The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for 'election meddling' against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation.

Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, "promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation's security," the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case on Monday, in a motion to drop the charges.

DOJ lawyers cited "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination," saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.

What is the infamous ID2020? It is an alliance of public-private partners, including UN agencies and civil society. It's an electronic ID program that uses generalized vaccination as a platform for digital identity.

It seems, the more there is written about the causes of the Coronavirus - the more the written analyses are overshadowed by a propaganda and fear-mongering hype. Questions for the truth and arguments for where to look for the origins and how the virus may have spread and how to combat it, are lost in the noise of wanton chaos. But isn't that what the "Black Men" behind this intended pandemic want - chaos, panic, hopelessness, leading to human vulnerability - a people becoming easy prey for manipulation?

Today WHO declared the coronavirus COVID-19 a "pandemic" - when there is not the slightest trace of a pandemic. A pandemic might be the condition, when the death to infection rate reaches more than 12%. In Europe, the death rate is about 0.4%, or less. Except for Italy which is a special case, where the peak of the death rate was 6% (see below for further analysis).

Translated by Sott.net
There are dozens, hundreds even according to the photos, under the sun of this Sunday in March, going out for walks, strolling in the parks, going to the markets. All this would be a beautiful beginning of spring if on Saturday evening, the authorities had not asked everyone not to go out any more because of the coronavirus.

Prime Minister Édouard Philippe's appeal on Saturday evening was clear: in addition to closing down "non-essential" public places, the Prime Minister called on French men and women to assume their responsibilities, and to stop going out without good reason. "We must all together show more discipline in the application of these measures. We must avoid gathering as much as possible, and limit friendly and family gatherings," he explained.

In the post WWII years two cultural revolutions swept both Asian and western civilisations appearing on the surface to have distinct characteristics, yet each resulting in profound moral cultural decay.

In America and Europe, the rise of modernism in painting, music, philosophy and architecture were imposed upon academia and the arts which modern research has revealed to have been the work of the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom. This paradigm shift in the arts was funded by western intelligence agencies who justified their artistic patronage with the logic that "if the new communist blocs were to be governed by iconoclasm and realism in the arts which put the state above all ideas of personal freedom, then the "democratic aesthetics" must take the polar opposite stance and promote only the unbounded freedom of individual expression devoid of any connection to the whole of society". One consequence of this shift was that the Ancient Greco-Roman aesthetics that defined America's architecture, painting, and general moral sensibilities was brutally amputated [1].

While the backdrop to this reform took the shape of McCarthyism in America, in China a parallel cultural reform occurred in 1949. This cultural movement saw the total rejection of Confucianism as a "relic of past elitism and corruption" which had no place in the Maoist vision for a newly reconstructed China.

Remember when we kicked off 2020 with that little WWIII scare in the Middle East? Oh how quaint all that seems now.

I was going to start off this week with a recap of the craziness that unfolded in recent days as full-on pandemic panic set in in the United States, but leave it to Twitter to come up with the pithiest summary: "What a year this last half hour has been."

That's one way of capturing the shock that many are experiencing right now. But more enlightening still are the responses to that tweet.

"Understatement of the year," one user replied, adding that "Every time you click [refresh], something unbelievable has happened. Literally every second."

Another user responded that "I have a friend who just shut everything off and went out into nature for a day because it was all going to be there when they came back."

Observed yet another: "So much has happened this evening, my mind is literally spinning....I can't keep it straight, and the market opening is 11 hours away..."

So what has got the Twitterati's heads spinning so furiously? A torrent of news about coronavirus that hit the American news media like a tsunami this past week, that's what.

Like the suspension of the NBA, NHL, NCAA Championships and just about every other major sporting event you can think of.

Or the shut down of numerous college campuses (including on-campus housing), which is already leading to riots.

Or the announcement that this or that celebrity has tested positive for the virus.

Or, oh yeah, the worst Wall Street crash since the Black Monday event that led to the creation of the Plunge Protection Team. And the impending shutdown of New York City. And the potential closing off of international borders.

You know, that kind of stuff.

Of course, every crisis has its silver lining: The producers of some of the most risible late night garbage, including Fallon, Colbert and Meyers, have announced they're suspending their shows for the rest of the month!

Yes, it has been a week of non-stop, wall-to-wall, over-the-top news that is enough to make even the sturdiest of information warriors feel queasy. It's not easy to look over the precipice of panic and not feel some vertigo from the view.

It's at times like these that people start worrying about their survival, and not without reason. Even if, as the cooked government numbers seem to indicate, you have nothing to fear from SARS-CoV-2 unless you're an octogenarian with a lung condition, there are still the very real martial law lockdowns and supply shortages and economic collapses to be concerned about.

Whatever your thoughts on what is and isn't really happening here, there no doubt that we're heading into a profound and long-lasting economic crisis, or that we're facing a dramatic change in the way we live our lives. And even the slowest of the slow understand by now that we're about to see a massive power grab by governments the likes of which could scarcely have been imagined at the start of the year.

Universities and schools are being shuttered, sports activities and public gatherings are being cancelled, individuals are hoarding toilet paper and supplies, travel is being severely constrained, the stock market has crashed, and business activity is nose-diving. Major businesses are forcing their employees to work at home.

This blog will try to summarize the coronavirus threat, suggest that some of the panic-driven actions may not be well-founded, and that there may be a far better, more effective approach to deal with the virus.

Before I begin, let me note two things. I am not a medical doctor, epidemiologist, or viral expert. But I am a scientist with some facility with statistics and data, and my specialty, weather prediction, is all about helping people react appropriately to estimates of risk. And I have talked to a number of doctors about this issue. But don't read any more if my background bothers you.

The Western media quickly took the stage and laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of the new coronavirus which appeared to have begun in China, claiming it to have originated with animals at a wet market in Wuhan.

In fact the origin was for a long time unknown but it appears likely now, according to Chinese and Japanese reports, that the virus originated elsewhere, from multiple locations, but began to spread widely only after being introduced to the market.

More to the point, it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.

As the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis comes to dominate headlines, little media attention has been given to the federal government's decision to classify top-level meetings on domestic coronavirus response and lean heavily "behind the scenes" on U.S. intelligence and the Pentagon in planning for an allegedly imminent explosion of cases.

The classification of coronavirus planning meetings was first covered by Reuters, which noted that the decision to classify was "an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government's response to the contagion." Reuters further noted that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Alex Azar, and his chief of staff had "resisted" the classification order, which was made in mid-January by the National Security Council (NSC), led by Robert O'Brien — a longtime friend and colleague of his predecessor John Bolton.

When the World Health Organization announced on February 24^th that it was time to prepare for a global pandemic, the stock market plummeted. Over the following week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by more than 3,500 points or over 10%. In an attempt to contain the damage, on March 3^rd the Federal Reserve slashed the fed funds rate from 1.5% to 1.0%, in their first emergency rate move and biggest one-time cut since the 2008 financial crisis. But rather than reassuring investors, the move fueled another panic sell-off.

Exasperated commentators on CNBC wondered what the Fed was thinking. They said a half point rate cut would not stop the spread of the coronavirus or fix the broken Chinese supply chains that are driving US companies to the brink. A new report by corporate data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet calculates that some 51,000 companies around the world have one or more direct suppliers in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus. At least 5 million companies globally have one or more tier-two suppliers in the region, meaning their suppliers get their supplies there; and 938 of the Fortune 1000 companies have tier-one or tier-two suppliers there. Moreover, fully 80% of US pharmaceuticals are made in China. A break in the supply chain can grind businesses to a halt.

The largest deployment of troops across the Atlantic in 25 years entered its main phase last weekend within the framework of the Defender Europe 2020 exercise. The scale of NATO's provocative military exercise underscores how far advanced the preparations for war are 75 years after the end of World War II.

The United States and 18 other countries are deploying large contingents of troops from America and Western Europe to the Russian border within a short period of time. In total, around 37,000 soldiers are participating in the exercise, which is to continue until June. Their objective is Poland and the Baltic states.

The freight ship Endurance docked in Bremerhaven last week together with four other vessels carrying US tanks and other heavy military equipment. The US alone is deploying 20,000 troops and their armaments to Europe.