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WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: Archaeologists map complete Roman city without lifting a shovel.

WELL, YES: “The American collegiate system, Thiel, his staff, and his fellows unanimously affirm, has become a giant scam, transforming potential innovators into subservient drones; indoctrinating the disrupters of tomorrow into Marxist myths of resentment; and using the social-justice buzzwords of class privilege and structural oppression to crush the spirit.”

BlackLivesMatter.com appears to be an international money laundering scheme used by the Democrats to raise money from an international audience.

The post EXCLUSIVE: Donations, Including International Funding, to BlackLivesMatter.com Go Directly to the DNC – This Is Money Laundering appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

The post Norwegian Scientist Claims to Have Proof Coronavirus Was Created in Lab appeared first on The Bongino Report.

TRUST THE EXPERTS. They know the science.

NPR ADVISES READERS TO ’DECOLONIZE” THEIR BOOKSHELVES BY REMOVING WHITE AUTHORS:

NPR suggests that “decolonizing your bookshelf” is about “about actively resisting and casting aside the colonialist ideas of narrative, storytelling, and literature that have pervaded the American psyche for so long.”

They posit:

If you are white, take a moment to examine your bookshelf. What do you see? What books and authors have you allowed to influence your worldview, and how you process the issues of racism and prejudice toward the disenfranchised? Have you considered that, if you identify as white and read only the work of white authors, you are in some ways listening to an extension of your own voice on repeat? While the details and depth of experience may differ, white voices have dominated what has been considered canon for eons.

Curiously though, I doubt NPR wants to replace John Maynard Keynes with Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell, or Pauline Kael with Armond White. In any case, as Ray Bradbury wrote in the introduction to the 50th anniversary edition of Fahrenheit 451, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches.”

WAIT, ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE INFORMED ME THAT THIS WAS LAUGHABLY IMPOSSIBLE: Russia Developing Coronavirus Treatment That Disinfects the Body With UV Light From Inside.

ON THE UPSIDE, THE REPORT GENERATED HEADLINES AND FUD AT THE EXPENSE OF AN INEXPENSIVE, GENERIC, OFF-PATENT TREATMENT FOR A WIDELY FEARED DISEASE: A mysterious company’s coronavirus papers in top medical journals may be unraveling.

On its face, it was a major finding: Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly. A study published on 22 May in The Lancet used hospital records procured by a little-known data analytics company called Surgisphere to conclude that coronavirus patients taking chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine were more likely to show an irregular heart rhythm—a known side effect thought to be rare—and were more likely to die in the hospital.

Within days, some large randomized trials of the drugs—the type that might prove or disprove the retrospective study’s analysis—screeched to a halt. Solidarity, the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) megatrial of potential COVID-19 treatments, paused recruitment into its hydroxychloroquine arm, for example.

But just as quickly, the Lancet results have begun to unravel—and Surgisphere, which provided patient data for two other high-profile COVID-19 papers, has come under withering online scrutiny from researchers and amateur sleuths. They have pointed out many red flags in the Lancet paper, including the astonishing number of patients involved and details about their demographics and prescribed dosing that seem implausible. “It began to stretch and stretch and stretch credulity,” says Nicholas White, a malaria researcher at Mahidol University in Bangkok.

Today, The Lancet issued an Expression of Concern (EOC) saying “important scientific questions have been raised about data” in the paper and noting that “an independent audit of the provenance and validity of the data has been commissioned by the authors not affiliated with Surgisphere and is ongoing, with results expected very shortly.”

Plus:

Meanwhile, the questions swirling around the Lancet paper have left leaders of the halted chloroquine trials weighing whether to restart. “The problem is, we are left with all the damage that has been done,” says White, a co-investigator on a trial of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 prevention that was halted at the request of U.K. regulators last week. Headlines proclaiming deadly effects will make it hard to recruit patients to key studies, he says. “The whole world thinks now that these drugs are poisonous.”

Mission accomplished. But whose mission?

Related: Surgisphere and their data.

Meanwhile, from a new Indian study on HCQ prophylaxis in health care workers: “Consumption of four or more maintenance doses of HCQ was associated with a significant decline in the odds of getting infected.”

AWFUL: Independent autopsy finds George Floyd died of asphyxia.

The Ohio Investigative Unit, a plainclothes division of the Ohio Highway Patrol, says it will be policing the state's bars and restaurants making sure that customers aren't violating social distancing rules or playing pool or video games, which is banned under a state health order. They will be joined in their efforts by officers from other agencies.

China is crushing Hong Kong. A new national security law and a crackdown on dissident activists are just the latest steps in the dismantling of "one country, two systems," the framework that was supposed to guarantee the freedoms that made Hong Kong a thriving global city.

As the world watches, Britain looks on with an especially keen sense of responsibility.

When the British handed Hong Kong to China in 1997, Chris Patten, the colony's last governor, said: "Hong Kong people are to run Hong Kong. That is the promise. That is the unshakable destiny." The clampdown suggests otherwise. As China reneges on its agreement with Britain, the U.K. clearly failed in its duty to safeguard Hongkongers' freedom.

In an encouraging sign that it has not forgotten its obligations to the city, the British government has now opened up a route to citizenship for nearly 3 million Hong Kong residents.

Before the handover, Hong Kong residents were able to register for special passports, called British national (overseas) passports, giving them a limited set of rights, including the ability to visit the U.K. for six months.

On Thursday, U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab announced that, unless Beijing reversed the new security law, these passport holders would be able to come to Britain for an initial 12-month period that could be extended to "provide a pathway to future citizenship." The option initially seemed to be available only to the 350,000 Hongkongers who currently hold such passports. A day later, the government made clear it was proposing something far more radical: a path to full British citizenship for the nearly three million Hong Kong residents who were born before 1997 and thus were eligible to apply for the passports.

By allowing Hongkongers to vote with their feet, Britain isn't just offering a new home to the wealth creators of a city more prosperous than Beijing or Shanghai. It's fighting totalitarianism with freedom. The move makes no British claims over Hong Kong. Unlike economic sanctions, which often do the most damage to those they are designed to help, the offer of citizenship would materially improve the choices available to those in Hong Kong. And the revealed preferences of hundreds of thousands of Hongkongers offered a freer life in Britain would be more powerful than even the slickest state-backed propaganda touting the merits of the Chinese model.

No wonder China is furious. Beijing said it would "resolutely oppose" the move and threatened "appropriate countermeasures."

Beyond the geopolitical consequences, the domestic implications for the U.K. could be sweeping. A paper published by the Adam Smith Institute last year cites the precedent of the nearly 30,000 British passport holders of South Asian descent who Idi Amin expelled from Uganda in the 1970s. Those arrivals have been one of Britain's most socially and economically successful immigrant cohorts. The same would surely be true of the potentially far larger group of arrivals from Hong Kong, a dynamic place with strong cultural ties to Britain.

Coming shortly after Britain's departure from the European Union, this offer is also a reminder that Brexit needn't mean the U.K. will turn inwards. As it finds a new place for itself in the world, sticking up for freedom in Hong Kong—the place where the sun finally set on the British Empire—seems like a good place to start.

The post Independent Autopsy Confirms George Floyd’s Death Was Caused by Asphyxia From Sustained Pressure appeared first on The Bongino Report.

QUALIFIED IMMUNITY: Police act like laws don’t apply to them because of ‘qualified immunity.’ They’re right.

If qualified immunity exists at all — and it shouldn’t — it should be by statute. Instead it’s a doctrine that judges literally made up out of thin air because they thought it was a good idea.

THE EXPERTS AT WHO WEIGH IN: Healthy people should wear masks only if caring for coronavirus patients, WHO says.

SCIENCE:

Plus:

UGH: All China’s Lies And the Sad Death of Hong Kong.

OUT ON A LIMB: Is there such a thing as a left-wing authoritarian? Authoritarianism is a trait generally thought to belong to those on the right, but a new study claims the personality type can also be found on the left.

Prominent leaders of National and International Socialist movements say that’s un-possible.  

HISTORY: Lessons From Operation ‘Denver,’ the KGB’s Massive AIDS Disinformation Campaign. “Historian Douglas Selvage sheds light on a conspiracy theory that reverberates to this day.”

In September 1985, the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB) informed other Warsaw Pact foreign intelligence agencies that it had launched a new, major disinformation campaign. “We are carrying out a complex of [active] measures in connection with the appearance in recent years of a new dangerous disease in the USA known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome).” The KGB explained that “the goal of the measures is to create a favorable opinion for us abroad — namely, that this disease is the result of secret experiments by the USA’s secret services and the Pentagon with new types of biological weapons that have spun out of control.” Most likely, the KGB had initiated the disinformation campaign as early as 1983, but the September 1985 document — obtained by Christopher Nehring from the former Bulgarian State Security archive — is the earliest conclusive evidence that has turned up so far.

This is a fascinating read, and Communist China’s similar propaganda effort on the Wuhan Virus just goes to show that commies never change.

An oddly specific “mistake”!

The post YouTube Admits to Automatically Deleting Comments That Insult China’s Communist Party “by Mistake” appeared first on The Bongino Report.

MICHIGAN DAM OWNER FOUGHT WITH STATE OVER LAKE LEVELS BEFORE FLOOD:

Boyce Hydro, which has been criticized for failing to keep the Edenville Dam in compliance with federal regulations, said it sympathizes with those affected by the flood but defended its actions in the weeks and months before record rainfall caused the dam to fail.

In April, Boyce and the state sued each other in state and federal court over the company’s attempts to lower Wixom Lake, an impoundment reservoir that the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) says is home to endangered freshwater mussels that were killed by drawdowns in 2018 and 2019.

Boyce says it asked EGLE for permission to lower Wixom Lake last fall “due to concern for the safety of its operators and the downstream community.” EGLE and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources denied the request. Boyce lowered the lake without approval in mid-November “believing its safety concerns were paramount.”

Boyce sued the state on April 29 in Grand Rapids federal court, arguing the state lacks scientific validation for its endangered species concerns and should allow the drawdowns.

Gov. Whitmer: If it saves just one mussel, it’s worth it.

I HAD BEEN ASSURED BY THE SMARTEST BESTEST PEOPLE THAT THIS KIND OF THING NEVER HAPPENED: Philadelphia Election Official Pleads Guilty To Stuffing Ballots In Return For Bribes.

WELL, GOOD: Good News, We Can Activate The Cells That Keep Our Muscles From Wasting Away After 30.

THREE FEET SOUNDS A LOT BETTER: There’s little “science” behind the six-foot social-distancing rule.  A U.K. expert says that the country’s two-meter rule is based on “very fragile evidence” and is probably excessive. Sweden, Norway, Austria and Finland are getting by with one-meter distancing, which makes it much easier for restaurants and other businesses to reopen.

ILYA SHAPIRO: Broad Lockdowns Are No Longer Constitutionally Justified.

States have the “police power” to govern for the general health, welfare and safety of society, so long as they have sufficient justification for doing so. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no limit on the actions that state and local officials can take, or that actions that were justified at one point will continue to be justified forever, regardless of underlying developments.

In other words, it’s prudent in a pandemic to restrict activities that would otherwise bring people together in a way that facilitates viral transmission, but it doesn’t mean governors get to “shut down” anything and everything on a whim. Recall that viral video of the guy running along the beach in California, chased by a hapless cop. Or that dad who got arrested for playing catch with his kids in a public park. Or mayoral edicts that stop drive-in church but permit drive-thru liquor sales. Or the Michigan order banning motorboats but not sailboats; the sale of seeds but not weed. . . .

As the facts on the ground change, government actions that once were grudgingly accepted now simply don’t pass the constitutional smell test. That’s especially so given the fundamental error that was made in ordering shutdowns based on arbitrary definitions of “essentiality,” as opposed to issuing rules according to the safety of various activities.

Yes.

The post China Looks to Take Full Control of Hong Kong appeared first on The Bongino Report.

The post Study From Korean CDC Finds Covid Patients Testing Positive after Recovery Are No Longer Infectious appeared first on The Bongino Report.

WELL, CNN. The COVID ‘Spike’ in Reopened Texas: CNN Gets It Wrong.

On Sunday CNN ran a segment on the spread of COVID-19 in Texas. The news channel promoted it with the jarring tweet “Texas is seeing the highest number of new coronavirus cases and deaths just two weeks after it officially reopened.” The segment spotlighted 1,448 new cases and 58 new deaths, and noted the increased movement of people in the state according to cellphone data, illustrating that the public was increasingly out and about.

While technically true, this information is horribly misleading, and to the extent CNN is trying to establish a causal connection between Texas’ reopening and the increase in coronavirus diagnoses and deaths in the Lone Star State, it is simply wrong. It is so wrong that it is difficult to give the benefit of the doubt here.

Read the whole thing. Really shameful fearmongering on CNN’s part, assuming anyone there is capable of it.

Exit Question: How long has it been since a serious person gave the benefit of any doubt to CNN?