750 Million Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes Approved for Release in Florida Keys – First Time Ever in USA

Marathon, FL—The Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) approved the first-ever U.S. release of genetically engineered [GE] mosquitoes.

The GE mosquitoes, a strain of transgenically modified Aedes aegypti, are designed to kill the wild strain, which can transmit yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya, and Zika fevers.

The GE mosquitoes contain a dominant lethal gene and was developed by a commercial company, Oxitec Ltd, a US-owned, British-based company.

In 2009 and 2010, local outbreaks on the Keys of dengue fever, spread by Aedes aegypti, prompted the FKMCD to spend millions on aerial, truck and backpack spraying and the use of mosquito-eating fish. They were unable to eliminate Aedes aegypti. Larvicide and pesticide had been largely ineffective.

https://frankreport.com/2020/08/20/750-million-genetically-engineered-mosquitoes-approved-for-release-in-florida-keys-first-time-ever-in-usa/

TikTok Unveils New Website Aimed at Dispelling US/NATO Propaganda

TikTok pushed back against continued efforts to exclude it from the US market, rolling out a new website in which it counters US allegations that it poses a threat to national security. The popular video-sharing app launched the site, called the “Last Sunny Corner of the Internet”, after the US gave its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, a 90-day deadline to sell its US assets or face a ban in the country, according to RT.

Earlier in August, President Trump signed an executive order barring all US transactions with TikTok and another popular Chinese-owned app, WeChat. That order, set to go into effect next month, claims that the Chinese apps “threaten the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States”.

On its new website, TikTok said it wanted to “set the record straight”, arguing that Washington and the media have been proliferating rumors and misinformation about the app.

“TikTok has never provided any US user data to the Chinese government, nor would it do so if asked. Any insinuation to the contrary is unfounded and blatantly false,” the website announced.

It added that user data is stored in Virginia, with a back-up in Singapore, and that there are safeguards to ensure user privacy.

“Trump’s executive orders targeting the firm risk undermining global businesses’ trust in the United States’ commitment to the rule of law”, the site claims, stressing that such actions set a “dangerous precedent for the concept of free expression and open markets”.

Last week TikTok launched a new Twitter account, @tiktok_comms, to respond in real-time to the controversy surrounding the app. Washington’s attempts to keep the video-sharing app out of the US market has put further strain on deteriorating US-China relations.

On Monday, Beijing accused the US administration of using “digital gunboat diplomacy” to target TikTok. The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that despite ByteDance’s attempts at openness and transparency, the company has been “unable to escape the robbery through trickery undertaken by some people in the US based on bandit logic and political self-interest”.

https://fort-russ.com/2020/08/tiktok-unveils-new-website-aimed-at-dispelling-us-nato-propaganda/

Biden: A Diminished Trojan Horse With an Army of Marxist Transformers Inside

Some conservative pundits and strategists have opined that it may not be prudent for President Trump and the Republicans to make too big a deal about Joe Biden’s cognitive challenges. If pro-Trump opposition goes all in on terms like dementia, senility, or, as President Trump defines Biden’s mental condition, “not all there,” they risk setting the expectation bar so low that all Biden has to do is stay afloat during the presidential debates and at whatever politically organic (not wholly-orchestrated) campaign appearances he might make.

The case was made that if Trump and his surrogates condition voters to expect a doddering, rambling, and often incoherent candidate, Biden can beat the expectation game by simply mouthing pre-approved answers to most conceivable questions and sticking to the script.

On the eve of his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention, it is generally understood on both sides of the aisle that the “Biden’s okay, he’s just being Joe” narrative is kaput. Everybody knows that, sadly, the former VP is not quite hitting on all cylinders. What we have here is a rickety old Trojan Horse the left hopes to wheel back through the gates of governance.

What to do with that?

Biden was not even able to successfully get through wife Jill’s remarks on night two of the convention. What should have been a poignant moment for the Dem ticket served only as another reminder about Mr. Biden’s seeming inability to deliver off-the-cuff the most patent campaign fluff.

Let’s look at some narrative themes that define the 2020 election. Attuned conservatives fully understand the Democrat “chaos campaign,” and the Biden campaign’s “basement strategy.” On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Republican “Biden as a cognitive shell of his former self” narrative has been anything but subtle. Sean Hannity has a Biden gaffe/impairment reel that provokes both laughter and the pull-back reserve that comes with knowing a person is cognitively impaired.

Laughing at cognitive decline is uncomfortable. Even pointing out such decline in the context of unrelenting partisan politics is something nobody really wants to have to do. One wishes the opposition candidate was still in possession of all mental faculties. Under normal circumstances, policy differences could be vigorously debated, and contrasts made, without having to resort to highlighting the fact that the other party’s standard-bearer is certifiably suffering from loss of synaptic function.

And for that reason, would be a disaster if elected to the highest office in the land.

Nobody wants to have to witheringly attack a person in the throes of illnesses like Alzheimer’s disease. Millions of Americans have loved ones or know people who suffer from impaired cognition and memory loss. Just like such diseases present symptoms ranging from mild disruption to complete loss of brain function, the emotional reaction to such diagnoses in people close to those afflicted, depending on the severity of the illness, runs the gamut from manageable grief to life-altering crisis.

Conservatives recall with sadness President Ronald Reagan’s descent in to full-blown Alzheimer’s, and first lady Nancy’s heroic last stand in support of her husband. Reagan was long out of office before experiencing the debilitating phase of the disease.

But if he wins, Joe Biden won’t be.

All the more reason, however disagreeable the task, to focus attention on Biden’s cognitive challenges, and the apparent impairment in his ability to maintain smooth transitions of thought and render them in complete sentences. We’re talking here about diminishment evident even to staunch Dem operatives like James Carville and Terry McAuliffe.

Democrats hope to obfuscate and divert from the issue of their candidate’s mental condition; Republicans and the Trump campaign must continue raising questions about the cognition of the man to whom the national electorate might hand the keys to the kingdom.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/mark-ellis/2020/08/20/a-diminished-trojan-horse-with-an-army-of-marxist-transformers-inside-n816315

'Fight Club In The Skies': Brawl Erupts On American Airlines Flight Over Mask Policy

The past months of coronavirus lockdown and social distancing measures have produced some truly bizarre scenes, but perhaps none so strange and potentially dangerous as the brawl that broke out on an American Airlines flight this week.

The incident which happened Monday and was caught on video, reportedly started when a traveler on a Las Vegas to Charlotte flight refused to comply with the airline's coronavirus protective face mask policy. After a flight attendant ordered the maskless woman to exit the flight, other angry passengers appeared to invervene while the airline called authorities to get a disruptive woman off, and that's when punches started flying.

Nothing like a morning Fight Club as tempers flared on @AmericanAir LAS-CLT flight today….So much for social distancing! #AAFightClub @thefatjack pic.twitter.com/NN9lj8enbf

— Caryn Ross (@SuperSassyMama) August 17, 2020

The passenger that uploaded the widely shared video said, "Nothing like a morning Fight Club as tempers flared on American Air LAS-CLT flight today."

"So much for social distancing!" the eyewitness added. Onlookers could be seen getting increasingly frustrated that the belligerent woman in the pink shirt was causing a significant flight delay due to the incident.

Security was called in and escorted the women off the plane, but the latest in a series of 'mask vs. maskless' tense encounters over this bizarre summer of COVID-19 social distancing measures.

The full three-and-a-half minute video of the ordeal shows a woman standing in the aisle arguing another while airline personnel are nowhere in sight, followed by the moment fists go flying. A man in row behind also later joins in the melee.

An American Airlines official statement on the incident later said, “On Monday, a customer on American Airlines Flight 1665 with service from Las Vegas to Charlotte failed to comply with our mandatory face-covering policy after boarding the aircraft prior to departure.”

It continued: “In accordance with our policy, the customer was subsequently asked to leave the aircraft and became disruptive, resulting in an altercation with other passengers.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fight-club-skies-brawl-erupts-american-airlines-flight-over-mask-policy

Project Camelot: Q Team's Take Down of the Cabal, Trump and the Future via Charlie Freak