Trump. It is perfectly plausible to assume the party apparatus might try to do the same again in 2020, albeit with different tactics.

The utter contempt for Sanders among the establishment ranks of the DNC should not be underestimated. Despite the fact that Sanders ultimately supported Clinton in 2016, Clinton herself initially refused to say she would back Sanders if he became the party’s nominee in 2020 — and declared that “nobody likes” the Democratic socialist, who consistently ranks as the most popular politician in the country, but whose socialist-style politics are anathema to corporate centrists.

The Iowa drama is reminiscent of the controversy surrounding the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC in 2016. The determination that Moscow hacked the organization to harm Clinton’s campaign was made almost instantly by Crowdstrike, a private Democratic party contractor with links to an arms manufacturer-funded think tank. You couldn’t even make it up.

For progressive Democrats expecting a Sanders win in Iowa (that prediction based on recent polls in which he enjoyed significant leads), this all looks like blatant, bare-faced corruption. Or, as journalist Kyle Kulinski put it: “This is either record breaking incompetence or it’s an attempt to game the results. Those are the only two options.”

As of the time of writing, it has been 14 hours since the Iowa polls closed, there are still no official results available and Shadow Inc has assured everyone that it sincerely regrets the delay. While Buttigieg has declared victory based on limited data covering only his own campaign, Sanders’ camp has released data covering all candidates, indicating that he won the night.

With such a mess made of the Iowa caucus, and suspicions swirling about Shadow’s mysterious app, whether Sanders won or he didn’t, the DNC has once again ignited a rage in his supporters that it may come to regret.

Progressive Democrats were expecting yesterday’s caucus to potentially get messy, but “Shady app crashes and Pete Buttigieg declares victory before the result” probably wasn’t on anyone’s Iowa bingo card.

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