Month: March 2024

By Tuomas Malinen

In early February, I posted a poll on X asking whether I should write a geopolitical piece on the Russo-Ukrainian war, adding to my series mapping a worst-case scenario for the war. While the vote count for this particular poll was not very high, an overwhelming majority supported this notion.

Before conducting the poll, developments in Ukraine in December and January had led me to ponder the outcome, or endgame, of the war. In September 2022, I had established an alternative to the western narrative of the war, spewed relentlessly by our media. In it, I argued that

• Ukrainian losses are massive, passing Russian losses possibly 5-10 times.

• The Russian army has not collapsed, but it may have become the strongest it has been since WWII.

• The West (NATO) is fighting a proxy-war in Ukraine with the possible aim of regime change in Russia.

• Russia is about to create a war-machine not seen in Europe for a very long time, which it could use to unleash a devastating attack against Ukrainian (NATO) forces during the winter.

In late-October 2022, I also noted that:

The massive force Russia is amassing and the all-but-halted progress of Ukrainian forces, tells me that we are most likely approaching a turning point in the war. In the worst case, this implies that Ukraine has already lost. Even in the best case (excluding peace) this means that the war will drag on and become a resource race between NATO and Russia.

Now, essentially all of this, except the Russian winter-offensive (2022/23) have been proven true. Ukraine has effectively lost the war, or a least she cannot win it in any plausible scenario. Just a few days ago, French President Emmanuel Macron attempted a game-changer, by “not ruling out” NATO boots in Ukraine. This, unsurprisingly, led to a strong backlash both from European allies and the Kremlin, but the idea of direct NATO involvement in Ukraine had been floated. Yet, we already know that western soldiers have been in Ukraine for some time and now we also know that NATO has been providing both operational and intelligence support for Ukraine for some time.

Anyone who understands anything about the ‘power politics’ in Europe knows that radical new developments will be first proposed by some party/parties only to be shot down by other political leaders. However, after this initiation, the proposal keeps appearing in newspaper articles and comments by political leaders, which slowly turn from condemnation to neutrality and further to (reluctant) acceptance. This is why all of us concerned about pan-European security should be extremely vigilant concerning the plans of European political leaders and the elite. The analysis presented in this piece further amplify these concerns by showing that the motives of NATO in the Ukrainian conflict are unlikely to be benevolent for the European populace.

The timing of the comment by Macron, was naturally no coincidence. The AFU (Armed Forces of Ukraine) is currently facing a looming collapse of the eastern front. A key development was the fall of Avdiivka, a key town in the east, to Russians in mid-February. It now looks as though the AFU has no fortified positions after Avdiivka, which implies that the whole Ukrainian defenses can collapse in a matter of weeks.

The questions we should be asking are as follows: Why are we here again, on the verge of another major war in Europe? Why has the narrative of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, changed so drastically from the first days of the war?

We have learned that western nations, especially the U.S. and the U.K., have been adamantly against any ceasefire, not to mention peace, in Ukraine. From the perspective of the geopolitical security structure, based on integration, created in Europe after the Second World War, this makes absolutely no sense.

Blaming only Russia for the war in Ukraine, would also be extremely naive. The actions of the U.S. in Ukraine before the onset of the first phase of the war, in 2014, do not stand up to any scrutiny. Also those, who consider Russia as a “white knight” in this macabre power play, are clinging on to beliefs that are not supported by reality. The longstanding, publicly stated position of neutrality of Russia in the conflict in Donbas, since 2014, is a blatant lie from the Kremlin. I know this, e.g. through my contacts in the operational leadership of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe) mission in eastern Ukraine. But, this is just how these two major nuclear powers play this game. You just have to be careful to not blindly believe what either of the party argues.

Yet, the decisions and actions, or “errors”, NATO has made in the Russia-Ukraine war, can only be plausibly explained with two scenarios. The first one is that NATO leadership is highly erratic, while the other is that NATO is not an “defense alliance”, but an aggressor. Both of these have dire implications for the security structure of Europe.

Russian threat that wasn’t

Sir Winston Churchill described Russia as a “riddle wrapped in a mystery, inside of an enigma”. This is how Russia presents itself to many westerners. The relatively chaotic, but mostly victorious military history of Russia conceals their centuries long aim of bezopasnost, which translates to “absence of threat”. The Napoleonic wars, which led to the Fire of Moscow, and Operation Barbarossa, one of most bloody wars of invasion ever fought in Europe, have been burned deeply into the psyche of Russian leaders. For a very long time, the threat to Russia has come from the west and from the south-west. Both Hitler and Napoleon proceeded to Russia through Poland and Ukraine. This is something that the collective west often and most likely deliberately forgets.

On the other hand, the wars of invasion fought by Russia, and the Soviet Union, combined with their extensive ‘psyop’ operations in the West (conducted mostly by the Soviet Union), can be seen as an over-reach of security or direct policies of enlargement. However, also this is how major military powers operate, when they feel their security and/or interests threatened. The wars fought by Russia and the U.S. over the centuries, shows their power politics rather clearly. The difference between the two is that, while Russia has mostly fought wars close to its borders, the U.S. has waged wars, practically, across the globe.

What is also deliberately forgotten in the west is that Russia is not the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a superpower with the capacity to conquer and hold most of Europe. For decades, it was the second largest economy in the world, the winner of the first stage of the space race and a military giant. Russia’s economy, on the other hand, is eleventh largest in the world with a gross domestic product of $2.1 trillion in 2023, which is less than one-tenth of the U.S. economy ($26.9 trillion). The states of California and Texas, for example, have larger economies than Russia.

This quite simply means that, while Russia currently most likely leads NATO in development of modern ground forces, the economy of Russia simply cannot cope with any larger wars of invasion. The costs of the annexation of Crimea to Russia’s fiscal balance were staggering. The economic foundations, like tourism and private businesses, on the Peninsula collapsed and Russia emptied her Sovereign Reserve Fund to pay for the costs of annexation. The second military phase of the conflict has more than halved the National Wealth Fund, with its value falling by $58 billion since February 2022.

What do you think would happen, if Russia would invade, for example, the Baltics? Russian state finances would collapse without massive lending (money printing) from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, which would bring another round of hyperinflation.

Purely from economic premises, the idea of Russia engaging in a war of invasion in Europe is preposterous! A wider war against NATO would utterly devastate Russian state finances, with a very high risk of devastating nuclear confrontation. This means that the Kremlin would not take upon such an endeavour, even if it were militarily possible (which it is not, at least not yet), without a direct threat to the survival of Russia. What could bring upon a such a threat?

The two faces of NATO

In January last year, I went through the uneasy relationship and rather aggressive history of NATO and Russia. The conclusion of my analysis was:

The history of NATO, the lack of genuine push for peace from the West, and the current extremely dangerous rhetoric demanding for “full Russian capitulation” and the change in regime in Moscow, makes me think that the threat Kremlin feels has roots in reality. It seems more and more that the U.S. and NATO are using Europe to wage a war against her opponent for 80 years. The Eurasian power structure forming between Europe, China and Russia would have risen to challenge the U.S. hegemony, and this can be seen as the motive for such a worst-case scenario.

This was a rough conclusion, but it was based on analyses of three leading geopolitical scholars (two American, one Russian). There was also one thing all geopolitical scholars, Russian and American (NATO-hawks and doves), agreed upon in the 1990’s and 2000’s. It was that Ukraine was a ‘no-go-zone’ for NATO. How and why did NATO then deliberately flirt with the idea of Ukraine becoming a member of NATO already in 2008? Moreover, the General Secretary of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, has given truly strange statements lately, including the statement that Ukraine would eventually become a member of NATO. This would violate all the principles and rules of how the alliance accepts new countries.

The main problem with NATO is that it seems to have a mind of its own. It does not follow the guidance of its member states, nor even advice of the most notorious ‘NATO-hawks’, like Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moreover, while no formal agreement was ever signed to stop NATO from expanding to former Soviet countries in eastern Europe, there were verbal agreements and statements of such a ‘moratoria’. It’s difficult to assess, how much weight the Kremlin originally put to such promises, but according to the statements by President Putin they were not negligible. Even as late as in early-December 2021, President Putin demanded guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward any further. This can be seen as a last-minute effort to prevent a wider conflict in Ukraine.

Alas, it appears that NATO operates with two faces. Publicly it’s a defense alliance, responding to the threat of Russia. Yet in the background, it is sowing the seeds of conflict, and flaming them by deliberately over-stepping the red lines of its main rival, Moscow. This leads us to the first scenario, i.e. to erratic NATO.

Scenario I: NATO, the erratic

The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949 (which happens to be the same day when Finland ascended to full membership to the alliance, in 2023) between the United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom. In it, they agreed to consider an “attack against one an attack against all, along with consultations about threats and defense matters”. Moreover, the collective defense arrangement only applied to attacks against the signatories that occurred in Europe or North America and not, for example, to conflicts in colonial territories.

This was the original aim of NATO. That is, to form a collective defense alliance between countries. It was naturally not the first of its kind in history, but it became the strongest one. The Soviet Union and its allies responded by forming the Warsaw Pact on 14 May, 1955.

All through the Cold War, NATO acted honoring its original aim. It provided a credible counter-force to the military threat of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact on 25 February, 1991, NATO remained. Why?

NATO started to take part or to lead military missions across the globe in the 1990’s. At the same time NATO expanded eastwards with most of the eastern European countries joining the alliance between 1997 and 2020. This did not go unnoticed in the Kremlin, which drew definite red lines for the expansion in 2008. Alexander Grushko, Russia’s former deputy foreign minister stated in 2008 that, “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership into the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have the most serious consequences for pan-European security”. One Russian newspaper reported that, when Presidents Putin and Bush met, Putin stated that, “if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist”. These were extremely dire warnings that Ukraine was an integral part of the bezopasnost, a definite red line for Moscow. To emphasize the point, Russia invaded parts of Georgia in August 2008, after the idea of Georgia becoming a member in NATO was floated in 20th NATO Summit, held in Budapest between 2-4 April 2008 (there’s also controversy surrounding who started the war). Yet, every single one of those warnings was neglected by the leadership of NATO.

To believe that the NATO leadership is simply erratic in their decisions, in the sense that they are deliberately over-stepping the red lines of Kremlin, requires that there exists a massive deficit by recent leaders of NATO to understand the communications coming from Moscow. These deficits would need to be so massive that believing in this scenario would require questioning the sanity of NATO leadership, because they are effectively over-stepping the red lines of a country with the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

I cannot believe in such a scenario of insanity, which leads us to the other scenario. That is, that NATO has evolved into something very different that it was in the beginning.

Scenario II: NATO, the aggressor

NATO is effectively run by the U.S., which covers some 22% of its budget. The U.S. also played a major role in the formation of its first ever military structure. By also being the largest nuclear power in the alliance, the U.S. can be seen wielding uncontested power in NATO’s decision making process. The rather strange occurrence of escalations in Ukraine under democratic rules in the U.S. (Obama and Biden) can be seen either as a weakness of leadership which President Putin took advantage of, or as weakness exploited by the “Deep State”. The aggressive stance taken by NATO in Ukraine, a non-member country, hints to the latter.

Deep state is often described as a conspiracy theory, where secret government networks collude to steer the politics of a state. However, a more plausible description for the term is a network of civil servants, guiding political leaders possibly for decades, who have formed their own view of how things should be handled. Some could describe this as a culture of governance. The thing with such networks is that, if they are subjected to a weak leader, the networks can start to run things, that is, to control decisions. The larger the network, the more extensive its power. There’s a very telling piece on this “power vacuum” a national leader faces, by no other than President Barack Obama.

Every single human institution is also prone to corruption. This is often related to the nature of the power the network yields. If it, for example, has the ability to decide the fate of nations, we can expect corruption to become rather pervasive, if the power of the network goes unchecked. This tends to happen, if it has a weak leader, that is, when the network observes that the commander-in-chief does not have the capacity to properly digest and analyze their guidance, but just act upon them. At this point, there usually is a ‘silent revolution’, where the true decision making process, of any organization, is taken over by the network. Moreover, in such cases the immovable minority, consisting of intolerant and unyielding people, is likely to take over. In positions of power such minorities tend to exhibit meanness reaching even a psychopatic level. The immovable minority may also consist of people, who have devoted themselves to a certain cause or the cause of their background organizations. There’s no lack of secretive organizations running their own agendas in our societies, on which Freemasons are probably the most well known.

In any case, the mental and physical state of the current leader of the U.S., President Joe Biden, has raised some serious questions. I was shocked to see how fragile he has become, when I watched his press conference, first time in a year, some weeks ago. He seems like an old man that should be in a retirement home. I have no doubt that he’s no longer in charge, but his team and the Deep State are.

This leads us to the question, what is the Deep State pursuing?

Answering this question is naturally possible only through indirect observations. If we observe all the “erratic” decisions and actions by NATO for the past 30 years, it’s hard to conclude anything else than that the Deep State seeks a direct confrontation with Russia. What could be the catalyst for this?

Russia holds vast mineral resources, estimated to total between $75 to $90 trillion. In a sense, this makes Russia the richest country in the world. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia sought funds from everywhere, and was very open to investments. It could be that the Deep State hopes to accomplish the same if the current Russian administration collapses, but this is a very high risk strategy.

The other likely motivation for the Russia-Ukraine war is to destroy the Eurasian alliance that was forming between China, Europe and the U.S. However, this already lies in ruins, but the aim could be to hold up the tensions so that there could be no detente between Europe and Russia/China. This requires that the war in Ukraine continues and even spreads. Peace would be very risky to this scenario, as Europe could be seeking to re-establish relations with Russia due to its importance, e.g. to European energy security. Peace at this point would also be a heavy blow to the credibility of the U.S. military power.

The third possible source of motivation is rather speculative. I have speculated on the possibility that the global elite, and a powerful group behind (or over) them is sowing their own dark plan for Europe and the world. This group could be assumed to have a strong influence on the Deep State in all major countries. Their agenda would likely consist of inflicting ultimate chaos in the world in order to establish a pervasive control mechanism. World War III, even with the risk of nuclear annihilation, could serve such an agenda.

Regardless of which of the two scenarios the current NATO leadership is following, the implications for Europe and the world are dire. This is because they both point to deepening escalation. This implies that we have entered the most dangerous period of European history since the late 1930’s.

I will publish scenarios for the endgame of Russia-Ukrainian war in the coming weeks.

Authored by Julie Kelly via RealClear Wire,

The newly disclosed video shows a dark SUV pulling up to the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C., at 9:44 a.m. on Jan. 6, 2021. It sits for several minutes until a uniformed man with a bomb-sniffing dog enters from the right and steps up to the vehicle. The driver complies with his command, the dog sniffs inside and outside the car which is soon allowed to enter the parking garage. The man and his dog exit back to the right.

This scene is unremarkable except for one detail: The uniformed man and his trained canine came within a few feet of where a plainclothes Capitol Police officer would soon discover a pipe bomb that had been planted there the night before. The bomb, which the FBI has described as viable and capable of inflicting serious injury, along with a similar one found at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee, would appear to be the most overt act of violence perpetrated on Jan. 6.

Responding to the video discovered by this reporter, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, the Georgia Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee subcommittee now conducting a separate inquiry into Jan. 6, asked, “How could a bomb-sniffing dog miss a pipe bomb at the DNC? We’ll add this to our long list of unanswered questions and continue getting to the truth.”

The number of anomalies surrounding this still unsolved case continues to grow. These include:

• The failure of the Secret Service detail assigned to Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris, who was inside DNC headquarters when the bomb was discovered, to find the device before her visit.

• The fact that the bomb at RNC headquarters was discovered by a government contractor with ties to the FBI.

• That law enforcement officials repeatedly described the bombs as “highly dangerous” but also said they couldn’t have detonated on their own because of their cheap kitchen timers.

• That cell phone data that might help locate the perpetrator has been deemed corrupted.

•  

• That the FBI’s geofence warrant to obtain cell phone data from Google gives no indication the warrant included the Capitol Hill neighborhood on the night of Jan. 5 – the time and location the pipe bombs were apparently planted.

• That the FBI assistant director leading the stalled investigation had previously been in charge of the investigation into a kidnap plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in which the bureau tried to get alleged conspirators to build bombs.

• That an FBI whistleblower has testified he was told the bombs were inoperable – a claim that seems supported by video showing authorities allowing children to cross the street toward the DNC bomb after it was discovered.

Discovery of the new video featuring the ineffective bomb-sniffing dog has also generated skepticism about the timing of the day’s events: The RNC pipe bomb was discovered at 12:40 pm, just thirteen minutes before the first breach of police lines on the west side of the Capitol and 20 minutes before House and Senate members convened to consider the electoral college results of the 2020 election – creating a narrative of grave threat as the protests turned violent. How might the day have unfolded if the bombs had been discovered many hours before and large swaths of the city had been shut down? And why, given the devices’ proximity to the U.S. Capitol and the joint session of Congress that would involve every U.S. Senator and House member, did law enforcement not send investigators with bomb-sniffing canines to the Capitol immediately?

Vanished Without a Trace

The greatest mystery may be why official Washington has lost interest in this alleged act of domestic terrorism. In the three years since Jan. 6, the DOJ has conducted what Attorney General Merrick Garland describes as a criminal investigation proceeding at an “unprecedented speed and scale” into the protests. Casting a wide dragnet for Capitol protesters across the country, federal and local authorities in Washington have tracked down and prosecuted more than 1,300 defendants, almost all of whom were unarmed, including 62 individuals so far this year.

Yet the perpetrator of what could have been the only deadly attack by a civilian that day appears to have vanished without a trace. He or she also seems to have slipped down the official memory hole. Although the Washington FBI field office recently issued a statement saying the “suspect may still pose a danger to the public or themselves” and upped the reward to $500,000, Washington appears to have lost interest in the pipe bomb whodunnit.

The now defunct Select Committee to Investigate the Attack on the U.S. Capitol barely mentioned the pipe bomb threat in its final report; the committee did not include video of the incident or the suspect during any televised hearings. This strikes some observers as odd for two reasons: The pipe bombs seemed to offer the strongest evidence for the Committee’s case that Jan. 6 was an act of domestic terrorism, and the direct threat to the life of the vice president, who was at the DNC for nearly two hours as the device sat undetected outside the building.

The major news organizations that initially devoted significant space to promote the idea that a supporter of Donald Trump tried to blow up buildings near the Capitol on Jan. 6 have also lost interest in the case.

But a handful of outlets led by Revolver News stayed on the story. And the same media once fixated on the pipe bomber now considers poking holes in the government’s official story little more than right-wing conspiracy-mongering.

The government’s seeming ineffectiveness, however, and lack of forthrightness regarding an allegedly deadly plot filled with unanswered questions has also created a wellspring of distrust. 

The presence of bombs in the nation’s capital as the joint session of Congress convened to debate the outcome of the Electoral College vote animated the notion that Jan. 6 represented an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Trump supporters. Reports that two explosives were found just blocks from the U.S. Capitol initiated the first wave of panic that accelerated throughout the afternoon.

It began when a 37-year-old woman from Madison, Wisc., named Karlin Younger, who said she was walking to do her laundry near the RNC, discovered a device in an alley around 12:40 p.m. Although it is not clear whether the Jan. 6 committee interviewed Younger – her name does not appear in its final report – she gave numerous media interviews in the weeks and months following Jan. 6.

In November 2021, Younger told Business Insider, “When I cast my eyes down, I just saw something kind of metallic, and it was just a very passing glimpse, and all I thought is someone must have missed the recycling bin. And I was going to recycle it, because I’m about that life. I just looked, and it was so completely unbelievable. You’re not on high alert. You don’t think you’re under attack. I’m not in Iraq. This is Capitol Hill.”

She beckoned an RNC security guard whose name has not been made public to confirm her suspicions. “Holy shit, it’s a bomb!” Younger said he exclaimed.

The FBI interviewed Younger a few days later after she contacted the bureau’s Jan. 6 tip line. But it doesn’t appear she was interviewed again by the FBI.

The FBI story.

The FBI official leading the investigation, Washington FBI Field Office assistant director in charge Steven D’Antuono, told House Republicans he did not “recall” who discovered the device. Had the FBI come knocking again, Younger certainly would have consented to another interview. At the time, Younger worked for a public-private partnership called FirstNet, which provides interoperable broadband for first responders across the country. The month before Jan. 6, the FBI awarded a $92 million grant to FirstNet.

Authorities quickly dispatched officers to the DNC located a few blocks away. A similar device reportedly was found on the ground between two benches outside one of the building’s entrances at 1:07 pm.

In response, police immediately evacuated a few congressional buildings including the nearby Cannon House Office building. “I just had to evacuate my office because of a pipe bomb reported outside,” Virginia Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria tweeted at 1:46 p.m. “Supporters of the President are trying to force their way into the Capitol and I can hear what sounds like multiple gunshots. I don’t recognize our country today and the members of Congress who have supported this anarchy do not deserve to represent their fellow Americans.”

The Capitol Police stated on Jan. 7 that both devices, which it said were “hazardous and could cause great harm to public safety,” were “disabled and turned over to the FBI for further investigation and analysis.” The FBI did not respond to a request for a report on the devices.

The topic of the pipe bombs was raised repeatedly during the Department of Justice’s first press conference a few days later. In their joint appearance on Jan. 12, D’Antuono and acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia Michael Sherwin were asked by CBS News reporter Catherine Herridge whether the pipe bombs were a diversionary tactic to redirect police away from the site of the protest, or if the devices intended to kill or maim individuals working in both buildings. Sherwin responded that both scenarios would be explored during the investigation but he emphasized that the devices were “real” and contained “explosive igniters.”

D’Antuono, who spearheaded the FBI’s Jan. 6 investigation including the pipe bombs, announced a $50,000 reward leading to the arrest of the perpetrator. “I just want to make that perfectly clear and that we’re looking at all angles in that. Every rock is being unturned, because we have to bring that person to justice or people to justice,” D’Antuono said.

By the end of January 2021, the FBI released grainy footage of a person the government believed to be the bomber and upped the reward to a total of $75,000 – and which now stands at $500,000. 

An individual, wearing a hoodie, a face mask, gloves, and Nike gym shoes, is seen carrying a backpack around the vicinity of both buildings. FBI authorities said the suspect planted the devices sometime between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. on Jan. 5. Ashlan Benedict, head of D’Antuono’s ATF division, told CNN at the time that the bureau considered the investigation an urgent matter because the suspect “could potentially be building more bombs right now.”

Intense media coverage followed. On Jan. 29, 2021, the Washington Post published an extensive story on the pipe bombs, assigning five of the paper’s top reporters to investigate the timeline and obtain private security camera footage from surrounding property owners.

Months passed before D’Antuono’s office provided an update into the investigation. In September 2021, the FBI released more inconclusive security video obtained from a camera at the DNC showing the alleged suspect walking by the building and sitting on a bench next to where the bomb was discovered the next day. But the brief clip did not show the perpetrator removing anything from his backpack or placing a bomb on the ground.

By the third anniversary of the Capitol protest, the FBI was still empty-handed. D’Antuono himself had become a target of media and congressional scrutiny over his handling of the Jan. 6 investigation and his involvement in the FBI-orchestrated plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.

FBI Director Christopher Wray had promoted D’Antuono from head of the Detroit FBI field office – the office responsible for the key FBI agents, informants, and undercover employees responsible for executing the entrapment operation – to head of the Washington FBI office in October 2020.

That case also involved the use of explosives. The FBI ran an undercover agent disguised as an explosives expert into the group of alleged kidnappers to lure them into attempting to buy components to build a bomb. Several of the men targeted by the FBI were arrested when the FBI’s lead informant drove them to meet the undercover agent acting as a bomb builder.

Under questioning by House Republicans in 2023, D’Antuono, who retired from the FBI after Republicans won control of the House in November 2022 to take a job in the private sector, appeared less confident about the threat posed by the pipe bombs than he had in public statements. Asked by Rep. Tom Massie whether a one-hour kitchen timer, a component of both devices, could detonate a bomb 17 hours after it was set, D’Antuono said it could not.

D’Antuono admitted he did not follow the “granularity” of his office’s inquiry into the pipe bomber case and also did not know if the FBI interviewed the person who discovered the device outside the DNC. 

D’Antuono also testified that a search warrant failed to scoop up data of the alleged suspect, who is seen handling a cell phone on his walk in the vicinity. Stating the FBI did a “complete” geofence warrant for Jan. 6, D’Antuono disclosed that data from one company strangely was missing. “Some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I’m not sure – I can’t remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don’t have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was.”

Congressional Republicans say they were troubled by another aspect of D’Antuono’s testimony related to the allegedly corrupted file. While the FBI did issue a geofence warrant to obtain cell phone data from Google, there is no indication the warrant included Jan. 5 – the day the pipe bombs were allegedly planted.

Public reporting and court filings in Jan. 6 cases indicate the warrant identified three specific time periods on Jan. 6, resulting in the collection of data from more than 5,000 devices, but did not request records for Jan. 5.

“Mr. D’Antuono’s testimony raises concerns about the FBI’s handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee’s requests for a briefing regarding the investigation,” Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, wrote in June 2023.

Other aspects of the pipe bomb story started to raise eyebrows. After nearly a year of misleading judges and defendants, federal prosecutors revealed in late 2021 that Kamala Harris was at the DNC and not at the Capitol on Jan. 6; the government was forced to disclose her whereabouts to correct court filings that stated Harris was in the Capitol on the afternoon of Jan. 6. Harris left the Capitol following a Senate Intelligence Committee briefing and arrived at the DNC around 11:25 a.m. She remained inside the building until she was evacuated at 1:15 p.m. 

The timeline generated even more head-scratchers. How did her security detail, which included Secret Service agents and D.C. Metropolitan police officers, miss the device sitting in relatively plain view?

Did the Secret Service fail to perform a sweep of the premises before she arrived? Even so, how did numerous law enforcement agents not see a pipe bomb laying on the ground just feet from her parked motorcade?

Further, security video posted this month by Revolver News showed law enforcement’s puzzling reaction to the discovery of the bomb at 1:07 p.m.

“The most striking feature of the footage depicting the discovery of the DNC bomb is the utter nonchalance of the Secret Service officials, Metro PD officials, and Capitol Police officers upon learning of the proximity of the bomb,” Darren J. Beattie of Revolver wrote on Jan. 18. “The Metro PD officers didn’t even bother getting out of their vehicles for about a minute after being informed of the bomb and proceeded to stand around in the most lackadaisical fashion imaginable once getting out of the vehicles.”

And according to Sean Gallagher, chief of the Protective Services Bureau of the Capitol Police, one of his plainclothes officers found the bomb after responding to the threat at neighboring RNC. “[One] of my counterintelligence teams that was doing enhanced sweeps around the DNC found a pipe bomb at the DNC as well,” Gallagher told the Jan. 6 committee in 2022. He also did not discuss with the committee Harris’ presence or any aid his division provided in ensuring her safe escape from the building.

Even more puzzling is the fact Harris never mentions the episode in her public statements, even though she has compared Jan. 6 to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Reporters also appear uninterested in the subject; Harris, more than three years later, hasn’t been asked about it.

The Secret Service also is mum on the issue – and under suspicious circumstances. Text messages belonging to at least two dozen officials and agents from Jan. 5 and 6 were deleted at the end of January 2021 and never recovered. Jan. 6 committee investigators, when first informed the messages were purged during “a pre-planned, three-month system migration,” according to an agency spokesman, issued a subpoena for the missing records in July 2022, but the request came up empty. Committee investigators did not continue their inquiry further.

This represents another aspect of the congressional investigation that did not reach an edifying conclusion. A suspected Trump supporter planted a bomb that could have killed the first female and person of color to hold the office of the vice presidency – and it only merited one sentence in an 840-page report.

The voting public, and especially the rural voting public, should brace themselves for an avalanche of mainstream media and punditry hate directed toward them in the months leading into the November election.

A Thursday the below MSNBC segment was somewhat shocking even for the mainstream in terms of the extent a whole demographic of Americans was viciously attacked stereotyped and labeled as ‘all the same’. One online commenter rightly pointed out: “This might be the most overtly racist thing I’ve seen people say on TV.” Watch below:

This might be the most overtly racist thing I’ve seen people say on TV… pic.twitter.com/ucPnlupa0e

— EducatëdHillbilly™ (@RobProvince) February 29, 2024

University of Maryland political science professor Thomas Schaller and op-ed writer Paul Waldman were in MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” studio to promote their new book titled, “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy”. They repeatedly called Whites in the countryside and across the land “racist” and “anti-democracy”.

“They are the most racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant, anti-gay, geodemographic group in the country,” Schaller said. “Second, they’re the most conspiracist group. QAnon support and subscribers, election denialism, COVID denialism instead of scientific skepticism, Obama birtherism.” So all that… applied to an entire race of people living in rural areas.

The aforementioned commenter “Educated Hillbilly” further highlighted that this particular segment is notable for being “far more in your face and blatant”. He complained, “I have not seen anyone on TV say all black city people are XYZ this blatantly racist way and be accepted on a mainstream so and get support from everyone while saying it.”

The authors continued their rant, with Schaller saying further of White rural people, “They don’t believe in an independent press, free speech.”

“They’re most likely to say the president should be able to act unilaterally without any checks from Congress, or the courts or the bureaucracy. They’re also the most strongly White nationalist and White Christian nationalist,” Schaller said. “Fourth, they’re most likely to excuse or justify violence as an acceptable alternative to peaceful public discourse.”

Can you imagine thinking rural Appalachia is full of white rage and is threatening democracy?

We are too busy trying to keep our kids from taking opioids laced with fentanyl bought from an illegal who moved into a house that was owned by a poor family who couldn’t pay their… https://t.co/ffZhUxmfz9

— Margo (@MargoinWNC) February 28, 2024

As for co-author Waldman, he called Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump a “conduit for [White rural voters’] rage and anger.” 

“All that [Trump] gave them was essentially a way to essentially give a big middle finger to Democrats, to people who live in cities and to the rest of the country,” he said.

Sadly the road to November is likely be paved with much more of this elite corporate media racism unleashed on Trump supporters and “rural” or “poor” White people.

* * *

The examples are starting to pile up… just this week:

And speaking of a big “middle finger” – this is how Washington Post reports on Alabamans’ legitimate concerns about where their tax-dollars go…

Just an affluent stay at home mom, asking folks in one of the poorest states to give her more money to send overseas. Shocking that (eventually) someone gave her the finger.

— Charles Rigler (@theBradRigler) March 1, 2024

Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Heather Idoni picked up a phone receiver and punched in her inmate number on a keypad to activate it through the visitation window at Grayson County Detention Center.

She had 15 minutes to talk before the sound was cut off without warning and her guests were told to leave.

In prison, every move an inmate makes is controlled. Ms. Idoni, 59, is getting used to that. She must, because she is facing more than 41 years in prison—the rest of her natural life.

Her sentence is expected to be the longest in the United States for someone charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that prohibits interfering with anyone obtaining or providing “reproductive health services.” It was seldom used until the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, which returned abortion regulation to the states.

Her crime: sitting near or in front of the doors of abortion clinics to give sidewalk counselors a few moments to talk to women before their abortion appointments and potentially change their minds. Nine women out of 10 give them the middle finger and keep walking, Ms. Idoni said. But some women do change their minds, and sidewalk counselors say the life of every baby saved is worth the risk.

But a decade or more in prison is an outcome Ms. Idoni and other abortion rescuers didn’t expect. In post-Roe America, pro-lifers have been served harsh, life-altering penalties.

“I have young, young grandchildren,” Ms. Idoni told The Epoch Times. “They are not going to have any memory of me. It’s hard to think about. It is the most painful thing, being separated from my young grandchildren who are growing so fast, and I’m missing their lives.”

Before prison, Ms. Idoni owned a bookstore in Linden, Michigan. She is a mother of 16, including 10 orphaned boys she adopted from Ukraine.

In 2022, at least 26 pro-life activists were charged under the FACE Act, and many are now in prison or awaiting sentencing. Most were charged after June 2022, when President Joe Biden formed the Reproductive Rights Task Force, a Department of Justice-led group focused, in part, on enforcing the act. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.

Political watchers predict the emotional issue of abortion will be a top 2024 election topic in most races.

Civil Disobedience

Ms. Idoni was convicted in 2023, along with four other defendants in Washington, of a FACE Act offense and of felony conspiracy against rights.The group blocked the entrance to a late-term abortion business in 2020. The DOJ said the group entered the facility and blocked access using their bodies, furniture, chains, and ropes, then live-streamed their activity on social media. The DOJ considered live-streaming a felony conspiracy, which carries a 10-year penalty. The FACE violation adds another year. Sentencing is in May.

But after her trial in Washington, Ms. Idoni and five others were convicted for praying and singing hymns in the hallway of a now-closed abortion business in Mount Juliet, Tennessee. This will be considered a prior conviction and could add years to the sentence out of Washington. She awaits another trial for two FACE violations in Michigan.

“The Tennessee case highlights how absurd the situation has become, using FACE in that weaponized fashion against the pro-lifers who obviously are political opponents of this administration,” Stephen Crampton, senior counsel for the Thomas More Society, told The Epoch Times. “To throw in that 10-year federal conspiracy charge in a case that, if you’re just looking at it cold, is indistinguishable from a civil rights sit-in.”

Mr. Crampton is an attorney in the Tennessee case, which was tried in Nashville, where in 1960, black citizens engaged in civil disobedience by sitting at lunch counters to protest racial segregation.

“There is a Civil Rights Museum in the middle of the public library right across the street from the courthouse—a big display, honoring as heroes those folks that engaged in sit-ins in Nashville and helped change the whole culture of the nation,” Mr. Crampton said.

“In the same breath, they make our [clients] martyrs because they engaged in a sit-in, not for advancing racial equality but for trying to save the life of an unborn child. … If that’s not political, I don’t know how else to describe it.”

The abortion business affiliated with the Tennessee FACE charges was closed before the DOJ served any indictments because abortion is no longer legal in Tennessee.

No matter how one feels about abortion, Americans should care about what happens with the FACE Act, Mr. Crampton said.

“The fact that the government has picked … which causes to federalize and to maximize prison sentences for—today, it’s pro-lifers, but tomorrow, hey, maybe it’s Greenpeace, right? Maybe it’s the PETA folks with animal rights, and all of a sudden you’re facing 11 years in prison because they don’t like your cause,” Mr. Crampton said.

“Is this really something that we want our federal government doing?”

Repealing FACE

The FACE Act has been used 130 times against pro-life individuals, but it has only been used three times against pro-abortion protesters, a U.S. Senate aide told The Epoch Times on background.

“There’s certainly a disparity in how this is being enforced,” the aide said. “In the wake of the Dobbs decision being leaked, there are at least 108 Catholic churches and at least 78 pregnancy-resource centers that were attacked by pro-abortion protesters.

“But there were only three FACE Act cases opened in response to that. So it’s very clear, just on the numbers alone, that this is being enforced in a very political way, and that the DOJ is weaponizing it against pro-life individuals and ignoring it when it comes to pro-abortion individuals.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who is sponsoring legislation that would repeal the FACE Act, pointed to the fact that legal scholars have long questioned the act’s constitutionality. He said the Biden administration has recently used it as a tool to harass and prosecute pro-life activists. His House bill is called the Restoring the First Amendment and Right to Peaceful Civil Disobedience Act.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) has a companion bill in the House.

While there was interest when the Senate bill was introduced in October 2023, it has not had much momentum since then. The aide isn’t optimistic about the measure passing in the Senate.

“Without a Republican majority, there is just no way that that’s going to get through,” which means those imprisoned under the FACE Act may face long sentences, the aide said.

“They are suffering from the political fallout of this law that really shouldn’t exist in the first place, and that has absolutely been weaponized against one group and not another.”

FBI Raid

Mark Houck, a father of seven, was shocked the morning of Sept. 23, 2022, when a team of roughly 25 FBI agents pounded on his door, pointed guns at him and arrested him for an alleged FACE Act violation.

Mr. Houck was a long-time sidewalk counselor at a Philadelphia abortion business. He pushed a volunteer at that business after the man made vulgar comments to Mr. Houck’s son and wouldn’t stop. Although local police refused to bring charges in the case, the DOJ said the shove was a FACE violation. A jury disagreed and found Mr. Houck not guilty. For months before the verdict, however, he faced a potential prison term. Now he is running for a U.S. congressional seat in Pennsylvania.

“We would not be running if that had not happened to me,” Mr. Houck told The Epoch Times. “That wasn’t my personal aspiration. But after the raid, and the government coming after me, and the government being weaponized against me, we decided that we want to run so that this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”

Read more here…

Donald Trump dominated in Saturday’s primary races, inning caucuses in Idaho and Missouri – while sweeping the delegate haul at a Michigan party convention.

The former president earned every delegate at stake on Saturday, bringing his overall count to 244 vs. Nikki Haley’s 24. To secure the Republican nomination, Trump will need 1,215 delegates in total.

In Michigan, Trump won all 39 delegates at the Republican convention in Grand Rapids, after winning the state’s primary on Tuesday with 68% of the vote vs. Haley’s 27%.

In Missouri, Trump won 51 delegates. Things went particularly not well for Haley at one point:

The steep odds facing Haley were on display in Columbia, Missouri, where Republicans gathered at a church to caucus.

Seth Christensen stood on stage and called on them to vote for Haley. He wasn’t well received.

Another caucusgoer shouted out from the audience: “Are you a Republican?”

An organizer quieted the crowd and Christensen finished his speech. Haley went on to win just 37 of the 263 Republicans in attendance in Boone County. -AP

Earlier in the day, Missouri Trump supporters inside a church in Columbia linked up to appeal for the former president.

“Every 100 days, we’re spending $1 trillion, with money going all over the world. Illegals are running across the border,” said Tom Mendenall, an elector for Trump in 2016 and 2020. “You know where Donald Trump stands on a lot of these issues.”

And in Iowa, Trump won 32 delegates, once again smoking Haley.

Next on deck is a Republican event on Sunday in the District of Columbia (they have Republicans?), followed by Super Tuesday two days later, when 16 states will hold primaries – and the date Haley suggested she’d be dropping out if things don’t start going her way.

This is going to be fun, no? From tonight’s speech in Virginia:

President Trump: “With your vote, we will throw out Bidenomics… and we will reinstate MAGANOMICS!” pic.twitter.com/qNlLtupYWM

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) March 3, 2024

LMFAO!!! OH MY GOD! pic.twitter.com/FwF0vZHTXh

— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) March 3, 2024

Authored by Paul Thacker via The Disinformation Chronicle,

The COVID pandemic created some of the worst science writing in our lifetimes. Major media outlets failed at providing readers with accurate and balanced news across a host of issues, including vaccines, masks, lockdowns and how the virus likely began spreading through the human population.

It’s critical to call the news we read over the last four years “science writing” and not “reporting” because few science media outlets do any actual reporting. What science writers label “reporting’ is just calling up the known experts and then quoting them as the known experts.

As I’ve noted in the past: Science writers report for, not on science.

Looking back over the last four years of science writing claptrap, I ran across an early article by Science Magazine writer Jon Cohen that illustrates this point quite nicely. On January 31, 2020, Cohen wrote a story for Science Magazine alleging that “most researchers say” the virus could not have come from a lab, an idea Cohen added, had been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory.”

However, Cohen’s “most researchers say” assertion was totally phony. How do we know this?

We have the emails.

“[S]ome of the features (potentially) look engineered,” a virologist wrote in a private email, the day after Cohen quoted him in his “most researchers say” article for Science Magazine.

That same day after Science Magazine published Cohen’s article—this would be February 1, 2020—Anthony Fauci emailed NIH officials detailing what “most researchers say” when they were talking to him on a conference call: they fretted that the virus was not natural, might have had a mutation inserted into the sequence, and their fears were heightened because scientists in Wuhan were running dangerous gain-of-function studies on coronaviruses.

Since Cohen wrote that January 2020 article, he has only doubled and tripled down with further allegations that the virus could not have escaped from a Wuhan lab.

As Ashley Rindsberg reported in Tablet, an anonymous whistleblower tipped off Cohen that one of the critical papers virologists published to allege the pandemic could not have started in a lab was apparently corrupt and did not list the true authors (Treason of the Science Journals). Instead of doing anything with the information, Cohen dimed out the whistleblower and forwarded the allegations on to the virologists: “Here’s what one person who claims to have inside knowledge is saying behind your backs …”

After this story went public, several accounts on X began referring to the Science Magazine staff writer as “Crooked Cohen” a label that eventually forced him off the social media app.

Cohen’s ham-fisted, biased attempt at journalism, however, remains a singular example of pandemic science writing gone awry. So let’s take a look at that early article he wrote.

Emails: The bane of science writers

In the pandemic’s opening weeks, reporters scrambled to understand how the virus first began circulating in humans. Most outbreaks start when a virus, circulating in animals, adapts to the human body and then spreads to infect the rest of us. But the Washington Post reported in January 2020, that people were speculating on social media whether the pandemic started naturally or not.

Based on emails, we now know that some scientists were even concerned whether the virus came from a Wuhan lab.

But on January 31, 2020, Science Magazine’s Jon Cohen tried to shoot down such thinking in a misleading feature that ignored scientists’ own opinions. (Mining coronavirus genomes for clues to the outbreak’s origins: Theories abound about how the virus that’s now rampant in China made its way from bats (almost certainly) to humans.)

Here’s the second paragraph of Cohen’s story:

“One of the biggest takeaway messages [from the viral sequences] is that there was a single introduction into humans and then human-to-human spread,” says Trevor Bedford, a bioinformatics specialist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The role of Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, in spreading 2019-nCoV remains murky, though such sequencing, combined with sampling the market’s environment for the presence of the virus, is clarifying that it indeed had an important early role in amplifying the outbreak. The viral sequences, most researchers say, also knock down the idea the pathogen came from a virology institute in Wuhan.

Note three allegations in this paragraph:

1. The virus entered the human population and then began spreading

2. The Huanan Seafood Market is critical

3. “Most researchers say” the virus sequences serve to “knock down” the idea that the virus came from a Wuhan lab.

Cohen also quotes two researchers: Kristian Andersen with Scripps Research, and Eddie Holmes with the University of Sydney.

The paragraph with Andersen serves to further enforce the idea that the virus didn’t come from a lab, and jumped from a wild animal (natural host) into humans.

“Until you consistently isolate the virus out of a single species, it’s really, really difficult to try and determine what the natural host is,” says Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary biologist at Scripps Research.

The paragraph quoting Eddie Holmes serves the same purpose: further enforcing the notion that the virus wasn’t engineered and didn’t come from a lab, but jumped from a wild animal into humans.

“The positive tests from the wet market are hugely important,” says Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Sydney who collaborated with the first group to publicly release a 2019-nCoV sequence. “Such a high rate of positive tests would strongly imply that animals in the market played a key role in the emergence of the virus.”

In case the narrative wasn’t already clear, Cohen then addressed “conspiracy theories” about the pandemic beginning from lab research.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is the premier lab in China that studies bat and human coronaviruses, has also come under fire. “Experts debunk fringe theory linking China’s coronavirus to weapons research,” read a headline on a story in The Washington Post that focused on the facility.

Well, here’s the funny thing. Emails show that Cohen’s “reporting” was totally wrong-headed.

The day after Cohen published his “most researchers say” piece to “knock down” the “conspiracy theory” that the virus could have come from a lab, Kristian Andersen—the same one quoted in Cohen’s story!—emailed Anthony Fauci.

“[S]ome of the features (potentially) look engineered,” Andersen wrote to Fauci. “Eddie Bob, Mike, and myself all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from evolutionary theory.

The Eddie, Bob, and Mike are researchers Eddie Holmes (who Cohen quoted in his “most researcher say” story), Bob Garry (a virologist at Tulane Medical School) and Michael Worobey (evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona).

Yet none of Eddie, Bob, and Mike’s concerns that the COVID virus was engineered can be found in Cohen’s “most researchers say” article. Even though Cohen quotes Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes in the piece.

Oh, but it gets better.

Fauci responds to Andersen’s email, “Thanks, Kristian. Talk soon on the call.”

According to an email sent to Fauci by Jeremey Farrar of the Wellcome Trust, attendees on the call were to include Kristian Andersen, Eddie Holmes, and Bob Garry, as well as the following:

• Christian Drosten, Director of the Institute of Virology at the Charité Hospital in Berlin

• Ron Fouchier, Deputy Head of the Erasmus MC department of Viroscience

• Marion Koopmans, Dutch virologist who is Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience

• Patrick Valance, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government of the United Kingdom

In short, the conference call attendees were a collection of experts that any reporter would call if they were going to write a “most researchers say” article about how the pandemic started.

Well, guess what?

After that call ended, Fauci sent an email detailing what he learned “most researchers say,” noting that NIH-Director Francis Collins was also listening in. Here’s Fauci:

They were concerned about the fact that upon viewing the sequences of several isolates of the nCoV, there were mutations in the virus that would be most unusual to have evolved naturally in the bats and there was a suspicion that this mutation was intentionally inserted. The suspicion was heightened by the fact that scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine the molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.

In short, here’s what “most researchers say” when their thoughts are not being stage-managed by Jon Cohen and the editors at Science Magazine:

1. Mutations in the COVID virus do not appear to be natural;

2. There was suspicion that a mutation was inserted into the virus;

3. These suspicions were heightened because Wuhan scientists were doing dangerous gain-of-function research and the outbreak began in Wuhan.

Of course, only Jon Cohen knows why his “most researchers say” reporting was so phony and misguided.

I sent him an email asking him to explain, and got back an angry retort that ran over 800 words. Here’s one pertinent passage: “Andersen and Fauci did not share these concerns with me at the time, and if they had—and I wish they had–I certainly would have quoted them saying as much.”

“Jon, you seem upset,” I replied. “If Andersen and Fauci didn’t tell you what they were thinking, why are you directing anger at me? Have you asked them why they misled you? How are you going to hold them accountable to readers?”

Jon emailed back that I was twisting his words.

To this day, a majority of American remain concerned that the COVID pandemic started because scientists were screwing around in a lab with dangerous viruses and something went haywire. And these suspicions remain because virologists worked to gaslight anyone who raised this as a possibility—a propaganda campaign that was aided by their friends in science writing.

AT THE REQUEST OF A LONGTIME READER, JON COHEN’S EMAIL TO ME. JON SEEMS UPSET BY MY QUESTIONS, BUT NOT AT ANTHONY FAUCI, KRISTIAN ANDERSEN, AND EDDIE HOLMES FOR MISLEADING HIM.

WHY IS THAT?

Paul,

Despite your inaccurate, incessant, snarky, juvenile attempts to deride me and my work, I am going to explain this to you because it’s so wide of the mark. I anticipate that you will twist whatever I say here to fit the narrative you have wedded yourself to, but, well, color me generous and thoughtful.

The story you are citing from, written in the first month of the outbreak becoming public, is questioning all origin possibilities and stresses that the market theory remains uncertain. It also is one of the first stories that, without bias, raises the lab origin possibility and WIV’s potential role:

Concerns about the institute predate this outbreak. Nature ran a story in 2017 about it building a new biosafety level 4 lab and included molecular biologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, Piscataway, expressing concerns about accidental infections, which he noted repeatedly happened with lab workers handling SARS in Beijing. Ebright, who has a long history of raising red flags about studies with dangerous pathogens, also in 2015 criticized an experiment in which modifications were made to a SARS-like virus circulating in Chinese bats to see whether it had the potential to cause disease in humans. Earlier this week, Ebright questioned the accuracy of Bedford’s calculation that there are at least 25 years of evolutionary distance between RaTG13—the virus held in the Wuhan virology institute—and 2019-nCoV, arguing that the mutation rate may have been different as it passed through different hosts before humans. Ebright tells ScienceInsider that the 2019-nCoV data are “consistent with entry into the human population as either a natural accident or a laboratory accident.”

The sentence fragment you have selected comes from a paragraph that further emphasizes that the market theory is “murky”:

“One of the biggest takeaway messages [from the viral sequences] is that there was a single introduction into humans and then human-to-human spread,” says Trevor Bedford, a bioinformatics specialist at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The role of Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, in spreading 2019-nCoV remains murky, though such sequencing, combined with sampling the market’s environment for the presence of the virus, is clarifying that it indeed had an important early role in amplifying the outbreak. The viral sequences, most researchers say, also knock down the idea the pathogen came from a virology institute in Wuhan.

Unlike you, I had covered infectious diseases and outbreaks for several decades when this one surfaced, which means I regularly speak with many researchers who work in the field. That’s why I wrote what I did. (You, strikingly, didn’t know who Redfield was, and when you discovered him, you ignored his troubled past, which occupies a chapter in my 2001 book, Shots in the Dark, about reporting I did in the early 1990s.) Andersen and Fauci did not share these concerns with me at the time, and if they had—and I wish they had–I certainly would have quoted them saying as much. I had no bias toward it being a natural origin, and I do not until this day. As I have said repeatedly, I would be happy to break a story about compelling evidence that this was a lab leak, and I have closely examined every theory. 

You are a believer. You chide me for not being a journalist, but you have abandoned journalism to push an agenda, and you rely heavily on sources who have the same convictions. Let me be clear: I am not wounded by your campaign to defame and libel me—have at it. I have a body of work that speaks for itself (your #scicomm thing demonstrates you haven’t read much of it), and I’m too old to care about criticism that’s not based on fact. But I just did a quick search to remind myself of why I find your criticism of my work feckless, mendacious, and filled with unbridled rage:

We don’t play by the same rules. I strive to be fair and accurate. You preach to a choir, gleefully attacking people you deem miscreants with toxic rants, and have convinced yourself that you know the truth about something that remains a mystery. You blithely ignore mistakes made by journalists who are in the choir. You jump up and down about scientists behaving like scientists and changing their minds when new evidence surfaces. You seem to lack the interest in complicated science to assess claims yourself, relying entirely on people you view as reliable experts to judge the worth of arguments and counterarguments. And you remain mum about outrageous behavior by China that doesn’t support your beliefs: Have you ever written about the proven coverup of the wildlife for sale at the market, the scientifically preposterous assertion that the virus came from outside of China through the cold chain, or the absence of traceback studies from the wildlife  stalls we know sold these animals? 

In closing, I have written about or referenced most every lab leak theory, and I have organized panel discussions with scientists and journalists who have different points of view. I think civility matters. I would encourage you to be more civil to me and others who you disdain.

Jon

Making money in the markets over the past few months has really come down to four simple steps:

Step 1: Put on pants.

Step 2: Identify buzzy stock-du-jour.

Step 3: Buy metric fuckton of deep OTM, extremely short-dated calls.

Step 4: Sit back, sip coffee, take profits after gamma squeeze complete.

Sounds to simple to be true, right?

Here’s Goldman Sachs’ flows guru reflecting on the situation:

And, everyone’s searching for “call options”…

At first it appeared to be SoftBank up to its old tricks…

Holy shit, that sociopath really did it again. https://t.co/OsWXOxOl5e pic.twitter.com/uHC6X8If5Y

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 13, 2024

But then, day after day, a different name was picked and gamma-squeeze-algo unleashed on poor unsuspecting dealers…

Of course, the ‘buzz’ recently has been ‘AI’ stocks…

ARM Holdings call volume exploding as the stock ramped over 100% in 4 days…

SoundHound AI stocks soared a stunning 330% in the last two weeks as call volumes literally went to the moon…

Even boring old DELL is in on the act with gamma-squeezers buying calls with both hands and feet, sending the stock up 36% in 3 days…

Careful though – it doesn’t always work.

Palo Alto Networks disappointed after the call-buying-brigade has gone wild into earnings and that shitshow left the stock (critical to AI) down 28% in a day (but we do note that since that decline, the gamma-guys didn’t give up, pumping the stock up 20% in the last few days on the back even more call-buying)…

And then there’s the big boy – NVDA – where we see call-volume spike into earnings every time, but this time was special as the put-denying-pumpers pushed the giant AI chip maker up 17% in 2 days after this massive call-buying-gasm…

“The call volume is very extreme,” said Piper Sandler head of options, Daniel Kirsch, referencing interest in Nvidia.

“People seem to just — every day — have no problem continuing to add.”

Finally, just so you get the point, here’s SMCI – probably the ultimate poster-boy for gamma-squeezers in the last month as the stock rallied 222% practically without a dip as day-after-day, the deep OTM, short-dated cal-buying worked to squeeze dealers to chase the stock higher and higher…

But, with all this upside call buying – and no downside protection buying – skews have collapsed to a point that some are anxious of another systemic crisis in equity-vol land…

Last time skew was this low was on Feb 5, 2018, a few hours before Volmageddon sent the VIX from 14 to 40 pic.twitter.com/gQEn8zpXny

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 11, 2024

So, maybe, just maybe, the ‘squeezers’ got out of bed this last week, put on their pants, and noticed that the buzzy-stock-du-jour was actually bitcoin ETFs (and bitcoin itself).

Which is where we find ourselves now.

UNless you lived under a rock – or are marooned, powerless in Lake Tahoe – right now, you will have likely read/watched news about crypto’s impressive gains in the last two weeks…

…as the newly-launched Spot Bitcoin ETFs has seen unprecedented net inflows…

Putting this sudden ‘demand’ in context…

Heading for a blowout year…

And this is ahead of the Halving, which implicitly hampers supply.

“All things are pointing towards if momentum keeps us going up, then we could see another violent move upwards,” said Luke Nolan, a research associate at digital-asset manager CoinShares.

So applying the four-step logic from above – what do you think would be the most likely next target for the gamma-squeezers?

Bitcoin options volumes are exploding higher…

Source: Deribit

And notional options open interest has hit a new high…

Source: Deribit

As Yahoo Finance reports, an influx of buyers for short-dated options has increased Bitcoin volatility to the highest since last year’s collapse of crypto-friendly Silvergate and Signature banks. The notional value of the March 29 call and put options contracts has climbed to around $7 billion, far above the amount of any other contracts on a specific expiration date, according to data from Amberdata (and call volumes are dominating puts in the shortest-dated maturities)…

Source: Deribit

“We can see still a huge amount of OTM (out of money) calls,” Nolan said.

“If Bitcoin pushes to levels near that, then in my opinion we could certainly get a squeeze.”

To put it simply, if a large amount of call options are bought, the sellers of the options, usually dealers or market makers, need to hedge their exposure. The usual way to hedge is to buy the underlying instrument so that they are not exposed to directional risk, Nolan said. If Bitcoin starts going up, the dealers will have to hedge further, thus buying more of the underlying token.

“This self-perpetuating loop can lead to a rapid price increase as dealers push the price up, causing them to have to buy more,” Nolan said.

But, Nolan warns, even a small change in ETF flows could cause people to quickly deleverage.

“It works both ways,” he said.

But, there are three good reasons to believe the ammunition for a gamma-squeeze is still there – Technicals (short positioning), Supply (Halving) and Demand (ETF flows and institutional adoption).

For one, funding rates are through the roof (implying a large demand for shorting bitcoin)… which implicitly provides support for the gamma-squeezers to the upside if it morphs into a short-squeeze…

We’ve had to (possibly temporarily) add a new color to the funding rate heatmap for >100% APR: pic.twitter.com/8GIn1C5SHY

— Velo (@VeloData) February 29, 2024

In fact we’ve already seen very heavy short-liquidation driving this move…

Source: CoinGlass

Another factor supporting bitcoin from here is the upcoming Halving, and as the stock-to-flow model shows, we have reverted back to fair-value just as the supply-shrink is about to occur….

Source: @PlanB

As @PlanB explains below, we are entering a ‘bull market’ with “face-melting FOMO and extreme price pumps”... hyperbole?

And then there is demand as institutional interest accelerates and retail adoption improves.

“I think there’s an even bigger wave coming in a few months as we start to see the major wirehouses turn on,” Bitwise’s CIO Matt Hougan explained in a Feb. 29 interview with CNBC, adding that the first wave of Bitcoin ETF interest has primarily come from retail, hedge funds and independent financial advisors.

“So we’re going to see the next wave of institutional capital coming,” said Hougan, who referred to the ETFs as Bitcoin’s “IPO moment.”

“With #Bitcoin right now … there is too much demand and not enough supply.” – Matt Hougan, CIO Bitwise pic.twitter.com/1B0joUQ1Pp

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) February 29, 2024

The supply-demand dynamic is just “off the hook,” Hougan said of the amount of Bitcoin ETFs purchased relative to Bitcoin mined day-to-day and the upcoming halving event.

“There’s too much demand and not enough supply.”

When asked how high, Hougan said Bitcoin could blow Bitwise’s initial 2024 prediction of $80,000 out of the park and reach anywhere between $100,000 to $200,000 or even higher.

While many have welcomed Bitcoin ETFs, some major U.S. players like Merrill Lynch are still blocking clients from being able to access the investment products. Vanguard, the world’s second-largest largest asset manager, also blocks access to Bitcoin ETFs through its platform due to the firm’s “philosophy” around investing.

“I’m sure pressure is mounting for them,” tweeted Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas on Thursday, noting that recent ETF flows are likely “natural demand” for BTC rather than algorithmic buying.

“They like to see [a] track record and get paid off, but with grassroots demand like this they [are] gonna have to expedite,” he continued.

And Bitcoin is hitting record highs around the world.

Bitcoin has passed all-time highs in 30+ countries, including China and India. pic.twitter.com/63CnC9DE0F

— Balaji (@balajis) February 28, 2024

Japan has been a particularly weak case, with a 24% decline in the yen meaning bitcoin hit a record price in that country well before this week’s fireworks that saw bitcoin prices soar.

“Japan’s government has been devaluing the yen, and the flow of liquidity has trickled into bitcoin as their fiat has weakened,” March Zheng, Managing partner of Bizantine Capital explained in an interview with CoinDesk.

With The Fed hinting at the next QE on Friday (Reverse Twist), will we see ‘record highs’ in the USD price for bitcoin soon too?

Via The Libertarian Institute,

The leaders of Kenya and Haiti inked a pact for a Kenya-led UN mission to the Caribbean nation. Nairobi plans to send 1,000 armed men, dubbed police officers, to Port-au-Prince as local authorities have all but lost control of Haiti’s capital city. The Joe Biden administration has been working for several years to create a UN force to invade Haiti to restore order. 

In October, at Washington’s urging, the UN Security Council approved a resolution that authorized Kenya to lead a UN police force in Haiti to return power to Prime Minister Ariel Henry, who has faced months of violent unrest in the wake of the 2021 assassination of President Jovenal Moise.

The people of Haiti did not elect the government in Port-au-Prince. Not long after Moise’s murder, then-Prime Minister Claud Joseph resigned at the behest of Western pressure, allowing Henry to assume power in his stead.

Since then, armed gangs have seized control over most of the city under Henry’s watch, at times occupying critical infrastructure, including its main port.

After the UNSC approved the force, opposition leader Ekuru Aukot in Nairobi challenged President William Ruto’s decision to send Kenyans to Haiti. In January, the Kenyan High Court ruled in favor of Aukot, blocking the deployment. 

The president later declared he could skirt the ruling by inking a pact directly with Port-au-Prince. That “reciprocal” agreement was signed on Friday. Ruto said he and Henry “discussed the next steps to enable the fast-tracking of the deployment,” though the leaders did not offer a timeline for the operation. 

The US-backed plan to send Kenyans to Haiti has met opposition in Port-au-Prince in addition to Nairobi. Haitians have protested Henry’s request for the UN deployment, as UN peacekeepers in Haiti have a legacy of rampant sexual abuses and, causing a cholera outbreak that killed thousands.

Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince saw another day of fighting as gangs looked to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry. Gunmen targeted the international airport and police stations, forcing residents to flee their homes. pic.twitter.com/dcsXExWApw

— DW News (@dwnews) March 2, 2024

“The Haitian people have kept the bitter taste of a foreign force in charge of our situation: theft, rape, cholera, food dependence, deregulation of the economic system, without mentioning the fact that we don’t remember seeing then-gang leaders be arrested or rendered unable to do harm,” a Haitian think tank, Groupe de Travail sur la Securite (the Security Working Group), said of Henry’s initial request.

Authored by Felix Aviles via RealClear Wire,

The aerospace industry desperately needs young talent if we expect it to grow, innovate, and continue providing the services we need and expect in the modern era. The jobs are plentiful, but the skilled workers are not. The leaders of the industry must do a better job of communicating with the next generation of aviation pilots, machinists, and mechanics. If they don’t, the future of aerospace is in jeopardy.

A recently released industry report a detailed that “the aircraft mechanic shortage has reached a critical point” and the outlook for growth is precarious. This is detrimental not only to commercial aviation, but also national defense aviation. Without mechanics to service the U.S. aerial fleet, it’s essentially useless.

In his testimony to the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee last fall, Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Ashish Vazirani said that the Pentagon missed its recruiting goals by roughly 41,000 recruits. He also noted that “the all-volunteer force faces one of its greatest challenges since inception” in 1973. As our fighting forces shrink, so does the number of skilled machinists, technicians and pilots that are trained to service our defense aircraft. This is exacerbating an already critical problem.

I spent my aviation career as an F-15 technician and crew chief in the U.S. Air Force (USAF), and later I was hired by McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company which eventually merged with Boeing. Working on this first-class fighter jet gave me opportunities I never imagined, including traveling to Saudi Arabia to support and train officers in the maintenance of the F-15s for the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF) working on the F-15 C/D models. This is the most successful fighter jet in the world with an unbeaten combat record.

America’s younger generation has so much to offer. The technologies that have developed since I began my career have advanced tremendously, and today’s young people are already masters of it. The sky is the limit, literally. But they can’t seize on aerospace careers if they don’t know about them.

Now is the time for the aerospace industry to make a concerted effort to increase awareness about the fulfilling, family-supporting opportunities in aviation. For too many years, the message to our young people has been you need to go to college to succeed. While that may be the right path for some, it’s not the only path to success. Especially when you consider that the cost of a traditional college education has increased by nearly 150% since the 1960s.

Aerospace companies have been partnering with colleges and universities to create training programs that help directly fill open trades positions directly upon completion. Similarly, the U.S. service branches have been pounding the pavement, trying to reach young people and educate them on all the opportunities available through military service. However, more must be done. The skilled worker shortages get worse every day, stagnating the industry and creating a substantial national defense concern.

Industry leaders, elected officials, and those currently in the field must do what they can to meet our young people where they are. We must share our success stories, promote training programs, and offer guidance and advice to students who could become contributors and innovators in the industry. The problem won’t resolve overnight, but we can make incremental improvements if we work together.

Felix Aviles is a U.S. Air Force veteran, a single-engine pilot, and a Boeing retired F-15 technician. He currently resides in Tucson, AZ.

Negotiators involved in Qatari-mediated peace efforts between Israel and Hamas are said to be scrambling to salvage talks after the deadly aid convoy incident. The death toll from that Thursday incident has reportedly risen to 118. President Biden has said he hopes a deal can be reached by the start of the Muslim season of Ramadan, which begins March 10.

“We’re not there yet,” he told reporters Friday. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the emerging disappointment and fear that talks have been utterly stalled. “Talks between Israel, Hamas and their mediators were expected to kick into high gear as the two sides try to reach a cease-fire for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan…,” the Saturday report describes. Meanwhile Al Jazeera reports of a new mass casualty attack near Rafah:

At least 11 Palestinians were killed and 50 wounded when an Israeli air raid directly hit tents housing displaced people in Tal as-Sultan, Rafah, an area previously designated as “safe”.

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned Qatari and Egyptian officials that the Israeli side will not participate in another round of talks until Hamas confirms a full list of living hostages still being held in Gaza.

Axios reported on Friday, “Israel made it clear to Egypt and Qatar that it will not hold another round of talks until Hamas presents a list of the hostages who are alive.”

Israeli officials said: “There is no point in starting another round of talks until we receive the lists of which of the hostages are alive and until Hamas gives its answer regarding the ‘ratio’ that defines how many prisoners will be released for each hostage.”

This has been a key part of the hold up all along: disagreements over numbers and the iterative phases of planned exchanges. Additionally Hamas has been requiring that all Israeli troops withdraw from the Gaza Strip first, something which Netanyahu has called “delusional”.

“Hamas officials have told negotiators that in the coming days they may propose new figures for how many Palestinian prisoners they expect to receive in exchange for roughly 40 Israeli hostages,” according to more from the WSJ. “The latest framework being discussed in Cairo involves exchanging about 400 Palestinian prisoners for 40 of the hostages still held captive in Gaza, including five female Israeli soldiers.”

On Tuesday President Biden raised eyebrows in hastily and seemingly prematurely declaring his hope that a truce deal between Hamas and Israel would be achieved by Monday.

But now this is even less likely, though that timetable was acknowledged as unrealistic by all parties in response. On Thursday the president walked back the statement. And now he’s opted to stick with the ‘hopefully’ by Ramadan timeline. 

⚡️Another massacre in Rafah… pic.twitter.com/bUPmdIa309

— War Monitor (@WarMonitors) March 2, 2024

But there are now new reports of Israeli bombings of Palestinian tent encampments – in what looks like a dense urban or suburban area of Rafah – with horrific and tragic footage [warning: graphic] widely circulating, which will make successful talks between Hamas and Israel even less likely to progress. 

* * *

Below is a list of more of the latest developments via Al Jazeera:

• The US carried out its first airdrop of aid into Gaza, according to US officials, with three C-130 planes dropping some 35,000 meals.
• Thousands are marching in Kafr Kana, an Arab town in northern Israel, to demand an end to Israel’s attacks in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
• A separate crowd of Israeli protesters, led by relatives of Israeli captives in Gaza, are marching towards Jerusalem to urge the government to do whatever it can to bring their loved ones home.
• Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, joining the march to Jerusalem, blamed the government for not doing enough to return Israeli captives.
• The office of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for an impartial investigation into the aid convoy attack on Thursday that killed 115 people and said responsibility for the incident falls on Israel.