PHILIP GIRALDI: Does Israel interfere in American elections?

USA Today: More than 400 police departments working with Ring to view doorbell cam footage

Activist Post: FBI crime lab analyzing two broken cameras from outside Epstein’s cell

J.D. TUCCILLE: The revolving door between government and cable news

JOHN KIRIAKOU: In search of a Russiagate scalp: The entrapment of Maria Butina

BRETIGNE SHAFFER: Are anti-vaxxers violent extremists? Or is this the latest smear tactic?

Reason: Forget the Amazon fires. State-sanctioned deforestation is the bigger problem.

USA Today: Apple apologizes for retaining Siri audio recordings and vows to improve privacy

Digital Trends: Meet the subversive start-up that’s fighting mass surveillance with t-shirts

Quanta: Possible detection of a black hole so big it ‘should not exist’

The mold, Aspergillus, has killed one person, who I assume was a child since it’s a children’s hospital, and sickened five more. The outrageous fact that should receive blanket coverage is that the hospital kept the presence of the deadly mold a secret, and continued to use the operating room. It’s unbelievable, yet how many hospitals across the country also contain a deadly fungi of some stripe, and are keeping quiet about it?

Two Pittsburgh hospitals have seen 5 deaths from mold between 2014 and 2017, and the public only found out about it through a wrongful death lawsuit. Unbelievable. Beyond outrageous. The five deceased had been transplant recipients, and were particularly susceptible to the infection, yet it looks like each hospital continued operating even though they knew the mold was there. The patients, and their families, did not.

Sacramento residents express fear over becoming one of the first cities to launch 5G

There is so much money invested in 5G that inconvenient health concerns will be ignored entirely. Just watch, the 5G infrastructure will be installed and brought online as quickly as possible in an attempt to outrun worry over health risks. But in 10, 20 years, when health outcomes will be more apparent, will they dismantle the network?

How many currently-employed cops are ticking time bombs like this one?

NY Daily News: Parents of schizophrenic man shot dead by off-duty cop in California Costco say they ‘begged’ for son’s life:

““I told Officer Sanchez not to shoot twice. I even said please,” Paola said Monday, fighting back tears. “I was pleading for my son and our lives, but I was still shot in the back.”

Some people go out into public looking for a fight, looking for an opportunity to bait someone into attacking first in order to get a chance to pull their concealed-carry weapon and later claim self-defense, or “I feared for my life”. Many of these people, who feel an urgent need to hold power over others, become cops, and then proceed to harass the public for the thrill it gives them.

And a question that everyone should be asking but no one does: does every cop really need to be armed to the teeth? Their utility belts are weighed down with a buffet of weapons, is this necessary, especially when they are constantly mingling with the public?

For instance. Four crew-cut cops were in Starbucks earlier at the same time that I was, and all four couldn’t even keep their arms at their sides due to all the needless junk strapped to their belts. Guns, batons, pepper spray, tasers, an array of bulging pockets of expensive, useless trinkets that they don’t need. It creates needless danger for the public, who can’t possibly feel safe when these armored and armed men, who for some bizarre reason wear also their sunglasses indoors.

The cops interacting with the public should not be armed for battle. They shouldn’t believe they are in a ‘battlefield’. Cops in that state of mind will invariably see the public as the enemy.

Some of the “refugees” that migrated to Germany, taking advantage of her First World amenities, also occasionally vacation in Syria, the country they fled from. Now the German gov’t warns they could lose their privileged “refugee” status and receive the boot.

Of course they won’t get kicked out, as the German government fears accusations of ‘racism’.  While I’m for fairly open immigration, and an end to the police state surrounding the U.S. border, it seems disastrous for governments to actively invite foreigners en masse with the promise of guaranteed amenities, et cetera. They will come, and they won’t be composed entirely of people deserving of ‘refugee’ status, but they will take the hand-outs.

Fortune: How Amazon and Silicon Valley seduced the Pentagon

Or was it the other way around? Surely the $10 billion JEDI contract dangled in front of Amazon by the Pentagon was the bait needed to lure Amazon into the fold of the Surveillance State, ensuring their compliance with whatever is asked of them. At least now no one can speak of Amazon as a “private” company. They’re private in the manner of Lockheed Martin.

An interesting article from Global News: Big pharma pours millions into medical schools. Here’s how it can impact education.

And pharma is doing much more than merely giving money. They’re writing the textbooks too:

“His main textbook for gastroenterology, First Principles of Gastroenterology, was published by pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca makes drugs for conditions like asthma, blood pressure and cancer.

Along with another classmate, Abi-Jaoude started a petition against the pharma-funded material and began questioning if the industry was too involved in educating future doctors. He was concerned that companies with a conflict of financial interest were helping inform what students learned.”

And while this piece focuses on Canada, the phenomenon is worldwide. A supremely important article was written in 2009 in Pro Publica that focused on Pharma’s outsized influence at Harvard: Pharma Ties at Harvard Medical School:

“A first-year Harvard Medical student tells the Times:

Before coming here, I had no idea how much influence companies had on medical education. And it’s something that’s purposely meant to be under the table, providing information under the guise of education when that information is also presented for marketing purposes.”

Another study, published in 2013, also looked at this corrupt arrangement: Pharma influence widespread at medical schools

This is having the effect of transforming entire generations of doctors into glorified salesmen, retailing the latest products of the pharmaceutical giants. It’s particularly dangerous, because we grow up believing we can trust the unbiased opinion of our doctor, that they have our well-being in mind, rather than goodies and kick-backs from a powerful corporation.

Al Jazeera: Trump slammed for saying Jews disloyal if they vote Democrat

Fox News: Amazon’s ‘Ring’ barred police from using the word ‘surveillance’ to describe its products

Reason: Privacy-friendly fashion for a Surveillance State age

FEE: How government programs ruined childhood