The Defense Department late Friday halted all domestic travel for US-based service members, civilian employees and their families in response to the coronavirus.

It's the strictest travel restrictions yet for the department.

On Wednesday, the DoD set a 30-day restriction on travel from the US to China, Italy, Iran and South Korea, again for service members, civilian employees and their families.

The domestic restrictions apply to all personnel assigned to DoD installations, facilities and surrounding areas in the US and its territories, according to a department memorandum.

Service members will be allowed local leave only, the memorandum states.

"Conspiracy theory", what does the term mean? For most people it means a stupid belief based upon paranoia, imagination and a refusal to accept evident facts. This is perfectly understandable because that is precisely how the term is used by the State, the mainstream media (MSM), large swathes of academia, many in the scientific, business and financial communities, the legal profession, politicians and numerous "personalities."

For want of a better expression, let's call this nexus between the institutions of the State and representatives of the orthodox view the Establishment. If you only get your information from Establishment sources it is difficult to see how you could possibly think conspiracy theory meant anything other than a form of lunacy. Quite clearly, according to the Establishment, conspiracy theory is crazy.

More recently, the Establishment has suggested a belief in conspiracy theory is a dangerous, even extremist ideology. It is self evident that the term has a very strong, pejorative connotation.

If the Establishment label someone a conspiracy theorist this implies you should not listen to them. You should automatically reject everything they say. Not because you know what evidence their opinions are based upon, but because they have been labelled as a conspiracy theorist, and that's good enough.
Does anyone reading this doubt it? What do you think when the Establishment tells you an interpretation of historical events, an opinion or narrative is a conspiracy theory? If you are told someone is a conspiracy theorist what judgments do you make? Doesn't that immediately invalidate any evidence these ne're-do-wells offer? Doesn't the term conspiracy theory mean "not true?"

Yet, what if the Establishment is deceiving you? What if, instead of being baseless gibberish, many so called conspiracy theories are built upon verifiable, substantiating evidence? Is it worth looking at this evidence or do you trust the Establishment enough to accept what they tell you, and automatically ignore it? That is, after all, what the Establishment suggests.

I've offered links to some of this extensive evidence on In This Together and I hope some of you will find it a useful start for your own research. Please take a look around. However I'm not covering that evidence in this post.

In very general terms lets look at these opposing views of the world, from the western perspective. I don't claim to speak for anyone else and I represent no one but myself. I'm sure many will find much to disagree with here. However, I hope some basic truths seep through.

"The constitution is dead" was the last tweet ever sent by 21-year-old Duncan Socrates Lemp. On Thursday morning at 4:30 a.m., a Montgomery County SWAT team killed Lemp during a violent attack on his family's home in the affluent Washington suburb of Potomac, Maryland.

Why did the SWAT team attack the home as Lemp was sleeping? The initial county police press release referred only to "firearms offenses." County police spokeswoman Mary Davison refused to disclose either the details of Lemp's alleged offense or the affidavit used to justify the raid. Instead, she notified me that my press inquiries were being handled under the Maryland Public Information Act which entitles government agencies to delay responding for weeks or months.

Even the search warrant used to justify the raid is reportedly sealed for 30 days. This Blue Wall of Silence is doing nothing to slow the cascade of allegations on social media that Lemp was murdered.

Marc Steiner: Welcome to The Real News. I'm Marc Steiner, good to have you all with us. When you hear the word Gaza, what does that conjure up for you? War? Bombs being dropped? Rockets firing? Israeli blockades and occupation? Whatever it conjures up, it's not positive and, too often, forgotten.

Yellow Vest demonstrators aren't letting a ban on mass gatherings or fears of coronavirus stop them from expressing their opposition to the French government, and are staging their weekly protests in Paris.

France's Interior Minister Christophe Castaner on Friday banned all gatherings of more than 100 people but hundreds of demonstrators are continuing the weekly Yellow Vest vigil and are protesting at Paris landmarks.

Thousands of French security forces personnel hit the streets of the capital in a bid to clamp down on the movement, which has now been running for 70 consecutive weeks.

Disco vibes, flare pants, a chorus in Spanish and serious faces, while performing the freakiest of dance moves — Russia's rave-pop-punk hooligans Little Big have impressed the Eurovision crowd with a clip for its contest song.

Little Big, often described as "a Russian mental patient's answer to Die Antwoord," sure know how to make a hit. Two years ago their song, called 'Skibidi,' became a viral sensation, gaining 23 million views on YouTube in just 1 week. Since then it was seen by almost 370 million people, while the dance routine from the clip became a meme.

The Saint Petersburg band's entry for this year's Eurovision contest remained a mystery until Thursday, when the band finally presented their song on Russia's most popular late night talk show. The track called 'Uno,' which means 'one' in Spanish, has both Spanish and English lyrics, and is heavily influenced by disco music.

The owner of an oil pipeline that spewed thousands of barrels of crude oil onto Southern California beaches in 2015 will pay $60 million to to settle allegations that it violated safety laws, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday.

Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline didn't admit any wrongdoing or liability in the consent decree that will end a lawsuit filed on behalf of federal and state agencies. But it agreed to operational changes and to five years of federal and state scrutiny to ensure it is obeying the pollution and safety rules.

The agreement still must undergo a public comment period and needs federal court approval.

On May 19, 2015, oil gushed from a corroded pipeline north of Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, northwest of Los Angeles. The spill blackened popular beaches for miles, killed or fouled hundred of seabirds, seals and other wildlife and hurt tourism and fishing.

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.

Russia is limiting flights to and from EU member countries, Norway and Switzerland over the COVID-19 pandemic now raging in Europe, exempting only regular flights from Moscow to their capital cities and charter evacuation trips.

Temporary flight restrictions will go into effect starting March 16, said the government's center for combating the spread of the infection.

However, regular flights to capitals of EU member nations, as well as Oslo and Geneva, will continue through Terminal F of Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport. Charter flights bringing Russians back to the homeland and repatriating the nationals of other countries will continue as well.

The announcement comes after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that Europe has become the new center of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, with more cases reported daily than at the peak of the contagion in China, where the virus reportedly originated in December last year.

Russia has already temporarily banned entry to almost anyone coming from Italy as of Friday, as tourists who recently traveled to that country - currently the hardest-hit EU member - account for the majority of cases registered in Russia so far.

Jerry Wayne teamed up with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to challenge former Vice President Joe Biden after a video of their meeting in Michigan went viral.

Wayne, a union auto worker, asked Biden last Tuesday about his gun control plan — and Biden responded by telling Wayne that he was "full of s**t," claimed that he only meant to take "machine guns" like the "AR-14s" and threatened to "take him outside."

On Friday, the NRA released a new video featuring Wayne firing a custom "AR-14" with Biden's profile and the words "full of s**t" on the magazine well along with Wayne's personal message for Biden and anyone else who was thinking about coming for the "AR-14s."