For the SIXTH time, Pentagon increases number of injured US troops from Iranian airstrikes on Iraq base, this time to 109

Reuters
Mon, 10 Feb 2020 22:10 UTC

The U.S. military is preparing to report a more than 50% jump in cases of traumatic brain injury stemming from Iran's missile attack on a base in Iraq last month, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of an announcement, said there were over 100 cases of TBI, up from the 64 previously reported last month.

The Pentagon declined to comment, but in the past had said to expect an increase in numbers in the weeks after the attack because symptoms can take time to manifest and troops can sometimes take longer to report them.

Comment: Right.

No U.S. troops were killed or faced immediate bodily injury when Iran fired missiles at the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike at the Baghdad airport on Jan. 3.

Comment: "Immediate bodily injury." You can smell the desperation to avoid admitting military weakness (in terms of defensive capabilities anyway) all the way from the Pentagon.

Comment: This is one heckuva brazen PR stunt they're pulling here. 6 weeks old and still ongoing...

See also: Pentagon AGAIN increases casualty numbers from Iranian airstrikes against US base in Iraq, this time to "50, as of today" - UPDATE: Now it's 64!

Revelations in the bubble: Trump's presidency brings to light 7 undeniable facts about the swamp

Doug "Uncola" Lynn
The Burning Platform
Sun, 09 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC

Barely into the New Year, 2020 vision has brought many revelations into better focus, making several ongoing observations perfectly clear. Although there are those who've been watching the dots of The Matrix assemble into the big picture for decades now, the election of Donald Trump has increasingly exposed what was hidden in plain sight for so long.

The awakening for many Americans could be compared to that of actor Jim Carrey's character in the 1998 film The Truman Show. In that narrative, the unsuspecting star of a global reality television program came to the realization his entire worldview was formed within a bubble; a literal bubble that generated bubblevision in Carrey's character as all of those around (and above) him performed right on cue.

Truly, it feels like that now in America. The times have become surreal.

'For Sama' nominated for an Oscar - yet another propagandumentary that pushes Al Qaeda's narrative in Aleppo

Vanessa Beeley
RT
Sat, 08 Feb 2020 12:33 UTC

Screenshot from the trailer for For Sama (2019) PBS distribution.

Oscar-nominated 'For Sama' is a gritty, well produced "documentary" claiming to present the reality of the five-year siege of the Syrian city of Aleppo. Just how deceptive is this portrayal?

The 90-minute video directed by UK Channel 4's Waad Al-Kateab and English filmmaker Edward Watts has been unanimously praised in the mainstream media and it might win this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. But does the film present a truly unbiased picture of the Syrian conflict or, rather, just the side of the story that fits the Western narrative about the war?

Comment: See also:

Mexico shows the world how to defeat neoliberalism: With publicly-owned banks outside bankster control

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt
Thu, 06 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC

While U.S. advocates and local politicians struggle to get their first public banks chartered, Mexico's new president has begun construction on 2,700 branches of a government-owned bank to be completed in 2021, when it will be the largest bank in the country. At a press conference on Jan. 6, he said the neoliberal model had failed; private banks were not serving the poor and people outside the cities, so the government had to step in.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) has been compared to the United Kingdom's left-wing opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, with one notable difference: AMLO is now in power. He and his left-wing coalition won by a landslide in Mexico's 2018 general election, overturning the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) that had ruled the country for much of the past century. Called Mexico's "first full-fledged left-wing experiment," AMLO's election marks a dramatic change in the political direction of the country. AMLO wrote in his 2018 book A New Hope for Mexico, "In Mexico the governing class constitutes a gang of plunderers.... Mexico will not grow strong if our public institutions remain at the service of the wealthy elites."

Populist wave reaches Ireland: Sinn Fein stuns establishment, becoming first left-wing party to win Irish general election

Danielle Ryan
RT
Sun, 09 Feb 2020 19:55 UTC

Comment: Sinn Fein is definitely 'left', but there's more to it than that. It's also nationalist, and wants a referendum on Irish reunification ASAP. But the primary source of its support is likely drawn from a decade of austerity measures and the failure of neo-liberalism.

Needless to say, the entire media-political establishment spent the entire election campaign warning the Irish people that voting for Sinn Fein would mean certain DOOM!...

Polls have closed in Ireland's general election and, with no party securing a strong lead, confusion abounds as voters wait to see which parties will agree to do business with each other to form a coalition.

An Ipsos MRBI exit poll published by Ireland's state broadcaster RTE at 10pm shows FG [Fine Gael], SF [Sinn Fein] and FF [Fianna Fail] tied with a statistically insignificant (given a margin of error of 1.3 percent) difference of 22.4, 22.3 and 22.2 percent of the vote respectively.

A Sinn Fein surge in the run up to election day looks to have translated into votes at the ballot box, allowing party leader Mary Lou McDonald to head into post-election discussions with some serious clout - and possibly even form a coalition either with another major party, or with the Green Party, the Social Democrats and independents - though the 'grand left coalition' still looks like one of the least-likely outcomes.

Comment: It'll be a few days before results are counted, but so far Sinn Fein actually appear to be doing better than even the exit poll suggested, approaching 25% of the popular vote as of 22:00 CET this Sunday February 9th.

Ironically, Sinn Fein themselves apparently didn't believe they were going to do this well, as they didn't field enough candidates to translate their large vote share into a corresponding number of seats!

This means that the two establishment parties, if they hinder Sinn Fein efforts to form a coalition government this time around, will almost certainly lose more seats to them if another election were held later this year.

Ireland still has some way to go before its fractured polity of multiple small parties and independent candidates reunite under strong leadership, as in the 1918 election when (old) Sinn Fein won the vast majority of seats, but something historic may indeed be in motion here.

One thing is certain: Ireland's current leader, Leo Varadkar, is out.

Israel admits arming anti-Assad Syrian 'rebels'. That was a big mistake

Daniel J. Levy
Haaretz
Sun, 03 Feb 2019 19:59 UTC

© Reuters
A fighter from the Free Syrian Army's Al Rahman legion carries a weapon as he walks towards his position on the front line against the forces of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in a Damascus suburb

For the first time on the record, a senior official confirmed Israel's secret unconventional war in Syria, aimed at preventing Iranian encroachment. But what did Israel gain from exposing its 'anti-intervention' lie after so many years of denial?

In his final days as the Israel Defense Forces' Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot confirmed, on the record, that Israel had directly supported anti-Assad Syrian rebel factions in the Golan Heights by arming them.

This revelation marks a direct break from Israel's previous media policy on such matters. Until now, Israel has insisted it has only provided humanitarian aid to civilians (through field hospitals on the Golan Heights and in permanent healthcare facilities in northern Israel), and has consistently denied or refused to comment on any other assistance.

In short, none other than Israel's most (until recently) senior serving soldier has admitted that up until his statement, his country's officially stated position on the Syrian civil war was built on the lie of non-intervention.

Comment: This article was published almost exactly one year ago. What a change since then. Syria has regained two-thirds of its territory, and with Russian support, is well on the way to pushing Turkey's terrorist proxies out of Idlib. Unfortunately, the US is still squatting in the resource-rich north-east of the country and at the Al-Tanf border crossing with Iraq, but (probably on Russia's advice) Idlib must be dealt with first. Regaining the illegally-occupied Golan Heights is a distant goal still, but it's unlikely Syria will give up on it. All in all, not the picture Israel was hoping for a year ago.

Did Coronavirus outbreak originate in a lab? Novel sequence in 2019-nCoV Virus genome suggests man-made cause

James Lyons-Weiler
jameslyonsweiler.com
Thu, 30 Jan 2020 20:52 UTC

Recombination technology has been in use in molecular virology since the 1980s. The structure of the 2019-NCoV virus genome provides a very strong clue on the likely origin of the virus.

Unlike other related coronaviruses, the 2019-nCoV virus has a unique sequence about 1,378 bp (nucleotide base pairs) long that is not found in related coronaviruses.

Looking at the phylogenetic tree recently published, derived using all the full genome sequence, we see the 2019-nCoV virus does not have clear monophyletic support given the bootstrap value of 75 (Fig 1).

Close-up on Bootstrap value of 75 for available 2019-nCoV from Lu et al., 2020 The Lancet article [Full Text]

There is no doubt that there is a novel sequence in 2019-nCoV; we confirmed this via sequence alignment. Here's the DOT plot:

Comment: It's still only a theory, but if it's in the ballpark, then this outbreak could yet be chalked up to madcap vaccine science...

The author posted the following update to his website on February 2nd, 2020:

Dr. Marc Wathelet commented that he was puzzled about my report of a spike protein gene homologous to part of the pShuttle-SN vector, given that spike glycoproteins are found in bat coronavirus. He urged me to analyze the homology (sequence similarity) of the SARS-like spike protein element I reported with other spike proteins, saying that any scientist working on coronaviruses would be surprised if there were not a spike protein.

I replied in comment that I, too, would expect protein sequence level homology due to shared conserved domains, but assured him that I would undertake further genome sequence-level (nucleotide) analysis as the location of the novel sequence relative to the other spike proteins is certainly of interest.

A few recent publications (sent to me by followers/readers) contained further bat coronavirus accession numbers, and SARS accession numbers, so I procured the spike protein coding sequence (CDS) of these from NCBI's nucleotide database and aligned them using Blast, with the sequence from the first 2019-nCoV protein as the anchor. (Oddly, that Genbank entry does not label the S protein CDS as a spike glycoprotein, instead annotating it only as a "structural protein").

The resulting massive alignment confirms a major unique inserted element in 2019-nCoV not found in other bat coronaviruses, nor in SARS in the homologous genomic position:

© jameslyonsweiler.com
This is why full genome phylogenetic trees cannot tell the full story of recombinant viral evolution.

Blasting the novel sequence region against all non-viral sequences (to pick up vector technology) again results in pShuttle-SN (no surprise) but now this time is also picked up a recombinant coronavirus clone Bat-SRBD spike glycoprotein gene from UNC, USA, (Genbank entry) and other synthetic constructs.

As I published earlier, before anyone points fingers at the Chinese, note that recombinant viruses have been in play in laboratories all across the world in many nations.

The overlap occurs at the 3′ end of the novel region (search restricted from 21600-22350 bp in the query) 2019-nCoV sequence originally blasted against the other coronavirus CDS. It could arguably merely be that I selected too large a region; I chose the region visually to include the fully potentially inserted sequence including any homologous vector elements at the 5′ or 3′ end.

It is worth pointing out that due to the length of overlap, the sequence strength is considered moderately strong: highly significant E-value, high %identity, but short sequence length. These findings cannot be considered strong validation for obvious reasons: produced by the same analyst, using (part) of the same data. Spike proteins determine receptor binding for entry into cells, and 2019-nCoV appears to, like some bat species SARS coronavirus, target ACE2 receptors.¹

For those tracking closely, I confirmed that the novel inserted sequence in the large alignment above is the same as the novel sequence I reported a few days ago. The sequence of interest is here.

inserted-portion

1. Hou et al., 2010. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) proteins of different bat species confer variable susceptibility to SARS-CoV entry Arch Virol 155:1563-1569

These results do show, however, that the novel sequence is not likely present in other coronaviruses.

Thus, it still seems prudent that this inserted sequence in 2019-nCoV become the focus on urgent research, and that laboratory sources be included in the search for the origins of 2019-nCoV and potential targets for treatments and expected pathophysiology in patients infected with 2019-nCoV.

I am grateful to Dr. Wathelet for this inquiries and requests for additional clarification.

Hybrid War and its impacts on Latin America

Santiago Mayor, Andrew Korybko
One World
Tue, 04 Feb 2020 12:00 UTC

This is the full English-language original version of the interview that Andrew Korybko gave to Argentinian journalist Santiago Mayor, who then published a shortened form of it in the Buenos Aires newspaper "Tiempo Argentino":

1. In your book about the theory of the Hybrid War, you review the different American geopolitical theories throughout history to arrive at the current project of the "Eurasian Balkans" and "peripheral chaos". What does Washington's geopolitical project consist of and how is it linked to the current multipolar world?

The US aims to retain its hegemony over Eurasia so as to indefinitely perpetuate its preeminent role over International Relations, to which end it's employing a divide-and-rule strategy over the supercontinent via the external exploitation of identity conflicts for geopolitical ends. Many Eurasian states are very diverse, so it's comparatively easier to meddle in their affairs through information warfare, NGOs, and other more "traditional" activities of its intelligence agencies. This takes the form of provoking Color Revolutions and civil wars, sometimes through the use of terrorist-driven means. The resultant chaos destabilizes the targeted state and thus enables the US to compel it into undertaking envisaged political concessions that work out to America's supreme benefit. On a larger level, employing this policy in several states at once creates a chain reaction of chaos all along the Eurasian periphery that the US tries to channel for "containment" purposes against Russia, China, Iran, and others, but sometimes it loses control of the chaotic processes like in Syria where this scheme ultimately backfired to a large extent by creating the conditions for Russia's game-changing anti-terrorist intervention which led to Moscow challenging Washington's influence in the Mideast.

Comment: See also:

Rigging Replay: Failed Iowa Caucus app is deeply linked to self-declared winner Buttigieg... and Hillary Clinton

Danielle Ryan
RT
Tue, 04 Feb 2020 21:14 UTC

An app supposedly meant to ensure quick reporting of the Iowa caucus results was developed by a firm deeply tied to the Democratic establishment and went kaputt at the crucial moment. What are the chances?

It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but Americans can be excused for their distrust of the system after what happened in 2016 - and the facts that have been dug up on the group behind the failed Iowa app won't do much to quell their suspicions.

The firm in question, rather ironically, is called Shadow Inc. — and, according to Federal Election Commission filings, it was paid thousands of dollars by Pete Buttigieg's campaign for "software rights and subscriptions" in July 2019.

Comment: That's American democracy for you.

Remember, the whole premise of Russiagate is that Russian intelligence is supposed to have hacked the DNC in 2016, publicly revealing that the Democratic Party's nomination that year was rigged for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders.

Here we are 4 years later and the DNC is again conspiring to rig the Democratic Party nomination against Sanders, in favor of an AMERICAN naval intelligence officer.

You couldn't make this up!

See also:

Israel in the Middle East: A civilizational and metaphysical war

Alastair Crooke
Strategic Culture Foundation
Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00 UTC

President Trump's 'deal of the century' has been published this week. Mostly, it has been examined as a purely political project - whether in terms of the domestic needs of Trump and Netanyahu, or as a maximum squeeze on Palestinians, which may, or may not, work. But there is another (implicit) dimension, lying - a little out of sight - behind these explicit politics.

It has been argued, by at least one US historian, that the U.S. is no ordinary nation-state, but should be understood as a system leader, a 'civilizational power' - like Rome, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire. The 'system leader', historically, has always sought to embed its particular civilizational vision onto those distant 'lands' that serve, or abut, its empire: which is to say that the universalistic vision may be bound to one state, but is forcefully unfurled across the globe, as 'our' inevitable destiny.

It is not hard to see what we are talking about when it refers to America: politically it is liberal markets, liberal capitalism, individualism and laissez-faire politics - and the metaphysics of Judeo-Christianity, too, if you like. For most Americans, their victory in the Cold War spectacularly affirmed the superiority of their civilizational vision, through the defeat and implosion of communism. It was not just a political defeat for the USSR, more significantly, it represented a triumph for America's full cultural paradigm: It was a Civilisational 'win'.

Comment: And don't miss: 'Greater Israel': The Zionist plan for the Middle East

'' '' So if the NBA is going to do those things, I would honor it, but at the same time I would ask like, it doesn't seem logically consistent,"...

Demore

I bet there's Twatter comments saying, "Well, if she had just worn her mask......"

DeliciousTears

"No" should be sufficient reason.

DeliciousTears

..... However, Tsitsipas changed his views as a couple of days ago he revealed he's planning to take the vaccine before the season ends...... So I...

DeliciousTears

That cop deserves the harshest sentence and the other cops should be clamoring for it.

Demore

For the SIXTH time, Pentagon increases number of injured US troops from Iranian airstrikes on Iraq base, this time to 109

Revelations in the bubble: Trump's presidency brings to light 7 undeniable facts about the swamp

'For Sama' nominated for an Oscar - yet another propagandumentary that pushes Al Qaeda's narrative in Aleppo

Mexico shows the world how to defeat neoliberalism: With publicly-owned banks outside bankster control

Populist wave reaches Ireland: Sinn Fein stuns establishment, becoming first left-wing party to win Irish general election

Israel admits arming anti-Assad Syrian 'rebels'. That was a big mistake

Did Coronavirus outbreak originate in a lab? Novel sequence in 2019-nCoV Virus genome suggests man-made cause

Hybrid War and its impacts on Latin America

Rigging Replay: Failed Iowa Caucus app is deeply linked to self-declared winner Buttigieg... and Hillary Clinton

Israel in the Middle East: A civilizational and metaphysical war

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