ACTIVATING FILTER PROTOCOLS
>What does the MSN in MSNBC stand for?
Microsoft Network
MSNBC was established under a strategic partnership between NBC and Microsoft. NBC executive Tom Rogers was instrumental in developing this partnership. James Kinsella, a Microsoft executive, served as president of the online component, MSNBC.com, and represented the tech company in the joint venture. Microsoft invested $221 million for a 50 percent share of the cable channel. MSNBC and Microsoft shared the cost of a $200 million newsroom in Secaucus, New Jersey, for msnbc.com.
>Make-a-Wish will not require anyone to get vaccinated to receive a wish,” Make-A-Wish declared Sunday
Sometimes you're in polite company and you must obey the fucking rules of society.
Fear is the currency of control.
https://twitter.com/GrayConnolly/status/1409286330530418691
The computer modelling found the virus’s ability to bind to the bat ACE2 protein was poor relative to its ability to bind human cells ….. This argues against the virus being transmitted directly from bats to humans.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/australian-researchers-stunning-covid-origin-find/news-story/f15deec77f1655701575dd9995038b91
Australian researcher’s stunning Covid origin find
Coronavirus appears uniquely designed to attack humans, adding yet more weight to the ‘lab leak’ theory of the pandemic’s origins.
A team of Australian researchers have published a scientific paper proving that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus appears to be best adapted to attack human cells, raising even more questions about the pandemic’s origins.
The scientists from Flinders University and La Trobe used powerful computers to model the protein receptors in a number of animal species to see how the coronavirus’s spike protein attached itself to them.
The theory was that if the coronavirus attached itself readily to an animal like a bat or a pangolin, it would have likely been the species that the bug used to make its leap into the human population.
However, the modelling found that the coronavirus’s spike protein was best suited to attacking protein receptors in humans.
“The computer modelling found the virus’s ability to bind to the bat ACE2 protein was poor relative to its ability to bind human cells,” said Flinders University epidemiologist and vaccine researcher Professor Nikolai Petrovsky.
“This argues against the virus being transmitted directly from bats to humans.
“Hence, if the virus has a natural source, it could only have come to humans via an intermediary species which has yet to be found,” he said.
While the researchers also found that the coronavirus could attach relatively easily to pangolins, as well as domestic animals like cats and dogs, the findings will add weight to the increasingly repeated charge that the coronavirus escaped the controversial Wuhan Institute of Virology in an accident involving “gain of function” research.
“Overall, putting aside the intriguing pangolin ACE2 results, our study showed that the COVID-19 virus was very well adapted to infect humans,” Prof Petrovsky said.
Studies such as this one are also being increasingly looked at in light of what appears to have been an orchestrated campaign to suppress any science that would implicate the Wuhan lab.
Early on in the pandemic, a number of scientists signed an open letter to one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals, The Lancet, attacking what they called ‘conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin’.
The letter was used by media organisations as well as internet platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to justify censoring any discussion of the so-called “lab leak” theory as misinformation or fake news.
However it was later revealed that one of the letter’s chief organisers was British scientist Peter Daszak, who ran a New York-based health organisation that was responsible for funnelling millions of dollars to researchers in China, including at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, to examine bat coronaviruses.
The paper, In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin, appears in the journal Scientific Reports.
>The paper, In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin, appears in the journal Scientific Reports.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-92388-5
In silico comparison of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-ACE2 binding affinities across species and implications for virus origin
The devastating impact of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS–coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has raised important questions about its origins and the mechanism of its transfer to humans. A further question was whether companion or commercial animals could act as SARS-CoV-2 vectors, with early data suggesting susceptibility is species specific. To better understand SARS-CoV-2 species susceptibility, we undertook an in silico structural homology modelling, protein–protein docking, and molecular dynamics simulation study of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein’s ability to bind angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) from relevant species. Spike protein exhibited the highest binding to human (h)ACE2 of all the species tested, forming the highest number of hydrogen bonds with hACE2. Interestingly, pangolin ACE2 showed the next highest binding affinity despite having a relatively low sequence homology, whereas the affinity of monkey ACE2 was much lower despite its high sequence similarity to hACE2. These differences highlight the power of a structural versus a sequence-based approach to cross-species analyses. ACE2 species in the upper half of the predicted affinity range (monkey, hamster, dog, ferret, cat) have been shown to be permissive to SARS-CoV-2 infection, supporting a correlation between binding affinity and infection susceptibility. These findings show that the earliest known SARS-CoV-2 isolates were surprisingly well adapted to bind strongly to human ACE2, helping explain its efficient human to human respiratory transmission. This study highlights how in silico structural modelling methods can be used to rapidly generate information on novel viruses to help predict their behaviour and aid in countermeasure development.
Upper panel: Picture of the complex formed by SARS-CoV-2 S protein and human ACE2 (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license; adapted from Taka et al.15).
Lower panel: Sequence alignment of S1 subunit of four closely related spike proteins (sequence commences 60 residues before RBD). Coloured differences in spike protein sequences from pangolin CoV (green), bat RATG13 CoV (cyan) SARS CoV (red) when compared to sequence of SARS-CoV-2. The spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD) is denoted by the red bar in the sequence alignments.
“The Deep Rig” — which premiered on Saturday to anyone willing to plunk down $45 to see it — stars former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, a Trump supporter who is raising money to pay for the Arizona audit.
Also making his film debut is Ken Bennett, tapped by Senate President Karen Fann to serve as her liaison to the audit.
But the real surprise — a stunner, actually — was the unveiling of identity of the voice in the movie’s original trailer, known heretofore only as Anon.
Turns out Anon is … wait for it….
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan.
Just think about that for a minute. The man in charge of auditing Maricopa County’s election — the one who Fann has said will produce an “unbiased” review of our vote — is now appearing in a film chock full of conspiracy theories backed up by nothing more than QAnon crazies and wishful thinking.
>Just think about that for a minute. The man in charge of auditing Maricopa County’s election — the one who Fann has said will produce an “unbiased” review of our vote — is now appearing in a film chock full of conspiracy theories backed up by nothing more than QAnon crazies and wishful thinking.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/06/27/cyber-ninjas-doug-logan-arizona-election-audit-overseer-appears-the-deep-rig-film-rigged-election/5350003001/
CEO of Arizona audit contractor Cyber Ninjas appears in movie about U.S. election fraud
The CEO of the company leading Arizona's audit of the 2020 Maricopa County general election appears in a new movie called "The Deep Rig" that asserts the U.S. election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Doug Logan, the CEO of the Florida-based cybersecurity company Cyber Ninjas, initially was shown as an anonymous technical expert in the film, which premiered Saturday at Dream City Church in north Phoenix. Trump stopped at the church in June 2020 amid multiple campaign stops in Arizona.
Toward the end of the movie, Logan's identity was revealed, to loud cheers from the approximately 500 people who bought $25 tickets to attend. Others downloaded the movie online for $45.
Logan said in the film, "If we don’t fix our election integrity now, we may no longer have a democracy.”
The entire premise of "The Deep Rig" is that the U.S. election was compromised. That's despite numerous election challenges dismissed in courts across the country and post-election audits completed in Maricopa County. The film relies on theories that have been rehashed for months, including that a voting-machine company conspired to shift the election to Joe Biden.
Logan has not spoken with news reporters since the audit launched on April 23 and has not publicly reported on its progress. The audit's findings are expected to come out in late July or early August, Randy Pullen, an audit spokesperson, has told The Arizona Republic.
Logan has previously said the results of the audit were not predetermined. But before Republicans in the Arizona Senate hired Logan to conduct the audit he had shared conspiracy theories about the election being fraudulent on a now deleted Twitter account.
>CEO of Arizona audit contractor Cyber Ninjas appears in movie about U.S. election fraud
As a result, he has had to answer questions about his objectivity.
"The big question should not be, ‘am I biased’" Logan said in a statement in April, "but ‘Will this audit be transparent, truthful and accurate?’ The answer to the latter question is a resounding ‘Yes.’”
Later in April, as the recently completed hand count of the county's nearly 2.1 million ballots was about to get underway, he said, “If we go through here and we don’t find any fraud, I’m going to be ecstatic. I’m going to love that. And I want to be able to tell people about it. If we go through here and find fraud, I want to fix it.”
In the film, Logan said there is risk in participating in the audit. “But if you view it as this would be the end of our democracy, too many people lost their lives preserving what we have now to not put everything in, to do what we can to save it now," he said.
"I’ve had so many people come to me and say 'Hey Doug, you need to get out of that," Logan said. "You can’t be involved in that. You know, what about your family? What about this?' And my answer is, what if nobody stands up? You know, what if nobody else fills this gap? How can I shirk it off on someone else? I know stuff and I can do something about it and by golly, I’m not going to let our country be lost on my watch. So I’ll do what I can do.”
Logan also was involved in efforts to try to prove there was election fraud in Antrim County, Michigan. A judge dismissed the fraud claims there.
Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who on a right-wing news network in December raised the possibility of Trump using the military to rerun elections in swing states, appears in the film, as does his brother Joe.
Joe Flynn said in the film that once Trump pardoned his brother, "we rolled right into the election fraud work, and I got deeply involved in that."
Patrick Byrne, the founder and former CEO of Overstock.com who appears in the film based on a book he wrote, spoke to the audience afterward, along with others involved in the production.
"This is a government takeover of the United States," Byrne said in the film.
Byrne has said he is raising money for Arizona's audit. The Arizona Senate launched the audit of Maricopa County ballots with $150,000 in taxpayer money. Despite public records requests to the Senate and Cyber Ninjas by The Republic and other news organizations, no information has been released about other funding.
Byrne said that the film struggled to find any locations that would host a screening besides the church, but that anyone could pay him $1 per seat to host a screening at their home, office or church,with a $500 minimum. He said they could charge what they like and pocket the profits.
"This has been priced so patriots can make money," Byrne said. "What we want is people to do this a lot around the country."
Lawmakers attending Saturday's filming included Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley and Sen. Sonny Borrelli, R-Lake Havasu City.
US Secretary of State: Washington will provide an additional $400 million in humanitarian aid for the Syrian crisis
looks road legal
Durham North Carolina
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/world/middleeast/Antony-Blinken-Israel-Yair-Lapid.html
Meeting Blinken, Israel’s Top Diplomat Aims to Fix Netanyahu ‘Mistakes’
Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, is determined to repair his government’s fraught relationship with Washington Democrats, but he does not necessarily speak for his own right-wing prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
ROME — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met Sunday with Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, as the Biden administration takes the measure of Israel’s new government after the departure of the country’s divisive prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
The two men discussed Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and the international talks seeking to return Iran and the United States to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, about which Mr. Lapid said Israel had “serious reservations.”
But Mr. Lapid took a warm tone overall in brief remarks at the start of his meeting with Mr. Blinken, their first since Israel’s new government took power on June 13, saying he hoped to repair damage incurred under Mr. Netanyahu to Israel’s standing among Washington Democrats.
“In the past few years, mistakes were made,” Mr. Lapid said. “Israel’s bipartisan standing was hurt. We will fix those mistakes together.”
Speaking of differences over Iran, perhaps the main source of tensions between Democrats and Mr. Netanyahu, he added, “We believe the way to discuss those disagreements is through direct and professional conversation, not a press conference.”
“As the closest of friends do, we will have occasional differences,” Mr. Blinken responded. “We have the same objectives. Sometimes we differ on the tactics.”
It was not the first time that Mr. Lapid had called for mending relations with a Democratic Party that now controls Congress and the White House. After his swearing-in this month, he acknowledged that many Democrats were “angry” at Israel and said, “We need to change the way we work with them.”
Mr. Lapid represents only part of his country’s patchwork governing coalition, however, and he does not necessarily speak for its more conservative prime minister, Naftali Bennett, who shares many of Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing views.
Mr. Bennett assumed office this month on a bellicose note when it comes to Iran, declaring that work to repair the 2015 nuclear deal “is a mistake that will once again give legitimacy to one of the most violent, darkest regimes in the world.”
Under the agreement, world powers lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for time-limited restrictions on its nuclear program.
Mr. Bennett added, “Israel is not a party to the deal, and will maintain total freedom of action.”
Steven Simon, who served as the National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa in the Obama White House, said the rifts that emerged between Democrats and Mr. Netanyahu — fueled by his enthusiastic embrace of President Donald J. Trump — would not be smoothed over easily by a change of faces in Israel’s leadership.
“There are fundamental differences that have emerged in the relationship that will be difficult to reverse, especially as American politics becomes increasingly polarized,” said Mr. Simon, now a professor of international relations at Colby College. “I think it will be hard under foreseeable circumstances for Israel to recapture the wall-to-wall loyalty of the Democratic Party.”
Last week, 73 House Democrats signed a letter calling on President Biden to do more to reverse key elements of what they called Mr. Trump’s “abandonment of longstanding, bipartisan U.S. policy” toward Israel and the Palestinians. That included the formal withdrawal of Mr. Trump’s plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and the rescinding of a State Department legal opinion that called Israeli settlements “inconsistent with international law.”
Mr. Blinken met Mr. Lapid last month in Israel following the cease-fire that ended a 10-day conflict between Israel and Gaza-based Hamas set off by violence within Israel between Arabs and Jews.
>Israel’s foreign minister, Yair Lapid, is determined to repair his government’s fraught relationship with Washington Democrats, but he does not necessarily speak for his own right-wing prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
During their meeting, Mr. Blinken reiterated American concerns to Mr. Lapid about specific Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, including the demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem to make way for new Jewish settlements and Israel’s management of the Temple Mount, which Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and which is home to the sacred Al Aqsa Mosque.
Mr. Blinken also urged Mr. Lapid to find ways to accelerate slow-moving humanitarian and reconstruction aid into Gaza, which was severely damaged during the May conflict. Israeli and U.S. officials say that the militants of Hamas, with whom they refuse to work directly, have made that process more difficult.
The May 20 cease-fire was tested this month when Israel’s government, days after assuming power, conducted airstrikes in Gaza after incendiary balloons floated into southern Israel from the isolated Palestinian territory.
Seeing no real prospect of a peace agreement in the foreseeable future, Mr. Biden has made no effort to restart an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which effectively died during the Trump administration.
Mr. Blinken said the U.S. “strongly” supports normalization agreements, brokered at the end of the Trump administration and known as the Abraham Accords, that Israel struck with several Arab states, and said he hoped they could be expanded to more nations.
But he added that “as vital as they are, they are not a substitute for engaging on the issues between Israelis and Palestinians that need to be resolved.”
Mr. Lapid has become something of an Israeli envoy to leading Democrats. He spoke by phone this past week with Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Also on Sunday, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Gilad Erdan, who was appointed by Mr. Netanyahu this year, notified Mr. Bennett that he would step down once a replacement has been named or when his planned term expires in November. Mr. Erdan, a Netanyahu ally, intends to continue in his other role as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Rome is the third stop on a weeklong trip by Mr. Blinken to Western Europe, following meetings with government leaders in Germany and Paris. Both France and Germany effusively welcomed Mr. Biden’s top diplomat, displaying palpable relief at the end of the Trump era.
>Both France and Germany effusively welcomed Mr. Biden’s top diplomat, displaying palpable relief at the end of the Trump era.
Dan Crenshaw is one version of what the Republican Party might look like after Donald Trump. A decorated Navy SEAL who lost his eye in Afghanistan, Crenshaw was one of just a handful of millennial Republicans elected to Congress in 2018, a year that saw record youth momentum on the Democratic side. In his first year in office, Crenshaw has built a sizable social-media following—including more than 1 million Twitter followers—as the right’s leading warrior against what he calls “outrage culture.” Crenshaw’s path is one preferred by many young conservatives: he defends the President’s policies on issues from taxes to immigration—he even live-streamed his ride-along with Border Patrol on Instagram—without supporting his erratic tweets or endorsing his most controversial actions. (Crenshaw strongly criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria, and co-sponsored the bipartisan House resolution opposing the pullout.) He’s also one of the biggest fundraisers in the House, despite still being in his first term: in 2019, he’s collected more than $2.7 million. For those who want a more traditional, hard-right warrior, Crenshaw may be a glimpse at the conservative movement’s future.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?512962-1/president-biden-transportation-secretary-buttigieg-commemorate-lgbtq-pride-month
President Biden and Transportation Secretary Buttigieg commemorated LGBTQ Pride Month during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House. “Pride is back at the White House,” said the president. He spoke about the work his administration is doing to advance equal rights for all, but acknowledged that there is still work to be done.
Do not store up resentment against your neighbor, no matter what his offence; do nothing in a fit of anger. Pride is odious to both God and man; injustice is abhorrent to both of them…. Do not reprehend anyone unless you have been first fully informed, consider the case first and thereafter make your reproach. Do not reply before you have listened; do not meddle in the disputes of sinners. My child, do not undertake too many activities. If you keep adding to them, you will not be without reproach; if you run after them, you will not succeed nor will you ever be free, although you try to escape.
>Do not store up resentment against your neighbor, no matter what his offence; do nothing in a fit of anger. Pride is odious to both God and man; injustice is abhorrent to both of them…. Do not reprehend anyone unless you have been first fully informed, consider the case first and thereafter make your reproach. Do not reply before you have listened; do not meddle in the disputes of sinners. My child, do not undertake too many activities. If you keep adding to them, you will not be without reproach; if you run after them, you will not succeed nor will you ever be free, although you try to escape.
Sirach,10:6–31 and 11:1–10
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirach
>Senate was to meet in pro-forma session at 9 am et. Just a gavel-in, gavel out. But the dais is now empty. No sign of any Senate officers nor a senator to preside over the session, six minutes after mtg was to take place
Is there a livestream?
“Kevin Love is on the team because of tokenism,” Rose said on his ESPN show Jalen and Jacoby. “Don’t be scared to make an all-Black team representing the United States of America. I’m disappointed by that. Anybody that watched the league this year knows Kevin Love did not have a stellar season, was not the best player on his team and did not necessarily deserve to be on this squad.”
“I also know the favoritism that Christian Laettner was shown when he got a chance to be put on the Dream Team ahead of Shaq and Alonzo (Mourning),” Rose said of USA’s men’s basketball team from 1992. “But they made it so a college player could even get on and gave him favoritism.”
>severing into new tribes and forming new conspiracies as they contend with prophecies that did not come to fruition
>Sen Josh Hawley & Sen Kyrsten Sinema are now reportedly in possession of previously unseen Jan 6 film footage showing a ‘different narrative’ than what is being shared by Democrats & MSM.
>Thank you Joe & Kamala for helping to wake up the normies and helping to show the people.