More Evidence That China Is Lying That COVID-19 Was First Transmitted From Animals to Humans

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Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the Chinese Communist Party has desperately tried to convince the world that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19, was naturally transmitted from animals to humans.

That is, SARS-CoV-2, over time, naturally mutated in animals until it attained structures capable of infecting humans.

A new scientific study, however, demonstrates that SARS-CoV-2 could not have “jumped” from animals to humans in the way China claims, because it is probably incapable of infecting bats or pangolins (scaly anteaters), the only two animal hosts that could have harboured the virus.

The closest ancestor to SARS-CoV-2 so far identified by China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology is the bat RaTG13 coronavirus with over 96% identity at the genomic level.

A newly reported bat coronavirus, RmYN02, also found by China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, shares 93.3% nucleotide identity with SARS-CoV-2, but apparently lacks the ability to infect humans.

Besides bat coronaviruses, two pangolin coronaviruses share up to 90% and 85.2% sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2.

It is important to note, however, that, while SARS-CoV-2 appears to be of bat ancestry, there is still no definitive evidence of an intermediate host, such as pangolins, that could have transmitted the virus to humans.

When asked about that possibility of pangolins being the SARS-CoV-2 host, Dr Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert from the University of North Carolina, in a March 15, 2020 interview, stated pangolins were not the source.

“Pangolins have over 3,000 nucleotide changes – no way they are the reservoir species [for SARS-CoV-2], absolutely no chance,” he said.

Most of the research on SARS-CoV-2 has been focussed on the cascade of events regulated by the protein part of the spike glycoprotein, or S-protein, which has two sections, S1, primarily responsible for binding to the human cell and S2, driving fusion with the cell membrane and entry.

The S1 section contains a sequence of amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, called the receptor binding domain (RBD), which defines the coronavirus’ ability to bind to the specific human angiotensin converting enzyme-2 receptor (ACE2).

Several scientific studies have demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 already demonstrated high-affinity human binding even in the earliest cases and that it appeared to be “pre-adapted” for human infection.

Between the S1 and S2 sections of SARS-CoV-2 is a furin polybasic cleavage site (amino acid sequence proline, arginine, arginine, alanine or PRRA), a distinctive feature widely known for its ability to enhance pathogenicity and transmissibility in coronaviruses , but NOT PRESENT in any closely related bat or pangolin coronavirus.

To summarise, it is believed that SARS-CoV binds to the human cell ACE2 receptor making the furin polybasic cleavage site more accessible to human cell protein cleavage enzymes. The cleavage of the SARS-CoV-2 protein at the S1 and S2 junction facilitates the fusion of the SARS-CoV-2 membrane with the human cell membrane allowing the insertion of viral genetic material for subsequent virus replication and release.

The most astounding finding of the new study is that insertion of the PRRA polybasic cleavage site into the bat RaTG13 coronavirus, the closest known relative to SARS-CoV-2, but lacks the PRRA site, caused the modified RaTG13 to lose its ability to infect both bats and pangolins.

It is, therefore, highly unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 could have originated naturally in bats or pangolins, if the addition of the PRRA furin polybasic cleavage site selects against the survival of the virus in either animal.

This new study further confirms the claim that SARS-CoV-2, which appears to have the “backbone” of a bat coronavirus, must have been genetically manipulated in the laboratory. (For more from the author of “More Evidence That China Is Lying That COVID-19 Was First Transmitted From Animals to Humans” please click HERE)

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Lawrence Sellin, PhD is a retired US Army Reserve colonel. He has previously worked at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and conducted basic and clinical research in the pharmaceutical industry. His email address is [email protected].

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Pompeo: The World Health Organization Is Corrupt

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is sharpening his denunciation of the World Health Organization, saying that “corrupt” leadership bears responsibility for the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s become corrupt,” Pompeo told a Danish radio outlet while traveling in Copenhagen. “An epidemic broke out, killing hundreds of thousands of people all across the world. Trillions of dollars lost in economic wealth. All as a direct result of the Chinese Communist Party covering up and doing it with a complicit World Health Organization.”

Pompeo offered that rebuke to explain the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO. The attack comes on the heels of a private accusation, reportedly delivered in London, that drew a public response from the United Nations agency.

“We strongly reject any ad hominem attacks and unfounded allegations,” the WHO said late Tuesday. “WHO urges countries to remain focused on tackling the pandemic that is causing tragic loss of life and suffering.” (Read more from “Pompeo: The World Health Organization Is Corrupt” HERE)

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Here’s Who’s on Top for Biden VP Pick

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Just weeks remain until Joe Biden announces his running mate, and more than a half-dozen women are top contenders in his search. . .

MSNBC host Joy Reid asked Biden whether he would commit to picking a black woman to be on the ticket — a common question for him in the wake of the nationwide race and policing protests and riots that swept the country in June.

“I am not committed to naming any but the people I’ve named,” Biden said. But instead of repeating his frequent line that more than one black woman is being considered, he provided a specific number: “Among them, there are four black women.” . . .

1. California Sen. Kamala Harris

2. Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth

(Read more from “Here’s Who’s on Top for Biden VP Pick” HERE)

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Prosecutor Criticized for Charging St. Louis Couple Who Pointed Guns at Protesters

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A Missouri prosecutor faces heavy scrutiny at the national and state level for bringing criminal charges against a St. Louis couple who pointed guns at trespassers in late June to defend themselves and their property.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner filed the charges against Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who became nationally known because of a viral video of them holding firearms outside their home as protesters marched past.

“It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner at those participating in nonviolent protest, and while we are fortunate this situation did not escalate into deadly force, this type of conduct is unacceptable in St. Louis,” Gardner, a Democrat, said in a statement.

The McCloskeys both were charged Monday with a single felony count of exhibiting a firearm in an angry or threatening manner. He held a semiautomatic rifle, she a handgun.

The couple has said that protesters tore down a gate to gain entry to their property June 28.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Tuesday that she discussed the case with President Donald Trump that morning.

“The president, I asked him about that this morning. He said it is absolutely absurd what is happening to the McCloskeys.

McEnany added of Gardner:

There have been many cases brought to her attention of violent rioters that she has failed to charge. But instead, she’s charging the individuals who are defending themselves from violent protesters. You have 300 to 500 protesters who stormed the gates, tore down the gates, and trespassed on their property.

The White House press secretary noted that Patricia McCloskey said some trespassers threatened to kill the couple and occupy the house, while others shouted threats to burn down the house.

“They were completely within their right, and it is an egregious abuse of power,” McEnany said.

In a video announcement, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, the state’s top law enforcement official, said he would seek to dismiss the case. Schmitt, a Republican, called it a “political prosecution” and said citizens shouldn’t be targeted for exercising their right to self-defense.

Missouri’s “castle doctrine” law allows residents to defend their property.

If it goes to trial, the case likely will boil down to whether a jury believes the couple reasonably believed they were acting in self-defense, said Amy Swearer, a legal fellow at the Institute for Constitutional Government at The Heritage Foundation.

“The burden is on the state to prove it wasn’t reasonable self-defense,” Swearer told The Daily Signal. “There are so many questions to piece together for the facts and the timeline, I don’t envy lawyers from either side of this case. But it is good to have so much video, so it’s not just a he said/she said.”

Although there may be a legitimate question whether protesters were on the McCloskeys’ property, the couple asserted that some in the crowd were armed and shouting threats, Swearer said. The broader context includes the violent unrest that was happening in the area, she added.

The prosecution’s championing of the right to protest would be a difficult case to make, Swearer said.

“The protesters were out of public property and in a private gated area,” she said. “It’s not the case that the McCloskeys went out of their way to silence anyone.”

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, tweeted Tuesday: “Every Missourian has the right to protect their family and their personal property.”

The previous day, Parson also was critical of Gardner on Twitter, noting that “the Circuit Attorney’s office has admitted there is a backlog of cases and dozens of homicides that haven’t been prosecuted, yet she has accelerated this case forward.”

Mark McCloskey, 63, and his wife Patricia, 61, are both lawyers.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., called the prosecution an abuse of power and last week asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the prosecution by Gardner as a possible civil rights violation.

“This is an unacceptable abuse of power and threat to the Second Amendment, and I urge you to consider a federal civil rights investigation into the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office to determine whether this investigation and impending prosecution violates this family’s constitutional rights,” Hawley’s July 16 letter to Attorney General William Barr says, adding:

There is no question under Missouri law that the McCloskeys had the right to own and use their firearms to protect themselves from threatened violence, and that any criminal prosecution for these actions is legally unsound. The only possible motivation for the investigation, then, is a politically motivated attempt to punish this family for exercising their Second Amendment rights.

Indeed, this is part of a troubling pattern of politically motivated prosecutorial decisions by the St. Louis Circuit Attorney, who has not seen fit to prosecute many violent offenders, and who has expressed hostility to gun rights in the past. Recently, reports indicate that she declined to pursue charges against dozens of individuals arrested during a weekend of riots in the city.

Gardner was elected in 2016. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that her campaign was financed in part by the Safety & Justice Committee, a super PAC financed by liberal billionaire George Soros.

Gardner framed the prosecution as protecting the First Amendment right to protest, saying: “We must protect the right to peacefully protest, and any attempt to chill it through intimidation will not be tolerated.”

She added: “The people of St. Louis have elected me to pursue equal justice under the law fairly and impartially, and that is what I intend to do.”

(For more from the author of “Prosecutor Criticized for Charging ST. Louis Couple Who Pointed Guns at Protesters” please click HERE)

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Homeschool Enrollment Booms Throughout the U.S.

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As local school districts across the country struggle to develop reopening plans in the face of uncertainty about a possible resurgence of COVID-19 and teachers’ unions that are in many cases holding districts hostage with laundry lists of insane leftist demands, many parents are responding by pulling their children out of public schools altogether in favor of homeschooling.

In Texas, the Texas Homeschool Coalition says they have been “flooded” with calls from parents who have been dissatisfied with the distance learning they received from their public school system during the spring shutdowns, and have decided to pull their kids out of public school entirely and homeschool them. After the Texas Education Agency announced that schools in Texas will be permitted to use online-only learning for at least the first 8 weeks, the Texas Homeschool Coalition estimated that their average weekly number of contacts from interested parents doubled.

Texas is not alone. Nebraska’s homeschool filings have jumped 21% over last year already, and many educators predict that the number will grow even higher in the cornhusker state. A recent poll also revealed that 40% of parents are more likely to consider homeschooling their children this year due to concerns about school reopening plans amidst the coronavirus pandemic. (Read more from “Homeschool Enrollment Booms Throughout the U.S.” HERE)

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EXPOSED: BLM Unites With Islamists and Communists to Dismantle the West (VIDEO)

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The violent Leftists from the 1960s never went away; they just retreated underground. They’ve come back to lead the radicals of today, but they’ve added a new ally — Islamists.

It’s a nine-year-old Glenn Beck prediction fulfilled and playing out violently on our streets. Glenn warned that the unrest in the Middle East would spread to the West under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy.

(Read more from “EXPOSED: BLM Unites With Islamists and Communists to Dismantle the West (VIDEO)” HERE)

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Hong Kong Police Detain Protesters, Journalists, and Politicians, Deny Claims of Excessive Force

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Hong Kong riot police on Tuesday evening dispersed a protest marking the first anniversary of the Yuen Long railway station attack, a major event in the 2019 protests locally known as the “721 Incident.”

Police searched out and fined both demonstrators and journalists covering the event, along with two politicians, Kwai Tsing district councilor Rayman Chow and Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui. The police denied claims they used excessive force, including pepper balls. The demonstrators reportedly favored black clothing, an inversion of the white shirts worn by the swarm of club-wielding men who attacked pro-democracy protesters, journalists, and innocent bystanders at the Yuen Long station on July 21, 2019.

Critics of the Hong Kong government say Beijing may have ordered the assault, using hired gangsters as muscle and apparently indulged by the Hong Kong police, who responded very slowly to the bloody rampage at Yuen Long and have not vigorously investigated the organizers of the attack.

A few provocative local media reports fueled public anger with the police as the Yuen Long anniversary approached. A documentary prompted the authorities to grudgingly admit they were aware of the white-shirted, club-wielding thugs assembling before they swarmed into the station and started beating people. Further, a separate piece in the pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily claimed internal documents show the police were ordered not to respond to calls for help from Yuen Long on the day of the attack.

To date, police have charged only seven people with “rioting” and “conspiracy to injure others” for the 721 Incident, even though over a hundred white-shirted men participated in the beatings. A number of attackers caught on video or photographed by onlookers conspicuously remain unarrested, including one filmed beating up a reporter. (Read more from “Hong Kong Police Detain Protesters, Journalists, and Politicians, Deny Claims of Excessive Force” HERE)

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Chicago Mayor Threatens to Sue Trump (VIDEO)

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) on Wednesday threatened to sue the Trump administration if federal law enforcement agents step out of line following President Trump’s announcement that he is expanding government law enforcement operations to the crime-plagued city.

“I’m calling on all Chicagoans that if you see something that doesn’t like right, please, don’t hesitate to report it,” Lightfoot said during a press conference. “We are going to remain diligent, and if we see any steps out of line, particularly with DHS or Border Patrol, we are not going to hesitate to take the president to court and stop any unconstitutional actions.”

When pressed on whether she supports the deployment of agents to Chicago, the mayor replied: “The proof is gonna be in the pudding. It’s too soon to be able to say if this is a value-add or not. We’ve got to see what actually materializes.” (Read more from “Chicago Mayor Threatens to Sue Trump (VIDEO)” HERE)

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New York Times-Hyped Korean Report Actually Shows Kids Are Not Spreading Coronavirus

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In an incredible redux of when they hyped the Christian Drosten fake paper claiming children were highly infectious — when his math actually showed the opposite — the New York Times and Chicago Tribune pushed screaming headlines that a new Korean government report proves children ages 10 to 19 are highly infectious.

The Korean government report, based on data from March and ignoring all newer research, does make that claim, with qualifications, in its narrative summary. Its actual math, however, shows exactly the opposite. Do the elite newspapers even bother to consult anyone numerate?

As Professor Francois Balloux of the University of Lausanne Genetics Institute immediately replied, the New York Times writer completely misunderstood the report.

In fact, the report found that it was extremely rare for children to bring an infection into the home. It found that just 2.7 percent of potential “index cases” (first case in the home) were under age 20. Imagine twisting that into a call for school closures. It’s astonishingly reckless.

The report also did no genetic mapping and therefore was unable to determine true index cases. The paper itself says, “[W]e could not determine direction of transmission.” Contrast that with the contact tracing study from Iceland, which mapped haplotypes to determine direction of transmission and found it was almost always parent to child. (Read more from “New York Times-Hyped Korean Report Actually Shows Kids Are Not Spreading Coronavirus” HERE)

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The Chicago Funeral Shooting Shows Yet Again How Black Lives Don’t Matter to Politicians

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Where are all the frantic press releases from every corporation in America amid the worst mass shooting of black people in Chicago’s recent memory? Where are the protests? The demands for more prison time? More cops? Or, if you only get your news from superficial corporate media sources, perhaps you don’t know what I’m talking about.

While most people bring flowers and tissues to funerals, that is not the Chicago way. There, they bring guns. According to CBS Chicago, mourners were attending the funeral of Donnie Weathersby, himself a black life cut down at age 31 by gang violence, when a car full of gunmen drove by and sprayed 60 bullets into Rhodes Funeral Services funeral home, wounding as many as 15, some of whom are in serious condition. One of the victims was reportedly a bystander who was not a target of the assailants.

Some of the attendees reportedly shot back at the drive-by shooters, which is in itself peculiar given how hard it is for ordinary people to get a concealed carry license in Chicago. But Chicago is the Sodom and Gomorrah of America, where peaceful citizens can’t exercise their rights while gang members carry openly and never face serious consequences for committing violent crimes, including gun crimes. . .

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 70 percent of all black victims of violent crime in 2018 were victimized by black criminals.

A huge focus of the BLM movement is to abolish police and abolish incarceration. But once again, who are the victims of jailbreak policies almost every time? Yes, the black lives that absolutely do not matter to the political elites.

This year, the numbers of shootings and homicide victims in Chicago are eclipsing the numbers from last year by approximately 50 percent and are approaching record numbers year-to-date. Rather than spending the past three years fighting against criminal release and weak deterrent against gun felons, Republicans have joined in on the Jared Kushner jailbreak agenda, suggesting that we somehow have an over-incarceration problem. At the same time, when in control of all three branches, Republicans failed to pass a single self-defense or pro-Second Amendment bill, but passed a gun control bill. Gun control without criminal control is a recipe for disaster.

According to UCLA’s database on prison releases, Illinois has released over 4,600 criminals from prison and 800 from Cook County Jail.

Even before the acceleration of the jailbreak movement over the past two years, crystalizing during the coronavirus outbreak, incarceration rates have been plummeting. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the black imprisonment rate nationwide has been down 28% from 2008-2018, while the white imprisonment rate dropped by just 13%. The jail incarceration rate for black criminals dropped 30% – to the lowest level since 1990 – while the white incarceration rate actually increased 12% over the past decade.

According to data I tallied from the Illinois Department of Corrections website, the number of Illinois prisoners plummeted 21.86% just in the 27 months from March 31, 2018, through June 2002.

Republicans and Democrats alike have been cheering on this trend and continue to suggest that we still have an over-incarceration problem. But behind all these criminal releases are more victims of crime, most of them black.

How can Republicans agree to throw more money at the states for a coronavirus response in the coming days without conditioning the funds on terminating these releases?

This is not just about the rioting and retreat of the police in major cities. Just because there are no police on the streets doesn’t mean that people like you and me start committing crimes. It’s the career criminals who commit the most crimes. They have been released over the past few years and increasingly so in recent months. That was the first step of the breakdown in law and order. They are the fuel for the criminal fire, while the war on cops supplied the match to kindle the fuel. This is why crime has been able to spike so high so rapidly in some places, nearly as high as it was before the generation-long decline in violent crime beginning in the 1990s.

This is happening everywhere. In Los Angeles, Jose Enrique Esquivel has been arrested a dozen times for stealing cars since being released under coronavirus jailbreak, and every time, he was set free. There is simply no deterrent.

In a series of tweets, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the shooters “cowardly” and asserted, “We cannot give shelter to killers.”

Actually, Mayor, this is exactly what you have done by releasing so many criminals and declaring war on the cops.

“When a person picks up a gun, we suffer as a city. This cannot be who we are,” Lightfoot said.

So why is it that Chicago keeps putting gun felons with violent criminal histories on parole instead of locking them up? Just over the weekend, a man who was on parole despite a history of robbery and burglary convictions dating back 30 years was arrested for beating an elderly woman at Chicago’s Union Station.

How hard is it for Republicans to open the BLM narrative and show how its very policies are the ones resulting in all the dead black lives? Yet in an interview with Newsweek, Jared Kushner recently defended his de-incarceration agenda, suggesting that “people need a second chance.”

Well, what we are seeing in the justice system today is that they get 5-10 chances or an infinite number of chances, which ensures that many victims of crime don’t get a second chance at life. It’s easy to blame dead Confederate generals or pictures on food boxes for all the death and misery in inner cities. Leadership to address the source of the problem is what seems to be a rare commodity at this moment. (For more from the author of “The Chicago Funeral Shooting Shows Yet Again How Black Lives Don’t Matter to Politicians” please click HERE)

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