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.

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.

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.

Comment: See also:

• After Syria & Venezuela, Russian military prepares for Hybrid war
• Assassination of Soleimani Just One Shot in Battle of The Ages to Stop Eurasian Integration
• Thierry Meyssan: Changing political regimes?

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:

• Creepy Joe's first official face-plant: Biden flops in Iowa and so did the Democratic party's reputation
• Iowa caucus tech firm Shadow Inc. played role in creating covert Dem propaganda media outfit
• Tech firm started by Clinton campaign veterans is linked to Iowa caucus debacle
• Iowa: 8 counties voter registration rates are larger than eligible voters; Sec of State refutes report
• Iowa trainwreck: Dems offer lame excuse of app 'coding issue' for huge delay in issuing caucus vote results - Buttigieg claims victory anyway
• Iowa Caucus Disaster: 'Technical Glitch' Spawns Conspiracy Theories & Democrats Have Only Themselves To Blame

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

Comment: Question: given that stabbings in London are so common these days, including incidents where multiple people are stabbed, what prompted the authorities to respond within minutes to this particular stabbing with a veritable army of special armed police, helicopters, and ambulances?

Maybe it's nothing; maybe they're just super-organized and ready-to-go on a Sunday afternoon to any and all potential terror attacks...

In any event, it's all getting a bit old, no?

This stabby-jihadi too was on a 'watch-list', by the way.

Weirdly, or not, just like the London stabber-jihadi incident two months ago, an 'echo' stabbing incident occurred almost simultaneously across the English channel (this time in Ghent, Belgium, rather than The Hague, Holland)...

Police in the Belgian city of Ghent have shot and injured a knife-wielding woman, after she stabbed two people. The incident took place around an hour after a "terrorist" knifeman was shot dead by police in London.

According to Belgian news site HLN, a dark-skinned woman attacked two passers-by with a knife on the Bevrijdingslaan street in central Ghent. The woman reportedly stabbed one of her victims in the stomach.

Armed police officers neutralized the woman with a gunshot to the hand, and she was taken into custody.

Notice that the Belgian cops just shot the knife out of her hand, rather than riddle her body with bullets, a practice UK police seem to have picked up from the Americans. Why not just subdue the attacker then interrogate him/her?

Oh yeah, those 'suicide vests'...

Update 23:00 CET

Imagine our shock to learn that he was released from prison just a few days ago...


Update 3 February

'ISIS' has 'claimed responsibility' for the 'terror attack'...


That's according to the media anyway, which are citing 'ISIS News Agency, Amaq', if such really even exists. It has no surviving websites or social media accounts because they've either long since been taken down or tracked, located and droned.

As with ALL 'ISIS terror attacks' therefore, tracking the source of these claims-on-behalf-of-ISIS-by-Amaq... leads to a dead-end at SITE Intelligence 'terrorist watch group' subscriber-only website, an Israeli-owned corporation registered in Bethesda, Maryland, which is of course home to the NSA...

Update 3 February 22:15 CET

Comment: Bloomberg reports that the suspension is permanent:

A Twitter spokesperson said in an email to Bloomberg that the @zerohedge account, which had more than 670,000 followers, "was permanently suspended for violating our platform manipulation policy."

In an email to Bloomberg from the author known as Durden, he said he believed the suspension was "unjustified, and likely motivated by reasons other than the stated ones."

"We are confident that we did not violate any of the stated Twitter terms: we neither incited harassment, nor did we 'dox' the public official, whose contact information is as of this moment listed on the Wuhan institute's website," he wrote in the email.

Comment: Amen