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https://nypost.com/2023/02/27/10-myths-t...-debunked/

Quote:10 myths told by COVID experts — and now debunked
By
Marty Makary
February 27, 2023 9:50pm
Updated



More On: Coronavirus

• China cryptically warns Musk about sharing posts on COVID lab leak theory
  
• FBI chief confirms agency’s belief COVID came from Chinese lab leak
  
• Biden is not a king — if he wants to pay student loans, he needs Congress
  
• Fauci has an ‘open mind’ on COVID lab leak?! Let’s rewind the tape
  

In the past few weeks, a series of analyses published by highly respected researchers have exposed a truth about public health officials during COVID:
Much of the time, they were wrong.
To be clear, public health officials were not wrong for making recommendations based on what was known at the time.
That’s understandable. You go with the data you have.
No, they were wrong because they refused to change their directives in the face of new evidence.
When a study did not support their policies, they dismissed it and censored opposing opinions.
At the same time, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention weaponized research itself by putting out its own flawed studies in its own non-peer-reviewed medical journal, MMWR.
In the final analysis, public health officials actively propagated misinformation that ruined lives and forever damaged public trust in the medical profession.
Here are 10 ways they misled Americans:
Misinformation #1: [b]Natural immunity offers little protection compared to vaccinated immunity[/b]
A Lancet study looked at 65 major studies in 19 countries on natural immunity. The researchers concluded that natural immunity was at least as effective as the primary COVID vaccine series.
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Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle.AP/Nathan Papes
In fact, the scientific data was there all along — from 160 studies, despite the findings of these studies violating Facebook’s “misinformation” policy.
Since the Athenian plague of 430 BC, it has been observed that those who recovered after infection were protected against severe disease if reinfected.
That was also the observation of nearly every practicing physician during the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic.
Most Americans who were fired for not having the COVID vaccine already had antibodies that effectively neutralized the virus, but they were antibodies that the government did not recognize.
Misinformation #2: Masks prevent COVID transmission
Cochran Reviews are considered the most authoritative and independent assessment of the evidence in medicine.
And one published last month by a highly respected Oxford research team found that masks had no significant impact on COVID transmission.
When asked about this definitive review, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky downplayed it, arguing that it was flawed because it focused on randomized controlled studies.
A study recently found that masks didn’t have much of an effect on preventing COVID-19 transmission.Jeenah Moon/Pool via REUTERS
But that was the greatest strength of the review! Randomized studies are considered the gold standard of medical evidence.
If all the energy used by public health officials to mask toddlers could have been channeled to reduce child obesity by encouraging outdoor activities, we would be better off.
Misinformation #3: School closures reduce COVID transmission
The CDC ignored the European experience of keeping schools open, most without mask mandates.
Transmission rates were no different, evidenced by studies conducted in Spain and Sweden.
Misinformation #4: [b]Myocarditis from the vaccine is less common than from the infection[/b]
Public health officials downplayed concerns about vaccine-induced myocarditis — or inflammation of the heart muscle.
They cited poorly designed studies that under-captured complication rates.
A flurry of well-designed studies said the opposite.
We now know that myocarditis is six to 28 times more common after the COVID vaccine than after the infection among 16- to 24-year-old males.
Tens of thousands of children likely got myocarditis, mostly subclinical, from a COVID vaccine they did not need because they were entirely healthy or because they already had COVID.
Misinformation #5: Young people benefit from a vaccine booster
Boosters reduced hospitalizations in older, high-risk Americans.
But the evidence was never there that they lower COVID mortality in young, healthy people.
That’s probably why the CDC chose not to publish its data on hospitalization rates among boosted Americans under 50, when it published the same rates for those over 50.
Ultimately, White House pressure to recommend boosters for all was so intense that the FDA’s two top vaccine experts left the agency in protest, writing scathing articles on how the data did not support boosters for young people.
President Biden pushed extreme policies to attempt to get every American vaccinated.Christopher Sadowski
Misinformation #6: Vaccine mandates increased vaccination rates
President Biden and other officials demanded that unvaccinated workers, regardless of their risk or natural immunity, be fired.
They demanded that soldiers be dishonorably discharged and nurses be laid off in the middle of a staffing crisis.
The mandate was based on the theory that vaccination reduced transmission rates — a notion later proven to be false.
But after the broad recognition that vaccination does not reduce transmission, the mandates persisted, and still do to this day.
A recent study from George Mason University details how vaccine mandates in nine major US cities had no impact on vaccination rates.
They also had no impact on COVID transmission rates.
Misinformation #7: COVID originating from the Wuhan lab is a conspiracy theory
Google admitted to suppressing searches of “lab leak” during the pandemic.
Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, claimed (and still does) he didn’t believe the virus came from a lab.
Ultimately, overwhelming circumstantial evidence points to a lab leak origin — the same origin suggested to Dr. Anthony Fauci by two very prominent virologists in a January 2020 meeting he assembled at the beginning of the pandemic.
According to documents obtained by Bret Baier of Fox News, they told Fauci and Collins that the virus may have been manipulated and originated in the lab, but then suddenly changed their tune in public comments days after meeting with the NIH officials.
The virologists were later awarded nearly $9 million from Fauci’s agency.
The theory that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese lab in Wuhan proved to be true.HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP via Getty Images
Misinformation #8: It was important to get [b]the second vaccine dose three or four weeks after the first dose[/b]
Data were clear in the spring of 2021, just months after the vaccine rollout, that spacing the vaccine out by three months reduces complication rates and increases immunity.
Spacing out vaccines would have also saved more lives when Americans were rationing a limited vaccine supply at the height of the epidemic.
Misinformation #9: Data on the bivalent vaccine is ‘crystal clear’
Dr. Ashish Jha famously said this, despite the bivalent vaccine being approved using data from eight mice.
To date, there has never been a randomized controlled trial of the bivalent vaccine.
In my opinion, the data are crystal clear that young people should not get the bivalent vaccine.
It would have also spared many children myocarditis.
Misinformation #10: One in five people get long COVID
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that 20% of COVID infections can result in long COVID.
But a UK study found that only 3% of COVID patients had residual symptoms lasting 12 weeks. What explains the disparity?
It’s often normal to experience mild fatigue or weakness for weeks after being sick and inactive and not eating well.
Calling these cases long COVID is the medicalization of ordinary life.
[url=https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/02/NYPICHPDPICT000006996961.jpg] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claims that 20% of COVID infections can result in long COVID, but other studies say differently. MediaNews Group via Getty Images
What’s most amazing about all the misinformation conveyed by CDC and public health officials is that there have been no apologies for holding on to their recommendations for so long after the data became apparent that they were dead wrong.
Public health officials said “you must” when the correct answer should have been “we’re not sure.”
Early on, in the absence of good data, public health officials chose a path of stern paternalism.
Today, they are in denial of a mountain of strong studies showing that they were wrong.

From the "How could this end up anywhere good?" files:

Quote:US Military Signs Contract to Put Facial Recognition on Drones

Operators will use the tech on small drones to help them with intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, and identifying targets.

The United States is set to deploy facial recognition technology on drones. The tech, called SAFR, is owned by the company RealNetworks. According to a contract between RealNetworks and the U.S. Air Force, the facial recognition software will be used on small drones as part of special operations missions.

The Air Force paid RealNetworks $729,056 for SAFR. “Through this effort, we will adapt the SAFR facial recognition platform for deployment on an autonomous [small unmanned aircraft system] for special ops, [intelligence, surveillance, and target acquisition] , and other expeditionary use-cases,” the contract said. “This will require integrating the SAFR software with the hardware and software stack of the [small drones], including its onboard compute, communications systems, and remote controller software to enable operation in [disconnected, intermittent, and limited] communications settings, support actionable insight for remote human operators, and open the opportunity for real-time autonomous response by the robot.”

The small drones of the U.S. military are typically not armed. Small UAVs like the RQ-11B Raven are often hand launched by soldiers in the field and used for reconnaissance. This contract does not describe putting facial recognition software on large Predator and Reaper drones that will make decisions about who to assassinate in a war zone. The contract describes a use-case where teams of special operations soldiers use the facial recognition technology on smaller reconnaissance drones during operations in foreign countries.

But the contract did describe a world where sUAS will be used by America’s operators for intelligence and target acquisition. It’s possible this software will be used to identify targets, it’s just that a different human—or machine—will be pulling the trigger. Larger drones identify targets through a combination of high powered cameras and cell phone tracking. They make mistakes all the time.

For years, privacy advocates have been worried about the pairing of facial recognition technology with drone technology. For the most part, the cameras and sensors used for facial recognition have not been of a resolution high enough to work on drones that fly high above people. This contract suggests the technology has improved to a point where that is no longer true.

At a glance, it sounds like using facial recognition software would help the people who operate drones make fewer mistakes. But facial recognition software is also famously faulty and prone to errors, and deploying facial recognition is a step on the path toward fully autonomous drones.

By now you have heard the Covid Lab leak theory is being pushed once again.


NY Times (archived)

I'll tell ya what is a conspiracy theory...that whole damn story. The "Energy Dept."? Say wut?!






17 Labs in 17 Minutes



This is a bit odd. The Dept of Energy's much-ballyhooed determination that Covid likely leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab is significantly based on the analysis of their "Z-Division." But Z-Division had already made that same assessment all the way back in May 2020.

Quote:Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on covid-19 origins (WaPo, February 27, 2023)

Small shift in favor of ‘lab leak’ theory was prompted by new data and group of weapons-lab scientists

An analysis by experts from the U.S. national laboratory complex — including members of a storied team known as Z-Division — prompted the Energy Department to change its view earlier this year about the likely cause of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak, the officials said. Though initially undecided about covid-19’s origins, Energy officials concluded as part of a new government-wide intelligence assessment that a lab accident was most likely the triggering event for the world’s worst pandemic in a century.

“The bottom line remains the same: Basically no one really knows,” one of the officials said.

“‘Lab’ does not equal ‘man-made,’ the official said. “Even if it was a leak from a lab, they still think it would be a naturally occurring virus.”
Among the nine intelligence entities involved in the assessment, only the FBI had previously concluded, with “moderate” confidence, that covid-19 started with a lab accident. The Energy Department was the only agency that changed its view, while the CIA and one other agency remained undecided, lacking enough compelling evidence to support one conclusion over the other, officials said.

The labs were established as part of the U.S. nuclear weapons program and operate largely in the classified realm. The department’s cadre of technical experts includes members of the Energy Department’s Z-Division, which since the 1960s has been involved in secretive investigations of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threats by U.S. adversaries, including China and Russia.

Quote:EXCLUSIVE: Classified study found COVID-19 could have originated in Chinese lab (May 3, 2021)

A classified study of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 conducted a year ago by scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Department of Energy’s premier biodefense research institution, concluded the novel coronavirus at the heart of the current pandemic may have originated in a laboratory in China, Sinclair has learned.

Researchers at Livermore’s “Z Division,” the lab’s intelligence unit, issued the report May 27, 2020, classified “Top Secret.” Its existence is previously undisclosed. The Z Division report assessed that both the lab-origin theory and the zoonotic theory were plausible and warranted further investigation. Sinclair has not reviewed the report but confirmed its contents through interviews with multiple sources who read it or were briefed on its contents.
...
Asked about the Z Division report, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), ranking member on the House foreign affairs committee, declined to comment on classified material but emphasized the need for further study. “From what I have seen and read, you absolutely cannot dismiss the notion that the WIV lab is a potential source of the virus,” McCaul said in a statement to Sinclair. “And if you listen to the leaders in the previous and current administrations, they have said exactly the same thing.”

Quote:People familiar with the study said that it was prepared by Lawrence Livermore’s “Z Division,” which is its intelligence arm. Lawrence Livermore has considerable expertise on biological issues. Its assessment drew on genomic analysis of the SARS-COV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, they said.

U.S. Report Found It Plausible Covid-19 Leaked From Wuhan Lab (WSJ, June 8, 2021)

Make sure you have your "Rense" hat on, this one advances a speculative scenario. The gist of the story is in the larger font size.

Quote:Chemical Weaponry Destined For Ukraine Ignited In East Palestine Train Wreck

By Yoichi Shimatsu
Exclusive To Rense
2-21-23

In a recent radio conversation, Jeff Rense and I discussed some of the inexplicable anomalies related to the night-time train derailment of chemical-laden tankers at East Palestine, Ohio, which left a slew of questions but very few clear answers. Following the Rense program, I contacted an acquaintance in eastern Ohio, “K.T.”, who fortunately was tracking the local news and independent citizens’ reports online. K.T. disclosed the many inconsistencies in the official cover-up by the Norfolk Southern rail company, the Ohio governor’s office and the EPA, indicators of a panicked cover-up ordered by Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, under pressure from the Democrat-led EPA and the Biden White House.

The bipartisan shunning of the fears of regional residents, along with the heavy-handed mainstream media cover-up, indicated that the train derailment involves a national security issue and official secrets. This analytical article, aided by citizen reporting from the Ohio-Penn border region, exposes in detail the reasons for an illegal unregistered nighttime shipment of chemical weapons precursors as the cause of the near-explosive overheating of tanker cars and the use of an elongated burn pit from whence that ominous column of black smoke arose from the toxic flames.

The Chemistry of Disaster

In this chemistry-based analysis, the findings on the ground suppressed under orders from higher-ups, are examined for the most telling incontrovertible evidence: the chemistry regarding the liquid cargo of the five suspect tanker cars, the contents of which were set afire under government orders in a hastily dug trench. Contrary to official denials and disinformation about their chemical content, the actual payload was disclosed by the EPA detection of phosgene in that black cloud over East Palestine. Phosgene was infamously used for chlorine warfare aka “mustard gas” in France and Belgium during the First World War. Since it is not a byproduct of vinyl chloride (which contains only one chloride molecule, the actual precursor inside those tankers was a more dangerous chemical bonded with double the amount of chloride, just like phosgene.

The questions hereby raised are: Why were five tanker cars filled with a volatile chemical weapon precursor being transported toward the Eastern seaboard? What was the final destination of this chemical payload? Was the chemical cargo to be deployed for military use during warfare in blatant violation of the international treaty banning chemical weapons? Which battle zone was targeted for the massive chemical warfare attack?

The use of chemical weapons is a gross contravention of international law, a crime against humanity. The principle suspects in this genocide case are President Joe Biden, VP Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, CIA chief William Burns and their underlings security advisor Jake Sullivan, Transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, EPA chief Michael Regan and other lackeys of the warmongering regime.



Fact Checkers aka Official Falsehood

The mainstream media disclaimers and those denials known as “fact-checkers”, aka apologists for the intelligence agencies, politicians “in the know” and the war industry, have only added “fuel to the flames” of their own exposure and removal. (Most of their hasty claims of factually about the train wreck have proven to be exaggerated or plain wrong.) To spare their own derrieres from the boot, the high-level political felons have been downplaying the near-apocalyptic risks of open-air disposal by toxic chemical burning at East Palestine, a township of 1,300 households without any political clout or sufficient financial resources to pursue their lawsuit to achieve justice.

The actual chemical composition of that liquid cargo was misidentified in a criminal cover-up, obviously for reasons of a planned covert military and intelligence operation in blatant violation of international Chemical Weapons Treaty against the manufacture, storage, deployment and use of lethal chemicals in warfare or domestic turmoil. There is sufficient evidence even at this early stage for those gas-targeted nations (in a false flag operation), including Poland, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, to initiate a case at The Hague War Crimes Tribunal against the Biden administration for planned crimes against humanity with scheduled deployment of a banned chemical weapon in a false-flag operation.

Given the political limitations on NATO alliance member-states, which are forbidden to use or even deploy chem weapons on a stand-by basis, the only possible reason for transporting that large amount of poison gas, approximately 17,000 gallons, in an eastward direction toward a military test-range and on to an Atlantic port was to perpetrate a false flag operation against an enemy state(s) and, in this particular case, against a “victimized allied nation”, Ukraine. Given the present morass in Eastern Europe, the last card in the CIA’s deck is to fake a “Russian” chemical attack against Ukrainians and, more pointedly, targeting Poland for the precise purpose of inciting the NATO alliance to declare all-out war against Russia and Belarus, thereby precipitating World War III. Obviously, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, a certifiable warmongering madman, was neck-deep in this idiotic plot.

Tellingly, President Joe Biden has since made a secretive visit to Kyiv, two weeks after the East Palestine disaster, which seriously dented his surprise war plans, to confer with Volodymyr Zelensky, another conspirator who was visibly disappointed to hear “the bad news” of termination of the poison-gas attacks. Biden rode the 10-hour train to Kyiv to mourn the demise of NATO’s clandestine plot to ride to Ukraine’s rescue. Since no tears were shed for East Palestine, I won’t be crying for war criminal Zelensky or his overlord Joe Biden. We can only be thankful, to some hidden force, that nobody was immediately killed in East Palestine, though the health threat will linger for many months, and maybe years from now.



Liquid Cargo from Dow’s Toxic Waste Site

The source of the cargo in Madison, Illinois, was a shut-down uranium-rod production facility of the infamous Dow Chemical company (of Agent Orange notoriety), more recently operating under the cover name of Spectrulite. Since the mid-1990s, the radioactive site, located across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, has been under a “clean-up” (toxic containment) effort by the EPA, which has resisted designating the huge mess as a permanent hazardous waste dump. The chlorine-based compound inside the five suspect tanker cars was falsely described by the EPA and Norfolk Rail as “vinyl chloride”, a rather innocuous substance, in a cover-up of the actual content of highly volatile vinylidene chloride. The latter, a powerful oxidizing agent also known as 1,1 Dichloroethene, was used by Dow to clean uranium fuel rods at the Madison facility, where it has since been stored in steel holding tanks.

The logical question that rears up is: Where was that lethal cargo going to be delivered? The Norfolk Southern destination was just across the state line in Conway, Pennsylvania, located in Beaver County adjoining East Palestine’s Columbiana County. But that was not the end of journey. The Conway Rail Yard, operated by Norfolk Southern for more than a century, is a massive switching facility, the largest in the USA until the 1980s. Conway adjoins the Ohio River, and therefore has no major chemical plant or waste-disposal facility to accept tankers with a 30,000 gallon capacity. Therefore, it is safe to conclude the suspect five tankers along with several other chemical haulers were at the rear of the train for the purpose of decoupling and route transfer toward a completely different direction from the boxcars filled with foodstuffs from the upper Mississippi region heading to warehouses near major eastern cities.

Deadly Destination

Since the Madison (Illinois) site was a large-scale EPA holding center in an elbow of the Mississippi shoreline, it would have made zero sense to move the sensitive cargo hundreds of miles to a densely populated region located a mere 25 miles from Pittsburgh, which is not a center of the chemicals industry. Nowadays hazardous chemical plants are located by the sea, in event of major spillage, mostly along the Gulf Coast. There are no alternative narratives other than the obvious “usual suspects”.

Thus, the unmarked toxic tanker cars were obviously bound for the Edgewood Chemical Weapons Arsenal, located on the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, fronting Chesapeake Bay north of Baltimore, Maryland. For those Pollyannas who still believe the great Joe Biden can do no wrong, I hereby lay out the probable planned route of the second leg of the train journey: resuming the journey from the Conway train yard through Pittsburgh, then onto Altoona and the Harrisburg junction, from where the toxic train takes a brief northerly dog leg and resuming the easterly movement along the Maryland tracks toward Baltimore, and then a leftward split-off onto a secondary track to Aberdeen at the northern Chesapeake shore. Any further questions or objections?

On arrival at the Edgewood facility, the vinylidene chloride payload is readily weaponized into pure chlorine or far likelier “less lethal” phosgene for injection into canisters, for attachment to bombs and artillery shells. The tactical objective is to fell Polish civilians, not render them dead in less than an hour, although many will surely die from poisoned lung tissue in sufficient number to muster a NATO declaration of war against Russia and Belarus. This sort of secret use of phosgene is illegal under U.S. law and the international Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) ratified by 53 nations, including the United States, in 1963. A defacto ban on CW has existed since the end of World War I. Joe and Volodomyr, what in hell were you two crazy fools planning? Now let’s be done with the legal formalities for your war crimes trials and just swallow the cyanide capsules as if they are jelly beans.



Kill the Poles, Blame Moscow

The sole explanation for this blatant and secretive violation of global governance is quite typical of the many illegal international black-ops that have involved Joe Biden, the main sponsor of NATO-US military aid to the rogue Zelensky regime in Ukraine.A mysterious chlorine gas attack in western Ukraine and against NATO-allied Poland, with televised CNN-BBC-ABC scenes of chemical burns inflicted on thousands of Polish citizens in their pastoral homeland would absolutely invoke NATO war authorization on grounds of protecting allied civilians from illegal gas attacks by launching an all-out bombing campaign and ground invasion of Crimea, the Donetsk region and Russia itself, basically starting World War III.

Similar provocations to justify intervention were cooked up by Bill Clinton and Tony Blair to invade and dismember the Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999-2000. The sinister plot behind a false flag op to gas “expendable” civilians in Poland and Ukraine is all for political self-aggrandizement of that doddering imbecile Biden, who belongs in a psychiatric asylum. Who else could be in on the plot, not mentioned earlier? That murderous pervert Adam Schiff, First Lady Mrs. Zelensky, and of course that mental misfit of a NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, killer clowns all.

The Boring Part: Chemistry

OK, I realize that the vast majority of sensible humans dread chemistry class. As part of the Sputnik catch-up with the Soviets generation, I embraced organic chemistry in college as the magic wand that would save humankind from self-destruction. My dream of a world without suffering was naive, indeed folly. So please put up with this “blackboard lecture” for a few minutes to comprehend the hidden danger in those five tanker cars, and then go out to your favorite bar or cocktail lounge to wash away the horrifying thoughts.

The giveaway leaving no doubts was the midair detection of phosgene in the black cloud over the rail-side burn pit. Its formula is COCl2, translated as C for carbon, O oxygen, and CL-2 being two chlorine molecules. Its name is derived from Greek words for light and birth, as it was first synthesized by exposing carbon monoxide to strong sunlight giving birth to a weird yellowish compound that smells like fresh-mowed hay. The bizzare name of the Dow successor company Spectrulite is inspired by the eerie yellowish glow of Vinylidene chloride and phosgene when heated. On contact with humans and animals, it burns the eyes, ears and nostrils, inflicting unbearable pain and horrific scars.

The French deployed phosgene during trench warfare in World War I, resulting in the deaths of 85,000 German, English, American and French soldiers; the Imperial Japanese Army used phosgene to decimate China’s civilian population in the 1930s, to the dismay of the European powers. In these well-documented footsteps, Joe Biden and his sidekick Zelensky aimed to use this banned toxin against Ukrainians, Western military volunteers and Polish farmers to justify their madcap campaign to depose Putin.

The detection of phosgene in the black cloud of smoke over the East Palestine burn pit indicates the chemical content of the five mysterious tanker cars was not vinyl chloride as falsely claimed by Spectrulite-Dow, Norforlk Southern andthe EPA but actually comprised the more volatile vinylidene dicloride (CH2=CCl), a molecule containing carbon © and two chlorine particles (CL, the latter lower case L not to be confused for the numeral 1). The carbon element increases volatility/flammability during exposure to heat (as occurred due to the friction of toppled steel tankers sliding over gravel).

The disproportionate mass of the chlorine particle, as compared with the lighter elements, enables it to breaking free of its bonds. The atomic weight of chlorine is 35.45 or three times that of carbon at 12, and hydrogen at a mere 1.0. The imbalance in atomic weight means that volatile chlorine can break loose from its micro-electromagnetic bonds to become a free-ranging radical, generating heat of explosive power during inter-molecular collisions, especially when agitated. The capture of oxygen component from the air, during the final step of self-synthesis of phosgene, results in intense oxidation, aka burning, as seen at East Palestine’s infamous trench.

Since I trained in college to become a lab chemist rather than a chemistry teacher, I hope this simple-as-possible description shows the reader how the violent flames and towering black smoke were generated, along the potential harmful effects for any humans or animals that ingest the fumes (some 3,500 wild animals reportedly were killed, and many local residents suffered “painful smoke inhalation” aka chemical poisoning from the Norfork-EPA pit burn). OK, class over, let’s switch over to my personal recollections triggered by the Norfolk Southern catastrophe.



Prior Experience with Government Abuse of Chemistry

It should be noted here that the author was enrolled in the then world-leading organic chemistry program at Purdue University. My studies were interrupted, along with fellow undergraduates, by the gunshot assassination of our professor in his Ferrari convertible. A genius who was the youngest-ever dean in that field and was awarded dozens of patents, he served as a consulting scientist for Eli Lilly. I along with seven others refused to continue on that career path despite a guaranteed 20-year career track with the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical company. It was 30 years later that The New York Times released a brief article based on government-released documents that Eli Lilly back then was involved in producing and testing LSD for the CIA’s MK-ULTRA assassin program. That clarified the”mystery” behind the honorable professor’s murder, which remains under a cloak of secrecy with suppression of all information about that heinous crime of state.

The only virtue that arose from that heinous assassination gone unpunished is my gaining an understanding of the absolute necessity of vigilance and determination not to be deterred by lies, threats, exhaustion and the abuse of science, so that justice can be served. East Palestine cannot be ignored or relegated to a hazardous waste site as was done at so many toxic areas. The American people must fight back against authoritarian secret government(s) and expose their crimes against humanity, and do whatever possible to bring the felons on their knees or on their backs to justice. While much more research was dug up in this extensive search of sources and information related to the East Palestine crash, let me conclude for now with the following assurance of my personal liking of that mid-state region along the East Coast.

The Cry of a Bird

As turkey buzzards swirled in the rising gusts over northern Virginia, I leaped over steep gaps between towering limestone peaks to arrive at the farthest stony platform for a sweeping view of the heavily forested Cumberland Gap. This was during a stopover on a cross-country journey during the first half of lockdown. The long valley hidden under dense foliage far below has served as the ancient pathway for coastal Atlantic Indians carrying seashells inland for the wampum-bead trade, the common currency before the arrival of English silver and Spanish coin and the minting of the first U.S. dollar. The trace left by their moccasins became the rutted dirt highway through the barrier of the Appalachian chain for countless wagons towed by mules and oxen taking European settlers to Kentucky and beyond on the ever-westward push to the distant Pacific shore. From my sky-high perch under the vault of a cloudless sky, the only indicator of a human presence in the bow valley was the hoot of an unseen locomotive passing under the treetops that swayed and then stood still.

As postulated in relativity theory, one is either aboard the moving train or otherwise on some distant hill picking up a faint perception of its existence in passing. The rider inside a passenger cabin has the immediate experience of movement, whereas the distant observer identifies the train’s passing only in relation to the larger environment, the Cumberland Gap or an East Palestine. This same rule of distance affects how one makes sense of the train crash at a small town in eastern Ohio, near the state line with Pennsylvania. There is no way to palpably relive or recall that night of the crash, yet nevertheless it is possible for a distant observer to perceive aspects of that event within the coordinates of a larger context of the surrounding space, here meaning the political and economic-geography along the train’s tanker cars’ planned route from its starting point to the secret destination before shipment to Ukraine. Unlike uncertainty factors regarding a comet at vast distance in outer space, our perception is aided by the fact that a train travels with certainty on a specific steel track, at least until it’s derailed, which at least points in the direction toward the planed next leg of its grim journey of mass murder.

There were no human observers at the East Palestine crash at 8:55 p.m. on Friday, February 3, the only “witness” being a security camera at a trackside home, which recorded what appears to be a malfunctioning wheel of a box car closer than farther behind the locomotive. Once again, the false god of technology has turned on humankind, by clever exploitation of weaknesses. My opinion is that, for political reasons behind a cover-up, the “Environmental Protection” Agency is treating local residents like the human guinea pigs as done by TEPCO at the Fukushima reactor site, “to study the effects of chlorine poisoning on human subjects.”

Yes, let’s closely observe, for the advancement of science, what chemicals and radioactivity do to the human body and mind. This obnoxious bureaucratic attitude must be opposed, crushed and thereby discouraged, and so I encourage neighboring communities to demand total clean-up of their town(s) of hazardous trace materials or, failing that, organize permanent evacuation of East Palestine residents to the safety of affordable public-subsidized new homes away from the accidental gas-warfare site. Meanwhile, sue the hell out of the corporate crooks and their politician co-conspirators. Good Luck and May God Bless the People of East Palestine! And also its namesake land of Palestine.

Interesting stats on the British tank being sent to Ukraine. Also interesting only 14 are being sent yet some in the British Military are saying that will deplete the British Army's working tank force by 1/3 !

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/no_a...k-america/

Quote:[/url]

[url=https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/02/no_author/the-plan-to-wreck-america/#]
In America, we have an oligarch problem, and it’s much bigger than the oligarch problem that Putin faced when he became president in 2000. The entire West is now in the grips of billionaire elites who have a stranglehold on the media, the political establishment and all of our important institutions. In recent years we have seen these oligarchs expand their influence from markets, finance and trade to politics, social issues and even public health. The impact this group has had on these other areas of interest, has been nothing short of breathtaking. Establishment elites and their media not only stood foursquare behind Russiagate, the Trump impeachment, the BLM riots and the January 6 fiasco, they also had a hand in the Covid hysteria and the host of repressive measures that were imposed in the name of public health. What we’d like to know is to what extent this group is actively involved in the shaping of other events that are aimed at transforming the American Republic into a more authoritarian system?
In other words, are the mandated injections, the forced lockdowns, the aggressive government-implemented censorship, the dubious presidential elections, the burning of food processing plants, the derailing of trains, the attacks on the power grid, the BLM-Antifa riots, the drag queen shows for schoolchildren, the maniacal focus on gender issues, and glitzy public show-trials merely random incidents occurring spontaneously during a period of great social change or are they, in fact, evidence of a stealthily orchestrated operation conducted by agents of the state acting on behalf of their elite benefactors? We already know that the FBI, the DOJ and the intel agencies were directly involved in Russiagate –which was a covert attack on the sitting president of the United States. So, the question is not “whether” these agencies are actively involved in other acts of treachery but, rather, to what extent these acts impact the lives or ordinary Americans, our politics and the country? But before we answer that question, take a look at this quote from from a recent interview by Colonel Douglas MacGregor:
I was reading a document that was authored by George Soros over 10 years ago in which he talks specifically about this all-out war that would ultimately come against Russia because he said this ‘was the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox christian culture with Russian identity at its core. That has to be removed. So I think that the people who are in charge in the west and the people in charge in Washington think they have successfully destroyed the identities of the European and American peoples, that we have no sense of ourselves, our borders are undefended, we present no resistance to the incoming migrants from the developing world who essentially roll over us as though we owe them a living and that our laws do not count. Thus, far I would say that is an accurate evaluation of what we’ve been doing. And I think that’s a great victory for George Soros and the globalists, the anti-nationalists; those who want open borders what they call it an “Open Society” because you end up with nothing, an amorphous mass of people struggling to survive who are reduced to the lowest levels of subsistence … (Soros) even goes so far as to talk about how useful it would be if it was east Europeans whose lives were expended in this process and not west Europeans who simply won’t take the casualties. This is not a minor matter. This is the kind of thinking that is so destructive and so evil, in my judgement, that that’s what we’re really dealing with in our own countries and I think Putin recognizes that.” (Douglas Macgregor – A Huge Offensive”, You Tube;, 11:20 minute)
The reason I transcribed this comment from MacGregor was because it sums up the perceptions of a great many people who see things the same way. It expresses the hatred that globalist billionaires have toward Christians and patriots, both of which they see as obstacles to their goal of a borderless one-world government. MacGregor discusses this phenom in relation to Russia which Soros sees as “the last nationalist state that rests on a foundation of orthodox Christian culture with Russian identity at its core.” But the same rule could be applied to the January 6 protestors, could it not? Isn’t that the real reason the protestors were rounded up and thrown into the Washington gulag. After all, everyone knows there was no “insurrection” nor were there any “white supremacists”. The protestors were locked up because they’re nationalists (patriots) which are the natural enemy of the globalists. The MacGregor quote lays it out in black and white. Elites don’t believe that nationalists can be persuaded by propaganda,. They must be eradicated through incarceration or worse. Isn’t that the underlying message of January 6?
The other underlying message of January 6, is that ordinary people are no longer allowed to challenge the authority of the people in power. Again, political legitimacy in the US has always been determined by elections. What January 6 indicates, is that legitimacy no longer matters. What matters is power, and the person who can have you arrested for questioning his authority, has all the power he needs. Check out this excerpt from a post on Substack by political analyst Kurt Nimmo:
“Klaus Schwab, a student of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, is a mentor to power-hungry and narcissistic sociopaths. The WEF “Great Reset” is designed to turn the world into an impoverished social concentration camp, where destitute serfs “own nothing” and this, in true Orwellian fashion, will set them free…
I challenge people to investigate the WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative. According to the Transnational Institute in the Netherlands, this “initiative” proposes
a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. In other words, by stealth, they are marginalizing a recognized model where we vote in governments who then negotiate treaties which are then ratified by our elected representatives with a model where a self-selected group of ‘stakeholders’ make decisions on our behalf. (Emphasis added.)
In other words, large transnational corporate “stakeholders” will be deciding where you live, what you eat (insects and weeds), how you reproduce (or not reproduce; children produce carbon emissions), and what you can “rent” from them, or not be allowed to rent if you complain about an unelected globalist “economic” cartel driving humanity into serfdom, worldwide poverty, and depopulation.” (“WEF Calls for Destruction of America’s Middle Class“, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics)
What Nimmo is saying is that these billionaire elites are now so powerful, that they can openly say they’re going to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” (ie– representative government”) to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.” If I’m not mistaken, that is a pretty unambiguous declaration of a new form of supra-national government, in which only the billionaire stakeholders have a vote in what policies are implemented. But isn’t that the way things work already? On any number of topics from ESG, to digital currencies, to vaccine passports, to AI, to gain-of-function research, to 15-minute cities, to transhumanism, to war with Russia; the decisions are all being made by a handful of people of whom we know every little and who were never voted into office.
And that brings us back to our original question: How many of these oddball events (in recent years) were conjured up and implemented by agents of the deep state to advance the elitist agenda?
This seem like an impossible question since it’s hard to find a link between these dramatically divers events. For example, what is the link between a Drag Queen Children’s Hour and, let’s say, firebombing a food processing plant in Oklahoma? Or the relentless political exploitation of gender issues and the January 6 public show trials? If there was a connection, we’d see it, right?
Not necessarily, because the link might not have anything to do with the incident itself, but instead, with its impact on the people who experience it. In other words, all of these events could be aimed at generating fear, uncertainty, anxiety, alienation and even terror. Have the intelligence agencies launched such destabilizing operations before?
Indeed, they have, many times. Here’s an excerpt from an article that will help you to see where I’m going with this. It’s from a piece at The Saker titled Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Fascism.” See if you notice any similarities with the way things have been unfolding in America for the last few years:
Yves Guerin-Serac: the Black Ops Grandmaster behind Operation Gladio…. wrote the basic training and propaganda manuals which can be fairly described as the Gladio order of battle.”…
Guerin-Serac was a war hero, agent provocateur, assassin, bomber, intelligence agent, Messianic Catholic, and the intellectual grandmaster behind the ‘Strategy of Tension’ essential to the success of Operation Gladio. Guerin-Serac published via Aginter Press the Gladio manual, including Our Political Activity in what can aptly be described as Gladio’s First Commandment:
“Our belief is that the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures…In our view the first move we should make is to destroy the structure of the democratic state under the cover of Communist and pro-Soviet activities…Moreover, we have people who have infiltrated these groups.”
Guerin-Serac continues:
“Two forms of terrorism can provoke such a situation [breakdown of the state]: blind terrorism (committing massacres indiscriminately which cause a large number of victims), and selective terrorism (eliminate chosen persons)…
This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of ‘communist activities.’ After that, we must intervene at the heart of the military, the juridical power and the church, in order to influence popular opinion, suggest a solution, and clearly demonstrate the weakness of the present legal apparatus. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”
Anarchic random violence was to be the solution to bring about such a state of instability thus allowing for a completely new system, a global authoritarian order. Yves Guerin-Serac, who was an open fascist, would not be the first to use false-flag tactics that were blamed on communists and used to justify more stringent police and military control from the state….” (“Operation Gladio: NATO’s Secret War for International Facism”, The Saker)
Repeat: the first phase of political activity ought to be to create the conditions favoring the installation of chaos in all of the regime’s structures… This destruction of the state must be carried out under the cover of (communist) activities…. Popular opinion must be polarized in such a way, that we are being presented as the only instrument capable of saving the nation.”
In other words, the objective of the operation is to completely disrupt all social relations and interaction, cultivate feelings of uncertainty, polarization and terror, find a group that can be scapegoated for the wide societal collapse, and, then, present yourself (elites) as the best choice for restoring order.


Is this what’s going on?
It’s very possible. It could all be part of a Grand Strategy aimed at “wiping the slate clean” in order to “transition away from intergovernmental decision-making” to a system of “multi-stakeholder governance.”
That could explain why there has been such a vicious and sustained attack on our history, culture, traditions, religious beliefs, monuments, heroes, and founders. They want to replace our idealism with feelings of shame, humiliation and guilt. They want to erase our past, our collective values, our heritage, our commitment to personal freedom, and the very idea of America itself. They want to raze everything to the ground and start over. That is their basic Gameplan writ large.
The destruction of the state is being carried out behind the cover of seemingly random events that are spreading chaos, exacerbating political divisions, increasing the incidents of public mayhem, and clearing the way for a violent restructuring of the government.
They can’t build a new world order until the old one is destroyed.

But, first he gives a history lesson. Full article translated from Russian:

Quote:Points of no return

Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev on the causes of the current geopolitical crisis and the guarantee of preserving the future for the whole world

Last year's anniversary - the 100th anniversary of the formation of the USSR - took place against the backdrop of tectonic processes that originated three decades ago and in 2022 provoked powerful, destructive upheavals. With a metallic roar, the foundations of the world order of the post-Soviet period collapsed, which until recently was considered, if not the best, but still more or less familiar. The international airbags did not work, and now the cracks are going wide and deep into the entire peacekeeping system on the planet.

The reasons for what is happening are looking for in the legacy of a long and relatively new history. After all, what we are seeing now happened more than once - at the moment when another world empire came to the end of its existence.

Let us turn to the events of the relatively recent past, which many of us have witnessed. The beginning of the tragedy that is unfolding today in Ukraine was laid at the end of the last century. Specifically, at the moment when the Soviet Union collapsed. The powerful country for a long time rested on post-war agreements and mutual interests of the participating countries, on bloc confrontation and nuclear missiles, on food supplies to its satellites, on tractors and tanks, on “socialist realism”, although the communist regime lasted much less than the centuries-old Russian empire.

I will not delve into what motives motivated the political leaders, through whose efforts the USSR collapsed so quickly. As in the arguments about who undermined the Soviet Union: the machinations of external enemies, an uncompetitive economy or an arms race. It is likely that his last leader, who left in the year of the centenary of the Union, sincerely believed that he was acting for the benefit of the multinational people of the great state, the head of which he became after the notorious "carriage race." At the same time, the leaders of the union republics cynically cared only about becoming the heads of independent states created on the still smoking remains of a large country. One way or another, then there were Foros and the August coup. And the end of the USSR, which remained for the older generation a beloved Fatherland and a wonderful dream of justice.

The Western world looked down on all this, with an arrogant squint of a winner and a sense of clear superiority. Thinking only about how to satisfy their selfish interests. And by all means continuing to push our country into the abyss to completely eliminate its longtime rival. All the good talk about equal partnership, a brave new world without dividing lines, and other beautiful-hearted rubbish was only a distraction. And they turned out to be just meaningless formulas that masked the perverted designs of our eternal enemies.

The various politicians who took power in the new Russia could not cope with the threat that had arisen. Someone due to thoughtlessness, lack of political culture and experience, and someone - sincerely mistaken in the intentions of our "new friends". Hard times have come: people are rapidly sliding into poverty, and the backbone sectors of the economy, which have fallen under the avalanche of privatization, have fallen into decay. Separatism flourished, hot spots formed inside the country, the Caucasus was on fire.

The then authorities - the presidents of the USSR and the RSFSR Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin - were often credited with the fact that after the death of the "communist monster" they managed to prevent anything resembling a civil war, as after the October 24, 1917 coup. It is both so and not so. The critical mass of discontent could turn into a full-fledged civil confrontation, on the threshold of which we found ourselves in 1993. But at that time no one tried to actively fan the fire of the conflict from abroad, because the Western world was satisfied with a weak, defeated, submissive Russia. All this will begin a little later, in the mid-90s. Yes, and our multinational people then showed wisdom, not allowing to "shake" the country and provoke destructive internal aggression.

The main thing that can be added as a plus to the leadership of the collapsed USSR and the first head of its successor Russia is that they did not make the most terrible mistake: they did not allow its most powerful nuclear potential to be pulled apart on the patchwork quilt newly formed on the site of a great country.

At the cost of incredible efforts, Russia gradually overcame the most difficult times. It forced them to reckon with themselves at the international level, fully paid off their external debt, and took up the restoration of the economy and the social sphere. She returned respect for her armed forces, continued to pursue a policy of nuclear deterrence and did not allow provocations.

But history is relentless. Rome and Constantinople. Arab caliphs and Genghis Khan. The rise and inglorious death of Napoleon. "Sunset" in the colonies of mighty Britain. Europe of Charlemagne. Incas and Persians. Ottoman Empire and Tsarist Russia. On which of these pages you open the volumes of the world chronicle, you will find the same thing. After the heyday of the empire and its golden age, there is a long way to the same final: to disintegration and war or war and disintegration. This is the world law. And so it happened with us, with the USSR, only in a delayed version. The war could have happened earlier, in the 1990s, in the first two decades of the 21st century, but it has flared up now. This development of events is connected with the inexorable and cruel course of world history. A large country dies - a war begins. Sooner or later. The accumulated internal contradictions and resentments are too strong. Dense nationalism, primitive envy and greed arise. And, of course, the strongest catalyst for war after the death of an empire is always the countries around it, which want to further divide the collapsed power. In our case, it was the frostbitten and cynical position of the Western world. The Anglo-Saxon civilization, completely outraged by its impunity, which simply went crazy on the basis of the ideas of exclusivity and fictitious messianism.

Two dates can be considered as points of no return. The first was in the fall of 2008, when the Western world supported Georgia's aggression against the Ossetian people and lifted to the skies the fool, drug addict and adventurer, who was later rejected not only by his own country, but also by a foreign one, where he cowardly fled. The aggressor was then given a quick and firm rebuff.

The second turning point is the spring of 2014, when the people of Crimea expressed their will in a legal referendum, returning forever to their historical homeland. In the Western world, this caused a frenzied, impotent hysteria, which continues to this day. Their convulsions are fueled by cavernous Russophobia and the desire to create a newly-minted Frankenstein in the person of Ukraine - a special “anti-Russia”, about which the president of our country wrote. What else is there to say? Only one thing: the wise predecessors of today's brainless Western politicians said this: Deus quos vult perdere dementat prius - whom God wants to punish, first deprives him of reason. It was this insane hysteria, the obsessive desire to tear apart our country that ultimately led to a special military operation.

History also demonstrates something else: any collapsed empire buries half the world under its ruins, or even more. It seems that those who first destroyed the USSR and now are trying to destroy the Russian Federation do not want to comprehend this. They have delusional illusions that, having sent the Soviet Union to the other world without a single shot, they will be able to bury present-day Russia without significant problems for themselves, throwing the lives of thousands of people involved in the conflict into the furnace. These are extremely dangerous misconceptions. As with the USSR it will not work. If the question of the existence of Russia itself is seriously raised, it will not be decided on the Ukrainian front. And together with the question of the further existence of the entire human civilization. And there should be no ambiguity here. We don't need a world without Russia.

Of course, one could continue to pump weapons into the neo-fascist Kiev regime and block any opportunity to revive negotiations. Our enemies are doing just that, not wanting to understand that their goals obviously lead to a total fiasco. Lose for everyone. collapse. Apocalypse. When the former life will have to be forgotten for centuries, until the smoky blockages cease to emit radiation.

Russia will not allow this. And we are not alone in this endeavor. Western countries with satellites - only 15% of the world's population. There are many more of us, and we are much stronger. The calm power of our great country and the authority of its partners are the key to preserving the future for our entire world.

I think he covers what has been going on for the last several years quite well. An invasion could be broken down into four steps: Infiltration... (the "long march through institutions" is what the Chinese actually call the program)....Collaboration.. buying and enticing useful idiots to sing your song of propaganda ... Destruction...but not in the way you might expect... and finally Subjugation which can take many forms such as silencing dissenting voices.. I do believe most thinking people can see much of what he says is really happening.

Good write-up about the danse macabre of public officials drinking all that dubious water in East Palestine, and elsewhere.

Quote:You’ve seen it before. An industrial disaster poisons a town’s food or water supply. Residents get angry. Public officials try to dispel that anger through a public act of self-sacrifice, of reassurance. They convene a press conference, whereupon some hapless courtier brings forth a chalice of the supposedly poisoned material. And then, in front of God and the television cameras, the public official imbibes.

Examples from recent history abound. In 2019, former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe ate possibly irradiated rice balls from Fukushima to demonstrate the progress made toward rebuilding the prefecture since its 2011 nuclear meltdown. In 2013, former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper claimed he drank fracking fluid to assuage his constituents’ concerns around natural gas drilling. (Not “tasty,” he said.) And, most famous of all, in 2016 Barack Obama took a sip of (filtered) water from the lead-poisoned water supply of Flint, Michigan, to prove it was safe. (“This is not a stunt,” he noted of the stunt.)

Officials are already lining up to drink the forbidden poison issuing from East Palestine, Ohio. When a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed there earlier this month, producing an airborne toxic event of hazardous chemicals, concerns about the water inevitably arose. Enter one Troy Nehls, a Republican congressman from Texas, who became the first intrepid soul through the breach. On February 16, Nehls—who was inexplicably in Ohio, some fourteen hundred miles away from his district—posted a video to Twitter to get word out that the water was safe. To prove it, Nehls slurped it up. This was promptly followed by a video from Ohio lieutenant governor Jon Husted, wherein a group of public officials huddled together and threw back shots of supposed tap water like they were freshman college students out on the town.

But Nehls and Husted were just the undercard features. On February 21, following reports that Norfolk Southern had funded preliminary tests declaring the water totally safe, Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine and a merry caravan, including an EPA official and a congressman, stalked around East Palestine with news cameras, gamely drinking from residents’ taps. (“That’s good,” the EPA official gushed. “That’s really cold coming from the tap.”) The photos and videos from this danse macabre mirrored Husted’s, but on a grander scale—half a dozen people standing around, toasting and clashing cups together like they were at a medieval banquet. If these dizzying trends hold, it’s probably a matter of time before Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, or even President Biden, follows suit.

Years ago, I surveyed the literature looking for a name or term to describe this phenomenon of consuming potentially tainted materials. After all, it seemed to be increasing in frequency, and I’d even started witnessing it at the level of local politics. But if there was a name, I couldn’t find it. So I gave it one: the Devil’s Milkshake.

The Devil’s Milkshake is bipartisan. Neither Democrats nor Republicans hold monopoly on it. Which means it can be multiple things, depending on who wields it. To some, it’s cynical political theater, meant to make the politician look invincible and brave. To others, it can be a genuine—yet transparently phony—attempt at showing solidarity. And to others still, it abets a kind of mass hysteria, in which public officials feel increasingly pressured to outdo each other for attention and admiration.

The Devil’s Milkshake can also be an effective way for a public official to shirk any commitment to doing something about the conditions that gave rise to the disaster in the first place. One time I was at a town hall in Martin County, Kentucky, where the water system has been degraded by years of coal mining, corruption, and neglect. Residents were getting sick, and they’d convened the town hall to demand action from the local government. But instead of committing to any substantive action, one local official ran to the front of the hall and demanded a glass of that sweet local tap, so he could drink it right there on the spot, and thus prove that nothing needed changing. A few awkward minutes passed, wherein the crowd grew uncomfortable with the prospect of witnessing a man poison himself in public. So they talked the official down. To this day, Martin County’s water is still unsafe to drink.

It’s likely the Devil’s Milkshake is a modern phenomenon. After all, medieval rulers used to employ taste testers precisely in order to avoid being poisoned. But historical examples are nonetheless difficult to track down because the phenomenon has been heretofore unnamed. So I’ve had to crowdsource its history. It’s clear, reviewing this data, that public officials have had to tweak, refine, and workshop the spectacle; it developed over time through a process of trial and error.

A PhD student at Indiana University, Justin Hawkins, sent me what is perhaps the earliest historical example. In the 1850s, New York City was in the middle of an adulterated milk scandal. Across the country, thousands of infants were dying every year from milk cut with “swill”—excess mash from nearby distilleries, whitened with plaster and drained of nutrients. Tammany Hall sent an Alderman named Michael Tuomey to investigate. But Tuomey vigorously defended the dairy owners and their milk supply. While visiting one dairy, Tuomey threw back some whiskey with the farmers, concluded the milk was perfectly safe, and slandered anyone who thought otherwise as “prejudice[d].” But, as Hawkins points out, it’s unclear whether or not Tuomey’s stunt was performed before a crowd. This highlights a crucial ingredient in the Devil’s Milkshake formula: for it to be a proper Devil’s Milkshake, it must be performed in public, or at least in front of cameras.

The second criteria of the Devil’s Milkshake is that one must actually go through with it. This example came to me by way of a researcher friend, Jack Norton. It’s the story of New York governor Hugh Carey who, in 1981, volunteered to drink a big glass of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from a contaminated state office building in order “to satisfy the unions” that the building was safe. Carey, however, was warned that doing so might actually make him sick, and so he reportedly did not follow through. He nonetheless displayed a curious willingness to put his body on the line for the sake of scoring political points.

Occasionally, the Devil’s Milkshake can be fobbed off on the inferiors or family members of the elected official trying to harness its powers. To illustrate this, we turn to our cousins across the pond. In 1990, four years after the fatal mad cow disease was discovered in Britain’s beef supply, the nation’s agriculture minister, John Selwymn Gummer, carted his four-year-old daughter before news cameras and tried to feed her an “absolutely delicious” hamburger. Six years later, researchers confirmed humans could be infected with the degenerative neurological disease—and in 2007, the daughter of a Gummer family friend died of it. Perhaps Gummer’s logic was that of a hostage taker: if his audience saw his craven recklessness, they, too, might be willing to put their lives on the line to make beef sales go up.

But perhaps the grimmest example of the Devil’s Milkshake is that of Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and his fisheries minister, Felix Alberto Canal Torres. This story was sent to me by Twitter user @JimmyFalunGong. In 1991, cholera was spreading throughout Peru by way of raw fish, resulting in massive profit losses to the Peruvian fishing industry. In order to get the industry back on its feet, President Fujimori and Minister Torres chowed down on some raw fish live on television, hoping to encourage the public to do the same. Unfortunately, the epidemic wore on for months, eventually killing over three thousand people, and Minister Torres reportedly wound up hospitalized with cholera, no doubt acquired from the raw fish.


The Gummer and Fujimori-Torres debacles show that, from the very beginning, the Devil’s Milkshake was always just that: a deal with the devil. A gamble. One that, if successful, could pay enormous dividends. But, if unsuccessful, could be very embarrassing. Perhaps that’s why nowadays, the Devil’s Milkshake is most likely just a stage trick. When that aide brings out the chalice, whatever’s inside almost certainly isn’t poison. It’s something harmless that is meant to look poisonous. (Someone on Twitter even pointed out that the officials taking shots of East Palestine’s water in lieutenant Governor Husted’s video had neglected to hide their bottle of Smart Water.) Besides, even if President Obama really did drink lead-poisoned water in Flint, his stunt missed the point: prolonged, chronic exposure is what leads to severe impairment, not a single sip. Race, class, and geography are the major determinants of environmental harm. Most people know this, which is why many Flint residents viewed Obama’s theatrics with skepticism.

Yet I would argue that leaders like President Obama are, like the constituents they seek to deceive, fully aware of this structural truth. It’s what makes the Devil’s Milkshake so strange. The stunt seems to be a tacit acknowledgement by the ruling class that they know the general public doesn’t trust them. (Only 19 percent of Americans believe they can trust the government “most of the time.”) Its recent proliferation must be seen as proof of a ruling class desperate to uphold the illusion of democracy. It is the last gasp of a dying order, drinking and eating its way to the grave, restrained or unwilling to fix anything, and thus doomed to play act a fantasy before klieg lights and newscasters. The dizzying amount of Devil’s Milkshake footage issuing from East Palestine only proves their desperation: these people could not be more unlike you. In fact, the only thing you have left in common with them is the fact that they, too, still have to eat food and drink water to stay alive. That’s it. The Devil’s Milkshake is a measure of the gaping chasm between you and them.

The sad thing is that, sometimes, the water or food in question is actually safe to consume. Watersheds can be hard to wrap your head around. A lot of hysterical and paranoid information leeched into the ether following the East Palestine toxic event. People upstream from the Ohio River worried that they, too, were at risk of exposure. Were boil water advisories fifty miles southeast in Pittsburgh related to the derailment—even though local officials said otherwise? Were birds dying in Kentucky because of the crash? All these places probably are under threat, but from other things entirely: chemical plants, microplastics, algae blooms, air pollution, you name it.

The public has by now seen so many of these large-scale pollution events that they well understand no one will be held accountable; that the clean-up will be, at best, half-assed; and that we’re just going to bide our time until the next one occurs. (Indeed, in the weeks since the East Palestine incident, a commercial tanker truck full of chemicals crashed outside Tucson, killing the driver and releasing a plume of nitric acid into the air; a train derailed in Texas, killing one; another train carrying coal derailed in Nebraska; and on and on.) People, naturally, have lost trust in their leaders to keep them safe. No amount of poisonous water consumed by governors, congressmen, or EPA officials will restore that trust.

This is why the Devil’s Milkshake is ultimately an insult to your intelligence. The point isn’t to give you actionable information about what’s going on. If it was, public officials would just do that, instead of histrionically parading around in front of the cameras to show off the sacrifice they’re making. Nor is the point to rebuild trust in institutions. After all, these figures could just fix the problems, and make our natural and infrastructural environments responsive to crises and safe to navigate.

No, the point of the Devil’s Milkshake is to arrest further complaint. To recycle anger back into “acceptable” forms of discourse and mechanisms of accountability. To move on, forget it ever happened. It’s almost as if, through this act of symbolic consumption, a public official telegraphs their willingness to die for corporate America’s sins. That, because they’re willing to literally metabolize the issue, it’s been addressed, processed, and fixed.

The problem with this is that no one ever forgets. People remember it all. Not just the fear and terror of seeing a black pillar of smoke towering over their community. Not just the health scares and medical bills, the family members and friends and pets dying before their time. Not just the agonizing mystery of it all, of wondering which recent toxic event is responsible for their debilitating sickness, or if they’re crazy for even having that thought.

They’ll also remember the most terrifying, mind-bending thing of all: that their leaders sacrificed them at the almighty altar of profit, and then mocked them for daring to question it. They’ll wake up in the middle of the night, their minds retracing the choreographed ritual of power known as the Devil’s Milkshake, their gleeful leaders sending up veritable toasts to the fact they were getting away with it all. And this remembering brings on a final realization: that the next time may be even worse.

Quote:Gun-Toting Wing of IRS Wants to ‘Put the Fear of God in People’: Ex-Agent

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters building in Washington, on Mar. 8, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

By Tom Ozimek
February 21, 2023Updated: February 22, 2023
biggersmaller
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0:007:54


As the Internal Revenue Service seeks to bolster the ranks of its weapon-carrying Criminal Investigation unit, a former special agent described the inner workings of the division and said its key function is “to put the fear of God in people” and intimidate Americans into tax compliance.
Former IRS Special Agent Robert Nordlander told Accounting Today, in a wide-ranging interview published on Feb. 20, that while most Americans have a sense of what IRS tax audits look like, the work of the IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) unit is shrouded in some mystery.
Dubbed “gun-toters,” the armed special agents in the unit are responsible for enforcing those parts of tax code whose violations amount to crimes, he said. “When crimes are committed, the IRS-CI are the ones that actually enforce” the law, Nordlander said.
The IRS-CI examines potential criminal activity related to tax crimes and makes recommendations for prosecution to the tax division of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
There are now around 2,100 “gun-toters” in the criminal investigations division, and the IRS—flush with funds from a new cash injection—is looking to hire more special agents.
Carissa Cutrell, a public affairs officer at IRS-CI, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the unit is hoping to hire between 300 and 350 special agents this year.
In the mid-1990s, the unit had around 3,500 special agents and Cutrell said they lose between 150 and 175 agents each year due to retirement and attrition.
‘Army of 87,000’ Tax Enforcers?
The idea of an “army of 87,000” new tax enforcement agents surged into the spotlight and became an internet meme after Republicans warned that the $80 billion in new IRS funding under the Inflation Reduction Act would squeeze ordinary Americans for “every last penny.”
“87,000 more IRS enforcers would make the IRS bigger than the Pentagon, the State Department, and Border Patrol COMBINED,” Republican National Committee (RNC) chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a tweet last summer, when the Inflation Reduction Act was passed and the IRS funding boost hit headlines.
President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, former IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, and others have pushed back on such framing of the funding boost. They’ve insisted the money would be used to increase collections from high-earners and help with customer service, while Americans earning less than $400,000 wouldn’t face increased scrutiny from the agency.
Indeed, Yellen insisted that due to improved technology and customer service, people making less than $400,000 “will actually see a lower likelihood of audit.”
IRS officials have also said that whatever portion of the money would go toward new hires wouldn’t just be for tax enforcers.
Terry Lemons, IRS communications and liaison chief, said in an email that the new funding would be used to hire people across various departments. “In reality, the proposal would hire a variety of people across the agency to support not only enforcement but taxpayer service and technology improvements.”
Only part of the new funding will go to hire more special agents for the IRS-CI unit.
Deadly Force
Some have questioned why IRS agents would need to carry firearms at all.
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for example, on Aug. 4, 2022, led a segment on his show by expressing concern that the government is “treating the IRS as a military agency” and is “stockpiling” ammunition.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) also raised the question of whether IRS agents need to be armed, while pointing to a 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) showing that the IRS-CI had some 2,500 rounds of ammo per armed agent.
The IRS-CI itself says agents might need to respond to “life-threatening situations” on the job, be willing and able to participate in “dangerous assignments” and protect themselves and others from physical attacks, and be willing to use “deadly force.”
And while the NRA said it’s not “difficult to be cynical about all of these new, and possibly armed, IRS agents” given Biden’s anti-gun rhetoric, the gun lobby group conceded that a “segment of the IRS does need to be armed,” given that, historically, tax laws have been used to prosecute drug traffickers and other criminals and the work of IRS-CI agents can be dangerous.
Nordlander, a former IRS-CI special agent, said agents need to carry weapons because they never know what hazards lurk behind closed doors when executing warrants.
“You don’t know if the guy is a drug dealer that happens to just file false tax returns,” he said, recalling a case where someone arrested for tax crimes ended up also being wanted for armed robbery.
In some cases, white-collar criminals can be even more dangerous than gang members who may have been in and out of prisons and have had repeated run-ins with law enforcement, he said.
“These people have a lot to lose,” Nordlander said, suggesting that some white-collar criminals who are confronted by IRS agents can react unpredictably when they realize the jig is up and their world come crashing down.
“They know that they did the fraud, and once they do the fraud, they’re going to go away for many years and their livelihood’s over with.”
While some cases do have guns-drawn moments, Nordlander estimated that around 90 percent of a special agent’s time is spent poring over bank statements, interviewing people, and doing paperwork.
“Accounting nerds” with a gun and a badge is how he described most IRS-CI special agents.
‘Fear of God’
Nordlander said in the interview that the IRS-CI unit is selective in the cases it pursues and refers to the DOJ for prosecution.
Typically, the unit focuses its resources on cases where tax crimes occur over a period of years in order to build a solid case to present before a judge and secure a high rate of conviction.
In its annual report for 2022, the IRS-CI highlighted more than 2,550 investigations and a 90.6 percent conviction rate.
Special agents last year spent around 70 percent of their time investigating tax-related crimes like tax fraud and tax evasion, according to the IRS. The other 30 percent was spent on cases related to money laundering and drug trafficking.
“Our team follows the money,” IRS-CI chief Jim Lee said in a statement.
“We’ve been doing it for more than 100 years, and we’ve followed criminals into the dark web and now into the metaverse. Tax and other financial crimes know no borders. If you violate the law and end up in the crosshairs of an IRS-CI special agent, you are likely going to jail,” he added.
Nordlander said that IRS-CI special agents think long and hard whether they’d be able to convince a jury before referring a case for prosecution.
“At the end of the day, you want the judge to think this crime is so bad that there has to be active sentence time,” he said. “Otherwise, why do this? Because the job of the IRS-CI is really to put the fear of God in people,” he continued.
“They can only take so many cases, and so if everybody’s getting probation … you’re picking the wrong cases,” he said, adding that agents pursue cases that yield sentences of several years and that are “worthy of a press release.”
“So the whole general public knows ‘don’t do this or you go to prison,’ that’s what they’re looking for.”
Cutrell told The Epoch Times that media coverage doesn’t drive case selection but instead “plays an important part in the agency’s deterrence messaging once a case is complete.”
“IRS-CI’s mission includes not only investigating criminals for crimes they’ve committed, but also deterring potential criminals from committing future crimes,” she said.
Reuters contributed to this report.