TBR News May 5, 2020

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. May 5, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it. “
Comment for May 5, 2020:” Dealing with Trump, at a high level, is like trying to herd cats or pick up mercury. Not possible. He waffles, lies, erupts and generally behaves like the ero-centric they are. Here is a clear description of the narcissist. “In psychological terms, narcissism doesn’t mean self-love—at least not of a genuine sort. It’s more accurate to say that people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are in love with an idealized, grandiose image of themselves. And they’re in love with this inflated self-image precisely because it allows them to avoid deep feelings of insecurity. But propping up their delusions of grandeur takes a lot of work—and that’s where the dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors come in.
Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist’s life: from work and friendships to family and love relationships.
People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others. What’s more, they are extremely sensitive and react badly to even the slightest criticisms, disagreements, or perceived slights, which they view as personal attacks. For the people in the narcissist’s life, it’s often easier just to go along with their demands to avoid the coldness and rages. However, by understanding more about narcissistic personality disorder, you can spot the narcissists in your life, protect yourself from their power plays, and establish healthier boundaries.
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder
Grandiose sense of self-importance
Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.
Narcissists also believe that they’re better than everyone else and expect recognition as such—even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. They will often exaggerate or outright lie about their achievements and talents. And when they talk about work or relationships, all you’ll hear is how much they contribute, how great they are, and how lucky the people in their lives are to have them. They are the undisputed star and everyone else is at best a bit player.
Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur
Since reality doesn’t support their grandiose view of themselves, narcissists live in a fantasy world propped up by distortion, self-deception, and magical thinking. They spin self-glorifying fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, attractiveness, and ideal love that make them feel special and in control. These fantasies protect them from feelings of inner emptiness and shame, so facts and opinions that contradict them are ignored or rationalized away. Anything that threatens to burst the fantasy bubble is met with extreme defensiveness and even rage, so those around the narcissist learn to tread carefully around their denial of reality.
Needs constant praise and admiration
A narcissist’s sense of superiority is like a balloon that gradually loses air without a steady stream of applause and recognition to keep it inflated. The occasional compliment is not enough. Narcissists need constant food for their ego, so they surround themselves with people who are willing to cater to their obsessive craving for affirmation. These relationships are very one-sided. It’s all about what the admirer can do for the narcissist, never the other way around. And if there is ever an interruption or diminishment in the admirer’s attention and praise, the narcissist treats it as a betrayal.
Sense of entitlement
Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.
Exploits others without guilt or shame
Narcissists never develop the ability to identify with the feelings of others—to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In other words, they lack empathy. In many ways, they view the people in their lives as objects—there to serve their needs. As a consequence, they don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Sometimes this interpersonal exploitation is malicious, but often it is simply oblivious. Narcissists simply don’t think about how their behavior affects others. And if you point it out, they still won’t truly get it. The only thing they understand is their own needs.
Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others
Narcissists feel threatened whenever they encounter someone who appears to have something they lack—especially those who are confident and popular. They’re also threatened by people who don’t kowtow to them or who challenge them in any way. Their defense mechanism is contempt. The only way to neutralize the threat and prop up their own sagging ego is to put those people down. They may do it in a patronizing or dismissive way as if to demonstrate how little the other person means to them. Or they may go on the attack with insults, name-calling, bullying, and threats to force the other person back into line. (helpguide)

The Table of Contents
• Will Americans ever forgive Trump for his heartless lack of compassion?
• The Republican dilemma: They could have dumped Trump! But now they’re stuck with him
• Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that appears to be more contagious
• Two studies conclude majority of New York coronavirus cases came from Europe, not China
• Five Eyes spies have NO EVIDENCE that coronavirus emerged from Wuhan lab, report suggests in U-turn from previous leaks
• Lunacy as state policy
• Encyclopedia of American Loons
• Coronavirus: The seven types of people who start and spread viral misinformation

Will Americans ever forgive Trump for his heartless lack of compassion?
While the nation grieves, the US president has spent less than five minutes expressing compassion for those who are suffering
May 5, 2020
by Francine Prose
The Guardian
To exist at this moment is to navigate (or try to fend off) the flood of grief that threatens to submerge even our rare, buoyant moments. We mourn the death of friends and relatives, the absence of human contact and the everyday pleasures we once took for granted. We can’t stop thinking about the tens of thousands of families facing hunger, bankruptcy and homelessness even as they struggle to endure the loss of someone they dearly loved.
What’s striking, if not surprising, is that this deluge of sorrow has run dry at the door to the Oval Office.
One’s heart goes out to the reporters who have sifted through the Donald Trump’s press briefings on the current pandemic – hour after hour of bombast, self-promotion, vitriol, lies and recklessly unscientific speculation – for any evidence of sympathy for those who are in pain. It’s hardly a shock to learn that our president’s expressions of care and compassion have occupied a total of less than five minutes, out of all that time.
After all, a man who mocked a disabled journalist and boasted about grabbing women wasn’t elected for the depths of his kindness and the purity of his moral conscience. And it seems unrealistically optimistic to have hoped that the extremity of this crisis should have inspired, in our leader, a deep and essential change of heart.
Arguably, few politicians seek (and are elected to) office out of an excess of compassion. Even those who respond to catastrophe in more appropriately “human” ways – George W Bush mourning the victims of 9/11, Obama tearing up at the site of the Sandy Hook school shooting – have been parochial in their sympathies; there was little ceremonial grieving for the innocent child-casualties of our bombing and drone strikes in the Middle East.
And yet we can’t help thinking how much less worried we would be if a humane, competent, well-informed adult was making the decisions that affect us all. Though we’ve learned that Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned away refugees from Hitler’s Europe, we can still imagine how comforting it was, for those who lived through the Great Depression, hearing his radio speeches: absorbing their message of reassurance and hope, his determination to comprehend and mitigate the sufferings of our nation.
Trump’s enraged, self-infatuated maunderings are the opposite of Roosevelt’s calm resolve. Yet ultimately our president’s failure of empathy is less disturbing than the ways in which it appears to resonate with his supporters. He and his allies have framed our response to the crisis in terms of partisan politics, to imply (incorrectly, as the polls suggest) that tough conservatives are eager to get back to work sooner than scaredy-cat, stay-at-home progressives.
The flag-waving, gun-toting, defiantly unmasked protesters storming the capitol buildings in Michigan and Wisconsin would seem to support that view. This, too, is a situation that could have been defused by a president who projected sympathy, who persuaded his listeners, as Roosevelt did, that the pain of those who have lost jobs and businesses is shared by us all. Instead we see Trump’s efforts to stoke rage and bitterness because he suspects that it might help solidify his base.
It may be that the deepening polarization in our country – the suspicion, grievance and rage that the president is spouting and encouraging – is less political than spiritual. These divides go deeper than how we vote; they express our core beliefs about our responsibility to those with whom we share this brief span on this damaged planet. As Slate editor Tom Scocca posted on Twitter: “Conservatives have by now been conditioned to believe that thinking about other people ‘s needs or interests in any way is tyranny by definition,” a sentiment echoed by Emily Raboteau in the Huffington Post: “I can’t debate someone into caring about what happens to our fellow human beings.”
This idea that empathy and altruism are expressions of weakness and naivety is nothing new; it’s the foundation of novelist Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and it received a major boost during the Reagan-Bush years, when “trickle-down” economics did little to stem the growing problem of homelessness. But it’s never seemed so virulent as it does today, perhaps because it has never been so openly advocated – so blatantly demonstrated – by our president. It’s hard to think of anything more corrupt or corrupting than to boast about one’s success when (as I write this) more than 60,000 Americans have died of Covid-19. It’s hard to imagine anything more grotesque than using the pandemic as an excuse to further the ongoing campaign to separate families and exclude asylum seekers and other immigrants.
What’s most frightening to me is that the lack of empathy – the selfishness, the resentment, the hope that others will suffer even more than we are suffering – is itself a kind of virus: contagious, dangerous, possibly even lethal. I’ve heard people say that the Wisconsin and Michigan protesters – shouting shoulder to shoulder, refusing to observe the simple rules of social distancing – won’t learn how profoundly Trump has betrayed them until they themselves contract the virus that they have been encouraged to downplay. I’ve even heard it said how unfair it is that our overweight, out-of-shape politicians – too vain to wear a mask, flouting scientific advice and the dictates of common sense – have proved immune to the disease that has felled so many decent, generous people.
But such statements echo the absence of compassion that Trump, by tweet and by example, is encouraging us to feel. It’s become another thing to resist. I don’t want to wish that anyone will learn that particular hard lesson, in that particularly hard way: not the governors opening their states for business before it’s safe, not the demonstrators on the state capitol steps, not our president. Despite my own anger, frustration and fear, I still can’t bring myself to claim suffering as a success.

The Republican dilemma: They could have dumped Trump! But now they’re stuck with him
Facing a tough election year, embattled Republicans made their choice: Down the slippery slide with President Lysol
April 29, 2020
by Amanda Marcotte
Salon
Donald Trump’s approval ratings over the coronavirus pandemic are in free fall, having tumbled 10 points over the last month, to 39% in a new Emerson poll. This comports with the FiveThirtyEight tracking of Trump’s overall approval, which shows that after a short rally-round-the-flag response to the coronavirus, the public is starting to understand that the man who goes on TV and suggests injecting household cleaning products is a complete imbecile. Moreover, he’s the principal reason the U.S. has a massive shortfall in testing and four times as many official cases of COVID-19 as the second most hard-hit country, Spain. (This is without taking into account, unfortunately, how much the Chinese government may have fudged that nation’s numbers.)
That said, Trump’s overall approval numbers still aren’t dipping below his baseline of about 42%, which appears to be immovable. That’s because Trump’s base voters care about sticking it to the liberals more than they care about anything else, including their own health, their jobs or protecting our country from total collapse.
That puts Republicans running in 2020, especially endangered incumbents in swing states, in quite a bind. Yes, we’re talking about you, Susan Collins — along with other precarious GOP senators like Cory Gardner of Colorado, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Martha McSally of Arizona. To align themselves fully with the orange overlord is to alienate the possible swing voters who aren’t too keen on the “inject disinfectants” platform. But if they try to distance themselves from President Clorox Chewables too much, they risk bringing down Trump’s Twitter wrath unto them and alienating those base voters they will absolutely need to have any hope of surviving what looks to be a tough election cycle for their party.
Not that anyone should feel a moment of pity for any single Republican on Capitol Hill. Democrats gave Republicans a golden opportunity to remove Trump earlier this year, after the House of Representatives impeached the president in December on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his blackmail scheme against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But rather than take that impeachment for the gift that it was — an opportunity to remove a chaotic presence who constantly undermines the party with his erratic behavior — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rallied his troops. With the sole exception of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, every single Republican voted to acquit Trump, avoiding the easy escape hatch of replacing him with Vice President Mike Pence, who may be a right-wing Christian dingbat but at least isn’t a chaos monkey who screws over everyone he meets, even his own political colleagues and supporters.
The conundrum Republicans created for themselves, by not dumping Trump when they had the chance, is evident in the fight between the president’s re-election campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
On Friday, Politico reported that the committee, which advises Senate candidates on their runs, issued a memo advising candidates, “Don’t defend Trump,” Instead, the memo suggested that when GOP candidates are asked by reporters or voters about Trump’s massive failures in dealing with either the coronavirus pandemic or the devastating economic fallout, they should try to change the subject and “attack China.”
From the standpoint of pure, ruthless politics, it’s good advice. Trump’s behavior has been indefensible, ages before the injecting-disinfectant debacle. Trump spent months ignoring the crisis, and even when he sluggishly began to deal with it, his major priority was to slow-walk the coronavirus testing that’s necessary to reopen the economy because he’s worried that a higher caseload makes him look bad. Trying to change the subject may be cynical and amoral, but it’s definitely a smart call for Republicans. If Collins, Gardner, Tillis and other Republicans in tough races want to get voters above that 42% Trumpian baseline, they need to portray themselves as not as incompetent as their massively incompetent leader.
A smart party leader would let down-ballot candidates distance themselves from him, if that’s what it takes to win. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is well known for telling members of her caucus they can criticize her publicly, if that’s what it takes to win a close race.
But Trump, who has no loyalty to anyone but himself, was predictably enraged by the memo and lashed out, sending political adviser Justin Clark out to threaten Republicans who tried to distance themselves from Trump by saying, “Candidates will listen to the bad advice in this memo at their own peril” and “Trump enjoys unprecedented support among Republican voters.”
That may be true, but with anyone outside the core Republican cult movement, Trump is increasingly and correctly viewed as the reason this country is falling apart. Senators like Gardner, Collins, Tillis, McSally, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Steve Daines of Montana, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia and possibly even McConnell himself will need to snag at least a few Trump-skeptical voters if they’re going to win and hold onto their Senate majority.
To make it worse, even if Republicans do back up Trump’s erratic views and behavior through the coronavirus crisis, he’s likely to throw them under the bus for their loyalty.
That’s what happened to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, after all. Kemp picked up on Trump’s extremely unsubtle hints that he wanted states to “reopen” and let the virus run rampant, in the misguided belief that doing so will lead to an economic recovery. (In fact, odds are that such a reopening will just make more people sick — and make the economy worse.) Kemp also made doubly sure that was what Trump wanted by talking to the president privately and getting his support.
Then, when Kemp announced his plan to reopen Georgia, Trump — who has no shame and feels no loyalty to anyone — acted surprised by all this, saying he “wasn’t happy” with Kemp’s choices, which had clearly gone too far. It’s no mystery what Trump’s game is here: He wants to claim he’s trying to “reopen” America, but also wants no responsibility for the possible death and economic devastation that might cause. He’ll take credit for anything that goes well, of course, but anything that goes wrong is foisted on the governors.
There’s simply no winning with this guy, and Republicans should have realized that long ago. Sure, there would have been some short-term political pain as the base whined and cried about the removal of Trump, but in the long run Republicans would have been much better off without him. Pelosi gave them the gift-wrapped opportunity they needed to rid themselves of this chaos-demon before he screwed them over in ways they legitimately may never recover from. They turned her gift down, and now they’re looking at Great Depression levels of unemployment, soaring death rates and a president who looks at this disaster and starts spitballing about how maybe the solution can be found in the household products aisle at Walgreens.
But feel absolutely no pity for Republicans. Yeah, and I mean none. They made their deal with the devil and it looks like the bill is coming due.

Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that appears to be more contagious
May 5, 2020
by Ralph Vartabedian
Los Angeles Times
Scientists have identified a new strain of the coronavirus that has become dominant worldwide and appears to be more contagious than the versions that spread in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study led by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The new strain appeared in February in Europe, migrated quickly to the East Coast of the United States and has been the dominant strain across the world since mid-March, the scientists wrote.
In addition to spreading faster, it may make people vulnerable to a second infection after a first bout with the disease, the report warned.
The 33-page report was posted Thursday on BioRxiv, a website that researchers use to share their work before it is peer reviewed, an effort to speed up collaborations with scientists working on COVID-19 vaccines or treatments. That research has been largely based on the genetic sequence of earlier strains and might not be effective against the new one.
The mutation identified in the new report affects the now infamous spikes on the exterior of the coronavirus, which allow it to enter human respiratory cells. The report’s authors said they felt an “urgent need for an early warning” so that vaccines and drugs under development around the world will be effective against the mutated strain.
Wherever the new strain appeared, it quickly infected far more people than the earlier strains that came out of Wuhan, China, and within weeks it was the only strain that was prevalent in some nations, according to the report. The new strain’s dominance over its predecessors demonstrates that it is more infectious, according to the report, though exactly why is not yet known.
The coronavirus, known to scientists as SARS-CoV-2, has infected more than 3.5 million people around the world and caused more than 250,000 COVID-19 deaths since its discovery late last year.
The report was based on a computational analysis of more than 6,000 coronavirus sequences from around the world, collected by the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data, a public-private organization in Germany. Time and again, the analysis found the new version was transitioning to become dominant.
The Los Alamos team, assisted by scientists at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in England, identified 14 mutations. Those mutations occurred among the nearly 30,000 base pairs of RNA that other scientists say make up the coronavirus’s genome. The report authors focused on a mutation called D614G, which is responsible for the change in the virus’ spikes.
“The story is worrying, as we see a mutated form of the virus very rapidly emerging, and over the month of March becoming the dominant pandemic form,” study leader Bette Korber, a computational biologist at Los Alamos, wrote on her Facebook page. “When viruses with this mutation enter a population, they rapidly begin to take over the local epidemic, thus they are more transmissible.”
While the Los Alamos report is highly technical and dispassionate, Korber expressed some deep personal feelings about the implications of the finding in her Facebook post.
“This is hard news,” wrote Korber, “but please don’t only be disheartened by it. Our team at LANL was able to document this mutation and its impact on transmission only because of a massive global effort of clinical people and experimental groups, who make new sequences of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) in their local communities available as quickly as they possibly can.”
Korber, a graduate of Cal State Long Beach who went on to earn a PhD in chemistry at Caltech, joined the lab in 1990 and focused much of her work on an HIV vaccine. In 2004, she won the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award, the U.S. Department of Energy’s highest recognition for scientific achievement. She contributed a portion of the financial prize to help establish an orphanage for young AIDS victims in South Africa.
The report contains regional breakdowns of when the new strain of virus first emerged and how long it took to become dominant.
Italy was one of the first countries to see the new virus in the last week of February, almost at the same time that the original strain appeared. Washington was among the first states to get hit with the original strain in late February, but by March 15 the mutated strain dominated. New York was hit by the original virus around March 15, but within days the mutant strain took over. The team did not report results for California.
Scientists at major organizations working on a vaccine or drugs have told The Times that they are pinning their hopes on initial evidence that the virus is stable and not likely to mutate the way influenza virus does, requiring a new vaccine every year. The Los Alamos report could upend that assumption.
If the pandemic fails to wane seasonally as the weather warms, the study warns, the virus could undergo further mutations even as research organizations prepare the first medical treatments and vaccines. Without getting on top of the risk now, the effectiveness of vaccines could be limited. Some of the compounds in development are supposed to latch onto the spike or interrupt its action. If they were designed based on the original version of the spike, they might not be effective against the new coronavirus strain, the study’s authors warned.
“We cannot afford to be blindsided as we move vaccines and antibodies into clinical testing,” Korber wrote on Facebook. “Please be encouraged by knowing the global scientific community is on this, and we are cooperating with each other in ways I have never seen … in my 30 years as a scientist.”
David Montefiori, a Duke University scientist who worked on the report said it is the first to document a mutation in the coronavirus that appears to make it more infectious.
Although the researchers don’t yet know the details about how the mutated spike behaves inside the body, it’s clearly doing something that gives it an evolutionary advantage over its predecessor and is fueling its rapid spread. One scientist called it a “classic case of Darwinian evolution.”
“D614G is increasing in frequency at an alarming rate, indicating a fitness advantage relative to the original Wuhan strain that enables more rapid spread,” the study said.
Still unknown is whether this mutant virus could account for regional variations in how hard COVID-19 is hitting different parts of the world.
In the United States, doctors had begun to independently question whether new strains of the virus could account for the differences in how it has infected, sickened and killed people, said Alan Wu, a UC San Francisco professor who runs the clinical chemistry and toxicology laboratories at San Francisco General Hospital.
Medical experts have speculated in recent weeks that they were seeing at least two strains of the virus in the U.S., one prevalent on the East Coast and another on the West Coast, according to Wu.
“We are looking to identify the mutation,” he said, noting that his hospital has had only a few deaths out of the hundreds of cases it has treated, which is “quite a different story than we are hearing from New York.”
The Los Alamos study does not indicate that the new version of the virus is more lethal than the original. People infected with the mutated strain appear to have higher viral loads. But the study’s authors from the University of Sheffield found that among a local sample of 447 patients, hospitalization rates were about the same for people infected with either virus version.
Even if the new strain is no more dangerous than the others, it could still complicate efforts to bring the pandemic under control. That would be an issueif the mutation makes the virus so different from earlier strains that people who have immunity to them would not be immune to the new version.
If that is indeed the case, it could make “individuals susceptible to a second infection,” the study authors wrote.
It’s possible that the mutation changes the spike in some way that helps the virus evade the immune system, said Montefiori, who has worked on an HIV vaccine for 30 years. “It is hypothetical. We are looking at it very hard.”

Two studies conclude majority of New York coronavirus cases came from Europe, not China
April 9, 2020
by Andrew Mark Miller
Washington Exminer
Two genetic studies concluded that the majority of the coronavirus cases in New York came from Europe and not China, as previously thought.
A study conducted by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital and another by New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine both identified seven distinct lineages of the coronavirus in New York and determined most cases came from Europe, the New York Times reported.
“The majority is clearly European,” Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said about the study. The study is waiting to be peer-reviewed.
In the studies, doctors were able to examine the genetic material of viruses, identify mutations, and trace the spread of specific strains, which eventually helped them figure out the age and original location of those strains.
The studies suggest that the virus was more widespread than previously thought and lends support to President Trump’s decision to shut down travel from Europe, which was widely criticized at the time.
“The European Union disapproves of the fact that the U.S. decision to impose a travel ban was taken unilaterally and without consultation,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel said in a joint statement when the travel ban was announced.
“Public Health Experts Question Trump’s Ban On Most Travelers From Europe,” a headline from NPR read on March 12.
A CNBC headline from March 13 reads, “Trump’s travel ban on many European countries is ‘politically motivated,’ analysts say.”

Five Eyes spies have NO EVIDENCE that coronavirus emerged from Wuhan lab, report suggests in U-turn from previous leaks
May 5, 2020
RT
There is no evidence to substantiate the Trump administration’s claims that Covid-19 came from a Chinese laboratory, according to intelligence sources, raising questions about a leaked dossier blaming Beijing for the pandemic.
Sources that spoke to the Guardian said that a 15-page dossier which accused China of carrying out a cover-up to hide its role in the global health crisis was not based on intelligence taken from the infamous ‘Five Eyes’ network, which includes spy agencies from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Beijing could have been more forthcoming about what was happening in Wuhan – the original epicenter of the pandemic – but pressing the issue could risk a dangerous escalation between the West and China, Five Eyes agencies believe, according to the Guardian report.
Over the weekend, the Australian Sunday Telegraph claimed it saw a dossier, allegedly compiled by “concerned Western governments,” which claimed that the Five Eyes intelligence agencies are probing Beijing’s involvement in the Covid-19 outbreak.
The leak coincided with incendiary remarks from US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who claimed there was a “significant amount of evidence” that the virus came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Although it’s still not clear how Covid-19 emerged, Washington has promoted the theory that China is to be blamed for the health crisis.
The UK has taken a different approach to determining the cause of the crisis. Downing Street has resisted assigning blame for Covid-19, though it has stressed that questions need to be answered about the origin and spread of the virus in order to better prepare for future global pandemics.
Beijing has strongly denied any involvement in the spread of the illness, and has challenged Pompeo to produce the evidence purportedly showing its links to the pandemic. The secretary of state is engaged in the spread of a dangerous “political virus,” China has said.

Lunacy as state policy
May 5, 2020
by Christian Jürs
Parousia refers to the Second Coming of Christ as understood by the Christian Pentecostal sect to which President Trump and very influential numbers of his personal suite belong.
This second coming assumes a first coming (here, the facts are not in evidence ) but the fixation on bringing about the latter appearance is intense and determined.
It is the belief of Pentecostals that when certain conditions are met, Jesus Christ will return to earth, take his elect (the Pentecostals) physically to Paradise in an event known as Rapture. Those not belonging to the Pentecostal elect will have to remain behind for Satan to deal with.
When Parousia happens, there will be a great battle fought at Armageddon between the forces of Jesus and the Devil and his antichrist and Jesus, quite naturally, will be triumphant.
All of this, the Pentecostals assure their membership, can be found in the book of Revelation.
Unfortunately for this interesting thesis, the struggle between good and evil at Armageddon is not found in the book of Revelations. Revelations 16:16 only mentions the name of the long-forgotten town but there is nothing about an epic struggle mentioned anywhere else other than twisted interpretations in cult literature.
This strange book was allegedly written by St. John the Devine, a disciple of Jesus when, in fact is believed by most reputable Biblical scholars to have been written by a certain John of Patmos who lived many years after the period ascribed to Christ’s ministry.
John of Patmos was a hermit/monk on the Greek island of Patmos and contemporary historical reference briefly dismisses him as a lunatic. No one has been able to understand a word of what he wrote, and his confused and mystic writings easily lends themselves to all manner of interpretations by various dimwitted and obsessed religious fanatics.
When Martin Luther prepared the Protestant Bible, he discarded Revelations, and other books then found in the Bible, as being ‘unworthy and filled with nonsense.’
The Second Coming has as one of its primary requirements that a Jewish nation must be reestablished in Palestine (which it was in 1948) and, even more important, that the great Jewish temple of Solomon must be rebuilt before Christ can return to earth and elevate his elect.
The first temple of Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians and the more elegant second, by the Romans when they crushed the Jewish revolt in the first century.
Unfortunately for the Pentecostals, the former site of this temple is now occupied by the much-revered Muslim Dome of the Rock mosque.
The Jewish temple cannot be rebuilt, therefore, as long as the Muslim mosque occupies its space and therefore, it would be necessary to destroy this very holy building and replace it with a new edifice of another religion.
However, if this lunatic act were consummated, there would be an immediate and terrible rising in the Muslim world and a savage religious war would burst forth on an already-ravaged Middle East.
The Pentecostals are, by their very nature, uncaring and fierce fanatics and such a war would, to them, be a fulfillment of the spurious prophecy of the manic Revelation’s non-existent Battle of Armageddon.
Already we can hear comments from prominent Pentecostals that the Muslims are the forces of the anti-Christ and must therefore be engaged by the forces of Jesus in a final hecatomb of blood and destruction. This pending bloodbath means nothing to Pentecostals because, according to their beliefs, they will be safe in Paradise and those left behind are of no consequence
These God-intoxicated fanatics have managed to capture the White House and place their people in high official positions within the Trump Administration.
In the face of all reason and logic, they are pushing a suicidal, hidden agenda that will have terrible consequences for everyone concerned.
In light of this, perhaps it is now far easier to understand what really stands behind the Administration’s apparent fierce determination to invade a shattered and disorganized Iraq while studiously ignoring a very real danger from North Korea’s declared intentions of building nuclear weapons.
After all, North Korea is not mentioned in Pentecostal dogma and there would be no Parousia because of a terrible nuclear war launched by that country.
In pite of the large amount of learned dissertations on the underlying motives for the Trump Administration’s war hysteria, one should note that the simplest answer to a complex problem is always the correct one.
Trump and his co-religionists have committed the supreme error of making their personal religious beliefs a matter of state policy, horrifying as it may seem, and instead of elevating their numbers to a mythic paradise, they will most certainly create a wilderness of death and destruction for no sane justifying reason.
Jesus is quoted as saying that he did not come to “bring Peace but a Sword,” and this seems to be the real motivation of his more deranged followers.

Encyclopedia of American Loons

James Simpson

‘Accuracy in Media’ is a wingnut “media watchdog” run by Don Irvine. It was founded with the expressed purpose of combatting “liberal media bias” but actually – and predictably – ended up combatting accuracy instead, in favor of promoting wingnut conspiracy theories. It’s a perfect fit for wild-eyed conspiracy theorists like Jim Simpson, who for instance opposed the Obama administration’s comprehensive immigration reform plan because he believed it to be part of a Marxist push to destroy America and potentially make President Obama a dictator. He also accused the “illegal immigration lobby” of using the tactics of Nazis and Communists in promoting “ideas that are self-evidently destructive,” and asserted that there would be no room for compromise because reform proponents are Marxists and Marxists will only be “emboldened” by attempts to compromise: “When dealing with Marxists, the ‘moderates’ compromise away our rights, our livelihoods and our country to people and agendas that are inherently destructive to our society,” said Simpson and warned that immigration reform would mean the end of America, for instance because immigrants want to “destroy the culture” and ultimately “create a huge pool of voters” that they can use to institute “despotic governments.” “Accuracy” is not an apt term to describe any part of Simpson’s rant.
Immigrants destroying America – as part of some liberal plot to “dilute” America with “not nice people” – is of course a recurring theme in Simpson’s, uh, thinking. For instance, Mexican immigrants are often “child rapists” who are coming to the US because they will ostensibly get off easier in the justice system. Another common topic is of course voter fraud, something that Simpson is very concerned about, based on little evidence beyond what his paranoid imagination can dream up: In a 2014 rant, for instance, Simpson argued that voter fraud is a massive, “existential threat to our American Republic,” but the only “proof” of voter fraud happening he managed to list was college students voting in the state where they attend school, which is legal (not counting his references to Kris Kobach’s infamously dishonest and silly voter roll “crosscheck” system, which was carefully designed to yield false positives that weren’t controlled for). Of course, in Simpson’s mind, campaigns to replace the electoral college with a national popular vote and efforts to restore felons’ right to vote also count as conscious efforts to increase voter fraud. So there is that. “Democrats’ attitude toward voter fraud is the voting version of reparations for slavery,” complained Simpson.
Simpson thinks boycotts of companies by people he disagrees with are “economic terrorism”; it’s different when his side engages in boycotts, of course, since his side only engages in boycotts when they “are attacked first”.
Diagnosis: Yes, he is a fairly typical specimen, but that doesn’t make the delusional, paranoid garbage that passes for thought in Simpson’s head any less garbage. And people do listen to him, it seems.

Sherry Shriner

Oh, heavens.
The rabbit hole is a fascinating place, but the webs of lunacy are often woven according to logics so foreign to any rational mind, that unravelling the ideas going into them is tricky. For instance, the National Economic Security and Recovery Act (NESARA) was a set of proposed economic reforms suggested during the 1990s by one Harvey Francis Barnard, who printed 1000 copies of his proposal titled “Draining the Swamp: Monetary and Fiscal Policy Reform” (note that first part) and sent copies to members of Congress, believing it would pass quickly on its merits. It didn’t. Instead the ideas, unbeknownst to Barnard, took on life as a cult-like conspiracy theory promoted by Shaini Candace Goodwin, a.k.a. “Dove of Oneness”, a former student of The Ramtha School Of Enlightenment and “cybercult queen”, who claimed, contrary to all fact and reason, that the act was actually passed with additional provisions as the National Economic Security and Reformation Act, and then suppressed by the Bush administration and the Supreme Court, who orchestrated e.g. the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War as distractions from NESARA. Goodwin has managed to recruit a number of drone-like followers, including real, physical groups of people at least in Utah and the Netherlands, who pass out fliers and organize weirdly incomprehensible public protests. Sheldan Nidle is one of the followers, and has added his own mix of UFOs and prophecies into the conspiracy. Another active promoter of NESARA is one Jennifer Lee has, who has produced reports on how various otherworldly and “interdimensional” beings are helping behind the scenes to get NESARA announced.
But these loons are not the topic for the present entry. And Sherry Shriner, who is, is not a NESARA cultist. Shriner, who apparently thinks of herself as an Internet evangelist (“Servant, Prophet, Ambassador, Daughter, and Messenger of the Most High God”), does indeed take NESARA seriously, but instead of joining the cult she sees NESARA as a conspiracy run by malevolent reptiloid aliens she feels have been controlling the U.S. Government for a long time. I suppose it is best to just quote a section from one of her many websites, nesarasucks (hyperlinks in the quote are removed and replaced by ours): “BEWARE Of The Deceiver Maitreya & Sananda Esu Immanuel!! See Maitreya’s involvement with the H1N1 Vaccine and RFID Bracelets … Mass Chip Implantation and Murder See the Bible Codes at [hyperlinks removed]. He’s an evil, wicked, liar who wants to destroy mankind. Wake up People!!! The Lies of the 5th Dimension & The Coming Lies of Maitreya – Who is now being replaced by Sananda! Why? Because Maitreya was destroyed by our Orgone! Sananda has been stood up to replace him! NESARA is the economic and political program of the Antichrist. Known as the National Economic Security And Reformation Act it is better described as a National Evil Snake, Annunaki (and) Reptilian Association or simply,Neo-logical Excrement Spread Artfully Round America.” And so on. “Once these Reptiles and Lizards are in control they will ratify parts 2&3 of NESARA that nullify part 1 and begin their own agenda of cannibalism and murdering the inhabitants of America,” proclaims Shriner. Readers may imagine the color schemes and font variations in the original for themselves.
Shriner, though, promotes lots of other stuff, too, including prophecies about crashing starships and upcoming locust invasions, angels, Planet X, FEMA concentration camps, the “New Age Alien Agenda”, Jesus – not the fake Jesus promoted by the church, but the real one – and “her ancient grandfather King David” (there are apparently zombies, too, involved in the conspiracy). There is, unsurprisingly, a lot of stuff on Zionism as well (“The Talmud and the New World Order”). Apparently, her side is winning, though: “Governments in Terror over Twin Sun’s Arrival – The Twin Sun has arrived into our atmosphere and the aliens and evil beings are in TERROR! They’re all in a panic folks because it signals their coming demise!!” You haven’t noticed that “The Second Sun – The Second Sun is Here”? Well, that is because “[t]hey are trying to hide it with volcanic ashes and extreme clouding.”
Of course, we cannot do the range and depth of Shriner’s ideas any justice here. But it isn’t all innocuous, silly nonsense. Shriner actually drew some media attention to herself in 2017, when a former follower of hers, Barbara Rogers, shot and killed her boyfriend after Shriner warned said boyfriend that Rogers was a “Vampire Witch Reptilian Super Soldier” who would do him harm. A recurring feature of Shriner’s teachings is that the evil forces that manifest in or take over humans can only be discovered through minute details in their appearances and interests, so her followers should be wary and careful around friends, colleagues and family members (we suspect that becoming a follower of Shriner will quickly limit the number of people in the first two categories). In the case of Rogers, it was apparently a picture of Rogers enjoying beef tartare that set off Shriner’s alarm clocks. The subsequent murder of course only confirmed Shriner’s suggestions: “When the demon manifested in her, if it was the demon or a lizard, if she had both, a human’s no match for that kind of supernatural strength,” said Shriner, and she wondered whether Rogers was “triggered” to kill her boyfriend after watching a movie in the Resident Evil series with him; Shriner said that the movie is based on a female “super soldier,” whom she knows. Resident Evil is not based on someone Shriner knows.
Shriner’s website offers extensive information on Orgone blasters that will ostensibly kill zombies and evil beings, and keep away aliens and demons. We are sure that there will be few zombies and demons around after you deploy an orgone blaster. Shriner has raised more than $125,000 in a GoFundMe campaign to deploy the blasters.
Diagnosis: At least she is pushing at the limits of hysterical gibberish, but it is only harmless nonsense until someone gets hurt. She should have received the help she needs a long time ago.

Coronavirus: The seven types of people who start and spread viral misinformation
May 4, 2020
by Marianna Spring
BBC News
Conspiracy theories, misinformation and speculation about coronavirus have flooded social media. But who starts these rumours? And who spreads them?
We’ve investigated hundreds of misleading stories during the pandemic. It’s given us an idea about who is behind misinformation – and what motivates them. Here are seven types of people who start and spread falsehoods:
Joker:
You’d hope no-one was fooled by a WhatsApp voice note claiming the government was cooking a giant lasagne in Wembley stadium to feed Londoners. But some people didn’t get the joke.
To take a slightly more serious example, a prankster created a screenshot of a fake government text that claimed the recipient had been fined for leaving the house too many times. He thought it would be funny to scare people breaking lockdown rules.
After encouraging his followers to share it on Instagram, it found its way to local Facebook groups, where it was posted by worried residents, some of whom took it seriously.
“I don’t really want to cause panic,” says the prankster, who wouldn’t give us his real name. “But if they believe a screenshot on social media, they really need to sort of re-evaluate the way they consume information on the internet.”
Scammer:
Other fake texts claiming to be from the government or local councils have been generated by scammers looking to make money from the pandemic.
One such scam investigated by fact-checking charity Full Fact in March claimed that the government was offering people relief payments and asked for bank details.
Photos of the scam text were shared on Facebook. Since it circulated by text message, it’s difficult to get to the bottom of who was behind them.
Scammers started using fake news about the virus to make money as early as February, with emails suggesting people could “click for a coronavirus cure review” or suggesting they were entitled to a tax refund because of the outbreak.
Politician:
Misinformation doesn’t just come from dark corners of the internet.
Last week President Donald Trump questioned whether exposing patients’ bodies to UV light or injecting bleach could help treat the coronavirus. He was speculating and took facts out of context.
He later claimed the comments were sarcastic. But that didn’t stop people from phoning hotlines to ask about treating themselves with disinfectant.
It’s not just the US President. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman promoted the idea that Covid-19 might have been brought to Wuhan by the US Army. Conspiracy theories about the outbreak have been discussed in prime time on Russian state TV, and by pro-Kremlin Twitter accounts.
Conspiracy theorist:
All the uncertainty about the virus has created a perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
A false story of murky origins claiming the first volunteer to take part in a UK vaccine trial had died circulated in big anti-vaccination and conspiracy Facebook groups. It was fiction.
Interviews with David Icke on YouTube, which have since been removed, also peddled false claims that 5G is linked to coronavirus. Mr Icke also appeared on a London TV station, which was found to have breached the UK’s broadcasting standards. His Facebook page was later taken down, the company said, for publishing “health misinformation that could cause physical harm”.
Insider:
Sometimes misinformation seems to come from a trustworthy source – a doctor, professor or hospital worker.
But often the “insider” is nothing of the sort.
A woman from Crawley in West Sussex was the originator of a panicky voice note predicting dire – and completely unsubstantiated – death tolls for young and healthy coronavirus sufferers. She claimed to have inside information through her work at an ambulance service.
Ambulance worker virus voice message ‘not correct’
She did not respond to requests for comment or provide proof of her job, so we don’t know whether she actually is a health worker. But we do know that the claims in her voice note were unfounded.
Relative:
That alarming voice note and many others went viral because they worried people, who then shared the messages with friends and family.
That includes Danielle Baker, a mum of four from Essex, who forwarded a note on Facebook messenger “just in case it was true”.
“At first I was a bit wary because it was sent from a lady that I didn’t know,” she says. “I forwarded it on because myself and my sister have babies the same age and also have older children, and we all have high risk in our households.”
They’re trying to be helpful and they think they’re doing something positive. But, of course, that doesn’t make the messages they pass along true.
Celebirity:
It’s not just your mum or uncle. Celebrities have helped amplified misleading claims go mainstream.
The singer M.I.A. and actor Woody Harrelson are among those who have been promoting the 5G coronavirus theory to their hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
A recent report by the Reuters Institute found that celebrities play a key role in spreading misinformation online.
Some have huge platforms on traditional media as well. Eamonn Holmes was criticised for appearing to give some credence to the 5G conspiracy theorists on ITV This Morning.
“What I don’t accept is mainstream media immediately slapping that down as not true when they don’t know it’s not true,” he said.
Mr Holmes later apologised and Ofcom “issued guidance” to ITV, deeming the comments “ill-judged”.

Coronavirus: How bad information goes viral
There’s a huge amount of misleading information circulating online about coronavirus – from dodgy health tips to speculation about government plans. This is the story of how one post went viral.
It’s a list of tips and advice – some true, some benign, and some possibly harmful – which has been circulating on Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and elsewhere.
Dubbed the “Uncle with master’s degree” post because of the alleged source of the information, it’s hopped from the Facebook profile of an 84-year-old British man to the Instagram account of a Ghanaian TV presenter, through Facebook groups for Indian Catholics to coronavirus-specific forums, WhatsApp groups, and Twitter accounts.
At first glance it seems legitimate because the information is attributed to a trusted source: a doctor, an institution, or that well-educated “uncle”.
Poster Zero
The earliest version that we could find was posted by a Facebook user on 7 February. It was shared in a group called Happy People, with nearly 2,000 members.
The post read: “My classmate’s uncle and nephew, graduated with a master’s degree, and work in Shenzhen Hospital. He is being transferred to study Wuhan pneumonia virus. He just called me and told me to tell my friends…”
The tips that follow are misleading or wrong. One says that you don’t have the virus “if you have a runny nose”.
According to fact checking organisations Full Fact and Snopes, citing health authorities including the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and The Lancet medical journal, a runny nose is uncommon – but it’s not unheard of among coronavirus patients.
The post also encourages people to “drink more hot water” and “Try not to drink ice”. There’s currently no medical evidence that either of those things will help prevent or cure coronavirus.
“That has no support,” says Alex Kasprak of Snopes. “It’s wild to see that in there, it’s a big red flag.”
We attempted to contact the person who posted the information; she did not respond.