Researchers have found new hints of active volcanism near some of the most populated areas of Europe. The study obtained GPS monitoring data from antennae across western Europe to monitor subtle movements in the Earth’s surface believed to be caused by an increasing subsurface mantle plume.
The Eifel region is situated roughly between the cities of Aachen, Trier, and Koblenz, in west-central Germany. It is home to many early volcanic features, including the circular lakes called maars.
These are the remains of violent volcanic explosions, like the one which created Laacher See– the largest lake in the area. The eruption that produced this is believed to have happened some 13 000 years ago, with similar explosive strength to the catastrophic 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption.
The mantle plume that possibly triggered this historic activity is thought to be still present, spreading up to 400 km (250 miles) down into the earth. However, it is unknown whether it is still active or not.
“Most scientists had assumed that volcanic activity in the Eifel was a thing of the past,” said lead author, professor Corne Kreemer. “But connecting the dots, it seems clear that something is brewing underneath the heart of northwest Europe.”
Eifel scenery. Image credit: Walter Koch/Wikimedia
In the new study, the research team who are based at the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of California, Los Angeles used information from thousands of commercial and state-owned GPS antennae all over western Europe to monitor how the ground is moving vertically and horizontally as the Earth’s crust is stretched, sheared, and pushed.
The findings revealed that the region’s land surface is moving in an upward and downward direction over a huge area centered on the Eifel, and areas including Luxembourg, eastern Belgium, and the southernmost province of the Netherlands, Limburg.
“The Eifel area is the only region in the study where the ground motion appeared significantly greater than expected,” Kreemer stated. “The results indicate that a rising plume could explain the observed patterns and rate of ground movement.”
The new results support a previous study that found seismic evidence of magma moving underneath the Laacher See– both studies indicate that the Eifel area has an active volcanic system.
“This does not mean that an explosion or earthquake is imminent, or even possible again in this area,” the researchers noted.
“We and other scientists plan to continue monitoring the area using a variety of geophysical and geochemical techniques, in order to better understand and quantify any potential risks.”
Reference
“Geodetic evidence for a buoyant mantle plume beneath the Eifel volcanic area, NW Europe” – Geophysical Journal International – Kreemer, C. et al. – DOI: 10.1093/gji/ggaa227
Abstract
The volcanism of the Eifel volcanic field (EVF), in west-central Germany, is often considered an example of hotspot volcanism given its geochemical signature and the putative mantle plume imaged underneath. EVF’s setting in a stable continental area provides a rare natural laboratory to image surface deformation and test the hypothesis of there being a thermally buoyant plume. Here we use Global Positioning System (GPS) data to robustly image vertical land motion (VLM) and horizontal strain rates over most of intraplate Europe. We find a spatially coherent positive VLM anomaly over an area much larger than the EVF and with a maximum uplift of ∼1 mm yr−1 at the EVF (when corrected for glacial isostatic adjustment). This rate is considerably higher than averaged over the Late-Quaternary. Over the same area that uplifts, we find significant horizontal extension surrounded by a radial pattern of shortening, a superposition that strongly suggests a common dynamic cause. Besides the Eifel, no other area in NW Europe shows significant positive VLM coupled with extensional strain rates, except for the much broader region of glacial isostatic adjustment. We refer to this 3-D deformation anomaly as the Eifel Anomaly. We also find an extensional strain rate anomaly near the Massif Central volcanic field surrounded by radial shortening, but we do not detect a significant positive VLM signal there. The fact that the Eifel Anomaly is located above the Eifel plume suggests that the plume causes the anomaly. Indeed, we show that buoyancy forces induced by the plume at the bottom of the lithosphere can explain this remarkable surface deformation. Plume-induced deformation can also explain the relatively high rate of regional seismicity, particularly along the Lower Rhine Embayment.
Biomedical research ultimately protects public health, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, in explaining his support for controversial research.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Dr. Anthony Fauci is an adviser to President Donald Trump and something of an American folk hero for his steady, calm leadership during the pandemic crisis. At least one poll shows that Americans trust Fauci more than Trump on the coronavirus pandemic—and few scientists are portrayed on TV by Brad Pitt.
But just last year, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the organization led by Dr. Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
In 2019, with the backing of NIAID, the National Institutes of Health committed $3.7 million over six years for research that included some gain-of-function work. The program followed another $3.7 million, 5-year project for collecting and studying bat coronaviruses, which ended in 2019, bringing the total to $7.4 million.
Many scientists have criticized gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans, because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.
SARS-CoV-2 , the virus now causing a global pandemic, is believed to have originated in bats. U.S. intelligence, after originally asserting that the coronavirus had occurred naturally, conceded last month that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the Wuhan lab. (At this point most scientists say it’s possible—but not likely—that the pandemic virus was engineered or manipulated.)
Dr. Fauci did not respond to Newsweek’s requests for comment. NIH responded with a statement that said in part: “Most emerging human viruses come from wildlife, and these represent a significant threat to public health and biosecurity in the US and globally, as demonstrated by the SARS epidemic of 2002-03, and the current COVID-19 pandemic…. scientific research indicates that there is no evidence that suggests the virus was created in a laboratory.”
The NIH research consisted of two parts. The first part began in 2014 and involved surveillance of bat coronaviruses, and had a budget of $3.7 million. The program funded Shi Zheng-Li, a virologist at the Wuhan lab, and other researchers to investigate and catalogue bat coronaviruses in the wild. This part of the project was completed in 2019.
A second phase of the project, beginning that year, included additional surveillance work but also gain-of-function research for the purpose of understanding how bat coronaviruses could mutate to attack humans. The project was run by EcoHealth Alliance, a non-profit research group, under the direction of President Peter Daszak, an expert on disease ecology. NIH canceled the project just this past Friday, April 24th, Politico reported. Daszak did not immediately respond to Newsweek requests for comment.
The project proposal states: “We will use S protein sequence data, infectious clone technology, in vitro and in vivo infection experiments and analysis of receptor binding to test the hypothesis that % divergence thresholds in S protein sequences predict spillover potential.”
In layman’s terms, “spillover potential” refers to the ability of a virus to jump from animals to humans, which requires that the virus be able to attach to receptors in the cells of humans. SARS-CoV-2, for instance, is adept at binding to the ACE2 receptor in human lungs and other organs.
According to Richard Ebright, an infectious disease expert at Rutgers University, the project description refers to experiments that would enhance the ability of bat coronavirus to infect human cells and laboratory animals using techniques of genetic engineering. In the wake of the pandemic, that is a noteworthy detail.
Ebright, along with many other scientists, has been a vocal opponent of gain-of-function research because of the risk it presents of creating a pandemic through accidental release from a lab.
Dr. Fauci is renowned for his work on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated first in his class from Cornell University Medical College in 1966. As head of NIAID since 1984, he has served as an adviser to every U.S. president since Ronald Reagan.
A decade ago, during a controversy over gain-of-function research on bird-flu viruses, Dr. Fauci played an important role in promoting the work. He argued that the research was worth the risk it entailed because it enables scientists to make preparations, such as investigating possible anti-viral medications, that could be useful if and when a pandemic occurred.
The work in question was a type of gain-of-function research that involved taking wild viruses and passing them through live animals until they mutate into a form that could pose a pandemic threat. Scientists used it to take a virus that was poorly transmitted among humans and make it into one that was highly transmissible—a hallmark of a pandemic virus.(Emphasis added.) This work was done by infecting a series of ferrets, allowing the virus to mutate until a ferret that hadn’t been deliberately infected contracted the disease.
The work entailed risks that worried even seasoned researchers. More than 200 scientists called for the work to be halted. The problem, they said, is that it increased the likelihood that a pandemic would occur through a laboratory accident.
Dr. Fauci defended the work. (Emphasis added). “[D]etermining the molecular Achilles’ heel of these viruses can allow scientists to identify novel antiviral drug targets that could be used to prevent infection in those at risk or to better treat those who become infected,” wrote Fauci and two co-authors in the Washington Post on December 30, 2011. “Decades of experience tells us that disseminating information gained through biomedical research to legitimate scientists and health officials provides a critical foundation for generating appropriate countermeasures and, ultimately, protecting the public health.”
Nevertheless, in 2014, under pressure from the Obama administration, the National of Institutes of Health instituted a moratorium on the work, suspending 21 studies.
Three years later, though—in December 2017—the NIH ended the moratorium and the second phase of the NIAID project, which included the gain-of-function research, began. The NIH established a framework for determining how the research would go forward: scientists have to get approval from a panel of experts, who would decide whether the risks were justified.
The reviews were indeed conducted—but in secret, for which the NIH has drawn criticism. In early 2019, after a reporter for Science magazine discovered that the NIH had approved two influenza research projects that used gain of function methods, scientists who oppose this kind of research excoriated the NIH in an editorial in the Washington Post.
“We have serious doubts about whether these experiments should be conducted at all,” wrote Tom Inglesby of Johns Hopkins University and Marc Lipsitch of Harvard. “[W]ith deliberations kept behind closed doors, none of us will have the opportunity to understand how the government arrived at these decisions or to judge the rigor and integrity of that process.”
Correction 5/5, 6:20 p.m.: The headline of this story has been corrected to reflect that the Wuhan lab received only a part of the millions of U.S. dollars allocated for virus research.
Black bears, wolves and coyotes are among the animals facing increasingly cruel deaths by hunters as the Trump administration finalizes a reversal of the 2015 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.
The cancellation of this act would allow trophy hunters to use all kinds of treacherous methods to lure out and kill their prey, including:
– Attracting and killing grizzly bears with bait, including junk food. Even if this means disturbing their hibernation.
– Using dogs to hunt bears.
– The use of artificial light to enter the dens of bears, wolves and coyotes. And the right to kill mothers, cubs and pups.
– Slaughtering swimming caribou and other animals from boats and planes.
It will leave animals across Alaska’s 20 million acres of federal land and 10 natural preserves facing an uncertain future.
Senseless slaughter, amazingly cruel policy
Those in favor of the regulation change are arguing that it is necessary to cull the top predatory animals. Supposedly in order to allow the populations of caribou, moose and other game – which are also hunted – to flourish.
The alignment of state and federal regulations in Alaska is another of their arguments.
Conservationists however are concerned about the cruelty as well as the ecosystem damage.
Said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity:
“The Trump administration’s new rules promote the senseless slaughter of some of Alaska’s most iconic wildlife on the very preserves and refuges meant to protect biological diversity.
“It’s outrageous to bait and shoot brown bears and litter pristine public lands with cruel and indiscriminate traps.”
Jesse Prentice-Dunn, senior representative for the Sierra Club’s Responsible Trade Program, added: “This amazingly cruel policy is just the latest in a string of efforts to reduce protections for America’s wildlife at the behest of oil companies and trophy hunters.”
As you might know, tech giants like Facebook, Twitter, and Google (Also Youtube), increasingly censor information that does not fit the mainstream narrative. Freedom of speech should be the basic human right, however, in the current era, you are not allowed to share your views anymore. Fortunately, alternative platforms appear that are censorship-free. Minds.com is one of these platforms. You can sign up for free, HERE, and make sure you follow Truth Theory on Minds.
The Facts:Multiple experiments have shown strong evidence for precognition in several different ways. One of them comes in the form of activity within the heart and the brain responding to events before they even happen.
Reflect On:Do we have extra human capacities we are unaware of? Perhaps we can learn them, develop them, and use them for good. Perhaps when the human race is ready, we will start learning more.
Is precognition real? There are many examples suggesting that yes, it is. The remote viewing program conducted by the CIA in conjunction with Stanford University was a good example of that. After its declassification in 1995, or at least partial declassification, the Department of Defense and those involved revealed an exceptionally high success rate:
To summarize, over the years, the back-and-forth criticism of protocols, refinement of methods, and successful replication of this type of remote viewing in independent laboratories has yielded considerable scientific evidence for the reality of the (remote viewing) phenomenon. Adding to the strength of these results was the discovery that a growing number of individuals could be found to demonstrate high-quality remote viewing, often to their own surprise… The development of this capability at SRI has evolved to the point where visiting CIA personnel with no previous exposure to such concepts have performed well under controlled laboratory conditions. (source)
The kicker? Part of remote viewing involves peering into future events as well as events that happened in the past.
It’s not only within the Department of Defense that we find this stuff, but a lot of science is emerging on this subject as well.
For example, a study (meta analysis) published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience titled “Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity” examined a number of experiments regarding this phenomenon that were conducted by several different laboratories. These experiments indicate that the human body can actually detect randomly delivered stimuli that occur 1-10 seconds in advance. In other words, the human body seems to know of an event and reacts to the event before it has occurred. What occurs in the human body before these events are physiological changes that are measured regarding the cardiopulmonary, the skin, and the nervous system.
A few years ago, the chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, Dr. Dean Radin, visited the scientists over at HearthMath Institute and shared the results of one of his studies. Radin is also one of multiple scientists who authored the paper above. These studies, as mentioned above, tracked the autonomic nervous system, physiological changes, etc.
Scientists at HeartMath Institute (HMI) added more protocols, which included measuring participants’ brain waves (EEG), their hearts’ electrical activity (ECG), and their heart rate variability (HRV).
Twenty-six adults experienced in using HeartMath techniques and who could sustain a heart-coherent state completed two rounds of study protocols approximately two weeks apart. Half of the participants completed the protocols after they intentionally achieved a heart-coherent state for 10 minutes. The other half completed the same procedures without first achieving heart coherence. Then they reversed the process for the second round of monitoring, with the first group not becoming heart-coherent before completing the protocols and the second group becoming heart-coherent before. The point was to test whether heart coherence affected the results of the experiment.
Participants were told the study’s purpose was to test stress reactions and were unaware of its actual purpose. (This practice meets institutional-review-board standards.) Each participant sat at a computer and was instructed to click a mouse when ready to begin.
The screen stayed blank for six seconds. The participant’s physiological data was recorded by a special software program, and then, one by one, a series of 45 pictures was displayed on the screen. Each picture, displayed for 3 seconds, evoked either a strong emotional reaction or a calm state. After each picture, the screen went blank for 10 seconds. Participants repeated this process for all 45 pictures, 30 of which were known to evoke a calm response and 15 a strong emotional response.
The Results
The results of the experiment were fascinating to say the least. The participants’ brains and hearts responded to information about the emotional quality of the pictures before the computer flashed them (random selection). This means that the heart and brain were both responding to future events. The results indicated that the responses happened, on average, 4.8 seconds before the computer selected the pictures.
How mind-altering is that?
Even more profound, perhaps, was data showing the heart received information before the brain. “It is first registered from the heart,” Rollin McCraty Ph.D. explained, “then up to the brain (emotional and pre-frontal cortex), where we can logically relate what we are intuiting, then finally down to the gut (or where something stirs).”
Another significant study (meta-analysis) that was published in Journal of Parapsychology by Charles Honorton and Diane C. Ferrari in 1989 examined a number of studies that were published between 1935 and 1987. The studies involved individuals’ attempts to predict “the identity of target stimuli selected randomly over intervals ranging from several hundred million seconds to one year following the individuals responses.” These authors investigated over 300 studies conducted by over 60 authors, using approximately 2 million individual trials by more than 50,000 people. (source)
It concluded that their analysis of precognition experiments “confirms the existence of a small but highly significant precognition effect. The effect appears to be repeatable; significant outcomes are reported by 40 investigators using a variety of methodological paradigms and subject populations. The precognition effect is not merely an unexplained departure from a theoretical chance baseline, but rather is an effect that covaries with factors known to influence more familiar aspects of human performance.” (source)
The Takeaway
“There seems to be a deep concern that the whole field will be tarnished by studying a phenomenon that is tainted by its association with superstition, spiritualism and magic. Protecting against this possibility sometimes seems more important than encouraging scientific exploration or protecting academic freedom. But this may be changing.”
– Cassandra Vieten, PhD and President/CEO at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (source)
We are living in a day and age where new information and evidence are constantly emerging, challenging what we once thought was real or what we think we know about ourselves as human beings. It’s best to keep an open mind. Perhaps there are aspects of ourselves and our consciousness that have yet to be discovered. Perhaps if we learn and grow from these studies, they can help us better ourselves and others.
The UN has warned that the world is on the verge of the worst food crisis in at least 50 years as the recession following the COVID-19 pandemic may put basic nutrition beyond impoverished people’s reach. The organization has urged governments to take prompt action to prevent further disaster as 49 million more may fall into extreme poverty due to the outbreak.
Food systems are failing and the pandemic is mitigating the situation, said UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, on June 9, 2020.
“Unless immediate action is taken, it is increasingly clear that there is an impending global food emergency that could have long term impacts on hundreds of millions of children and adults.”
Although harvests of crops are holding up and export bans and protectionism have been largely avoided so far, the worst of the pandemic’s impacts and the recession that will follow is yet to be felt.
This year, about 49 million more may fall into extreme poverty due to the coronavirus as the number of people who are severely food insecure will rapidly expand.
“Even in countries with abundant food, we see risks of disruptions in the food supply chain,” Guterres pointed out. “We need to act now to avoid the worst impacts of our efforts to control the pandemic.”
The secretary-general plotted a three-point plan to restore the world’s ailing food systems and avoid further harm.
First, countries must focus aid on the worst-affected regions to ward off immediate disaster and for governments to prioritize food supply chains.
“That means designating food and nutrition services as essential while implementing appropriate protections for food workers. It means preserving critical humanitarian food, livelihood, and nutrition assistance to vulnerable groups.”
“And it means positioning food in food-crisis countries to reinforce and scale up social protection systems,” he added.
Second, countries must strengthen social protection systems for nutrition by safeguarding access to safe and nutritious food, especially for young children, pregnant and breastfeeding women, older people, and other vulnerable groups.
“This includes supporting children who no longer have access to school meals,” he continued.
Third, people must invest in the future by building a more inclusive and sustainable world.
“We have an opportunity to build a more inclusive and sustainable world,” Guterres said. “Let us build food systems that better address the needs of food producers and workers. Let us provide more inclusive access to healthy and nutritious food so we can eradicate hunger.”
According to Maximo Torero, the chief economist of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the world’s food systems were under threat as never before in modern times, as the coronavirus outbreak and lockdowns hinder people’s ability to buy and sell food.
“We need to be careful,” Torero reminded, “this is a very different food crisis than the ones we have seen.”
The UN’s report on the pandemic’s impact on food security shows that harvests are healthy and supplies of staple foods are robust, but most people get theirs from local markets, which are affected by the lockdowns.
Loss of income attributed to lockdowns are also putting food out of reach for many people who are already struggling. Although global markets remained steady, the price of basic necessities has started to hike in some nations.
Lockdowns are slowing down harvests while millions of seasonal laborers are not able to work. Food waste has hit damaging levels as farmers are forced to throw perishable produce as the result of supply chain problems. Meat industry plants have been forced to close as well.
“The Covid-19 crisis is attacking us at every angle,” said Agnes Kalibata, the UN secretary-general’s special envoy for the 2021 food systems summit.
“It has exposed dangerous deficiencies in our food systems and actively threatens the lives and livelihoods of people around the world, especially the more than 1 billion people who have employment in the various industries in food systems.”
Kalibata added that there was also a chance for countries to improve food systems, alongside reducing poverty and increasing worldwide resilience.
“Food has always brought people together and it can again if we build back better as it relates to our food systems.”
Not Alone? Four “Mysterious Signals” Captured From Outer Space
A team of scientists headed by Shivani Bhandari, an astronomer with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia’s federal agency responsible for scientific research, has made a breakthrough discovery by pinpointing the precise location of four fast radio bursts (FRBs).
FRBs are very mysterious bursts of radio waves coming from somewhere in the universe. The average pulse ranges for a few milliseconds, caused by high-energy sources, which are not entirely understood.
CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope in Western Australia detecting FRBs. h/t CSIRO
Bhandari’s new research, published on June 1 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, reveals that four FRBs came from massive galaxies forming new stars. They said FRBs originated not from the center of galaxies, but rather from the outer edges.
“These precisely localized fast radio bursts came from the outskirts of their home galaxies, removing the possibility that they have anything to do with supermassive black holes,” said Bhandari.
Bhandari’s team found exact locations for FRB 180924, FRB 181112, FRB 190102, and FRB 190608 by using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia.
Source of FRBs. h/t CSIRO
Bhandari said, “This first detailed study of the galaxies that host fast radio bursts rules out several of the more extreme theories put forward to explain their origins, getting us closer to knowing their true nature.”
Co-author of the study, CSIRO Professor Elaine Sadler said FRBs could not have come from a superluminous stellar explosion or cosmic strings.
“Models such as mergers of compact objects like white dwarfs or neutron stars, or flares from magnetars created by such mergers, are still looking good,” Sadler said.
Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, an astrophysicist from Northern Ireland who co-discovered FRBs, said:
“Positioning the sources of fast radio bursts is a huge technical achievement and moves the field on enormously. We may not yet be clear exactly what is going on, but now, at last, options are being ruled out. This is a highly significant paper, thoroughly researched, and well written,” said Burnell.
According to another paper (dated February 3) by a team of astrophysicists in Canada, a “mystery radio signal” was recorded as repeating based on a clearly discernible pattern. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object,” the team said. A summary of some of the key findings are as follows:
“Between September 16, 2018 and October 30, 2019, detected a pattern in bursts occurring every 16.35 days. Over the course of four days, the signal would release a burst or two each hour. Then, it would go silent for another 12 days.
“…The signal is a known repeating fast radio burst, FRB 180916.J0158+65. Last year, the CHIME/FRB collaboration detected the sources of eight new repeating fast radio bursts, including this signal. The repeating signal was traced to a massive spiral galaxy around 500 million light-years away.”
Both findings suggest astronomers are one step closer to understanding the source of these mysterious radio signals coming from deep within the universe. Could this mean we’re not alone?
If you install updates on your phone without reading the details then you might get an unwanted surprise. The latest involves contact tracking technology.
Contact tracing technology, in theory, will notify users when they have entered the presence of a person with the coronavirus. This project was begun in an effort “to protect people and get society back up and running,” according to an April 10 announcement via Apple’s newsroom. Even if this technology supposedly works, surveys have shown that three in five Americans are either unable or entirely unwilling to use the technology.
Veteran and MMA champion Paul Lazenby condemned this update on Twitter: “Contact tracing slipped discreetly into your latest IOS update. No notice given, no attention drawn to it. I wonder how many people really understand what a terrifying sign this is.”
He acknowledged that there appears to be an option to toggle the tracing technology on and off, but even then, whether the technology would stop tracking you without your consent is unknown.
Google, which is coordinating with Apple to lay the groundwork for this contact tracing system, has a history of tracking users even after they believe they have deactivated tracking technology.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) had previously scorched Google’s senior privacy counsel Will DeVries at a March 2019 hearing for that fact. He complained that Google technology still monitors customers even after they had supposedly turned said technology off. Hawley compared this fact to the iconic lyrics from “Hotel California,” quipping “It’s like that old Eagles song, ‘You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.’”
Ars Technica transcribed the wording of the new update’s description, which includes attributes such as “iOS 13.5 speeds up access to the passcode field on devices with Face ID when you are wearing a face mask and introduces the Exposure Notification API to support COVID-19 contact tracing apps from public health authorities.”
Among the specific features are the “Exposure Notification API to support COVID-19 contact tracing apps from public health authorities” and the “Option” to “automatically share health and other essential information from your Medical ID with emergency services when you place an emergency call (US only).”
Contact Tracing: Your governors, red or blue, are coming after you
A driver gets tested for COVID-19 at a drive-through testing center. CREDIT: Reuters
Red-state governors threaten their own citizens with arrest if they don’t comply with contact tracing investigators — up to six months in jail in Texas!
It was late morning on Tuesday, May 26, when James Daggett heard a knock on the door of his apartment home in Cedar Park, Texas, about 20 miles north of Austin.
When he answered it, two uniformed officers wearing badges and facemasks stood and stared.
One officer appeared to be a sheriff’s deputy and had a gun holstered on his side. The other wore a white uniform.
They said they had an important document to deliver that required his immediate attention.
The man in the white uniform handed him an envelope containing a letter from the Williamson County health department, demanding that he read it closely and follow its orders. What followed was a barrage of questions about his health, how many others he had living in his home, where he may have traveled recently.
As Daggett, 35, tore open the envelope and started to read the letter, the two men vanished from his doorstep as quickly as they had arrived.
James Daggett lives in Cedar Park, Texas, just north of Austin
These were just two of the foot soldiers in an army of 4,000 “contact tracers” hired by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, according to the Houston Chronicle, who signed a $295 million contract with Albany, New York-based MTX Group Inc., which partners with Google and SalesForce to data-mine the public and store their data forever in the Google Cloud.
The job of the contact-tracer investigators is to build a web, at the center of which are people like James Daggett, who just happened to test positive for COVID-19.
They reconstruct the spokes that come off the central hub – James’s family members, friends, the guy he may have sat next to on an airplane or at the local diner last night, or in the adjoining cubicle at work.
All it takes is to spend 10 or 15 minutes sitting or standing within six feet of another human being who was infected. These are all potentially infected persons who must be tracked down and sent into quarantine, then interviewed to get a list of their contacts.
In the end, one case such as that of James Daggett can ensnare hundreds of healthy, innocent Americans, and send them into lockdown, simply because they happened to breathe the same air that James breathed, or stood next to someone who did.
Contact tracers are trained to make sure all of these people, healthy or not, get thrown into complete isolation, away from their children, spouses and other family members while they get monitored for at least 14 days. Their release date is at the discretion of the public health authorities. The potential for abuse is great and could lead to continued rolling lockdowns throughout the country for months or even years. It is that very potential that has government watchdogs on alert.
As of this writing, every state has plans to exponentially expand their contact-tracing workforces.
………
Bye Bye Fourth Amendment
John Whitehead, a constitutional attorney and founder of the Rutherford Institute, said citizens are not generally required to speak to an officer about anything, much less their personal health.
“But if they have reasonable suspicion that you’ve committed a crime, they can hold someone for questioning,” he said. “Just an intimidation tactic.”
Whitehead said privacy rights are gone in today’s America, as the Fourth Amendment has been “shredded over and over and over again” since 9/11. The Fourth Amendment guarantees Americans’ rights against unreasonable searches and seizures of their personal property, papers and effects.
“The point is, who’s behind all of this? It’s Google and these big corporations,” Whitehead said. “They want to make the money on this. The dangerous thing I’m warning people about in all of this is if they get your DNA.”
He said Amazon, which built the intelligence cloud for all 17 intelligence agencies, “is now handing over your biometric information, your DNA, your fingerprints. There’s no privacy now. They can get whatever they want. And if they have it, either by police records, cases, or Ancestry.com, the FBI has access to that. A lot of this will drill down to this testing, where they get your DNA.”
What’s disappearing in today’s America, he said, is the legal principle of “bodily integrity.”
Once the state has your data and has turned it over to corporations, you will be vulnerable to them targeting you for various medical treatments [vaccine anyone?], as well as the possibility of discriminatory action by your employer.
“Here’s the key and people don’t realize this,” Whitehead said. “Access to healthcare data by big corporations will enable them to build a profile on people’s ailments, and target them for marketing campaigns; they will give that information over to employers and you could end up getting discriminated against. Landlords could ask you to leave their building. And they could also give it over to police. Police will have access to most of this information anyway because most of the police chiefs across the country are being trained by the FBI.”
Further arming the surveillance state
Americans must push back, now, or wave goodbye to their civil liberties.
….
Another red state goes all in for tracing, threatening arrest
In Georgia, GOP Gov. Brian Kemp has hired 1,000 contact tracers. He has given his contact-tracing program a new Orwellian name, “The Healthy Georgia Collaborative.”
In a report by Fox 5 Atlanta, health reporter Beth Galvin stated that she had received her information on Georgia’s contact tracers from the North Georgia Health District. Here’s how Galvin punctuated her May 28 report:
“If you’re in quarantine and you’re supposed to be checking in every day and you’re not, your health district will check in with you, and if you still don’t comply you could face a misdemeanor.”
“All information collected is provided voluntarily, and will be kept confidential according to HIPAA standards,” according to the state’s press release.
In an effort to clarify the state’s position, I called Jennifer King, the public-information officer with North Georgia Health District, who provided the following statement:
“All persons identified as infectious persons are required to comply with the quarantine ordered by the state (please refer to the attached ORDER FOR HOME QUARANTINE). They are required to check in daily while under quarantine in one of three ways: They may choose to have us call them to monitor, they may monitor through the application on their mobile device, or they may call the Georgia Poison Control Center. Information other than this requirement may be provided voluntarily and will be kept confidential according to HIPAA.”
The attached order provided by King states in bold print: “TAKE NOTICE that failure to comply with this Quarantine Order is a misdemeanor offense pursuant to O.C.G.A 31-5-8.”
Governors such as Kemp in Georgia and Jay Inslee in Washington are publicly stating that compliance with their contact-tracing spies will be “voluntary.”
But to say the program is “voluntary” is blatantly dishonest linguistic trickery. Remember how, in the early days of the lockdowns, we were told the draconian rules were just “temporary?”
The politicians and bureaucrats lied about “temporary,” knowing they would later shift to “new normal,” making “social distancing” and “no more handshaking” fixtures in a permanently reordered society.
Voluntary is the new temporary. It’s only voluntary until they say it’s not. It’s only voluntary until you refuse to volunteer. Then it becomes mandatory.
The scenario works something like this: Citizens will be asked to voluntarily quarantine and report daily to the local health authorities. If the citizen fails to submit to quarantine or to check in on a daily basis, the case becomes mandatory.
At that point, your medical privacy rights under the HIPAA law no longer apply. You have become an enemy of the state.
“The information can be given to a public-health agency if the government says it’s required to prevent an imminent threat to public safety,” Whitehead said. “And guess who gets to determine the definition of an imminent threat? The public official who is sitting somewhere far away in an office with drapes and flowers on his desk that we pay for.”
The new normal: Enslavement to the state
With contact tracing in place as part of the “new normal,” very few governors are likely to return to mass lockdowns like they did in late March and early April. They will simply apply the lockdowns to individual persons through contact tracing.
Watch the disturbing video below from a woman in California who went through that state’s training program for contact tracers.
It will actually be possible for some healthy people to go in and out of multiple 14-day lockdowns, depending on who they happen to come in contact with at work, in restaurants, or other places where people gather.
Imagine a salon worker or barber who comes in close contact with dozens of customers per day. If one of them happens to test positive, that barber will get outed and sent into lockdown.
The only way to escape this endless loop is to accept the vaccine being pushed by Bill Gates in his repeated statements to the media that “we cannot go back to normal until the whole world is widely vaccinated.”
Whitehead said the most terrifying aspect of contact tracing is it turns people into government snitches, using fear to encourage a turn-in-your-neighbor mentality.
That’s the mentality that has existed in all totalitarian societies throughout history, from Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia and Communist China. After the state-run media whips up an atmosphere of fear, people are easily led and will turn on each other if they think it will protect themselves or their family.
“Fear builds its own prison walls,” Whitehead said. “Everybody becomes a suspect and this time we are using the word “lockdown;” that’s prison terminology. We are prisoners in our own homes now. We can be reported by a neighbor if you cough, you don’t wear a mask.”
How did people end up in the Nazi camps? Whitehead said he was curious so he studied history to find out.
“Almost 85 percent of people who wound up in the camps were reported by their neighbors,” he said. “That’s where we are going. We’re following that model. Everyone is going to be nervous. You’ll be afraid to speak. First Amendment rights are dwindling. Anybody who speaks the truth today is going to look like a rebel or a radical.”
That’s why the Fourth Amendment was written, he said, to protect Americans against such abuses. But today’s politicians and judges have little respect for it.
“All my research and study shows that we’re headed down a really bad path and I’m afraid that people are going to give in,” Whitehead said. “We are being psychologically re-engineered to accept really tight control over our movements, how we think, and how we relate to other human beings.”
What to do if you are called by a contact tracer?
“If people want to take a Fourth Amendment stand, they don’t have to give over any information, their name or whatever when asked. They’re not required to. One question I would ask is: ‘Am I being charged with a crime? Why would you be contacting me?’ If they show up at the door, you can say the same thing.
“Now, the caution is that you could get arrested, but the only thing that’s going to change things around in this situation is either the people stand up and say ‘I’m not going to take it,’ or they take it. If you take it, it’s going to get really bad. But I’m afraid that, this is what I see generally, most people believe what they see on the mainstream media; they’re going to fall into the game.”
One man who has decided not to “take it” is James Daggett in Texas.
“People need to understand that this is how they’re handling this,” Daggett said. “It’s very heavy-handed…That’s what tyrants depend on. People wilting in the heat of the moment. If I am in any way impeded from carrying out my normal life, then I am going to contact an attorney.”
Americans need to know that the warnings being given about contact tracing are not some vague conspiracy theories.
“It’s reality,” he said. “There were guys with guns at my door.”
As Whitehead says, the only way to tip the scales and turn things away from tyranny is to take a stand and refuse to cooperate with the burgeoning army of health spies.
The time to make that stand is now.
Leo Hohmann is an independent freelance journalist and author of the 2017 book “Stealth Invasion.” If you appreciate the research and reporting of LeoHohmann.com, please consider a donation of any size.
Harvard prof with $4 million home imagines future without yours
Friday, May 15, 2020
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Bob Kellogg, Billy Davis (OneNewsNow.com)
A constitutional law professor who teaches at Harvard says the COVID-19 pandemic provides a great opportunity for America: Replace the U.S. Constitution with a more “common-good” document and a more powerful government to enforce it.
Writing in The Atlantic, Harvard Professor Adrian Vermeule says the U.S. Constitution has “outlived its utility” and now the time has come for government to claim a more centralized role in people’s lives.
In the scholarly article, Professor Vermeule writes:
As for the structure and distribution of authority within government, common-good constitutionalism will favor a powerful presidency ruling over a powerful bureaucracy, the latter acting through principles of administrative law’s inner morality with a view to promoting solidarity and subsidiarity. The bureaucracy will be seen not as an enemy, but as the strong hand of legitimate rule.
It’s not clear from the article why this new self-described government “bureacracy” will not be seen as the “enemy” of the public nor what happens to people who do hold such a view of government’s “inner morality.” But there are some estimates about past results in history.
Elsewhere in the article, the professor imagines this newly realized American society would mean “Libertarian” concepts such as property rights and economic rights “will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources.”
A footnote to the article states it is part of “The Battle for the Constitution,” an ongoing project of The Atlantic that invites debate on the topic.
“He’s actually saying some things that I think are really, really scary,” observes civil liberty attorney John Whitehead, “like doing away with property rights, redistributing resources by the government.”
If the Harvard professor ever gives up his own property, he would be surrendering a nice accommodation: the professor lives in a 4,078-square-foot, five-bedroom home in Cambridge with an assessed value of $4.7 million, the City of Cambridge website shows.
Whitehead, a longtime advocate for constitutional liberties, and his Rutherford Institute often represent clients in cases where 4th Amendment rights are threatened by a bullying police officer, for example, or a school administrator has punished a child for exercising his 1st Amendment rights.
During the current pandemic, Whitehead is witnessing some of his worst fears being discussed — mandatory contract tracing, tip lines for snitching on neighbors, and screening checkpoints — in the name of public safety.
“As long as ‘we the people’ continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security,” Whitehead writes, “things will get worse, not better.”
OneNewsNow reported this week that the health director for Ventura County, California announced COVID-19-posititive people would be removed from their homes if there are not enough bathrooms to keep family members separate.
“I’m telling you,” Whitehead tells OneNewsNow, “they’re using this coronavirus pandemic situation to push their agenda and it’s one of the most dangerous agendas I’ve seen in recent years.”
Regarding the professor’s open call for more government and less freedom, Whitehead says he was alarmed by the communist-sounding demands. It is even more alarming, he adds, that such beliefs are likely being taught to impressionable law students at the Ivy League school.
“If you don’t have property rights,” Whitehead warns, “that means you are the property of the government.”
If you’ve been following the 5G phenomenon and the growing opposition to it, you’ll want to spend some time with this article that was spotted by P.A.I. Before we get to that article, however, I want to mention why I include it in this week’s blogs, which – if you’ve been following them – are about strange stuff, from the Golden Gate Bridge getting a refurbishment to improve its aerodynamic qualities (and which now makes it “whistle”), to ships at sea sailing in circles. In this case, over the past several months, I’ve heard from various readers of this website, who follow the 5g rollout, that they’ve either experienced, or know of someone who’s experienced, strange and unusual symptoms. I myself have experienced a few weird things, namely, that while watching certain DVDs or Blue Ray disks, I experienced sudden, and almost narcoleptic sleepiness. This never happens to me outside, driving, or walking, but always and exclusively when watching certain DVDs in my collection.
Similarly, this article is mostly taken up with the people who’ve reported breathing difficulty, and/or heart palpitations, for no apparent or explicable reason, other than, perhaps, some sort of physiological response to 5G rollout:
These symptoms, notes the article and some of the commenters, began shortly after Space X’s launch of several 5G satellites in the last month. The article itself notes what some covering the corona virus narrative have also noted, a potential connection of 5G to the story, only here, the article suggests the virus narrative might be a cover for 5G-related physiological problems:
The full extent to which the 420 satellites are being tested is unknown to me. They are communicating with ten earth stations located in the United States. They are being tested by the U.S. Air Force for use by military aircraft. SpaceX intends to keep launching 60 satellites at a time every couple of weeks. The next launch is scheduled for tonight, May 3, 2020, at 9:25 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. SpaceXplans to begin what it calls beta testing with perhaps 10,000 private customers about three months from now when it has about 840 satellites in orbit. Beta testing alone could have devastating consequences. If and when Starlink signs up millions of paying customers, it is possible that nothing will survive –no humans, no animals, and no insects. It is likely that it will be blamed on COVID-19, unless this world wakes up in time.
The article then explains its reasoning:
Very briefly, all animals and plants are polarized positive to negative from head to feet, or from leaves to roots.An electric current of picowatt per square meter amplitude flows from the positively charged sky to the negatively charged earth in fair weather, courses through the earth beneath our feet, and returns to the sky via lightning bolts during thunderstorms. Every living thing is part of this circuit. The current enters our heads from the sky, circulates through our meridians, and enters the earth through the soles of our feet. This current provides the energy for growth, healing, and life itself. We do not live by bread alone, but by the energy provided to us by the biosphere. Oriental medicine calls it qi or ki, Ayurvedic medicine calls it prana, and atmospheric physicists call it electricity. It provides us energy for life, and information that organizes our bodies. If you pollute this circuit with billions of digital pulsations, you will destroy all life. It is one thing to sit in front of a computer all day, or hold one in your hand. It is quite another to live inside of one.
In short, adding thousands of satellites “muddles” this circuit, and that muddling may lead to unknown or unpredicted physiological and neurological complications and side effects.
All of which brings me to today’s high octane speculation: over the past few weeks, as the Fauci-Lieber-Wuhan-Baal Gates virus hysteria gradually petered out, I advanced the idea almost at the outset that what we may have been watching was the emergence of a kind of bio-electronically activated virus. I found it suspicious, and still find it suspicious, that precious little propatainment media attention was paid to Dr Fauci’s own researches into corona viruses, which, incidentally were shut down by the Obama administration; Fauci then simply moved them to…China. Similarly, Dr. Charles Lieber of Harvard’s arrest for allegedly not disclosing his financial ties to China’s Wuhan laboratories fell right off the radar screen. Lieber’s research into nanotechnology and association with the Wuhan laboratory were, indeed, what made me entertain the bio-electronically activated virus narrative. I even went so far as to suggest that the “sudden bird flu deaths” of previous years might have been related to the corona virus story and to some of this research. The fact that the “bird flu” mimicks in some respects electromagnetic effects on cells is an important factor here.
But now with this article I have to wonder, high-octane-speculation-style, if in fact these effects of a 5G rollout were known all along, and if, in fact, the race to acquire a “vaccine” that will alter – by Baal Gates’ own admission – the rDNA of humans, was in fact a “vaccine” not against the corona virus itself, but against those 5G effects? If so, then it may be another case of the “cure” being as bad as the “disease:…
In Brief
He acknowledged that there appears to be an option to toggle the tracing technology on and off, but even then, whether the technology would stop tracking you without your consent is unknown.
A constitutional law professor who teaches at Harvard says the COVID-19 pandemic provides a great opportunity for America: Replace the U.S. Constitution with a more “common-good” document and a more powerful government to enforce it.
“He’s actually saying some things that I think are really, really scary,” observes civil liberty attorney John Whitehead, “like doing away with property rights, redistributing resources by the government.”
“I’m telling you,” Whitehead tells OneNewsNow, “they’re using this coronavirus pandemic situation to push their agenda and it’s one of the most dangerous agendas I’ve seen in recent years.”
