90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, November 26, 2018

The Escalating Assault on Citizen Journalism

In December 1997, after the FBI arrested independent journalist James Sanders for investigating the destruction of TWA Flight 800, not a single reporter at a post-arraignment press conference managed to frame even one First Amendment question.

In fact, the Newsday reporter argued the government’s case, insisting the Justice Department found insufficient evidence to declare Sanders a journalist. The fact that Sanders had already written two successful investigatory books did not count. By challenging the media’s defense of a Democratic administration, Sanders all but sacrificed his First Amendment rights.

At the time of Sanders’s arrest roughly 40 percent of America was using the Internet. Within 20 years that figure would approach 90 percent. The Internet was the great equalizer. It enabled citizen journalists to report stories that the major media underreported or failed to report at all. As the reach of the Internet grew, the apprehension of the progressive establishment grew along with it. Sanders’s conviction on a bogus conspiracy charge was a sign of payback to come.

Here I use the phrase “progressive establishment” broadly to include any institution, private or public, which works to mute the voice of independent conservative journalists. In Sanders’s case, the active institution was the FBI aided and abetted by the mainstream media.

This past week, the progressive establishment attempted to silence two more independents. In the first case, Twitter and Facebook conspired to deny the audacious 25-year-old journalist Laura Loomer her rapidly growing audience. In the second, Special Counsel Robert Mueller lowered the boom on Jerome Corsi, a 72-year-old Harvard Ph.D.

An all too typical headline this week from ABC News -- “Conspiracy theorist becomes key figure as Mueller builds case” -- delegitimizes Corsi even before the article begins.

Corsi is not a journalist; he is a “conspiracy theorist.” The media are not opposed to conspiracy theorizing in general -- Michael Moore did win an Oscar -- but rather to theorizing that has the potential to harm the progressive establishment.

Corsi is said to be cutting a deal with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. According to ABC, Mueller and pals believe that “Corsi may have had advance knowledge that the email account of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, had been hacked and that WikiLeaks had obtained a trove of damning emails from it.”

Even if true, it is not at all clear why a journalist should have his career destroyed because of his “advance knowledge” of anything. If Corsi worked for ABC, the media would be howling in unison as they did upon the...

Illegal Immigration and the Threat of Infectious Disease

Active, Neglected Nodulous Lepromatous

Leprosy Lesions on Face

There's a growing health concern over illegal immigrants bringing infectious diseases into the United States. Approximately 500,000 legal immigrants and 80,000 refugees come to the United States each year, and an additional 700,000 illegal immigrants enter annually, and three-quarters of these illegal immigrants come from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

Legal immigrants and refugees are required to have a medical examination for migration to the United States, while they are still overseas. This is the responsibility of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which provide instructions to the Panel Physicians who conduct the medical exams. The procedure consists of a physical examination, an evaluation (skin test/chest x-ray examination) for tuberculosis (TB), and blood test for syphilis. Requirements for vaccination are based on recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

Individuals who fail the exam due to certain health-related conditions are not admitted to the United States. Such conditions include drug addiction or communicable diseases of public health significance such as TB, syphilis, gonorrhoea, leprosy, and a changing list of current threats such as polio, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, or severe acute respiratory syndromes. Illegal immigrants crossing into the United States could bring any of these threats, however. Southern Texas Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera warns: "What's coming over into the US could harm everyone. We are starting to see scabies, chicken pox, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections, and different viruses."

Illegal immigration may expose Americans to diseases that have been virtually eradicated, but are highly contagious, as in the case of TB. This disease rose by 20% globally from 1985 to 1991, and was declared a worldwide emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1995. Furthermore, TB frequently occurs in connection with the human immunodeficiency virus. Fortunately, more than 90% of Central Americans are vaccinated against TB, according to the WHO.

The federal government's Department of Homeland Security has public health controls in place to minimize any possible health risks, including medical units at the busiest border stations and measures to protect Customs and Border Protection including gloves, long-sleeve shirts, and frequent hand washing. In addition, the CDC’s Division of Global Migration and Quarantine has measures in place to protect the population from...

France: Migrant child rapist walks free despite second victim

The migrant was acquitted for the rape of a high school girl and lightly sentenced for the sexual assault of another minor. The verdict was handed down on November 21, 2018, in Normandy.

The prosecutor had demanded six years in prison for the crime, but the respondent was acquitted of rape and received only a suspended sentence fof two years for the sexual assault on his first victim.

The verdict was announced on Wednesday in the trial of the 21-year-old Bangladeshi who had been accused of rape and sexual assault of two high school girls in Saint-Lô (Manche) at the end of 2015.

The perpetrator will be registered in the sex offender file, but walked away as a free man from the Coutances courthouse.

The counsel for the defense pleaded that “difficulties of interpretation” exist which, according to her, are the common thread of these cases.

The “difficulty of interpretation” her client experienced were because he “did not have the cultural codes” to realise that he had imposed a sexual relationship based on fear and surprise, she argued.

She added that the “difficulty of interpretation” for the victim was that she saw the rapists’ advances as a “threat and therefore a constraint”. The “difficulty of interpretation” for the investigators were that that they “did not know how to measure the dismay of the victim”.

In his the statement after the verdict, Judge Jean-François Villette was careful to clarify that “the decision of the court is not a questioning of the sincerity” of the complainant. Incredulously, the court found that the accused “was not aware of sexual intercourse” with the minor, despite detailed testimony.

The respondent is a refugee from Bangladesh living at the home of young workers in Saint-Lô.

The first assault took place on September 29, 2015. The accused, aged 18 at the time of the incident, went for a walk with a 16-year-old girl who attended the same high school. He then invited the girl to his room where he assaulted her. The girl managed to flee and reported the assault.

Once in custody, respondent claimed that the girl had consented to sex. The complainant attempted suicide in late 2015, and she was hospitalized for a week. On this first day of the trial, she was absent at the hearing.

A second complaint

On December 10, 2015, the accused met a 15-year-old girl on a street in ...

Is The Deep State Feeling The Heat?

Bad as it may have been, the worst of the Russia Hoax was not the abuse of the FISA electronic surveillance regime for political purposes. Nor is the worst even the patent involvement of our intelligence agencies -- and in particular the FBI and CIA -- in electoral politics. No, the worst aspect of the Russia Hoax is that our intelligence agencies, including elements of DoJ and the State Department cooperating with the Clinton campaign, enlisted the intelligence services of foreign powers -- first in their effort to defeat the candidacy of Donald Trump and, when that effort failed, turning their efforts to what can only be described as an attempted coup against the elected President of the United States.

Shockingly, these later stages of the Russia Hoax have included members of the Legislative Branch who, in the face of clear evidence that the true collusion with foreign powers was that of the Clinton campaign, have worked to delay and to ultimately obstruct Congressional oversight and investigation of the entire Russia Hoax.

So, faced with this determined stonewalling of Congressional oversight by DoJ and the FBI, the President played what has always been his trump card: he ordered the declassification of most of the documents that are central to the Russia Hoax. Led by DAG Rosenstein, the forces of the Deep State were able to delay the release of the documents, but President Trump made it clear that he favors declassification -- and sooner, rather than later.

Three weeks later, an uneasy stalemate persists. DoJ and Team Mueller have claimed that release of the documents would constitute "obstruction" -- a patently bogus claim, but Trump has extracted the resignation of Jeff Sessions and his replacement with Matthew Whitaker as the Acting AG, who also replaces Rosenstein as the supervisor of Team Mueller. The anti-Trump forces are currently attempting to stymie Trump's latest move with attacks on the Whitaker appointment, while declassification hangs fire. And Democrats, newly empowered by their capture of the House, are threatening to tie Trump up with investigations of his finances, on the pretext of the Russia Hoax.

Nevertheless, there is evidence that the Deep State forces of both the US and the UK are feeling Trump's pressure. The Daily Telegraph, in a surprisingly little remarked-upon article, informed the world that MI6 is battling Donald Trump to stop him from releasing documents linked to the "Russia probe."

The article itself is an interesting mix of special pleading and disinformation, clearly reflecting the views and interests of the British and US Deep State. Perhaps it's a measure of Deep State alarm at the threat of declassification that the article coyly offers a glimpse of what we all know to be true--that the British were deeply involved in the Russia Hoax almost from the start--while attempting to maintain deniability with transparent euphemisms. For example, we read that:

The UK is warning that the US president would undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers.

However Trump allies are fighting back, demanding transparency and asking why Britain would oppose the move unless it had something to hide.

Yes, well, that's a very good question, isn't it? Exactly why are the British concerned about the release of an FBI application for FISA coverage against a US citizen? What could possibly be the British angle concerning such a purely US matter? Unless ... the British really do have something to hide. And who would they be hiding it from? Everyone who's anyone already has a very good idea of what could be revealed. The only people being kept in the dark are the British and American public.

And this goes on throughout the article. The Telegraph, we are told, has spoken to "more than a dozen" officials, "including in American intelligence." And those officials tell us, through the Telegraph, that the British spy chiefs have "genuine concern" that Trump could expose "sources" if he releases the FISA application. "Sources"? As in super-secret technical capabilities? No. Sources as in "It boils down to the exposure of people," as a "US intelligence official" helpfully explained.

But if release of the documents would expose sources, i.e., "people," doesn't that mean there are people to be exposed? And why do the British care about this American concern -- unless those "people" are connected to...

HONG KONG - A Chinese researcher claims that he helped make the world's first genetically edited babies - twin girls whose DNA he said he altered with a powerful new tool capable of rewriting the very blueprint of life.

If true, it would be a profound leap of science and ethics.

A U.S. scientist said he took part in the work in China, but this kind of gene editing is banned in the United States because the DNA changes can pass to future generations and it risks harming other genes.

Many mainstream scientists think it's too unsafe to try, and some denounced the Chinese report as human experimentation.

The researcher, He Jiankui of Shenzhen, said he altered embryos for seven couples during fertility treatments, with one pregnancy resulting thus far. He said his goal was not to cure or prevent an inherited disease, but to try to bestow a trait that few people naturally have - an ability to resist possible future infection with HIV, the AIDS virus.

He said the parents involved declined to be identified or interviewed, and he would not say where they live or where the work was done.

There is no independent confirmation of He's claim, and it has not been published in a journal, where it would be vetted by other experts. He revealed it Monday in Hong Kong to one of the organizers of an international conference on gene editing that is set to begin Tuesday, and earlier in exclusive interviews with The Associated Press.

"I feel a strong responsibility that it's not just to make a first, but also make it an example," He told the AP. "Society will decide what to do next" in terms of allowing or forbidding such science.

Some scientists were astounded to hear of the claim and strongly condemned it.

It's "unconscionable ... an experiment on human beings that is not morally or ethically defensible," said Dr. Kiran Musunuru, a University of Pennsylvania gene editing expert and editor of a genetics journal.

"This is far too premature," said Dr. Eric Topol, who heads the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California. "We're dealing with the operating instructions of a human being. It's a big deal."

However, one famed geneticist, Harvard University's George Church, defended attempting gene editing for HIV, which he called "a major and growing public health threat."

"I think this is justifiable," Church said of that goal.

In recent years scientists have discovered a relatively easy way to edit genes, the strands of DNA that govern the body. The tool, called CRISPR-cas9, makes it possible to operate on DNA to supply a needed gene or disable one that's causing problems.

It's only recently been tried in adults to treat deadly diseases, and the changes are confined to that person. Editing sperm, eggs or embryos is different - the changes can be inherited. In the U.S., it's not allowed except for lab research. China outlaws human cloning but not specifically gene editing.

He Jiankui (HEH JEE'-an-qway), who goes by "JK," studied at Rice and Stanford universities in the U.S. before returning to his homeland to open a lab at Southern University of Science and Technology of China in Shenzhen, where he also has two genetics companies.

The U.S. scientist who worked with him on this project after He returned to China was physics and bioengineering professor Michael Deem, who was his adviser at Rice in Houston. Deem also holds what he called "a small stake" in - and is on the scientific advisory boards of - He's two companies.

The Chinese researcher said he practiced editing mice, monkey and human embryos in the lab for several years and has applied for patents on...

WHOOPS!: Mexico to deport migrants who stormed U.S. border on Sunday

Whoops.

Mexico is reportedly set to deport up to 500 of the migrants who stormed the U.S. border today and attacked Border Patrol agents with rocks:

Via Mexican media:

Translation: “The National Institute of Migration will act and proceed to the immediate deportation of people” who participated in these altercations, said...