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Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening.
Sometimes, someone is.
Amazon.com Inc. employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa’s understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands.
The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching.
The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program. They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazon’s Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capital’s up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon’s presence.
The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as “Taylor Swift” and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist. Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.
Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault. When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasn’t Amazon’s job to interfere.
“We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously,” an Amazon spokesman said in an emailed statement. “We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone.
“We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.”
Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesn’t explicitly say humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa. “We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems,” the company says in a list of frequently asked questions.
In Alexa’s privacy settings, the company gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don’t provide a user’s full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user’s first name and the device’s serial number.
The Intercept reported earlier this year that employees of Amazon-owned Ring manually identify vehicles and people in videos captured by the company’s doorbell cameras, an effort to better train the software to do that work itself.
“You don’t necessarily think of another human listening to what you’re telling your smart speaker in the intimacy of your home,” said Florian Schaub, a professor at the University of Michigan who has researched privacy issues related to smart speakers. “I think we’ve been conditioned to the [assumption] that these machines are just doing magic machine learning. But the fact is there is still manual processing involved.”
“Whether that’s a privacy concern or not depends on how cautious Amazon and other companies are in what type of information they have manually annotated, and how they present that information to someone,” he added.
When the Echo debuted in 2014, Amazon’s cylindrical smart speaker quickly popularized the use of voice software in the home. Before long, Alphabet Inc. launched its own version, called Google Home, followed by Apple Inc.’s HomePod. Various companies also sell their own devices in China. Globally, consumers bought 78 million smart speakers last year, according to researcher Canalys. Millions more use voice software to interact with digital assistants on their smartphones.
Alexa software is designed to continuously record snatches of audio, listening for a wake word. That’s “Alexa” by default, but people can change it to “Echo” or “computer.” When the wake word is detected, the light ring at the top of the Echo turns blue, indicating the device is recording and beaming a command to Amazon servers.
Most modern speech-recognition systems rely on neural networks patterned on the human brain. The software learns as it goes, by spotting patterns amid vast amounts of data. The algorithms powering the Echo and other smart speakers use models of probability to make educated guesses. If someone asks Alexa if there’s a Greek place nearby, the algorithms know the user is probably looking for a restaurant, not a church or community center.
But sometimes Alexa gets it wrong—especially when grappling with new slang, regional colloquialisms or languages other than English. In French, avec sa, “with him” or “with her,” can confuse the software into thinking someone is using the Alexa wake word. Hecho, Spanish for a fact or deed, is sometimes misinterpreted as Echo. And so on. That’s why Amazon recruited human helpers to fill in the gaps missed by the algorithms.
Apple’s Siri also has human helpers, who work to gauge whether the digital assistant’s interpretation of requests lines up with what the person said. The recordings they review lack personally identifiable information and are stored for six months tied to a random identifier, according to an Apple security white paper. After that, the data is stripped of its random identification information but may be stored for longer periods to improve Siri’s voice recognition.
At Google, some employees can access some audio snippets from its Assistant to help train and improve the product, but it’s not associated with any personally identifiable information and the audio is distorted, the company says.
A recent Amazon job posting, seeking a quality assurance manager for Alexa Data Services in Bucharest, describes the role humans play: “Every day she [Alexa] listens to thousands of people talking to her about different topics and different languages, and she needs our help to make sense of it all.” The want ad continues: “This is big data handling like you’ve never seen it. We’re creating, labeling, curating and analyzing vast quantities of speech on a daily basis.”
Amazon’s review process for speech data begins when Alexa pulls a random, small sampling of customer voice recordings and sends the audio files to the far-flung employees and contractors, according to a person familiar with the program’s design.
Some Alexa reviewers are tasked with transcribing users’ commands, comparing the recordings to Alexa’s automated transcript, say, or annotating the interaction between user and machine. What did the person ask? Did Alexa provide an effective response?
Others note everything the speaker picks up, including background conversations—even when children are speaking. Sometimes listeners hear users discussing private details such as names or bank details; in such cases, they’re supposed to tick a dialog box denoting “critical data.” They then move on to the next audio file.
According to Amazon’s website, no audio is stored unless Echo detects the wake word or is activated by pressing a button. But sometimes Alexa appears to begin recording without any prompt at all, and the audio files start with a blaring television or unintelligible noise. Whether or not the activation is mistaken, the reviewers are required to transcribe it. One of the people said the auditors each transcribe as many as 100 recordings a day when Alexa receives no wake command or is triggered by accident.
In homes around the world, Echo owners frequently speculate about who might be listening, according to two of the reviewers. “Do you work for the NSA?” they ask. “Alexa, is someone else listening to us?”
Source: NewsMax America
FILE PHOTO: A man takes selfie pictures with a cutout of Indonesia’s presidential candidate for the upcoming election Prabowo Subianto during a campaign rally in Solo, Central Java Province, Indonesia, April 10, 2019. REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan/File Photo
April 10, 2019
By Fanny Potkin and Agustinus Beo Da Costa
JAKARTA (Reuters) – Armed with laptops, three dozen journalists and fact-checkers braced for battle before a live debate between Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his challenger, Prabowo Subianto.
With two giant screens displaying television network feeds in front of them, the keyboard warriors split into six groups, each responsible for fact-checking a segment of the debate.
For nearly three hours, their eyes barely left their screens as they attempted to verify candidates’ comments in real time: allegations about corruption, statistics on the country’s Muslim population, boasts, and even personal anecdotes.
They and other fact-checkers are fighting a running battle against fake news and propaganda ahead of an April 17 election in the world’s third-biggest democracy.
Election monitors are worried that the flow of misinformation stoking ethnic and religious divides could undermine electoral bodies and even raise social tensions.
The Cekfakta (“checkfacts” in Indonesian) initiative brings together the non-profit fact-checking organization Mafindo and 24 news organizations that normally compete fiercely with each other during election campaigns.
“There’s a watchdog now in operation,” Cekfakta co-founder Wahyu Dhyatmika, editor-in-chief of news website Tempo.co, told Reuters. “As a candidate, you cannot throw claims into the air … we will fact-check them.”
Backed financially by Google News Lab, which also helps fund Mafindo, Cekfakta’s volunteers took over the U.S tech giant’s swanky Jakarta office for the debate on March 30.
Dhyatmika wanted to avoid a repeat of the 2014 election, also between Widodo and retired general Prabowo, when reporters were unprepared for the flood of false news that swept across social media.
‘WE’RE IN A WAR’
The fact checkers’ adversaries, fake news peddlers, sit at screens too, pumping out misinformation disguised as fact that often exploits ethnic or religious divides.
“We’re in a war for content … people are doing anything they want,” said one fake news creator, who has written stories depicting Indonesian officials as paid off by Beijing. The person declined to be identified because such work is illegal.
Indonesia’s population of 269 million has a youthful median age of just over 30 years, according to the World Population Review.
With more than 100 million accounts, the country is Facebook’s third-largest market and a top-five market globally for its platforms WhatsApp and Instagram, as well as rival Twitter.
Fake news in Indonesia can rack up thousands of views in hours, despite laws against creating and spreading such content.
Mafindo’s head of fact-checking, Aribowo Sasmito, compares it to the drug trade.
“There are the factories, the dealers, and the victims. Most of the people who end up arrested are victims … They read hoaxes and believed them to be true.”
Since December, Mafindo has documented a surge in political fake news using ethnicity and religion to target both candidates.
The organization finds most worrisome the dozens of stories that paint electoral bodies as corrupt. This will be only Indonesia’s fourth democratic presidential election.
Sasmito considers it a good result if fact-checked posts can reach even a small fraction of the audience the originals did.
Mafindo’s work has made it some enemies. The group has received enough threats that it keeps its office address secret; Cefakta’s website was hacked after a previous debate.
A Reuters investigation in March found that both the Prabowo and Widodo campaigns were funding sophisticated social media operations to spread propaganda and disinformation through fake accounts on behalf of the candidates. [L3N20Z2EH]
Both campaigns said they did not use such teams.
FAKE NEWS CREATORS
One journalist said he was hired by Prabowo campaign advisers to write positive stories about Prabawo and negative ones on Widodo, to be posted on Facebook and WhatsApp. He said he was not motivated by money but believes the mainstream media is biased in favor of Widodo.
Fearing government retaliation, the man declined to be named, but he showed Reuters communications that suggested he was he in contact with Prabowo advisers.
He said he wrote only “true” negative stories, and cited as an example a post that 2,000 Chinese workers on Indonesia’s Sulawesi island were secretly part of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
“We have evidence from government contacts and we can see they are soldiers from the way they look,” he said, declining to share such evidence.
Prabowo campaign spokesman Andre Rosiadi denied any advisers had hired journalists to write “positive or negative content” and “especially not fake news.”
Asked about the Sulawesi allegation, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Embassy in Indonesia replied to Reuters in a text: “fake news.”
But such claims also make it onto the campaign trail. A Prabowo campaign volunteer in West Java told Reuters last week that millions of Chinese workers had been secretly relocated to Sulawesi.
“It’s not hoax, it’s fact,” said volunteer Cecep Abdul Halim.
Reuters found that the creator of the Sulawesi claim had also written stories in 2016 falsely depicting former Jakarta governor Basuki Tjaha Purnama as a Communist stooge of China.
Purnama, a Christian ethnic-Chinese Indonesian ally of Widodo, recently completed a two-year prison sentence for blasphemy against Islam based on a video doctored to make him seem he was insulting the Koran.
The man convicted of making the video, a former journalist, worked for Prabowo’s media team until he was sent to prison last month. A campaign spokesman confirmed he had worked for the media team, but did not comment further.
Social media data gathered by Mafindo as well as Indonesian big-data consultancy Drone Emprit shows that allegations using China as a bogeyman are widespread in Indonesia, where suspicions about the wealth of the ethnic-Chinese community and the influence of Beijing run deep.
A disproven video that went viral in January claimed to show seven shipping containers from China at Jakarta’s port filled with millions of ballots punctured in favor of Widodo.
Common misinformation themes against Widodo portray him alternatively as a member of Indonesia’s banned Communist party, a Chinese plant, or anti-Islam.
Prabowo, meanwhile, has been depicted as both impious and planning to create a caliphate, while his running mate has been portrayed inaccurately as gay.
All are inflammatory accusations in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, which rights groups say recently has seen increased prejudice against religious and LGBT minorities.
And the stories work. Although Widodo enjoys a double-digit lead over Prabowo, three surveys found that a minority of the population believes that he is either a communist or a Christian.
According to a December poll, as many as 42 percent of Prabowo supporters believed this about Widodo, while 65 percent of Widodo supporters believed Prabowo kidnapped democracy activists while in the military, a claim he strenuously denies.
Experts say such polarization is dangerous for Indonesia and could stoke anger against minorities.
“This kind of fake news gains traction because they’re the seeds of intolerance in our society,” said Cefakta’s Dhyatmika. “And it’s not being addressed.”
(Reporting by Fanny Potkin in JAKARTA and Agustinus Beo Da Costa in GARUT. Additional reporting by Yerica Lai. Editing by John Chalmers and Gerry Doyle)
Source: OANN
Imagine a dystopian science-fiction future where hospital ventilation systems are pumping out a deadly superbug, right into the open atmosphere, where winds carry it to local communities and farms, infecting crops and foods with chemical-resistant fungal strains that have a reported 41% – 88% fatality rate in humans.
And imagine the CDC knew about it, but refused to tell you which hospitals were infected. Local hospitals hid the fact that their own hospital rooms and intensive care units were being overrun with this fatal fungi, and that all the world’s epidemiological experts had no idea where the pathogen had come from or how to stop it.
But they all kept it a secret, because they didn’t want to “alarm” the public. And they sure didn’t want hospitals to be seen as hubs of superbug infections.
Well, imagine no more. This is real. It’s happening right now. And this pandemic has been silently spreading over the last four years, with virtually zero media reports, very little information from the CDC, and a coordinated cover-up by the hospitals of the western world to keep patients in the dark while they’re being infected and killed by a deadly pathogen.
This is the true story of Candida auris, a superbug fungal strain that has emerged from the widespread use of chemical fungicides in agriculture. In this extended Natural News report — initially based on a New York Times report but significantly expanded — you will learn why this silent pandemic has already invaded America’s hospitals and why it cannot be stopped using any known medical defense. It may already be too late for the planet. By abusing agricultural chemicals, humanity has given rise to a superbug that could, under the right conditions, kill a billion people and collapse the entire western medical system.
And you may already be “colonized” by this fungus, serving as a carrier who will infect others in your own family and community.
How did this happen? Understanding Candida auris
According to a bombshell New York Times investigation — yes, even the New York Times occasionally commits acts of real journalism — this pandemic has already found its way into some of the largest hospitals in New York, Chicago and London. The superbug fungus has spread to nursing homes and is carried from patient to patient by health care workers. It grows on IV lines and ventilators, and it infects hospital gowns and clothing. Aggressive sterilization efforts using aerosolized hydrogen peroxide do nothing to kill this fungus, and the cover-up continues, even as rates of infections and fatalities are exploding across the western world.
The fungus is called Candida auris, or C. auris for short. It’s called Auris because it was originally discovered to be living in a woman’s ear in Japan. But now, it has spread to every continent, and its rise has only been made worse by a coordinated cover-up by the CDC, hospitals and the corrupt medical industry that places its own profits over the safety of the public. If there were a vaccine for Candida auris, these infections would be front page news across the globe, and journalists would be screaming at everyone to get injected with the vaccine. But since the medical establishment has no treatment whatsoever for this deadly pathogen, they’ve conspired to cover it up.
This Natural News report aims to explain how this happening and how the science lies of the chemical agricultural giants have now put the entire human race at risk from this exploding superbug pathogen.
To understand how we got here, we have to go back a few years and take a closer look at fungi that grow naturally in crop soils.
The mass chemical contamination of farm soils in the name of “crop yields”
Soil is a complex living ecosystem, and soils naturally harbor an astonishing array of microbiology, including bacteria, fungi and viruses. In healthy soils, the most dangerous organisms are crowded out by good organisms. This survival competition keeps the really nasty bugs in check, preventing them from expanding their colonies and gaining ground.
But modern farming relies heavily on chemical pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. These chemicals, which are routinely sprayed on food crops, demonstrate selective chemical toxicity that kills some organisms but leaves others untouched. Even worse, some strains develop resistance to agricultural chemicals through a process of adaptation and microbiological natural selection. This leads to the rise of so-called superbugs. (See Superbugs.news for more reports.)
“Superbugs” is a generic term that can apply to insects that develop chemical resistance, or it can describe microbes and even fungi that develop resistance to chemicals that would otherwise kill them. Any organism that survives the onslaught of toxic chemicals and develops a physiological survival mechanism to nullify or eliminate those chemicals will suddenly find itself able to grow and spread at a ferocious rate. That’s because its competition has been wiped out by the agricultural poisons such as fungicides. So as farmers sprayed fungicides on virtually every vegetable and fruit crop in existence, this practice led to the inevitable rise of a superstrain of Candida auris, which now finds itself able to replicate and spread in ways that never could have been possible when all the other fungi were competing for the same resources.
Killing off the “good” fungi, in other words, allowed the really dangerous fungal strains to succeed like never before. And the more chemicals are sprayed on food crops, the more dangerous the pathogens become. This is all caused by human intervention via chemical agriculture — an artificial way to produce food for the masses.
Millions of tons of fungicides are sprayed on food crops every year in the United States alone
By 2023, it is estimated that annual expenditures on fungicides will reach $21 billion worldwide. In 2016, an average of 4.26 pounds of fungicide chemicals were applied per acre in the United States, and one of the largest classes of fungicide chemicals is called “azole fungicides.”
Azole fungicides now account for one third of global sales of fungicides, and various derivatives of azoles are heavily applied to crops every day, all over the world, including triazoles and benzimidazoles. These chemicals end up not merely in our food, but in agricultural runoff, eventually contaminating water supplies, rivers and even oceans. Over time, as these azole chemicals were repeatedly applied to food crops year after year, Candida auris developed robust immunity to these chemicals, enabling the fungus to survive on food crops due to the fact that it now had no competition, since most other fungi strains were killed by the chemicals.
So crops harvested from food fields carried this fungus to food markets and grocery stores. There, consumers purchased the products and prepared them at home, touching those fruits and vegetables with their bare hands and transferring the fungal colonies to their homes, their clothing and other family members. Almost instantly, Candida aurisspread from foods to home environments, persisting in damp kitchens, dark drawers and closets, effectively colonizing humans who then carried it to other humans.
From here, it was only a matter of time before C. auris found its way to hospitals, nursing homes, surgical centers and retirement centers. Today, C. auris is no doubt colonizing children in day care centers; co-workers in office environments; friends at social gatherings and family members at holiday events.
Everything in hospital rooms is infected: The bed rails, window shades, curtains, doors, bed and even the ceiling
When a man died at Mount Sinai hospital in Brooklyn after being infected with C. auris, his hospital room was tested for the pathogen, reports the New York Times:
“Everything was positive — the walls, the bed, the doors, the curtains, the phones, the sink, the whiteboard, the poles, the pump,” said Dr. Scott Lorin, the hospital’s president. “The mattress, the bed rails, the canister holes, the window shades, the ceiling, everything in the room was positive.”
The fungus preys on those with weakened immune systems, including infants and the elderly. Its symptoms include extreme fatigue, and in certain immune-weakened populations, it has so far been observed to kill 41% of those it infects. (See below for more statistics showing an even higher fatality rate.)
People with strong immune systems are apparently able to fight off the effects of the fungus, but even if they show no symptoms, they may be carriers of the strain, infecting others who may suffer from weakened immune function. This includes infants and seniors, but can also impact those who have caught a cold or a flu, or even people who have endured an extremely strenuous workout at the gym, placing themselves in an immunosuppressed condition for 2-3 days. “[T]hey are most lethal to people with immature or compromised immune systems, including newborns and the elderly, smokers, diabetics and people with autoimmune disorders who take steroids that suppress the body’s defenses,” the NYT explains.
It is self-evidence that C. auris will also attack those who are taking antibiotics, as their own personal gut flora are wiped out by the antibiotic drugs in exactly the same way that friendly fungi are wiped out across crop fields by azole fungicide chemicals. Thus, the people who undergo surgical procedures at hospitals and are routinely given antibiotics as part of the treatment are also being kept in the very same hospital rooms where Candida auris is increasingly festering.
This combination is a public health catastrophe waiting to happen. Hospitals have now become colonization centers where humans are exposed to deadly fungi. Hospitals, in a very real sense, are spreading the pandemic. Again, from the NYT:
[T]he germs are easily spread — carried on hands and equipment inside hospitals; ferried on meat and manure-fertilized vegetables from farms; transported across borders by travelers and on exports and imports; and transferred by patients from nursing home to hospital and back.
Five warnings from the CDC’s fungal expert, Dr. Tom Chiller
The CDC’s own chief of its fungal research division, Dr. Tom Chiller, warns about Candida auris, “behaving in unexpected and concerning ways, causing severe disease in countries across the globe, including the United States.” In a Medscape article published in 2017, Dr. Chiller lays out some facts about Candida auris that even the New York Times decided not to report. Via Dr. Chiller’s warning: (my comments are added in parenthesis)
Warning #1) C auris can spread between patients in healthcare facilities and cause outbreaks. In this way, it appears to behave much like some multidrug-resistant bacteria (eg, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or Acinetobacter).
Warning #2) C auris can colonize a patient’s skin for months or longer. (Yes, months. That means carriers can remain carriers for a very long time.)
Warning #3) This hardy yeast can live on surfaces for a month or more, and preliminary testing suggests that quaternary ammonium compounds commonly used for healthcare disinfection may not be sufficiently effective against C auris. (In other words, the usual chemicals that hospitals use to clean rooms simply don’t work against Candida auris.)
Warning #4) C auris is quickly becoming more common. In some international healthcare facilities, it has gone from an unknown pathogen to a cause of 40% of invasive Candida infections within a few years. We need to act now to prevent this from happening in the United States. (Too late. It’s also endemic in U.S. hospitals in Illinois, New Jersey and New York, although the CDC refuses to tell us which hospitals have been colonized by the fungus.)
Warning #5) C auris is often multidrug resistant. Some strains have been resistant to all three major antifungal classes, including echinocandins, the first-line treatment for Candida infections.
But it’s far worse than all that, in reality. Candida auris is airborne, and it floats through the air inside hospitals, infecting patients, hospital staff and colonizing hospital rooms and surgical areas. Even worse, the deadly pathogen is now escaping hospitals and infecting surrounding communities. Hospitals have, in effect, become hubs for spreading this deadly superbug across the country and around the world.
“Aerial samples of hospitals” test positive for the deadly pathogen… hospitals are factories that churn out this deadly disease
In 2013, a published science paper examined the spread of azole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus arising from the agricultural use of azole fungicides. The paper was published in PLOS Pathogens with the title, “Emergence of Azole-Resistant Aspergillus fumigatus Strains due to Agricultural Azole Use Creates an Increasing Threat to Human Health.”
The paper supports the astonishing conclusion that people are acquiring fungicide-resistant strains through “environmental sources” rather than experiencing fungal mutations in their own bodies while being treated with anti-fungal drugs. As the study explains:
Several recent findings support the hypothesis that ARAF (azole-resistant A. fumigatus) strains in patients with invasive aspergillosis were more likely to be acquired from environmental sources rather than from de novo mutation and selection within patients during azole therapy.
The supporting evidence for this extremely disturbing realization is also cited by the science paper as follows:
#1) “ARAF strains have been found in patients who had never been treated with azole antifungal drugs.”
#2) “ARAF strains have been found in many environmental niches including flowerbeds, compost, leaves, plant seeds, soil samples of tea gardens, paddy fields, hospital surroundings, and aerial samples of hospitals.” This means that hospitals are effectively pumping out the fungal strains to surrounding areas.
#3) “These strains showed cross-resistance to voriconazole, posaconazole, itraconazole, and to six triazole fungicides used extensively in agriculture.” In other words, the fungus is almost certain to have emerged from repeated exposure to agricultural fungicides, since those are the chemicals for which it has developed innate resistance.
As the paper explains, it is the agricultural use of azole fungicides that supplies the most likely explanation for fungicide-resistant superbug fungi:
For example, azole fungicides are broadly used to control mildews and rusts of grains, fruits, vegetables, and ornamentals; powdery mildew in cereals, berry fruits, vines, and tomatoes; and several other plant pathogenic fungi. Over one-third of total fungicide sales are azoles (mostly triazoles) and over 99% of the DMIs (demethylase inhibitors) are used in agriculture. In addition, there are over 25 types of azole DMIs for agricultural uses, far more than the three licensed medical triazoles for the treatment of aspergillosis. Furthermore, the azoles could persist and remain active in many ecological niches such as agricultural soil and aquatic environments for several months.
The widespread application of fungicide for agricultural use, in other words, is the credible, rational explanation for the widespread development of azole-resistant fungi strains that colonize and kill people, including people who have never been known to carry the non-resistant strains in the first place.
Azole-resistant Aspergillosis killed human patients with a mortality rate of 88%
One of the most horrifying findings of scientists who study azole-resistant fungi is the startlingly high mortality rate. Azole-resistant Aspergillosis was found to kill 88% of patients who were infected. As the PLOS Pathogens study cited earlier describes:
In fact 50% of the patients with invasive aspergillosis due to ARAF are known to be azole naïve and the outcome of patients with azole-resistant invasive aspergillosis has been dismal, with a mortality rate of 88%. (Van der Linden JWM, Snelders E, Kampinga GA, Rijnders BJA, Mattsson E, et al. (2011) Clinical implications of azole resistance in Aspergillus fumigatus, the Netherlands, 2007–2009. Emerg Infect Dis 17: 1846–1852.)
Even more alarmingly, it looks like patients currently being diagnosed as having chronic pulmonary infections may actually be victims of azole-resistant fungal infections. As the study explains, the genetic analysis (via PCR) of tissues from patients suffering chronic lung infections found that over half showed mutations characteristic of azole-resistant fungal strains:
[T]he same mechanism has also been reported in patients with chronic and allergic pulmonary infections [20]. For example, Denning et al. detected TR34/L98H and M220 mutations in 55.1% respiratory samples of CPA and ABPA patients by direct PCR…
This same genotype was, “found in 90% of ARAF isolates obtained from azole-naïve patients,” the study reports, meaning it’s a near-certain sign that these patients have been colonized by azole-resistant fungal strains.
Chemical agriculture has unleashed a deadly global pathogen with no known medical treatment… and the entire medical establishment is burying the truth while exposing millions of hospital patients every day
The upshot of all this is that chemical agriculture has given rise to a deadly global pathogen that has spread across the globe and has no known medical treatment. The NYT article quotes Dr. Lynn Sosa, the deputy state epidemiologist for Connecticut, saying, “It’s pretty much unbeatable and difficult to identity.” That story adds that nearly 50% of patients who contract Candida auris are dead within 90 days, according to what appears to be reluctant statements from the CDC. There, the head of the fungal research branch, Dr. Tom Chiller, described the fungal superbug as “a creature from the black lagoon,” the NYT reported. “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere.”
Except that it didn’t have to be that way. There has been a cover-up for years. The very medical establishment that is entrusted with keeping people safe from deadly pathogens has, itself, become both the distribution hub for spreading the disease while simultaneously colluding with the CDC to hide the truth about all this from the public. It is the hospitals that are now “fungal factories” which are spreading the disease, literally releasing superbug pathogens into the open air, contaminating entire communities with fungal spores that are stronger than any treatment chemical known to western medicine.
There simply is no treatment, no cure, and very little honesty about the reality of the situation. To his credit, the CDC’s Dr. Chiller did post a warning about all this in 2017, but the CDC itself has refused to name the hospitals where these outbreaks are taking place.
The NYT describes the bizarre combination of panic and collusion that’s now taking place in hospitals across the world:
In late 2015, Dr. Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease expert at Imperial College London, got a panicked call from the Royal Brompton Hospital, a British medical center outside London. C. auris had taken root there months earlier, and the hospital couldn’t clear it.
“‘We have no idea where it’s coming from. We’ve never heard of it. It’s just spread like wildfire,’” Dr. Rhodes said she was told. She agreed to help the hospital identify the fungus’s genetic profile and clean it from rooms.
Under her direction, hospital workers used a special device to spray aerosolized hydrogen peroxide around a room used for a patient with C. auris, the theory being that the vapor would scour each nook and cranny. They left the device going for a week. Then they put a “settle plate” in the middle of the room with a gel at the bottom that would serve as a place for any surviving microbes to grow, Dr. Rhodes said.
Only one organism grew back. C. auris.
It was spreading, but word of it was not. The hospital, a specialty lung and heart center that draws wealthy patients from the Middle East and around Europe, alerted the British government and told infected patients, but made no public announcement.
“There was no need to put out a news release during the outbreak,” said Oliver Wilkinson, a spokesman for the hospital.
This hushed panic is playing out in hospitals around the world. Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.
Now it’s in America… and it’s silently spreading while doctors, hospitals and the CDC are still hiding important facts from the public
According to the CDC, a total of 617 cases of Candida auris have been reported so far in the United States. This is detailed on the CDC’s Candida auris page, which warns that C. auris has “caused outbreaks in healthcare settings,” meaning hospitals and nursing homes are now spreading the superbug pathogen in America.
The CDC’s “tracking” page for Candida auris warns that hospitals around the world are spreading the disease, specifically naming the following countries as locations where healthcare-related pathogen transmission has been reported:
India, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela
Outside hospitals, multiple cases of Candida auris are currently being tracked by the CDC and have been recorded in the following countries:
Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States (primarily from the New York City area, New Jersey, and the Chicago area) and Venezuela
The CDC even warns that hospitals are spreading the disease, saying, “in some of these countries, extensive transmission of C. auris has been documented in more than one hospital.”
Illinois, New York and New Jersey are the hubs for Candida auris infections in U.S. hospitals and healthcare facilities
Candida auris is rapidly spreading across the United States, and the CDC publishes a chart with state-by-state statistics on where the infections are being found, even while refusing to tell the public which hospitals are infected:
https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/candida-auris/tracking-c-auris.html
Currently, the CDC’s tracking page shows 144 infections recorded in Illinois, 104 in New Jersey and 309 in New York. Twelve cases have been reported in Florida, 7 in Massachusetts with a smattering of isolated reports from California, Texas, Virginia and Connecticut.
Importantly, the CDC is so far refusing to name the hospitals or nursing homes where these cases are being found. This means the CDC, as usual, is hiding the truth about a deadly outbreak from the public. This behavior by the CDC will obviously lead to even more people being infected by visiting the hospitals where Candida auriscolonization is already complete. But the CDC seems more interested in protecting the profits of hospitals than in protecting the public from a deadly superbug pathogen, so it looks likely that the secrecy will continue.
Alarmingly, even the CDC says the numbers it has so far published coming out of Illinois, New Jersey and New York are only just the beginning. “Beyond the clinical case counts reported above, an additional 1056 patients have been found to be colonized with C. auris by targeted screening in seven states with clinical cases,” the CDC says. Yet to no one’s surprise, the CDC refuses to name which seven states.
Death by secrecy
Being “colonized” with Candida auris means you’re carrying it, spreading it to other people even though you may not show any symptoms yourself. As the CDC explains, “Colonization means that these patients are found to be carrying C. auris on their bodies, even though they are not sick with the infection.”
If there are 1,056 people across seven states who have already been found to be colonized with Candida auris, it means we are way beyond the Ebola scenario that scared the nation a few years ago when the geniuses at the CDC brought an Ebola patient to a Texas hospital, where that patient promptly spread Ebola to at least one nurse, causing a nationwide panic over a viral outbreak that thankfully failed to explode across the U.S. heartland. But Candida auris has already exploded across America, and the early numbers are only a hint of the scope of the real problem, given that “colonization screening” hasn’t even begun to encompass all of America’s cities or states.
With the CDC hiding the names of the hospitals where this deadly pathogen is spreading — and with the continued heavy application of azole-class fungicides on agricultural products across the country — it seems we’re already at a stage-six pandemic that has only just begun to be fully realized. It’s as if we’re all sailing on the Titanic, and the ship is already 80% under water by the time we realize something’s wrong. This pathogen is already endemic in America.
It’s likely that nearly every hospital, nursing home, public school and day care center in America is already colonized with Candida auris (or will be soon). No person can visit any hospital or healthcare facility without the reasonable expectation of being exposed to this superbug fungal strain, meaning that every visit to the hospital is now a potential death sentence, especially given the 41% – 88% fatality rates that have so far been associated with azole-resistant fungal strains.
Why Western medicine will ignore the obvious solution: Ultraviolet light
What’s even more horrifying about all this is that no one in the western medical system seems capable of thinking outside the realm of chemical treatments, so they all miss the obvious solution: Ultraviolet light. UV light — which everyone can get for free from the sun — kills nearly all fungi and viral strains. But hospitals, nursing homes and other healthcare facilities are unnatural places, characterized by artificial light and dark, damp hallways and rooms. Hospitals are breeding grounds for fungal colonies, and combined with the disturbingly high failure rates of hand washing among health care staff, it is inevitable that azole-resistant fungal strains will colonize every hospital in America over the next several years.
With window shades drawn to keep out the light, hospitals will try to fight the fungus with yet more chemicals, ultimately breeding even more dangerous, drug-resistant strains that could one day bring the world’s western health care system to a grinding halt.
Until that day comes, hospitals across America and around the world are pumping out billions of fungal spores into the open air, contaminating soils, streets and buildings in the surrounding communities. Even being near a hospital makes you a likely victim of fungal colonization. And just like the vaccine holocaust that maims and kills children all across America, the pharma-controlled media will no doubt bury this pandemic and decry those who warn about it as “conspiracy theorists.”
The fact that the New York Times even reported on this is practically a six-sigma event, but it’s an outlier, not the new rule. When health care dollars are at stake, journalism quickly folds to the profit interests of powerful corporations. Soon, the very mention of Candida auris will be decried as “anti-science,” and the World Health Organization will warn that “scare stories” about the superbug fungus are preventing people from visiting doctors and hospitals, thereby interfering with global health care. (This is exactly what the W.H.O. has done to vaccine skeptics who dare talk about the health risks of toxic vaccine ingredients such as squalene or aluminum-based adjuvants.)
Not long after the censorship crackdown on the “Candida conspiracy quacks,” the CDC will scrub its own website of any mention of the pathogen, just like the CDC deleted all its web pages that once admitted 98 million Americans were exposed to cancer viruses found contaminating polio vaccines. Western medicine isn’t good at solving health problems, but it’s very good at covering them up.
Remember: Rockland County, NY recently declared a state of emergency over a handful of measles cases. Yet a deadly fungal pathogen that now threatens to colonize and overrun every hospital and nursing home in the country gets almost zero mention anywhere. It’s clear that government officials and media propagandists have no real interest in protecting public health, but they have a huge interest in promoting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.
Conclusion: Chemical agriculture has already killed humanity… it’s too late to stop this
Five years ago, I warned that chemical agriculture was going to lead to humanity’s destruction. I was attacked and vilified by several science publications, of course, and labeled an “anti-science” nut case. In the years since, I launched what has now become a multi-million dollar ISO-accredited laboratory facility (CWClabs.com); I co-authored a peer-reviewed science paper published in the LC/GC chromatography journal; I launched a book — “Food Forensics” — that achieved a No. 1 science book ranking on Amazon.com; and I was awarded two scientific patents by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:
Patent #1) Cesium Eliminator, an invention for removing radioactive cesium-137 isotopes from the human digestive tract. (See Google patents link here.)
Patent #2) Heavy Metals Defense, an invention that removes toxic heavy metals from foods or liquids that are consumed by people or animals. (See Google patents link here.)
Also during those years, juries in California have now twice confirmed that glyphosate herbicide causes cancer, meaning that the U.S. food supply is heavily saturated with a deadly chemical that kills people. Using triple quad mass spec analysis, my laboratory has developed and validated a method for the quantitation of glyphosate in food and water, and we’re using that method to investigate retail food items sold at grocery stores across America. (Our science paper describing this method will soon be submitted for publication in science journals.)
In nearly every fresh food sample we test, we find fungicide chemicals. We also find traces of glyphosate in a fair number of samples (cereals, grains, beer, wine, beans, legumes, etc.), and we find shockingly high levels of lead and cadmium in many superfoods, dietary supplements and nutritional products.
With the Candida auris pandemic now confirmed by the New York Times, the last five years have confirmed that my original warning was correct. Agricultural chemicals are killing humanity; and we’ve only just begun to understand the vectors of emerging pathogens that have now turned virtually the entire global health care system into a suicide mission from the point of view of patients.
Agricultural chemicals don’t even have to kill us directly to be an apocalyptic threat to humanity, you see: They merely have to give rise to deadly pathogens that invade, colonize and infect every hospital, nursing home, subway station, public transport bus, mall, movie theater, church and synagogue across America. It is those pathogens that carry out the killing, not the original agricultural chemicals that gave rise to their existence.
In essence, chemical agriculture has spawned what Dr. Tom Chiller of the CDC calls, “a creature from the black lagoon.” In Dr. Chiller’s own chilling words, he summarizes what I’ve been trying to warn humanity about for fifteen years: “It bubbled up and now it is everywhere.”
And Big Pharma has no answers, no treatment and no cure. The real answer is, quite literally, sunlight. Yet the drug giants can’t patent the sun or charge royalties on it, so sunlight will never be mentioned by the establishment as the most obvious and powerful weapon for eradicating this insidious pathogen.
Meanwhile, hospitals across America will continue serving toxic food and administering toxic drugs to their patients, reveling in the repeat business that comes from the ongoing sickness and suffering that now characterizes western civilization’s chemical approach to everything.
“Better living through chemistry” has now collapsed into tragedy. The future we now face is, “The chemically-induced suicide of the human race.”
That’s the true story of how agricultural fungicides transformed every hospital visit into a suicide mission. If the food doesn’t kill you first, the visit to the doctor surely will.
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: The German share prize index (DAX) board is seen at the end of a trading day at the German stock exchange (Deutsche Boerse) in Frankfurt, Germany, February 12, 2019. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
April 10, 2019
By David French, Andreas Framke and Arno Schuetze
NEW YORK/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German stock exchange operator Deutsche Boerse AG is in advanced talks to buy FXall, a foreign exchange electronic trading platform owned by data provider Refinitiv, for about $3.5 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The deal would further diversify Deutsche Boerse’s business beyond stock trading, while enabling Refinitiv to trim its debt pile following its acquisition last year by a consortium led by Blackstone Group LP in a $20-billion leveraged buyout.
If the negotiations conclude successfully, a deal could be announced as early as next week, the sources said, asking not to be identified because the matter is confidential.
Deutsche Borse declined to comment, while Refinitiv did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FXall has more than 2,300 institutional clients who are trading foreign exchange on its platform, offering more than 500 different currency pairs through methods including on-the-spot trading, forward and option contracts, according to its website.
Deutsche Borse, operator of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, has been seeking new avenues for growth, as the profitability of facilitating trades is eroded by new digital rivals and the rise of passive investment funds that track indices.
On Tuesday, Deutsche Borse announced it would buy risk management software provider Axioma for $850 million, with plans to merge it with its existing index business to create a new analytics firm.
Deutsche Boerse’s Global Head of FX, Carlo Koelzer, was quoted by the Handelsblatt business daily on Apr. 1 saying that the firm would be interested in buying FXall, should it ever come up for sale.
Blackstone acquired a 55-percent stake in Refinitiv last year from information provider Thomson Reuters Corp, the parent of Reuters News.
Thomson Reuters retains a 45 percent stake in Refinitiv, which provides financial information, security pricing, analytics, risk management and compliance support tools. Refinitiv took on $13.5 billion in debt as part of its leveraged buyout, according to Moody’s Investors Service Inc.
(Reporting by David French in New York and Andreas Framke and Arno Schuetze in Frankfurt; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Source: OANN
How are all of these unprofitable companies staying afloat and even making big splashes with media-hyped IPOs?
Peter Schiff addressed this question, along with the supposed “failure” of capitalism in his most recent podcast.
The rideshare company Lyft had its lowest close since going public yesterday (April 9). In fact, the company has only closed above its IPO price twice – the day it went public and last Friday. This probably shouldn’t shock anybody, given that the company has never turned a profit.
Meanwhile, social media company Pinterest is gearing up for its IPO with a lot of media hype. The company has been around since 2010. It’s never made any money either.
Peter asked a poignant question. What makes people think these companies will ever make any money?
“[Pinterest] has been around for 10 years. If they haven’t figured out how to make a profit yet, are they ever going to do it? Because at least in the frenzy of the dot-com mania, people were saying, ‘Look, the company hasn’t made a profit yet because it’s only been around for a year. But don’t worry because it’s got all of this explosive growth.’ You know, ‘We’re grabbing eyeballs,’ or whatever it was. But people were willing to bet the companies would eventually be profitable, and they didn’t have a lot of data to go on because the companies hadn’t even been in existence for very long before they were going public. It was a rush to the market. But now that you’ve got these companies that have been going on for 10 years — I mean, they’ve had 10 years at Pinterest to try to figure out how to make a profit and they haven’t done it.”
But as Peter pointed out, because of the easy-money policies of the Federal Reserve and the resulting availability of cheap capital, companies have been able to continue to operate even though they don’t make any money.
“A lot of companies are able to attract funding and stay in business that under a normal free market system – a capitalist system – they would have gone bankrupt.”
This is one of the unseen impacts of central bank monetary policy. It distorts the market.
Consider Pinterest. The company has a lot of employees. It consumes a lot of resources to operate its website – land, labor and capital. These are resources that could be put to some other use if they weren’t being consumed by Pinterest. So, how do you know whether these resources being put to their best use? In a capitalist system, profits provide that information. Profits signal that resources are being well-used. The lack of a profit tells us these resources are not being put to good use. If the lack of profit persists, the company goes under and frees up those resources for better uses.
As Peter put it, if a company can combine resources to produce a product and then sell it at a higher price then the resources that it consumed, it is adding value to the economy. The consumer gets more enjoyment out of that product then the resources consumed in producing it.
“You see, resources are scarce, but demand is unlimited. And the idea behind an economy is how to satisfy unlimited demand with limited resources. And resources that are utilized for one purpose are not available for another purpose. And if a company though is losing money, then the market is basically saying, ‘Hey, you’re destroying value. You’re creating products, but your customers don’t even value those products as much as the resources were worth that you used to make them.’”
If a company is creating value, it is rewarded with profits. If it is destroying value, it is punished by losses.
The Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the monetary system short-circuits this process. You end up with a misallocation of recourses and all kinds of asset bubbles — not to mention piles of debt.
Back to Pinterest:
“I think that if during these 10 years we had normal interest rates, if the Fed was not keeping interest rates artificially low, Pinterest would already be profitable right now, or they would be out of business … The Fed has been able to keep this company and a lot of other companies in business. And all of this gambling mentality where people are willing to buy money-losing companies is only there because of the casino-like mentality that has been created by the Federal Reserve and the perpetual supply of cheap money.”
Simply put – capitalism isn’t the problem. It’s government and central bank intervention that has failed us.
In this podcast, Peter goes on to break down comments by Ray Dalio about the supposed “failure” of capitalism.
Owen Shroyer presents a local news report from the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, where a “tight knit” community of Orthodox Jews are being forced to vaccinate with the measles. Is the U.S. government conducting, yet again, secret medical experiments on their own people?
Source: InfoWars
FILE PHOTO: The seal of the Department of Commerce is pictured in Washington, D.C., U.S. March 10, 2017. REUTERS/Eric Thayer/File Photo
April 10, 2019
By Diane Bartz and Karen Freifeld
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday that it is adding 37 Chinese companies and schools to a red-flag list of “unverified” entities that U.S. companies should treat with caution, according to a notice in the Federal Register.
The list, which takes effect on Thursday, also includes six organizations in Hong Kong, four in the United Arab Emirates, two in Malaysia and one in Indonesia.
One company on the list is the Aisin Nantong Technical Center, a Chinese subsidiary of a Japanese auto parts manufacturer. Another is Beijing Bayi Space LCD Materials Technology Co Ltd, which has received patents for high-end screen technology.
Several other of the companies named specialize in precision optics, electronics, machine tools or aviation.
The listing means that the U.S. companies will treat the organizations with caution, said Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary of commerce for export administration.
Being put on an “unverified” list means that U.S. suppliers to the unverified companies and schools can no longer use license exceptions to, for example, sell products to repair goods that were sold previously but instead will have to get a new license, said Wolf, now at the law firm Akin Gump.
“Even though it’s not an embargo, because of the hassle sometimes suppliers will treat it as an embargo. It has a practical effect that’s greater than the legal effect,” said Wolf.
The Commerce Department will put entities on the “unverified” list if the organizations decline to answer questions about how U.S. goods are used.
Schools on the list include the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, whose website says it specializes in physics and chemistry research aimed at defense and economic development as well as training graduate students.
Other schools on the list are the Guangdong University of Technology in Guangzhou, Renmin University, Tongji University in Shanghai and two schools in Xi’an, China.
The listing also removes five Russian companies, three Chinese entities and one Finnish firm from the list.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A worker walks between the first two Astute class nuclear submarines as they are built in the Devonshire Dock hall at the BAE systems facility in Barrow-in-Furness, northern England, May 8, 2007. REUTERS/Phil Noble (BRITAIN)/File Photo
April 10, 2019
LONDON (Reuters) – A shipyard in northern England that builds Britain’s new generation of nuclear submarines was evacuated on Wednesday after what a local news website said was a bomb warning.
Ambulances and police were on the scene in Barrow-in-Furness in northwestern England. The defense ministry declined to comment.
“As a precaution, the Devonshire Dock Complex has been closed,” a spokeswoman for BAE Systems said. “Staff, contractors and local residents are being kept informed.”
An unidentified source told The Mail, a Barrow-in-Furness-based publication known previously as the North-West Evening Mail, that staff had been evacuated after a warning about a bomb on an Astute-class nuclear attack submarine.
Barrow-in-Furness makes the new generation of four Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines that will eventually replace the Vanguard class which form the basis of the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear deterrent.
Dreadnought-class submarines will measure 153 meters long, with a displacement of 17,200 tonnes, and have a PWR3 nuclear reactor.
BAE Systems, Rolls Royce and Babcock are the main industrial partners in the 31-billion pound ($41 billion) Dreadnought project.
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Paul Sandle; editing by Stephen Addison)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: A man uses his mobile phone to take photographs of a poster of the upcoming film “PM Narendra Modi” during the launch of its poster in Mumbai, India, January 7, 2019. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File photo
April 10, 2019
By Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Nivedita Bhattacharjee
MUMBAI/BENGALURU (Reuters) – Early this year, a dozen of Bollywood’s biggest names took a private jet from India’s film capital of Mumbai to New Delhi for a private audience with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Subsequently, actor Ranveer Singh, who has nearly 22 million followers on Instagram, posted a smiling picture of himself hugging Modi, with a caption expressing his “joy” at the encounter, drawing more than 3 million likes.
Bollywood is playing a lead role in Modi’s campaign for a second term, endorsing him on-screen and off, in both subtle and obvious ways, in a marked shift from the more transactional relationship Indian film stars previously had with politicians.
Modi asked filmmakers and stars to “talk about patriotism, and Indian culture and values,” in their films, said film producer Mahaveer Jain, who organized the Jan. 10 meeting.
“He recognizes the soft power of Bollywood, and the impact it can have.”
As people younger than 35 form nearly two-thirds of India’s population of about 1.3 billion, with more than 15 million voting for the first time in general elections that begin on Thursday, approval from the leading stars could be key.
Modi swept to victory in 2014, but this time, rural distress and concern about a lack of jobs threaten to make it tougher for his party to triumph in elections spread over a month, with counting set for May 23.
In recent months, Modi has met privately at least four times with several of Bollywood’s biggest personalities, most of whom have posted selfies with him on social media, accompanied by glowing captions.
“Together we would love to inspire and ignite positive changes toward a transformative India,” read a caption on director Karan Johar’s Instagram post of a star-studded group selfie with Modi that won more than 1 million likes. He thanked the government for cutting taxes on movie tickets.
“There is perhaps no politician in the history of Indian politics who has been able to create a celebrity outreach program like Narendra Modi,” said Joyojeet Pal, a University of Michigan professor who has analyzed Modi’s social media feed since 2009.
A BJP spokesman did not respond to Reuters’ repeated requests for comment.
(For video, click on https://reut.tv/2Gc7ooq)
Bollywood’s move to largely embrace Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party contrasts with the United States, where Hollywood has typically taken up liberal-left causes and backed the Democrats, more lately lampooning President Donald Trump and the right-wing Republican Party.
BIGGEST HIT
Beyond social media, Bollywood has released three movies with lead actors in prime ministerial roles this year.
One, “Uri – The Surgical Strike” proved the year’s biggest hit, pulling in a gross of more than $35 million at the Indian box office.
In speeches, Modi and his ministers have repeatedly evoked the film, which indirectly lauds the prime minister and his national security adviser for planning a 2016 attack that India says hit terrorist camps in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
But it has no political leanings, says director Aditya Dhar. “My film is a dedication to the Indian Army,” Dhar told Reuters in January https://in.reuters.com/article/interview-aditya-dhar-uri/qa-aditya-dhar-on-uri-the-surgical-strike-idINKCN1P50J3. “It is about the sacrifices they make for their countrymen.”
The film released the same weekend as “The Accidental Prime Minister”, based on an unauthorized biography of Modi’s predecessor, Manmohan Singh.
That film, which did not succeed at the box office, projected open contempt for Singh, painting him as ineffective and forced to bow to the whims of the Gandhi family, which heads India’s main opposition party, the Indian National Congress.
“You can clearly say some of these films are propaganda films,” said influential film critic Rajeev Masand. “There is no confusion on the agenda there.”
A biopic titled “PM Narendra Modi” is set for release on Thursday, when the first votes are to be cast in the seven-phase election, and it follows a 10-episode web series on Modi’s life.
“HUGE INFLUENCER”
Not everyone is jumping on the Modi bandwagon.
More than 800 theater artists, actors and film makers urged voters not to back Modi last week, but barring a few, most were independent and documentary film makers lacking the reach of Bollywood’s A-listers.
“The man portrayed as the savior of the nation five years ago has destroyed the livelihoods of millions through his policies,” they said on the website Artists Unite.
“We appeal to our fellow citizens to vote for love and compassion, for equality and social justice, and to defeat the forces of darkness and barbarism.”
The main opposition Congress party has also sought to woo Bollywood and a separate source said filmmakers were invited to meet its leader, Rahul Gandhi.
The agenda for that meeting is unknown and Gandhi’s office did not respond to calls seeking comment.
“My Name is RaGa,” a less publicized movie about Gandhi, is also set for release this month.
Traditionally, Bollywood stars functioned as crowd-pullers at the odd election rally, often for remuneration. Though many later took the plunge into politics, no political party has deployed them as subliminal brand ambassadors before.
“This is alarming because Indian cinema is a huge influencer,” said Sandeep Chatterjee, professor of direction and screenplay at the Film and Television Institute of India.
“One can say people have a right to decide what they watch, but you cannot discount the influence Indian cinema has on people at large, especially young people.”
(Reporting by Shilpa Jamkhandikar and Nivedita Bhattacharjee; Additional reporting by Rupam Jain; Editing by Martin Howell and Clarence Fernandez)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO – Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison reacts during the APEC CEO Summit 2018 at Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 17 November 2018. Fazry Ismail/Pool via REUTERS
April 10, 2019
By Byron Kaye
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s government proposed on Wednesday to criminalise some actions of animal rights protesters after activists blocked traffic in Melbourne and stormed farms and abattoirs this week to protest factory farming.
The new law proposed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison is unusual, legal experts say, because it appears to be a specific response to the actions of a vegan activist group, AussieFarms.
The group has posted an interactive map online of animal businesses, including farms, zoos and horse racing tracks, to promote a documentary film that calls for a ban on slaughterhouses.
Under the new law, people who encourage trespassers by posting the location of an agricultural business on the Internet could face up to a year in prison if found guilty, the government said.
“When they are using people’s personal information, details about their homes, it’s not just their farm, it’s their home, it’s where their kids live and grow up,” Morrison told reporters in the rural state of Tasmania.
“They are being targeted in the most mercenary way by an organisation that can only think of itself and not think to the real damage that is being done to the livelihoods of these hard-working Australians,” he added.
Australia is due to hold an election in May and most polls predict Morrison will lose, partly due to a drift of rural voters to other conservative parties.
Traffic stopped for an hour in central Melbourne on Monday when about 100 protesters waved signs to promote the AussieFarms documentary, Dominion, which used drones and undercover footage to film feedlots and saleyards. [nL3N21Q1B8]
It was part of a wave of action in three states, where activists targeted abattoirs in the middle of the night and at some farms chained themselves to equipment.
Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Centre, said there were laws in place that limited the actions of environmental campaigners, including a ban on trespassing.
“There’s a suite of powers available to police and law enforcement agencies to deal with trespass and obstruction of traffic and the like,” de Kretser told Reuters.
“Any attempts to further limit protest rights need to be very carefully scrutinised to make sure any penalty is not crushing, and the scope of any offence is not disproportionate to the conduct they’re trying to prevent,” he added.
Chris Delforce, the director of Dominion, said he would rather go to jail than take down the group’s website.
“All we’re trying to do is enforce transparency on these industries,” he told Reuters by telephone. “Whatever happens to me cannot compare to what’s happening to animals.”
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; editing by Darren Schuettler)
Source: OANN
FILE PHOTO: Mar 31, 2019; Kansas City, MO, United States; Kentucky Wildcats forward PJ Washington (25) shoots over Auburn Tigers forward Horace Spencer (0) during the first half in the championship game of the midwest regional of the 2019 NCAA Tournament at Sprint Center. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports
April 9, 2019
Kentucky standout sophomore PJ Washington declared for the NBA draft on Tuesday and will hire an agent, the school announced.
“This place has been my home for two years and it’s hard for me to put in words how much I’ve grown in my time at Kentucky. The staff challenged me from day one to become the best version of myself and to work hard to become one of the best players in college basketball. I feel like I’ve done that,” Washington said in a statement posted on the Wildcats’ website.
The 6-foot-8 forward ends his career with 932 points, 476 rebounds, 120 assists and 74 blocks. He led the Wildcats in scoring (15.2) and rebounding (7.5) in the 2018-19 season. He also posted nine double-doubles and shot 52.2 percent from the floor, including 42.3 percent from the 3-point line.
Washington earned first-team All-SEC and third-team All-America honors. He is projected to be a mid-first-round pick by ESPN.
–Two-time SEC Player of the Year Grant Williams said he is entering the NBA draft but will remain open to returning to school for his senior season.
“My whole thing is I want to go into the process with an open mind and understand what I need to improve on and what I need to get better at, while also understanding I have to make the most informed decision possible,” said Williams, who has until May 29 to make up his mind. “If it is the right time, then it is the right time.”
The 6-foot-7 Williams averaged 18.8 points and 7.5 rebounds this season while earning first-team All-America honors.
–Michigan forward Ignas Brazdeikis, the 2018-19 Big Ten Freshman of the Year, told ESPN he will hire an agent and enter the draft.
“As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an NBA player — not just an NBA player, but an NBA All-Star,” said the 6-foot-7 Canadian, who averaged 14.8 points and 5.4 boards in 37 starts with the Wolverines.
–Israel’s Yovel Zoosman has submitted paperwork to the league office to become eligible for the draft, according to ESPN.
Ranked No. 58 in the ESPN Top 100, the 20-year-old wing player was named MVP of the FIBA U20 European Championship last July after leading the Israeli national team to the championship in Germany.
–Field Level Media
Source: OANN
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