Backseat Driver
Backseat Driver's JournalChristian 'Risks-Be-Damned' Hassell: Pushing Dangerous, Taxpayer-Funded Genetic Engineering and Gain
Interesting and pretty decent writing at an unusual site for this type of information including a rehash of the "unsolved" Ameritrax attack.
https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/christian-hassell-pushing-dangerous-taxpayer-funded-genetic-engineering-and-gain-of-function-research?utm_medium=email&utm_source=engagingnetworks&utm_campaign=OB+670&utm_content=OB+670
Any scientific lab work that involves making pathogens more lethal, contagious, infectious, or resistant to disease—even when done, ostensibly, for defensive purposes or medical countermeasures development—is really too risky to do at all.
Especially when you consider that 30 years’ worth of gain-of-function research has produced no vaccine, and no cure for a pandemic.
But perhaps an even better reason to stop experiments that could be used to create biological weapons, or the next pandemic, is the large number of high-profile—some accidental, some nefarious—releases of deadly pathogens from U.S. labs.
One U.S. government scientist who’s been linked, at least indirectly, with at least one gain-of-function research lab failure is Dr. Christian Hassell. (snip)
Our complex's lawn maintenance was here today.
The guy using the weedwhacker whacked my whole row of herbs inside our patio fence! I'm now in mourning my fresh herbs. Guess he did know what a tomato was on the other side of the fence. Just damn! the last of my lush mint, rosemary, basil, sage, dill, cilantro, and stevia - all gone!
Christine Daley, Lehman's Star Distressed Debt Analyst, Dies
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/christine-daley-lehman-star-distressed-213034655.html(Bloomberg) -- Christine Daley, a veteran analyst who headed Lehman Brothers’ distressed debt team before the firm’s collapse in 2008, has died.
The New York-based investment bank Seaport Global Securities LLC., Daley’s most recent employer, confirmed her death on Sunday. “The firm extends our deepest condolences to Christine’s family,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg News. No cause of death was given. Daley was born in July 1958, according to public records. [snip]
A graduate of the College of New Rochelle and NYU Stern School of Business, Daley joined Bear Stearns in the high yield and bankruptcy department and worked there until 1993. She later became a managing director at Lehman Brothers, where she led the distressed debt and special situations proprietary desk, and oversaw distressed debt and high yield research.
After the collapse of Lehman Brothers during the global financial crisis, Daley joined Oak Hill Advisors in 2009 as managing director of the firm’s investment team. In 2011, she joined River Birch Capital, a hedge fund co-founded by ex-Lehman President and COO Bart McDade that shuttered in late 2018, before switching to Seaport Global.
Read more...[snip]
Amid virus, Nicaragua drops celebration, readies monument
https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1134375-amid-virus-nicaragua-drops-celebration-readies-monument
President Daniel Ortega's government is being deterred by the coronavirus from holding the usual mass celebration to mark the July 19 victory of Nicaragua's revolution. Instead, it will unveil a new addition to its collection of monuments in the old city center of Managua. The 3½-ton Peace Bell will toll atop a 55-foot (17 meters) concrete tower not far from a grove of "Trees of Life," the huge abstract steel trees painted in garish colors that were sowed about the capital by Vice President Rosario Murillo, wife of the former revolutionary leader Ortega. Flower gardens and benches will surround the tower.
While the government had announced the bell tower would be inaugurated Friday afternoon, work continued at the site late into the day and there was no ceremony. There was no official announcement of a new time. In one of the few signs that Ortega's government is beginning to take the pandemic more seriously, this will be the first time in 41 years that throngs of people won't gather for the July 19 anniversary of the downfall of dictator Anastasio Somoza. Instead, a virtual concert is to be broadcast Saturday night and the bell will be formally dedicated at some point.
For months the government downplayed the coronavirus, keeping schools open and encouraging mass events while the rest of the world called for social distancing. International health organizations have repeatedly urged the government to take action while the public witnessed "express burials" and spreading illness. Some have criticized the bell project as a whim by Murillo at a time that Nicaragua's already struggling economy has been paralyzed by the pandemic. [snip]
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The world has gone crazy! One thing for sure: You can't trust statistics anywhere in the world the admin doesn't want them known. Meanwhile, somewhere along the line, one of the poorest nations with plenty of their own to mourn, raises an expensive bell tower in a bit of landscaped green space.
US sanctions son of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/us-sanctions-son-nicaragua-president-daniel-ortega-71844255MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- The United States Treasury sanctioned a son of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo Friday, as well as his communications company,for alleged ties to drug trafficking.
The U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control added Juan Carlos Ortega to its list of “Specially Designated Nationals.” The designation means his assets in the U.S. are blocked and “U.S. persons are generally prohibited from dealing with them.”
Juan Carlos Ortega is the third son of the ruling couple to be sanctioned by the United States. Some 22 people close to Ortega and Murillo have been sanctioned, including Murillo herself, since late 2017. A known Nicaragua political operator, José Mojica, was also added to the list.
There was no immediate reaction from the Nicaraguan government. [snip]
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So Munchies came across this, did he?
Has anyone had any success in eliminating magnolia scale
from their flowering magnolia trees/bushes? Mine are about 15-20 ft and those bugs are dripping that honeydew all over the lower leaves that attract bees and wasps at around my front door. Sooty black mold will then feast on it and kill the leaves as well since they won't be able to perform photosynthesis.
I don't want to kill pollinators or other plantings: yew, vinca ground cover, holly, sand cherries or red cane varigated-leaf dogwoods, but hate the thought of those pests sucking all the juice out of my magnolias all summer long thus weakening the whole tree during summer droughts and killing the young branches that flower next spring. Are any systemic pesticides very effective?
I've also heard one could use horticultural oils, possibly Neem oil sprays, to smother the critters if it's sprayed at a very specific time, when "crawlers" emerge, mate, and lay eggs, or dormant oils later, late fall, but these magnolias are very tall.
I can't afford the services of an arborist - HELP!
U.S. issues new indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Source: Associated Press
WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sought to recruit hackers at conferences in Europe and Asia to provide his anti-secrecy website with classified information, including military secrets, according to a new Justice Department indictment announced Wednesday.
The superseding indictment does not contain additional charges beyond the 18 counts the Justice Department unsealed last year. But prosecutors say it underscores Assange’s efforts to procure and release classified information, allegations that form the basis of criminal charges he already faces.
Assange was arrested last year after being evicted from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and is at the center of an ongoing extradition tussle over whether he should be sent to the United States.
The Justice Department last year charged him with conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history. It says the WikiLeaks founder damaged national security by publishing hundreds of thousands of classified documents, including diplomatic cables and military files on the wars in Iraq and Afgahnistan, that harmed the U.S. and its allies and aided its adversaries. [snip]
Read more: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-issues-new-indictment-against-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-2020-06-24
Adding more logs to the fire...
State Investigating Hospital With Coronavirus Policy That Profiled Pregnant...
Native American Mothers and Separated Them From Newborns
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham cited “significant, awful allegations” in a ProPublica and New Mexico In Depth story on a hospital where clinicians said pregnant Native women were singled out for COVID-19 testing and separated from newborns after delivery...read more here:
https://www.propublica.org/article/state-investigating-hospital-with-coronavirus-policy-that-profiled-pregnant-native-american-mothers-and-separated-them-from-newborns
https://www.propublica.org/article/a-hospitals-secret-coronavirus-policy-separated-native-american-mothers-from-their-newborns
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National racial/ethnic epidemics(s) of cruelty run viral!
I hope this video presentation is true, relevant, and
IMPORTANT to our health and well-being:
To encourage you tonight:
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