Virus Profiteering 101

On the Art of Creating Problems and Selling their Solutions

Joe Hoft, "US Dr. Ralph Baric Was Reviewing Moderna and Dr. Fauci’s Coronavirus Vaccine in December 2019! — What’s Going On?"

When did Doctors Fauci and Baric find out about the China coronavirus leak in Wuhan and how did they know it?

Why was the US investigating the coronavirus vaccine before the Western world even knew about it?

On April 9, 2020, we were the first media outlet to report on major events leading up to the China coronavirus leak that we suspected came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. We were able to determine Chinese Doctor Shi Zhengli was part of a team that was working on a coronavirus project jointly with US doctors in 2014 before it was shut down by the DHS for being too risky.

HUGE EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Doctor Shi Zhengli Ran Coronavirus Research in Wuhan After US Project Was Shut Down by DHS in 2014 for Being Too Risky — PRIOR LEAK KILLED RESEARCHER

After the US research project was shut down, Dr. Shi continued her coronavirus research in Wuhan, China.

We reported that Doctor Shi Zhengli from China was part of a team, including Doctor Ralph S. Baric from North Carolina, that published an article in a 2015 edition of Nature Medicine.

In the article, they discussed bat coronaviruses that showed potential for human emergence. The article was published in 2015.

This report was published shortly after their project was defunded by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 

The HHS in 2014 sent a letter to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where they announced they were going to defund the program.

Dr. Ralph S. Baric was identified in the letter.

After the work stopped in the US, the Chinese moved forward with the project and ran research and development in Wuhan at the Wuhan Virology Center. From Shi Zhengli’s papers and resume, it is clear that they successfully isolated the virus in the lab and were actively experimenting with species <-> species transmission.

Today, Dr. Lawrence Sellin, who contributed much to this effort to uncover the truth about COVID, reported that a December 12, 2019 agreement was signed by Dr. Ralph Baric that he would receive the “mRNA coronavirus vaccine candidates developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna”:

On DECEMBER 12, 2019 an agreement was signed (pg 105) that Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina would receive "mRNA corona virus vaccine candidates developed and jointly-owned by NIAID and Moderna"@Rossana38510044 @ydeigin @BillyBosticksonhttps://t.co/taAbB9FIvp

— Dr. Lawrence Sellin (@LawrenceSellin) February 27, 2021

The Moderna mRNA vaccine is now being given to people around the world. Pfizer also has an mRNA vaccine. Ralph Baric is a long-time coronavirus researcher with close ties with the batwoman and the Wuhan Institute of Virology as noted above in our post from April 2020. December 12, 2019, is very early in the COVID-19 outbreak before it was reported in the West. Baric would be a logical person to test the efficacy of an mRNA vaccine.

What this tells us is that Doctors Baric and Fauci may have been aware of what was happening in China and Fauci and Moderna were likely working on coronavirus vaccines before COVID-19 was announced in the West. The Moderna vaccine was ready for human testing very quickly.

It seems to be hardly a coincidence that Baric, who does not appear anywhere else in the confidential agreements should appear at such a consequential moment.

We can’t say this is a smoking gun of any type, but it is something not widely known and it certainly generates additional questions.

The Politics of Resentment...

 ...why does Leftism REQUIRE a domestic scapegoat? Because the Unseen Enemy is ALWAYS "within"!

...and ultimately, familiarity breeds CONTEMPT!

The Progressive "Fact Checking" Fraud

The New "Cloak of Gyges".

America's Cold War with Iran Has Just Heated Up

CHRIS JEWERS FOR MAILONLINE and PA

-Mystery explosion hits Israeli cargo ship in the Gulf hours after US air strike on Iran-backed militia forces in Syria

-Israeli-owned cargo ship 'Helios Ray' was sailing in the Gulf of Oman on Friday

-It was hit by an unexplained blast, renewing concerns over tensions in the region

-The site of the blast saw a series of explosions in 2019 that the US blamed on Iran

-Tehran denied the accusations, which came after Trump abandoned Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran

-The explosion came after the US hit Iran-backed militia targets with an air strike

-President Biden's airstrike in Syria reportedly killed 22 Iran-backed fighters

A mystery explosion has struck an Israeli cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman hours after a US air strike hit Iran-backed militia forces in Syria.

The Israeli-owned cargo ship was sailing out of the Middle East on Friday when it was hit by an unexplained blast, renewing concerns about ship security amid escalating tensions between the US and Iran in the region.

The crew and vessel were safe, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which is run by the British navy. The explosion forced the vessel to head to the nearest port.

The site of the blast, the Gulf of Oman, saw a series of explosions in 2019 that the U.S. Navy blamed on Iran against the backdrop of steeply rising threats between former President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders.

Tehran denied the accusations, which came after former US president Donald Trump abandoned Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on the country.

In recent weeks, as the administration of Joe Biden looks to re-engage with Iran, Tehran has escalated its breaches of the nuclear accord to create leverage over Washington.

The deal saw Tehran agree to limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of crippling sanctions.

Dryad Global, a maritime intelligence firm, identified the stricken vessel as the MV Helios Ray, a Bahaman-flagged roll-on, roll-off vehicle cargo ship.

Another private security official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, similarly identified the ship as the Helios Ray.

Satellite-tracking data from website MarineTraffic.com showed the Helios Ray had been nearly entering the Arabian Sea around 10am local time (0600 GMT) on Friday before it suddenly turned around and began heading back toward the Strait of Hormuz.

It still listed Singapore as its destination on its tracker, and by 4pm GMT was still shown as being in the Gulf of Oman, and had not reached a port.

It had been due to arrive in Singapore on March 5.

Two More Stories that May Indicate That the US & Israel Have Reached a Deal with Syria & Russia on Excluding Iran from the Region...

Reports: Israel buys vaccines for Syria in prisoner deal

Israeli media are reporting that Israel has paid Russia $1.2 million to provide the Syrian government with coronavirus vaccine doses

JERUSALEM -- Israel paid Russia $1.2 million to provide the Syrian government with coronavirus vaccines as part of a deal that secured the release of an Israeli woman held captive in Damascus, according to Israeli media reports on Sunday.

The terms of the clandestine trade-off orchestrated by Moscow between the two nations remained murky. But the fact Israel is providing vaccines to Syria — an enemy country hosting hostile Iranian forces — drew criticism at home, and stands in contrast to Israel’s refusal to provide significant quantities of vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saturday “not one Israeli vaccine” was involved in the deal. He didn't address whether Israel paid for Russian vaccines, and said Russia insisted details of the swap remain secret.

Netanyahu's office declined comment, and many details of the agreement remained censored.

Labor Party leader Merav Michaeli called on the Knesset’s foreign affairs and defense committee to discuss the deal and Netanyahu’s “political, inappropriate use of censorship.”

“Why do Israeli citizens consistently need to learn about things from foreign media that their prime minister is hiding from them?” she said on Israel’s Kan radio Sunday.

Israel announced Friday it had reached a Russian-mediated deal to bring home a young woman who had crossed into neighboring Syria earlier this month. In exchange, Israel said it released two Syrian shepherds who had entered Israeli territory.

Netanyahu boasted that his warm ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin helped clinch the deal. His office made no mention of any agreement to pay for vaccines for Syria.

The Israeli reports said Israel paid for an undisclosed number of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine. The Russian Direct Investment Fund, which financed development of Sputnik V, said in November it will cost less than $10 per dose internationally.

The Syrian state news agency denied the deal exists.

The released 25-year-old Israeli woman returned to Israel via Moscow and was questioned by Israel’s internal security agency. She hails from the predominantly ultra-Orthodox West Bank settlement of Modiin Illit and previously attempted to cross Israel’s borders with the Gaza Strip and Jordan, according to Israeli media.

The woman reportedly crossed into Syrian territory from the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed in 1981, a move not widely recognized internationally. Her identity and motivation for crossing into Syria were not released by Israeli officials.

Gideon Saar, a former Netanyahu ally who is running to unseat him in upcoming Israeli elections, said Sunday the government’s “censorship of something that Damascus and Moscow know about, and Israeli citizens don’t, is incomprehensible.”

Israel and Syria remain in an official state of war and Israeli citizens are officially prohibited from visiting Syria.

Israel's archenemy Iran has sent troops to support Syrian President Bashar Assad against rebel groups. Israel considers Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier to be a red line and has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Iranian-linked facilities and suspected weapons convoys destined for the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.

Israel has provided some humanitarian aid to groups unaffiliated with Assad and provided medical treatment to thousands of Syrians who reached the Golan Heights frontier.

Netanyahu's reported agreement to pay for vaccines to an enemy country contrasts with his refusal to provide large quantities of vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, drawing outcry from human rights organizations.

The disparities between Israel's successful vaccination push with its own population and the Palestinians have drawn criticism from U.N. officials and rights groups and have shined a light on the inequities between rich and poor countries getting access to vaccines.

These groups contend that Israel is responsible for vaccinating the Palestinians, while Israel has argued that it is not responsible for vaccinating them and that under interim peace agreements reached in the 1990s, the internationally backed Palestinian Authority must see to vaccinating its own population. Israel's vaccination campaign has included its own Arab population.

The Palestinian Authority has not publicly asked for Israeli assistance, saying it is procuring vaccines on its own and through a World Health Organization for poorer nations. But earlier this month, Israel agreed to share 2,000 vaccines with the Palestinians to inoculate medical workers in the West Bank.

Ahmad Tibi, a lawmaker with the Joint List of Arab parties in Israel's Knesset, wrote on Twitter on Friday: “Must we wait for a Jewish person to cross the border with Gaza for them to deserve vaccines?”

By ILAN BEN ZION Associated Press, February 21, 2021, 10:06 AM

--------

Report: Israel Tells US It Will Not Compromise on Iran’s Nuclear Program in Exchange for End to Regime’s Entrenchment in Syria and Lebanon

Senior Israeli security officials have told their US counterparts that they will not compromise on their insistence that Iran be deprived of nuclear weapons, even if such concessions might bring an end to Iranian entrenchment on Israel’s northern border and elsewhere, Israeli news site Walla reported Thursday.

According to the report, Israel’s security establishment is concerned that — rather than confront the nuclear issue directly — the US may attempt to first reach a compromise with Iran on the Islamic republic’s malign activities in the region.

These include Iran’s support for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad and the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, along with its attempt to entrench itself on those countries’ borders with Israel.

Israel has long been fighting what the IDF calls “the war between the wars” against this entrenchment, including massive numbers of air strikes and other operations against Iranian assets in Syria.

Iran also foments unrest and sponsors terrorism in Yemen, Iraq, Gaza, and outside the Middle East.

Walla reported that the latest message to the US was sent by Israel’s intelligence agencies, and said that Israel insists absolutely on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, which Israel regards as an “intolerable existential threat.”

There should be no linkage between the issue of ending Iran’s regional criminality and ending its nuclear program, the Israelis insisted.

The Israeli security establishment is pursuing this line because it believes that, if Iran achieves nuclear capability, it will have the leverage to engage freely in regional meddling as it likes, making the issue a moot point.

The Israeli officials also reportedly again made clear to the Americans that they believe a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran would be a mistake. The US was said to agree, acknowledging the weaknesses of that agreement and pledging that a new deal would put permanent end to Iran’s nuclear program.

In addition, the Israelis warned the US that a nuclear Iran could spark a regional arms race, with several other countries rushing to acquire the bomb in order to counter Iran’s capabilities.

Benjamin Kerstein

Has Something Changed in Syria?

The Axis of Resistance to Israel Is Breaking Up

Syria has turned against Hamas, and Iran’s efforts to mediate aren't working.

Yarmouk, once described as the capital of the Palestinian diaspora, was among the most ferociously bombed neighborhoods in the Syrian conflict. Home to 160,000 Palestinian Syrians before the civil war, the Damascus refugee camp-turned-suburb now lies in ruins and is nearly empty. The destruction of the camp, seen as a symbol of Palestinian resistance to Israel outside the occupied territories, has deprived Palestinians of their homes—and hope.

Yarmouk’s devastation, however, also tells the tale of Iran’s broken axis of resistance to Israel. It once comprised Hezbollah, Hamas, and Bashar al-Assad’s regime. As Hamas, an Islamist Palestinian movement and militia, ignored Assad’s calls for support and instead backed the rebels in the Syrian conflict, the resistance broke apart. This weakened Tehran’s position in the region, as well as limiting its leverage in possible future talks with the United States.

Since 1979, Shiite-majority Iran has presented itself as a champion of the Palestinian cause with the aim of brandishing its credentials as a nonsectarian Islamic power worthy of leading a Sunni-dominated Muslim world. Its alliance with a Sunni militia, Hamas, continues to be important to its narrative. It started to rebuild its axis in 2017 as a change in Hamas’s leadership opened the door to reconciliation talks. To reunite Hamas and the Syrian regime, Iran deployed Hezbollah, the Lebanese arm of the resistance, which has held a series of meetings to facilitate the restoration of ties between the former allies. Palestinian activists in Syria, however, doubt that an unforgiving Assad will agree to reconcile with Hamas. Some instead point to possible Russian mediation between Syria and Israel as a sign of some sort of recalibration of that supposedly hostile relationship instead.

Most of the people of the Yarmouk camp who both wanted a free Palestine and a repression-free Syria fear that the regime has no intentions to rehabilitate them and has deliberately imposed obstacles in the way of their returning. Um Ridwan was a baby when her family was forced to escape the former Mandatory Palestine in the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948, seeking refuge in Yarmouk. Yarmouk was her home from then on, but the relentless bombing of her neighborhood by the regime in battles with the rebels, who included a range of groups from anti-regime Palestinians to the Islamic State, changed the face of it. Now, she can barely recognize it. “It’s all rubble,” she said.

In December 2020, she finally received the required permissions from the Syrian regime to visit her home but found nothing except crumbling walls. “Everything in our house was looted: doors, windows, sinks, even electrical wires in the walls and tiles on the floors had been stolen,” she told Foreign Policy from rented accommodation in Damascus where she has been living. “There is no electricity, no clinics, no schools, there is nothing. We were told the regime is fixing Yarmouk, but it hasn’t.”

It has been almost three years since the regime reclaimed Yarmouk, but it has not even cleared the debris inside the buildings, 60 percent of which were destroyed in the bombardment. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians, just 604 families have been approved by the regime to return as of last month. Palestinian activists say that these are the families of those who actively supported the regime, not those who opposed it or remained neutral. They accuse the regime of deliberately letting the rebels take over Yarmouk with the intention of isolating them and bombing the camp and then, in the postwar phase, of trying to steal the properties of its original inhabitants.

Foreign Policy spoke to several Palestinian Syrians with homes in Yarmouk who said that the regime wanted only supporters to return, no one else. The regime has demanded residents provide original documents proving ownership, which many may have lost in the chaos of war, and security clearance from the dreaded intelligence services so the regime can screen them for past allegiances. Other families may lose their homes if they fall on streets that have been allocated for redevelopment.

Palestinian Syrians, too, wanted an end to corruption and longed for better lives. They, too, participated in protests, but officially the various groups maintained neutrality in the conflict. However, Yarmouk grabbed attention when the people provided refuge to the internally displaced from elsewhere in the country and offered logistical support and humanitarian services to the rebels of the Free Syrian Army. Palestinian Syrians could not remain outside a conflict that was happening all around them for long.

While some supported the regime, Hamas backed the rebels. The group had been formed in 1987 as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab organization propagating political Islam, whose Syrian members were now fighting the Assad regime. Back in 2012, Hamas was also inspired by the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in placing their man, Mohamed Morsi, as president of Egypt, and hoped to cash in on the triumph of its parent organization by siding with them on the Syrian battlefield. Hamas’s leaders left Damascus for Qatar, a patron of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its breakaway fighters formed Aknaf Bayt al-Maqdis, which trained Syrian rebels to build tunnels and make rockets. They fought alongside the rebels against the regime on the Yarmouk front line and even against their old ally Hezbollah in the Syrian town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border. Assad accused Hamas of supporting the Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, then called the Nusra Front, while Hezbollah chastised it for using Iranian tunnel technology against the axis.

Soon enough, though, Hamas lost the gamble. Morsi was ousted in a coup in July 2013, and in Syria, too, they were eventually defeated by Assad and his Russian allies. But the Palestinians’ protests and Hamas’s rejection of Assad cost the community dearly. Assad’s intelligence services imprisoned thousands of Palestinians it suspected of sympathizing with the Syrian rebels, or those who in any way, howsoever remotely, advocated political Islam. They were seen as a threat by the regime, especially those from Yarmouk.



One activist who subsequently moved to the United Kingdom, speaking to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity, said that fellow Palestinian Syrians were arrested if they happened to be from Yarmouk. “Bashar al-Assad considered Hamas’s refusal to support him as a stab in the back and perceived the whole community as unwanted guests in Syria,” the activist said. “Therefore the revenge was very extreme. They arrested anyone from Yarmouk, but it wasn’t limited to one camp. They chased Palestinians everywhere.”

Ahmad Hosein, the CEO of a U.K.-based monitor called Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, said anyone who did not support the regime was punished. “The regime did punish Hamas and its ‘official’ cadres for Hamas’s position toward the regime,” Hosein said. “But as for punishing the Palestinians as a community, I would say that every Palestinian individual who did not stand by the regime, regardless of their affiliation, was punished in one way or another.”

Iranian forces aided Assad in committing these crimes, but it still wanted to rebuild the axis. Over the last two years, Hezbollah’s head Hassan Nasrallah has met with Hamas’s leaders several times. Some of these leaders have also made conciliatory remarks about Syria’s previous largesse, which gave the refugees almost the same status as its own citizens—even though that decision predated the Baathist regime. A delegation from Hamas visited Damascus in 2019 and met with regime officials, but nothing came of it.

While Iran reeled under U.S. President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign, the United Arab Emirates and three other Arab countries signed normalization deals with Israel. That should give further motive to Iran and Hezbollah to keep making an effort to revive the broken axis. But in an interview Nasrallah gave in late December 2020 he hardly seemed optimistic. “This relationship must be restored, but it will take some time,” he said.

There is perhaps too much bad blood between Assad and Hamas to mend fences for the time being. The Syrian regime was left seething when Hamas, a group that they supported over Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization since the ’80s, shunned it in preference for its own Islamist brothers. Besides, analysts say, Assad’s strong relationship with Russia and growing ties with the UAE, both of which want Syria to come to terms with Israel, has impacted the regime’s thinking. Rami al-Sayed, a former human rights activist from the Yarmouk camp, said that the regime had always been insincere about the Palestinian cause and deployed it to achieve its hegemonic ambitions in the Levant. Now, he said, it seemed more interested in cracking a deal to ensure its survival. “We have seen several deals recently, such as when Russia dug graves in Yarmouk to find to Israeli soldiers. Now we have heard that Israel is buying Russia’s coronavirus vaccine for Syrians,” he said. “This comes in parallel with the normalization wave between Israel and the Arab countries. It’s not impossible we will see a formal normalization between the regime and Israel very soon.”

Anchal Vohra is a Beirut-based columnist for Foreign Policy and a freelance TV correspondent and commentator on the Middle East. Twitter: @anchalvohra

Life Goes On in Biden's Clown World...

Gotta LOVE This Gal!

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is having a hallway war with her Democrat neighbor Rep. Marie Newman — and she is definitely winning.

Rep. Newman had a tantrum on Wednesday after Rep. Greene voted against the so-called “Equality Act,” which would force girls to compete with biological boys in school sports and stomp on religious liberty laws.

The petulant Democrat decided to post a video of herself hanging a transgender flag outside of her office, which is directly across from Rep. Greene’s.

“Our neighbor, @RepMTG , tried to block the Equality Act because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is ‘disgusting, immoral, and evil.’ Thought we’d put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door,” Rep. Newman wrote, adding the winking and trans flag emojis.

In response, the firebrand Republican had a sign made that says “there are two genders: male & female” and “trust the science” and posted a video of herself hanging it, mocking Newman’s video.

“Our neighbor, @RepMarieNewman , wants to pass the so-called “Equality” Act to destroy women’s rights and religious freedoms. Thought we’d put up ours so she can look at it every time she opens her door,” Rep. Greene fired back with a winking emoji and an American flag.

In a subsequent tweet, to be clear, Rep. Greene asserted, “God created ONLY TWO genders.”

Our neighbor, @RepMarieNewman, wants to pass the so-called "Equality" Act to destroy women’s rights and religious freedoms.

Thought we’d put up ours so she can look at it every time she opens her door 😉🇺🇸 https://t.co/7joKpTh6Dc pic.twitter.com/aBGRSiIF6X

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (@RepMTG) February 24, 2021

Muh Russia, the Gift that Keeps on Giving...

Louisiana's Plan to Co-opt Democracy

....and select (through algorithmically pre-determined vote adjudication) your representatives for you!

How Many Shadow Foreign Policies and Diplomats Should the US Have?

Ben Wolfgang and Guy Taylor, "EXCLUSIVE: Biden team colluded with Iran to foil Trump diplomacy"

President Trump in 2019 sought to open a back channel of communication with top Iranian officials and saw the U.N. General Assembly meeting in September as a potential opportunity to defuse escalating tension with Tehran, but the effort failed.

Two months earlier, however, a different back channel was thriving in New York. Iran’s smooth, English-speaking foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, met with Robert Malley, who was President Obama’s Middle East adviser, in an apparent bid to undermine the Trump team and lay the groundwork for post-Trump relations.

The attempt at counterdiplomacy offers a window into the deep relationships Mr. Zarif forged with influential U.S. liberals over the past decade. These relationships blossomed into what high-level national security and intelligence sources say allowed the Iranian regime to bypass Mr. Trump and work directly with Obama administration veterans that Tehran hoped would soon return to power in Washington.

One of those was former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who met with Mr. Zarif during the Trump years. So did Obama-era Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. They, along with Mr. Malley, were top U.S. negotiators of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). As part of the deal, Tehran promised to limit its nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for economic sanctions relief and access to tens of billions of dollars in frozen bank accounts.

Mr. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the pact in 2018. He cited the need for a much tougher agreement that also addressed Iran’s support for terrorist groups and its destabilizing behavior in the Middle East.

Mr. Kerry and Mr. Malley are now in the Biden administration, Mr. Kerry as a climate adviser and Mr. Malley poised to play a major role in U.S.-Iranian relations from his perch as special envoy for Iran policy at the State Department.

But Mr. Zarif’s power extends far beyond the negotiating table. Numerous sources have told The Washington Times that he wields tremendous influence over a tightly knit group inside the U.S. that has long advocated for Washington to take a more accommodating tack toward Iran.

The sources, including several from the U.S. intelligence community who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described a “web” of activity tied to prominent think tanks across the United States, as well as lobbying efforts that reached directly into the White House during the Obama years.

It’s an informal union of Iran apologists and pro-diplomacy advocates that helps amplify Mr. Zarif’s talking points, giving the Iranian Foreign Ministry influence over public opinion in the United States and considerable sway in left-leaning political and social circles.

One former U.S. official described Mr. Zarif as “the bat signal” for a network that encompasses left-leaning university professors, think tank analysts and other corners of civil society calling for a less-confrontational relationship with the regime in Tehran.

“He’s the signal for an echo chamber internationally that has been established over time,” the former official said.

Some foreign policy analysts argue that the shadow diplomacy between Mr. Zarif and the former Obama team was particularly striking because Iran at the time was backing plots to kill Americans stationed in neighboring Iraq and the regime was funneling money, including funds it received from sanctions relief under the JCPOA, to terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.

“Former administration officials can play a very helpful role in close coordination with a sitting administration to open and support sensitive diplomatic channels,” said Mark Dubowitz, chief executive at the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “But it is not good practice for senior officials who served at the highest levels of a former administration, Democratic or Republican, to be trying to undermine the policy of a sitting administration by engaging actively with a known enemy of the United States.

“That’s especially true when multiple administrations have determined that this enemy is the leading state sponsor of terrorism,” said Mr. Dubowitz, who has been the target of Iranian sanctions because of his outspoken criticism of the regime in Tehran.

Although details of Mr. Zarif’s face-to-face conversations with leading Democrats remain murky, one former senior U.S. official told The Times that the Iranian foreign minister held meetings throughout the Trump years, in 2017, 2018 and 2019, before the administration halted his visa in 2020.

The underlying goals of Mr. Zarif’s meetings, the official said, was “to devise a political strategy to undermine the Trump administration” and to continue building up a reservoir of support for the JCPOA, or another deal like it, that could be drawn up if a Democrat returned to the White House in 2021.

Mr. Kerry has publicly acknowledged meeting with Mr. Zarif at least twice during the early years of the Trump administration.

In 2018, the former senator from Massachusetts told radio host Hugh Hewitt that he intended to find out “what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better” and said there was nothing secret about his meetings with Mr. Zarif. He vehemently denied claims that he “coached” Mr. Zarif about how to deal with the Trump administration.

The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported that Mr. Zarif met with Mr. Moniz earlier in 2018 and with Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference that same year. Ms. Sherman has been nominated to serve as deputy secretary of state in the Biden administration.

Most of the meetings with Mr. Zarif took place before Mr. Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018. That timing is important because it means the U.S. and Iran were still official diplomatic partners.

But Mr. Malley and Mr. Zarif met in 2019, after the JCPOA withdrawal, meaning the dynamic between Washington and Tehran had changed drastically. Sources said it’s likely that Mr. Malley urged Iranian officials to wait out the Trump presidency with the expectation that a Democratic administration in 2021 would restore Obama-era policy.

A spokesperson for the International Crisis Group, which Mr. Malley was leading at the time, told the Jewish Insider media outlet in July 2019 that the meeting was part of Mr. Malley’s “regular contacts with all parties, whether it be Iran, the U.S., Gulf states or European countries.”

Mr. Malley did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Times, and State Department Bureau of Public Affairs officials appointed by the Biden administration refused to address questions about his dealings with Mr. Zarif.

“We categorically reject baseless smears against dedicated public servants,” one U.S. official said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has directed Mr. Malley to incorporate people representing a variety of views in his Iran approach. Mr. Blinken also has stressed that Iran must make the first diplomatic move by returning to the uranium enrichment limits laid out in the JCPOA. Iranian leaders say they have purposely breached those limits in response to the revival of American economic sanctions.

The secretary of state said recently that a new deal may address other issues, including Tehran’s support of terrorism.

Questions of transparency

For Mr. Zarif, the January 2017 change between the Obama and Trump administrations was jarring. Mr. Trump campaigned against the Iran nuclear deal in 2016 and withdrew the U.S. from it two years later.

Outraged at the American reversal, Mr. Zarif saw an opportunity to exploit Democratic anger to Iran’s advantage. During the initial uproar in 2018 over his meetings with Mr. Kerry, Mr. Zarif explained that he could tap into a network of support for the deal that was alive and well on the political left.

That network, he said, allowed him to work around the Trump administration.

“America is not just a government in the White House. America is a collection of public opinion, pressure groups and studies. These factors are pushing politics forward,” Mr. Zarif told a May 2018 meeting with members of the Iranian Parliament, as quoted by the Al Arabiya news channel.

One of the central organizations in the web, according to numerous sources, is the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

The group, whose website says it engages in “direct lobbying efforts” in Washington, has long supported a softer diplomatic approach toward Iran. It called the appointment of Mr. Malley to the Biden administration “a major step in putting U.S. diplomacy back in the hands of genuine professionals.”

In private, U.S. officials describe the NIAC as “the Iranian version of AIPAC,” the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee that has long exercised significant influence in Washington promoting a pro-Israel policy but has no direct ties to the Israeli government.

A months long investigation by The Washington Times found no direct financial connection between NIAC and Iran’s government, but critics say the council is the lobbying arm of the regime in Tehran, operating in plain sight in the United States.

NIAC vehemently denies such claims, which have been debated in the press and in lawsuits dating nearly all the way back to the organization’s founding two decades ago.

However, the council often appears in lockstep with Mr. Zarif on public messaging. In the immediate aftermath of a January 2020 U.S. airstrike that killed top Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, they had similar reactions and expressed near-identical warnings about what may result.

“The US’ act of international terrorism, targeting & assassinating General Soleimani … is extremely dangerous & a foolish escalation,” Mr. Zarif tweeted on Jan. 2, 2020. “The US bears responsibility for all consequences of its rogue adventurism.”

“The assassination of … Qassem Soleimani is a profoundly reckless move that will be viewed as an act of war in Tehran,” NIAC said in a statement the same day. “We call yet again on leaders in Washington and Tehran to halt the escalation spiral, invite in intermediaries and negotiate their differences before it is too late and a regional war is upon us.”

Those types of similarities have caught the attention of key lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

In January 2020, three high-profile Republican senators asked the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether NIAC was violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires anyone working in a political capacity for a foreign government to disclose that information.

“We are concerned that certain organizations that purport to represent the interests of [the Iranian-American] community, specifically NIAC, may be conducting lobbying and public relations activities in coordination with or on behalf of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” wrote Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Mike Braun of Indiana.

It’s unclear whether an investigation was ever opened. The Justice Department declined to comment when The Times asked about the senators’ letter.

The Council issued a statement last year describing the lawmakers’ assertions as “slanderous” and “a sign that warhawks are seeking to intimidate pro-peace voices, starting with Iranian Americans, from halting the push toward war, which Cotton and Cruz have long championed.”

When approached by The Times with questions about council’s dealings with Mr. Zarif during the Trump era, and whether it directly coordinated with the Iranian official on messaging, the organization declined to comment, though it said in a statement that it “is completely independent of any government, and is funded exclusively by American donors and reputable U.S. foundations.”

“Our commitment to transparency has earned NIAC a Guidestar Platinum Seal of Transparency,” the statement said. “Our policy priorities are set by our membership and consistently fall within a supermajority of the views of the Iranian-American community based on all polling data.”

‘Foreign influence operations’

The Cruz-Cotton-Braun letter also singled out Trita Parsi, a co-founder of NIAC who now serves as executive vice president at a recently formed Washington-based think tank, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The senators’ letter cited years-old claims that Mr. Parsi had a close working relationship with Mr. Zarif. It referenced a 2008 lawsuit that revealed Mr. Parsi had arranged meetings between Mr. Zarif and members of Congress around 2006 when Mr. Zarif was serving as Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations.

One high-level source, who detailed the dynamic on the condition of not being identified, said senior officials familiar with intelligence on Iran believe Mr. Parsi works in step with the Iranian regime.

“Basically, there is a huge hole in how we perceive foreign influence operations in America,” said the source, pointing to reports that Mr. Parsi had high-level access to the Obama administration.

A 2017 report by The Washington Free Beacon examined Obama White House visitor logs and found that Mr. Parsi had visited 33 times to meet with Mr. Malley and other top administration officials.

“What the heck? Thirty-three times?” the high-level source told The Times. “It’s entirely reasonable to believe he’ll be doing it again now with Biden in the White House.”

“This is a guy who, for all intents and purposes, represents Iran, a country that wants to kill Americans and has a history of killing Americans,” the source said. “Can you imagine if we could get someone into [Iranian Supreme Leader] Ali Khamenei’s office? If I could pull that off, they’d be building a statue of me at Langley.”

Mr. Parsi declined to comment for this article, but he has previously issued sharp denials of claims that he or the Council ever lobbied on behalf of the Iranian government. He characterized the claims as lies fomented by neoconservatives who seek war with Iran.

A top former Iranian official pushed back at the notion that the council or Mr. Parsi operates as an American front for the government in Tehran.

“It is not a secret that Trita Parsi has had meetings with Javad Zarif in New York, like hundreds of other Iranian-Americans and Americans. But that does not equate to NIAC being a front for the Iranian government or to the Iranian government providing support for NIAC,” said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator who specializes in Middle East security and nuclear policy at Princeton University.

Mr. Mousavian told The Times in an interview that there is a far simpler explanation for the council’s pro-diplomacy policies.

“The overwhelming majority of Iranians in the United States do not want war against Iran or sanctions against Iran because their families — their parents, sisters and brothers — are in Iran and they want to be able to travel to Iran and they have assets in Iran,” he said.

“This is why 90% of Iranians in the U.S. don’t want to attack Iran and don’t want regime change,” he said. “They fear the country will fall into complete instability and there will be an Afghanistanization of Iran.”

NIAC’s return to influence in Washington at the highest levels represents a stark reversal from the Trump years, when groups promoting an entirely different view of Iran gained access to the White House.

One such organization that has promoted claims about a Tehran-run web of influence is the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group for Iranians who oppose the theocratic regime and U.S. efforts to engage with it.

The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), the most structured Iranian opposition outfit, is closely affiliated with the National Council of Resistance of Iran. It was once listed as a terrorist organization, but the listing was removed in 2012 after it renounced violence and recruited well-known American politicians and diplomats to plead its case.

MEK advocates have included Democrats and Republicans, and many of the Republican supporters took prominent roles in the Trump administration. John R. Bolton, who served as a national security adviser to Mr. Trump, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney, have both backed the MEK.

Mr. Trump and top deputies such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were outraged by Mr. Kerry’s back-channel diplomacy.

Mr. Trump even said it was illegal under the 1799 Logan Act, which restricts private American citizens from negotiating with hostile powers. That was the law Democrats cited to attack Trump aides such as Michael Flynn for contacts with Russians before Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration.

“John Kerry violated the Logan Act,” Mr. Trump told White House reporters in May 2019. “He’s talking to Iran and has had many meetings and many phone calls, and he’s telling them what to do. That is a total violation of the Logan Act.”

Legal experts say only two people have ever been indicted under the Logan Act, both in the 19th century, and both cases were dropped before trial.

Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and director of research in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, said he takes a “fairly lenient” attitude toward Americans communicating with foreign officials, “as long as they are upfront about the capacity in which they do so.”

He said he was more worried about the positions that the Obama-Biden operators took.

“Personally, I don’t think a simple return to the JCPOA today, as if the Trump presidency never happened, makes a lot of sense,” he said in an interview. “Trump aspired for too much on Iran, seeking to change all of the regime’s objectionable behavior in a way that was unrealistic. But we do need, I think, a tougher nuclear deal of longer-term duration. And Trump showed that Iran didn’t have lots of good options about what to do if we squeezed them” through economic sanctions.

The irony of the Obama team’s meetings with Mr. Zarif is that the Biden administration now seems to be increasingly aligned with Mr. Trump’s strategy.

After fulfilling his campaign promise to pull America back from what he described as the “disastrous” nuclear deal with Iran, Mr. Trump ramped up sanctions with the stated goal of pressuring Tehran into a new and wider negotiation that would address not only the Islamic republic’s illegal nuclear weapons program but also its support for international terrorism.

Although Mr. Trump’s unilateral moves angered others who had signed the multinational deal with Iran — including the European Union, China and Russia — most conservative observers felt by September 2019 that Mr. Trump’s strategy was working. U.S.-Iranian tensions were soaring, and the moment was ripe for Mr. Trump to exert the leverage his administration believed it had created.

With the U.N. General Assembly as cover, the president began pressuring Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to open a back channel of communication with the Iranians, but the effort fell on deaf ears.

Calling Out Joe Biden's Racism...

How Safe and Effective Are the New COVID19 Vaccines?

We won't know until the end of 2022 when the clinical trials are complete.

Nearly 1,000 Americans have died from the vaccine thru Feb 12, 2021.

Is the US Democratic Party a Criminal Protection Racket?

RICK MORAN, "Biden Fires Chicago U.S. Attorney Hot on the Trail of Democratic Corruption"

You’ve probably never heard of Chicago’s U.S. attorney John Lausch. For the last two years, he has been going after some of the biggest, most powerful Democrats in the state of Illinois.

His office indicted a Chicago alderman who had been serving since 1969. Edward Burke had been in the crosshairs of prosecutors for four decades but it wasn’t until Lausch came into office that he was indicted.

Then there’s the case of the most powerful state politician in the United States, Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan. His aides and cronies have been indicted for various crimes of influence over the years and Lausch has now set his sights on Madigan himself.

In fact, it’s believed Lausch has targeted some other high-profile Democratic politicians in other investigations. It’s a target-rich environment and Democrats in Illinois have gotten extremely nervous about who Lausch will go after next.

Now it appears, that bringing down corrupt Democratic politicians will be the job of the next U.S. attorney. Along with 56 other U.S. attorneys named by former president Trump, Lausch will lose his job — fired by Joe Biden. “It’s tradition,” said Biden supporters. This is true. But it’s also “tradition” to keep prosecutors in place who were pursuing high-profile cases. Lausch certainly qualified under that criteria.

Biden’s firing hasn’t gone down well in Illinois.

Washington Free Beacon:

"Lausch’s abrupt removal has drawn bipartisan criticism from Illinois lawmakers who say he should be allowed to finish his work or depart on a longer timeline to ensure an orderly transition. The president asked all Trump-appointed U.S. attorneys to resign by the end of February but allowed two to remain in place to conclude politically sensitive work.

With much of the state’s Democratic establishment in his sights, it’s not clear why Biden did not extend the same courtesy to Lausch. Madigan’s resignation, timed as it is with Lausch’s imminent departure, will raise even more pointed questions for Lausch’s successor about the future of the case."

The timing is particularly suspicious in Madigan’s case. Lausch indicted several Madigan associates, including his most trusted aide, for their role in a scandal involving the state’s primary electric utility, ComEd. The company provided payments, subcontracts, and no-show jobs to various Madigan cronies in return for favorable legislation. Madigan had probably been doing this sort of thing regularly over his many years as speaker of the Illinois House. He facilitated the scheme, but never directly benefitted financially — that prosecutors know of, anyway. It’s illustrative of the political-business-criminal nexus that robs the taxpayers and enriches the powerful.

It’s a tale told all too often in Illinois. Just your run-of-the-mill influence-peddling, log-rolling and pay-for-play by crooked pols who are used to getting away with it.

"Lawmakers in both parties have raised concerns that Lausch’s removal would disrupt the ComEd probe. Sens. Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.) said Lausch should remain in place until his successor is confirmed by the Senate, a move supported by Illinois’s five Republican congressmen. The GOP lawmakers emphasized that the scope of the investigation is “historic” in a Feb. 9 statement."

Who else in Illinois is being stalked? Biden will be watched carefully as far as who he names to replace Lausch. And more importantly, who else will be in the prosecutor’s crosshairs.

The Election Must be Over....

Marty Makary, "We’ll Have Herd Immunity by April"

Covid cases have dropped 77% in six weeks. Experts should level with the public about the good news.

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells, which develop “memory” once they are activated by the virus. Survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu were found in 2008—90 years later—to have memory cells still able to produce neutralizing antibodies.

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that the percentage of people mounting a T-cell response after mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infection consistently exceeded the percentage with detectable antibodies. T-cell immunity was even present in people who were exposed to infected family members but never developed symptoms. A group of U.K. scientists in September pointed out that the medical community may be under-appreciating the prevalence of immunity from activated T-cells.

Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. would also suggest much broader immunity than recognized. About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%. These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection.

In my own conversations with medical experts, I have noticed that they too often dismiss natural immunity, arguing that we don’t have data. The data certainly doesn’t fit the classic randomized-controlled-trial model of the old-guard medical establishment. There’s no control group. But the observational data is compelling.

I have argued for months that we could save more American lives if those with prior Covid-19 infection forgo vaccines until all vulnerable seniors get their first dose. Several studies demonstrate that natural immunity should protect those who had Covid-19 until more vaccines are available. Half my friends in the medical community told me: Good idea. The other half said there isn’t enough data on natural immunity, despite the fact that reinfections have occurred in less than 1% of people—and when they do occur, the cases are mild.

But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in.

My prediction that Covid-19 will be mostly gone by April is based on laboratory data, mathematical data, published literature and conversations with experts. But it’s also based on direct observation of how hard testing has been to get, especially for the poor. If you live in a wealthy community where worried people are vigilant about getting tested, you might think that most infections are captured by testing. But if you have seen the many barriers to testing for low-income Americans, you might think that very few infections have been captured at testing centers. Keep in mind that most infections are asymptomatic, which still triggers natural immunity.

Many experts, along with politicians and journalists, are afraid to talk about herd immunity. The term has political overtones because some suggested the U.S. simply let Covid rip to achieve herd immunity. That was a reckless idea. But herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it’s harder for it to spread—and that includes the new strains.

Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection. Doctors are watching a new strain that threatens to evade prior immunity. But countries where new variants have emerged, such as the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, are also seeing significant declines in daily new cases. The risk of new variants mutating around the prior vaccinated or natural immunity should be a reminder that Covid-19 will persist for decades after the pandemic is over. It should also instill a sense of urgency to develop, authorize and administer a vaccine targeted to new variants.

Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth. As we encourage everyone to get a vaccine, we also need to reopen schools and society to limit the damage of closures and prolonged isolation. Contingency planning for an open economy by April can deliver hope to those in despair and to those who have made large personal sacrifices.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, chief medical adviser to Sesame Care, and author of “The Price We Pay.”

The Green New Deal is a Bad Deal...

B-R-R-R-R... How Reliable is Green Energy?

Did Frozen Wind Turbines Impact the Texas Freeze? Here's the Data

Wednesday morning more than 1.3 million electric power customers across Texas remain without power during the coldest winter storm in decades. Gov. Greg Abbott put all of Texas’ 254 counties under a disaster declaration as the state has been hammered with a series of major and historic winter storms. The reasons for the collapse of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) grid are still being debated, and it’s certain that there is more than one cause and more information will come out.

But one of the most contested issues is the role wind generation has played. Prior to the onset of the storm last week, Texas led the nation in wind power generation and depended on the wind turbines in West-Central and Western Texas, along with a smaller number of turbines along the Gulf Coast, for about 25% of its electricity. As wind power has increased, coal-powered generation plants have been taken offline around the state. Texas has abundant coal, oil, and natural gas, and also has nuclear plants near Dallas and near Houston.

Real-time data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that wind power collapsed as the winter storm swept across the state.

To understand the graph, the very top line, beige, is natural gas power generation. Hydroelectric is the barely perceptible blue line at the bottom. Wind is the green line; coal is brown. Nuclear power is purple.

The graph clearly shows all forms of power generation dipped, with wind power collapsing from Monday to Tuesday before recovering somewhat. Meanwhile, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power generation also dipped but continued generating power. Gas pipelines and a cooling system at the STP nuclear plant outside Houston did suffer the effects of the extreme cold.

As the graph plainly shows, wind generation choked down but natural gas compensated. Coal and even nuclear power generation dipped. Solar generation has been negligible due to cloud cover and several inches of snow and ice.

The cold has created extreme demand across the state. During most winter storms, the Panhandle, West Texas, and even North Texas around Dallas and above toward Paris may get cold but Central and South Texas could remain well above freezing. This has not happened during the current series of storms. The entire state is in a deep freeze, with snow appearing even on Galveston Island’s beach. Galveston averages lows of about 50 degrees and highs in the mid-60s during a typical February. It’s 37 degrees in Galveston as I write this, well below average. Austin has seen single-digit temperatures at night.

To put all of this into some perspective, the storm that dumped more than six inches of ice and snow on Austin Sunday night would, by itself, have been a historic storm. It dropped more snow on the capital than any other storm since 1949. It was preceded by a major cold snap and has been followed by more extreme cold and then another ice and snow storm Tuesday night. Texas has not suffered a single historic winter storm over the past several days, but a series of them without any warming in between. It’s unlikely to get above freezing in the Austin area until Friday. Points north may stay below freezing for a couple of days after that. This is putting more demand on the grid.

Add to all of this, when Texas gets winter storms it usually doesn’t just get snow. Snow is fairly easy to deal with. Texas also gets ice, which can snap electric lines and break trees and tree branches, which also can fall on and break power lines. A tree in my yard is bent over by ice to the point that it looks like an invisible hand is holding it down. We can expect the ice to kill off millions of trees around the state. The ice layers also render most roads impassable. All of this is very unusual for Texas, but not unprecedented. The winter of 1836 was notably harsh; Santa Anna reportedly encountered deep snow as he marched his army toward San Antonio.

Most winters, Austin will have a few cold days but no snow. Central Texas is known to go entire winters without anyone having to so much as scrape any frost off their car windshield. Austin has had two significant snowstorms in 2021, with the current one being historic by any measure.

Piecing known information together, the wind turbines in Western Texas froze up starting Friday before the icy snowstorm hit, on Sunday night to Monday morning. This destabilized the Texas grid ahead of the worst of the storm. The storm produced the temperatures and precipitation the forecasts expected, but with weakened power generation and demand skyrocketing to heat millions of homes, homes which for the most part are not insulated against the current level of cold temperatures, the grid was set up to suffer mightily as it’s not hardened against extreme cold such as this once-in-a-century storm series is delivering.

Gov. Abbott has ordered a thorough investigation of ERCOT and the Texas Legislature will begin holding hearings next week. Texas’ dependence on wind power generation is likely to come under heavy scrutiny. The fact that many of the ERCOT board live outside Texas is already coming under heavy fire. Texas having its own power grid will likely come under scrutiny as well.

Addendum: I should add that we know production in the Permian decreased very significantly too, with demand surging and all significant power sources dipping — and wind and solar dipping more than the other sources. So Texas experienced a confluence of unusual events that pushed the grid statewide far beyond normal tolerances. Opportunists such as AOC and Beto O’Rourke are deliberately politicizing the storm. Neither actually understands energy. Both understand rank dishonesty.

As 'Green' as I Wanna Be...

The Kali Yuga Arrives...

In Hinduism, Kali Yuga (Sanskrit: कलियुग, romanized: kaliyuga, lit. 'age of Kali') is the last of the four stages (or ages or yugas) the world goes through as part of a 'cycle of yugas' (i.e. mahayuga) described in the Sanskrit scriptures.^[1] The other ages are called Satya/Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, and Dvapara Yuga. The "Kali" of Kali Yuga means "strife", "discord", "quarrel" or "contention" and Kali Yuga is associated with the demon Kali (not to be confused with the goddess Kālī)

Progressive-Liberal Models of the "Conservative" Mind...

The New "Progressive" Blackface of Animated Stereotypes!

from Quillette:

At the New Yorker, Harvard professor Namwali Serpell describes Soul as part of a “long tradition of American race-transformation tales” that are “unable to resist making white people the hero of blackness. The white desire to get inside black flesh is absolved as an empathy exercise. Blackface gets a moral makeover. It’s telling that, in most race-transformation tales, the ideal is presented as a white soul in a black body.”  This kind of film theory is preoccupied with the particulars of race, gender, identity, and representation at the expense of universally resonant themes of, say, love and loss or success and failure.  Of course, it is important to be mindful of cultural particulars—and Pixar seems to have made that effort. The studio assembled a “cultural brain trust” to develop the picture once it was agreed that the protagonist would be black. The basic premise, after all, had been the idea of (white) writer/director Pete Docter, whose Inside Out had seen wild critical and commercial success but left him feeling somehow hollow. So (black) co-writer/director Kemp Powers was brought aboard along with a diverse cast: musical luminaries Herbie Hancock, Jon Batiste, and Terri Lyne Carrington; anthropologist Johnnetta Cole; cinematographer Bradford Young; and Dr. Peter Archer, the Queens middle school band teacher and real-life model for Joe. 

However, to identitarians, Docter’s developmental role renders the project fundamentally fraudulent—a “white story” masquerading as a black one. If Docter taints the project, Fey poisons it. A number of reviewers (Serpell included) appear to discount the scene in which Unborn Soul 22 explains that denizens of the Great Before have no sex or race, and quickly assumes a variety of voices and forms, including Joe’s own, by way of illustration. Mischievously, 22 settles on a middle-aged white woman’s voice because “it annoys people.” But Serpell believes she has identified a more sinister agenda on the part of the filmmakers: 

[E]rotic frisson is all over race-transformation films. (Penis size comes up a lot.) In Soul, prurience sneaks in around the shower curtain, the lotion, Twenty-two’s knowing comments about “someone named Lisa” whom she learns about while rummaging in Joe’s mind. The film dutifully desexualizes Joe by putting the figure of a grouchy white woman inside him. Twenty-two’s not there to try out the D; she’s there, as the film says, to walk a mile in his shoes.

Makes you homesick for W.E.B. DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk" don't it? 

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro... two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.”

 ― W.E.B. DuBois, "The Souls of Black Folk"

Meanwhile, in realm on non-animated films...

That Progressive Liberal grand narrative just lives EVERYWHERE, don't it?  ;)

Failing Karl Popper's Paradox of Tolerance

Karl Popper, "The Open Society and Its' Enemies" 

Less well known [than other paradoxes Popper discusses] is the paradox of tolerance:

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.