“Hundreds of you have requested that I watch and respond to the Plandemic movie ft. Dr. Judy Mikovits, recently published on social media. I decided to check it out and respond point by point to the biggest claims the conspiracy theory movie makes.”
A follow-up interview answering viewers and inquirers questions here:-
By Kirsten Diprose and Matt Neal
Key points:
Dr Goodall said we should have known a pandemic-like coronavirus was coming because other viruses, such as SARS and HIV, also jumped the species barrier from animals.
Both SARS and COVID-19 are types of coronavirus and have been traced to live animal markets, or wet markets, in China.
But Dr Goodall said the loss of animal habitats and intensive farming are part of the problem, making it easier for viruses to spread from one animal to another and then to humans.
“We have to learn to think differently about how we interact with the natural world,” she said.
“And one of the problems is that as more and more forests have disappeared, so animals themselves have come in closer contact with each other.
“Most of these viruses that jumped to us have come through an intermediary. So there’s a reservoir host like a bat and in [the case of COVID-19] it’s thought to have jumped into a pangolin and then into us.”
Dr Andrew Peters, an associate professor in wildlife health and pathology at Charles Sturt University, backs Dr Goodall’s assertions that human interference with animal habitats is a concern when it comes to diseases.
“There’s going to be intense focus on the wet markets in China as a focus for human spill-over of viruses from wildlife, and that’s rightfully so,”
“But the thing we mustn’t lose sight of is there are a whole lot of other things we do in the natural environment that can lead to these kinds of spill-overs occurring.
“In Australia we’ve seen a number of emerging infectious diseases, including Hendra virus, which is obviously a very well known and deadly virus that infects horses and humans from bats.
“The causes of that are thought to be deforestation on the coastal plain of Australia and the pressure that puts on bat populations as they move down to the coast in winter.”
Dr Peters said humans need to reconsider their relationship with the natural world, and the impact we’re having on animals.
“The majority of human new emerging infectious diseases come from wildlife,” he said.
Dr Goodall is marking 60 years since she first entered the jungles of Tanzania at the age of 26, to study chimpanzees.
It was her unorthodox approach of immersing herself in their habitat that led to the discovery in 1960 that chimpanzees make and use tools.
The 86-year-old is also concerned the global chimpanzee population could become infected with COVID-19.
“The genetic makeup between humans and chimps differ by only just over one per cent,” she said.
“So almost certainly if the infected humans are anywhere near the chimps they are liable to catch it.”
A tiger at the Bronx Zoo in New York reportedly tested positive to COVID-19 earlier this month, suspected to have been infected by a zoo employee.
This is the first known instance of a tiger contracting the new coronavirus.
“We at the Jane Goodall Institute are taking very, very drastic measures to try and protect the chimpanzees in our two sanctuaries in Africa and the wild chimps which is, of course, much harder,” she said.
Dr Goodall said it is the same disregard shown by humans towards nature that is also the root cause of climate change.
“The way we have treated the planet with our reckless burning of fossil fuel and coal mines — you know all about that in Australia, and how it is heating up the planet,” Dr Goodall said.
“You have certainly suffered from the terrible fires and that’s because the planet is getting hotter and drier, the droughts are getting longer, and it’s all we have done to the natural world.”
She said the global community should have been treating climate change long ago as if it was a pandemic “because it’s actually far more devastating in terms of loss of life and people being driven from countries simply because the habitat is so inhospitable”.
“So why haven’t we been? Why haven’t we been treating climate change as the disaster it is?” Dr Goodall said.
“You only have to look around at some of the political leaders in different countries to understand why. Because people don’t want to think about making the changes necessary because it would impact their success in business.”
But Dr Goodall said there is reason to hope with the way leaders and communities are working together to fight coronavirus — evidence of what humanity is capable of.
“Maybe it has taken something like this COVID-19 to wake us up and realise you can’t eat money,” she said.
“If we go on destroying nature in this way, go on disrespecting the other beings whom we share this planet, it’s a downward trajectory.
“So hopefully this [coronavirus response], which is affecting the whole world, will give us the jolt we seem to need to start behaving and thinking in a different way”.
A new documentary Jane Goodall: The Hope, based on Dr Goodall’s long career, will be released April 22 by National Geographic to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.
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By Noah Bookbinder
Mr. Bookbinder is the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
When President Trump announced late on Friday that he would fire the government watchdog who told Congress about the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint, which ultimately led to his impeachment, it touched off one of the most acute threats yet to our democracy. But it didn’t even make the front page of most papers.
That’s understandable. Thousands of Americans are dying every day from the terrifying coronavirus pandemic. People are worried about their own safety and that of their families, as well as about their jobs and livelihood. Questions abound about how the crisis got to this point, whether the Trump administration took appropriate steps to address it and what steps are needed to minimize the devastation going forward; there is little bandwidth for anything else.
But we can’t afford to ignore the anti-democratic steps the president is taking while the American people are appropriately preoccupied with this outbreak. If we don’t respond to these outrageous abuses now, the damage may be done by the time anyone is the wiser.
The worst of the president’s latest round of steps to undermine checks and balances came not just in this time of crisis, but on a Friday night, the classic black hole for sweeping problematic actions in Washington under the rug.
First, the president announced that he would be firing Michael Atkinson, the inspector general for the intelligence community. Mr. Trump said in a required letter to Congress that he no longer had “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson; there was not even an effort to disguise the fact that what caused the president to lose that confidence was Atkinson following the law and allowing the truth to come out about Mr. Trump’s lawless attempt to pressure a foreign power to announce politically helpful investigations. Mr. Atkinson will be fired 30 days after the letter went to Congress, the soonest he can be under law, but the president undercut even that law by putting Mr. Atkinson on immediate administrative leave.
Michael Horowitz, the respected inspector general of the Department of Justice and chairman of a council that coordinates inspectors general, went out on a limb to vouch for Mr. Atkinson, praising his integrity and his handling of the Ukraine whistle-blower complaint. Mr. Horowitz is right, and his affirmation that the inspector general community “will continue to conduct aggressive, independent oversight” is heartening.
But President Trump’s further action makes that claim questionable at best. The president compounded the Atkinson announcement on Friday night with his intention to nominate White House lawyer Brian Miller to be special inspector general for pandemic recovery, a key position for oversight of the just-passed $2 trillion coronavirus relief package, which is ripe for fraud and corruption without aggressive review. The position demands ironclad independence, particularly with the risk that the president’s company, relatives, customers and donors could seek to benefit from the stimulus package. Mr. Miller, who served for nearly 10 years as inspector general at the General Services Administration, but more recently played a role in the White House’s response to the impeachment inquiry, is precisely the wrong person to ensure independence. A former senior Senate staff member praised Miller’s “loyalty to the administration” in explaining why he’ll make a good choice, even though loyalty is the exact opposite of what is needed.
The one-two punch of Mr. Atkinson and Mr. Miller is, unfortunately, just the tip of the iceberg of the president’s dangerous attacks on the independence of inspectors general. Mr. Trump will likely fire additional inspectors general because he and his allies view them as “deep state” operatives who undermine him. Indeed, the president seems to view any independence within the government and certainly any checks on him as intolerable disloyalty; that notion, of course, runs counter to our entire system of checks and balances.
Friday night’s actions came at the end of a week of scary departures from democratic practices. Reporting indicates that more and more power has gone to the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, whose coronavirus “shadow task force” of government allies and private sector connections may run afoul of federal law. Mr. Kushner is meanwhile also reportedly playing a significant role in the Trump re-election campaign from the White House, which may also violate federal law. Nepotism and disregard for the law have characterized this administration from day one, but the volume and brazenness of these anti-democratic tendencies is increasing.
Indeed, earlier Friday, the government changed its description on a federal website of the strategic national stockpile to correspond to Mr. Kushner’s description of it as being for the benefit of the federal government, not the states. Also last week, the Navy fired a captain who blew the whistle on the scope of a Covid-19 outbreak on his ship, another example of apparent payback for truthtelling, and the president reportedly wants to have his own signature on stimulus checks to Americans, which may also run afoul of law. All of these autocratic steps come on top of the president’s February purges of officials who testified in the impeachment trial and attempts to meddle in the sentencing of friends and allies convicted of crimes.
Here’s why this matters: times of crisis are when democracies are in the gravest danger of crumbling. We are seeing that play out in the world right now. Hungary, which has watched its hard won post-Cold War democratic reforms slipping away for some time, this week saw its Parliament give Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom Mr. Trump has praised, unlimited authority, effectively turning the country into a dictatorship. Dictators around the world are using the pandemic to tighten their control.
We’re not there yet. But the president’s attempts to rid the government of those who would provide appropriate oversight and accountability for abuses and speak truth to power, to put in place loyalists who will look out for him rather than providing independent checks, and to empower relatives and disregard laws sets us on a dangerous trajectory. Firing inspectors general and replacing them with loyalists is a serious threat to our democracy. The American people must register our outrage; Congress must investigate the firings aggressively and rigorously vet nominees. If we ignore the erosion of checks and balances because we are preoccupied with more immediate concerns, we may find that our democracy — when we need the institutions of this country the most — is disappearing. Just ask Hungary.
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Rules enforcement highlights problem of getting message across to minority community
Oliver Holmes and Quique Kierszenbaum in Jerusalem
It wasn’t a typical police operation. Two Israeli officers were to go undercover, although not posing as drug dealers or arms traffickers. For this particular assignment, they were to disguise themselves as ultra-Orthodox Jews.
Their mission on Friday was to bust an illegal gathering in a synagogue. People were praying together, a practice that is now against the law in the era of the coronavirus. Once the officers got inside to confirm the crowd, more units barged in and dispersed people.
Forces left the area, according to police, but: “An hour later, it was reported that people had returned again.” At that point, officers handed out fines amounting to nearly £4,000.
The operation in the county’s north was one small part of a sometimes fruitless nationwide effort to impose Covid-19 restrictions on a deeply religious and often cut-off community that has been slow, or even opposed, to change their way of life.
Officials fear the result has been an explosion of cases in neighbourhoods populated with the minority, which makes up more than 12% of Israel’s nine million citizens.
In the most extreme case, an entire city, Bnei Brak, has been surrounded with barricades. Israel’s cabinet declared the city a “restricted zone” last week, sending in 1,000 police officers who blocked residents from leaving except under special circumstances. The army has also be deployed to deliver food to the elderly.
One medical expert estimated up to 38% of Bnei Brak’s roughly 200,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox inhabitants could be infected, significantly higher than the national average.
Many Israeli ultra-Orthodox live in poor, often congested areas with large families where infections can spread rapidly. Some religious leaders have refused to order their people to stay inside long after the rest of the country was locking down.
When a population are told the Torah will protect them there is no motivation to comply with orders Jessica Apple, Haaretz
Chaim Kanievsky, an influential rabbi, had initially refused to close packed synagogues and religious seminaries, where hundreds of boys and men gather daily. “The Torah protects and saves,” the 92-year-old said. Only in late March did the rabbi relent, calling for lone prayer.
There have also been several anecdotal reports that ultra-Orthodox communities in other countries, including the UK, are suffering an above-average infection rate.
In Israel, the outbreaks have deepened entrenched grievances between secular and religious populations that have festered since the state’s founding.
Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, known in Hebrew as Haredim, or “God-fearers”, occupy a unique role, with laws allowing them to avoid military draft and live off stipends while they study religion, leading to secular resentment.
Many abhor Israel’s interference in their traditions. Some are vehemently anti-Zionist, rejecting the country whose Jewish majority is mostly secular, which has frustrated government coronavirus efforts when public trust and obedience are vital.
Attempts by police to enforce quarantine restrictions in religious neighbourhoods of Jerusalem have led to sometimes violent standoffs. Paramedics have been hit with rocks.
“When a population that regards its religious leaders as infallible are told that the Torah will protect them and that the secular law enforcement agencies are Nazis and anti-Semites, there is no motivation to comply with orders,” wrote Jessica Apple in the progressive local Haaretz newspaper; her article also called for ultra-Orthodox jews to wear face masks.
Now the cabinet is discussing using the Bnei Brak lockdown as a model for other outbreaks, and local media have cited an unnamed health official as saying more ultra-Orthodox areas could also be sealed off.
Ultra-Orthodox Jewish burial society workers with a coronavirus victim outside the Shamgar funeral house in Jerusalem. Photograph: Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images
Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, an ultra-Orthodox Jerusalemite who used to take part in anti-government demonstrations, said some rabbis took a “long time to internalise the severity of the situation … and they truly believe that studying Torah is more important than anything else.”
However, he said the government was also slow to communicate with more radical parts of the community, many of whom have no internet, television, radio, smartphones or even newspapers and usually get news from posters stuck to noticeboards.
Meshi-Zahav, who runs a volunteer emergency medicine group that has been helping coordinate the Covid-19 response, has written posters on the rules. Still, he added: “It is not our job, it should be the Ministry of Health’s responsibility.”
He said he was concerned about growing anger. “In normal times, there are discussions on this, but now the seculars are saying, ‘you are infecting us’. This is terrible, there is a lot of antisemitism around the world, and now the seculars are doing this?”
“There are things they say that are correct, but to accuse a whole community? To generalise? Some people are using the situation to attack the Haredim.”
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On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president’s public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.
In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: “The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.”
Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.
Rather, he is acting like Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America: repeatedly letting governors know the burden of shoring up their sick, their doctors and their people falls on their shoulders first. The national government? It’s the world’s greatest backstop.
Remember when the Republican party freaked out about Barack Obama and the US “leading from behind” abroad? Remember the howls that evoked from GOP leaders? Those days are gone. Welcome to what Martin O’Malley, a Democratic former governor of Maryland, calls the “Darwinian approach to federalism”.
There is nothing like populism marinated in wholesale contempt for the populace
Trump is telling NFL owners he wants the season to start on time. He is disregarding Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advice on wearing facemasks in public. And he is touting untested coronavirus cures live on national TV.
Think Trump University on steroids, only this time we all stand to be the victims.
When Dr Anthony Fauci says there is no evidence to back up Trump’s claims surrounding hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, pay attention. The fact Jared Kushner is on the case is hardly reassuring. He’s the guy who thought firing James Comey was win-win politics and promised Middle East peace in our time.
While all this is going on, the Wisconsin Republican party is giving America a taste of the campaign to come in the fall. Right now, the Badger State GOP is fighting in the US supreme court efforts to extend mail-in voting for this Tuesday’s Democratic primary.
In other words, voters will be forced to choose between foregoing their rights and risking their lives. Democracy shouldn’t work that way.
Back in the day, Republicans looked upon absentee voting as a valuable adjunct, a key piece in the party’s election day arsenal. Not anymore. Instead it is a dreaded foe, a fact readily admitted by Trump on Fox & Friends this week. If the US were to adopt mail-in voting, said the president, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”.
For good measure, Trump later declared from the White House: “I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in voting.”
For the record, Trump voted by mail in 2018. In March, the Palm Beach Post reported that he had requested a mail-in vote for the Florida Republican primary.
There is nothing like populism marinated in wholesale contempt for the populace. In case Trump and the Republicans forgot, “We the People” are the constitution’s first three words.
If you can leave your soldiers to suffer then no American is truly safe
Sadly, once again we are reminded that Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe’s masterpiece, Gladiator, is the movie for this presidency and its tumultuous times. In one scene, a senator, Gracchus, attempts to confront Commodus, the emperor, about a plague spreading through Rome. The emperor declines, threatens the senator and muses about disbanding the Senate.
On Thursday, Trump forced the removal of Captain Brett Crozier from his command of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, for having the temerity to plead his sailors’ case as more than 100 of them tested positive for coronavirus.
If you can leave your soldiers to suffer then no American is truly safe, no matter what Jeanine Pirro may say. Crozier left the ship to the cheers of the crew – then reportedly tested positive himself.
Hours after dismissing Crozier, Trump sacked Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general, for simply doing his job. Trump’s Ukraine call was never perfect, however many times he says it was.
Whether Trump wins reelection is an open question. For now, the economy is cratering and the coronavirus death toll has exploded. Not a promising combination. Herbert Hoover faced a depression, not a plague. Trump may contend with both.
According to Chris Christie, a former New Jersey governor and the man who sent Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father, to prison, November will be a referendum on Trump. Joe Biden is nearly irrelevant.
For the moment, Trump holds a commanding lead among Republicans. Seven months from now, we will learn if party loyalty is enough to secure a second term.
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The American South has resisted social distancing measures — and we’re all going to pay the priceBy AlterNet
As you can see from the New York Times’ examination of travel patterns in the United States, there has been a wide and largely regional disparity across the country in terms of who was quick to self-isolate and who wasn’t. Most of New England, the Mid-Atlantic, the Upper Midwest, and the West Coast had issued stay-at-home orders by March 27. Other states that were proactive include New Mexico, Colorado, Idaho, and Louisiana. The urban areas in Texas tried to be proactive even as their state government opposed them. The South, as a whole, did not instruct people to stay at home and the result is that their travel patterns remained normal, or close to normal.
This is going to matter later.
The inconsistencies in policies—and in when they are imposed—may create new problems, even for places that set limits weeks ago.
“Let’s assume that we flatten the curve, that we push transmission down in the Bay Area and we walk away with 1 percent immunity,” said Dr. George Rutherford, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, San Francisco. “Then, people visit from regions that have not sheltered in place, and we have another run of cases. This is going to happen.”
There’s a tradeoff to self-quarantining. People don’t get infected with COVID-19, so people don’t survive the infection and get immunity. The isolated communities are nearly as vulnerable to a new outbreak as they were before all this began. It’s worth doing anyway for a variety of reasons, including that it limits how many people are flooding our unprepared and undersupplied hospitals, and that it buys time for researchers to find effective treatments and develop a vaccine. Hopefully, getting COVID-19 in the fall or winter will be more survivable than getting it now.
But areas that were slow or still refuse to isolate and limit travel have spiked their own infection rates and spread the virus far and wide. They’ll have a higher level of immunity but that’s not going to be helpful to the rest of the country.
Looking at the charts, there seems to be more going on than just whether or not a given state government asked people to shelter in place. Outside of the South, people seem to have complied with this even in the absence of official guidance. Meanwhile, with the exception of parts of Louisiana and South Florida, the states of the former Confederacy all look the same regardless of what their governors set as policy. Something cultural explains why Southerners didn’t heed the advice they were hearing in the media, and it’s not just support for Trump. He has plenty of support in the prairies states and Mountain West, and they did significantly reduce their travel. The pattern is visible even in a blue state like Virginia and a purple one like North Carolina, both of which have Democratic governors.
Whether religiosity explains it, or a probably related skepticism toward scientific expert advice, or maybe something to do with their car culture, I don’t know. But their slowness to respond to this outbreak has undermined the effectiveness of the efforts of the areas that did respond. And, because of the nature of this disease, we’re all going to be paying for that for the foreseeable future.
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Rodney Howard-Browne. Credit: Hernando County Detention Center
Rodney Howard-Browne, the leader of a Pentecostal megachurch in Tampa Bay, Florida, has been arrested after continuing to hold large church services amid the coronavirus outbreak.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff announced on March 30 that he had obtained an arrest warrant for the pastor’s arrest. About an hour later, Howard-Browne was booked into the Hernando County Detention Center, inmate records show.
Although the governor of Florida has not issued a statewide “stay at home” order, local communities have taken steps to curb the spread of the virus. In Hillsborough County, gatherings are limited to no more than 10 people and residents are instructed to remain at their homes as much as possible. In the order, which can be read here, religious institutions are not included in the list of essential businesses.
Howard-Browne has been dismissive of the threat from COVID-19. During a sermon on March 16, he told the River at Tampa Bay congregation that the church would never close and encouraged people to shake hands.
Exactly !!! 🙄 https://t.co/2s1lnztRO2
— Rodney Howard-Browne (@rhowardbrowne) March 15, 2020
Rodney Howard-Browne told his congregation during a service on March 15 that his church would remain open and that only the end of the world could force him to close it. He retweeted a portion of his sermon that was shared to Twitter from that day. The clip is embedded above.
In the clip, Howard-Browne urged everyone to shake hands. “I know they don’t want us to do this, but just turn around and greet two, three people. Tell them you love them, Jesus loves them.” He reassured the congregation, “This has to be the safest place. If you cannot be saved in church, you in serious trouble.”
Howard-Browne then said, “This church will never close. The only time the church is closed is when the rapture is taking place.” In Christianity, the rapture refers to the second coming of Jesus Christ, when he will destroy the devil and the “Last Judgement” of mankind will take place.
Howard-Browne then suggested that his congregation is not afraid of contracting the coronavirus and that anyone who does it weak. “This Bible school is open because we’re raising up revivalists, not pansies.”
The Orlando Weekly reported that during one of his sermons, Howard-Browne insisted the coronavirus was less of a threat than the flu. “Suddenly we are demonized because we believe that God heals, that the lord sets people free, and they make us out to be some kook… we are free in America to worship God freely.”
Rodney Howard-Browne
Sheriff Chad Chronister of the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s office said his office received an anonymous tip that Rodney Howard-Browne was continuing to hold services with hundreds of people, even after legal orders were enacted barring large gatherings. The sheriff explained during a news conference on March 30 that law enforcement officials attempted to speak with the pastor at his church days earlier, but that he refused to see them.
Officials instead met with the pastor’s attorneys. Sheriff Chronister said the goal had been to “educate” the pastor about the “dangerous environment” he was creating by continuing to hold large services with hundreds of people packed into one room. Officials pointed out that Howard-Browne has the capability to broadcast his sermons over the internet, and therefore does not need to have services in-person during this pandemic. The River already streams its services online each week.
The sheriff added that other religious institutions have adopted this practice and encouraged their own congregations to practice social distancing. But Howard-Browne instead insisted on members of the congregation attend in-person and provided bussing to the church.
Howard-Browne’s defense has been that holding the services is within his first amendment rights. Hours before his arrest, the pastor even retweeted the sheriff office’s statement that his church was violating “the President’s guidelines for America, recommendations made by the CDC, and orders from the Governor.” Howard-Browne wrote that his attorneys were “meeting with authorities to resolve any issues!” He used the hashtags #thestand and #1stamendment.
But the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office and the State Attorney’s office disagreed with his argument that the first amendment was applicable in this case, because large gatherings had been designated as temporarily illegal. Sheriff Chronister argued that the health and safety of the community has to come first, stating that Howard-Browne’s “reckless disregard for human life put hundreds of people in his congregation at risk, and thousands of residents who may interact with them this week, in danger.”
Howard-Browne is charged with unlawful assembly and violation of public health emergency rules. Both charges are second-degree misdemeanors. He turned himself into authorities and was booked into the Hernando County Detention Center around 2:20 p.m. on March 30, inmate records show.
He was taken into custody there instead of Hillsborough County, because that is where he lives, the sheriff explained. Sheriff Chronister added that his office worked with Howard-Browne’s attorneys to allow him to turn himself in order to protect the safety of law enforcement. He referenced Howard-Browne’s past statements about possessing an arsenal of weapons and having private security. In 2017, the pastor posted on Instagram that the church was “heavily armed,” the Miami Herald reported at the time. The post was shared after a gunman killed 26 people at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Right Wing Watch reports on the extreme rhetoric and activities of key right-wing figures and organizations by showing their views in their own words. In this clip, right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne issues a “restraining order” to the Antichrist and the global cabal that seeks to destroy America.
Rodney Howard-Browne has made large claims in regards to his abilities as a religious leader. In a clip shared by Right Wing Watch in February 2020, Howard-Browne claimed that he cured Florida of the zika virus “in the name of Jesus” and vowed that he would do the same against the coronavirus.
In the clip, the pastor said he had been asked why he couldn’t rid the entire world of these viruses. He said it was because he “can’t be responsible” for every city in the world.
In July of 2018, Howard-Browne took credit for saving the planet from the devil. During a sermon, he claimed that he had issued a “restraining order” against the Antichrist. “If you think I’m crazy, that’s fine. I didn’t come here, I don’t care what people think. I’m here to deliver a message whether people like it or not. I’m not gonna change anything. I’m not looking to become accepted. I’m already accepted by Him. I’m just a messenger boy.”
Rodney Howard-Browne
Rodney Howard-Browne and his wife, Adonica Howard-Browne, has previously spent time at the White House. He shared a photo to Facebook on July 11, 2017, as he stood over President Donald Trump with his hands on the president’s back. Vice President Mike Pence can be seen amongst the men in the group, with his head bowed in prayer. Howard-Browne and his wife were invited by televangelist Paula White-Cain, Vanity Fair reported.
Howard-Browne explained, “Yesterday was very surreal for @ahowardbrowne & I. 30 years ago we came from South Africa to America as missionaries. Yesterday I was asked by Pastor Paula White-Cain to pray over our 45th President – what a humbling moment standing in the Oval Office – laying hands and praying for our President – Supernatural Wisdom, Guidance and Protection – who could ever even imagine – wow – we are going to see another great spiritual awakening.”
Facebook Rodney Howard-Browne and Donald Trump
President Trump appears to have met Howard-Browne along the campaign trail. The pastor gave the opening prayer before a rally at the Florida State Fair Grounds in November 2016.
In January 2020, Howard-Browne also made headlines for his defense of President Trump amid the impeachment hearings. He specifically addressed former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s decision to write a book about his time in the administration. Howard-Browne wrote on Twitter, “You are a slime ball of the highest order. I should have knocked your sorry butt through the door of the Oval Office into the rose garden when I saw you. I would have gladly been arrested … what a Benedict Arnold … I am glad you were fired!!!” In a follow-up tweet, Howard-Browne wrote that Jesus would have “made a whip and beat the crap” out of Bolton.
Revival Ministries Rodney Howard-Browne and wife Adonica
Rodney Howard-Browne was born and raised in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. His wife, Adonica, was born in Zimbabwe before her family relocated to Johannesburg, according to their church’s website.
After getting married in 1981, the couple traveled around South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia as ministers. They had three children together: Kirsten, Kelly May, and Kenneth.
Howard-Browne explained that the family moved to the United States in 1987 in order to answer a calling from God to spread the faith in the United States.
He wrote, “The Lord had spoken through Rodney in a word of prophecy and declared: ‘As America has sown missionaries over the last 200 years, I am going to raise up people from other nations to come to the United States of America. I am sending a mighty revival to America.’”
Howard-Browne added, “The Lord supernaturally provided for their air tickets and they came to America with only $300, four suitcases, and their three children, then aged five, three and seven months.”
The couple founded The River at Tampa Bay Church in December 1996.
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The FBI is warning that white supremacists have started encouraging their followers to contract COVID-19 and then intentionally spread it to police officers and Jews.
ABC News reports that the FBI’s New York office sent out an alert recently that warned neo-Nazi groups are pushing members to spread the virus though “bodily fluids and personal interactions” to their perceived enemies.
“The FBI alert, which went out on Thursday, told local police agencies that extremists want their followers to try to use spray bottles to spread bodily fluids to cops on the street,” ABC News reports. “The extremists are also directing followers to spread the disease to Jews by going “any place they may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.”
Michael Masters, the head of Secure Communities Network that coordinates security for synagogues, tells ABC News that neo-Nazis have been claiming that Jews are responsible for the spread of the virus in the United States.
“From pushing the idea that Jews created the coronavirus virus to sell vaccines to encouraging infected followers to try to spread the illness to the Jewish community and law enforcement, as the coronavirus has spread, we have observed how white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and others have used this to drive their own conspiracy theories, spread disinformation and incite violence on their online platforms,” he explains.
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There is not yet a vaccine available for the virus, which is sweeping across the world and has so far infected more than 140,000 people, with more than 5,000 deaths.
But a group called the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha (All India Hindu Union) hosted the urine-drinking ‘party’ on Saturday in Delhi, the country’s capital, in the hope of shielding themselves.
It was attended by around 200 people and organisers hoped to host similar events elsewhere in India, which has seen 84 cases, with two deaths.
‘We have been drinking cow urine for 21 years, we also take bath in cow dung,’ said Om Prakash, a person who attended the party.
‘We have never felt the need to consume English medicine.’
Chakrapani Maharaj, the chief of the All India Hindu Union, posed for photographs as he placed a spoon filled with cow urine near the face of a caricature of the coronavirus.
Photos also showed groups of men and women drinking the urine from paper and ceramic cups.
Leaders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party have previously advocated the use of cow urine as medicine and a cure for cancer.
A leader from India’s north eastern state of Assam told state lawmakers earlier this month during an assembly session that cow urine and cow dung can be used to treat the coronavirus.
On Saturday, the country declared COVID-19 as a ‘notified disaster’ which would enable the country to provide assistance and spend more funds to fight the pandemic.
Ten people who had the virus have recovered fully and the health ministry said that more than 4,000 people who had contact with the confirmed cases are under surveillance.
Yesterday, the start of the Indian Premier League, the world’s most lucrative cricket competition, was postponed from March 29 until April 15 due to the pandemic.
Sports events worldwide have been upended by the deadly virus, including the Premier League, this weekend’s Formula One Australian Grand Prix as well as PGA Tour golf and NBA basketball.
‘The Board of Control for Cricket in India has decided to suspend IPL 2020 till 15th April 2020, as a precautionary measure against the ongoing Novel Corona Virus (COVID-19) situation,’ the BCCI said in a statement.
The two-month Twenty20 competition is estimated to generate more than $11billion (£8.7bn) for the Indian economy and involves cricket’s top international stars like England’s Ben Stokes, Australia’s David Warner and India captain Virat Kohli.
Chinese mobile-maker Vivo paid $330million (£261m) to be the top sponsor for 2018-2022 for the league.
It involves eight franchises playing 60 matches to packed, raucous stadiums of tens of thousands of spectators – plus cheerleaders – all around India.
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David Smith in Washington @smithinamerica
Trump announces travel ban from Europe to the US in bid to stem coronavirus – video
Donald Trump’s first Oval Office address – that almost sacred altar for US presidents on prime time television – came in January 2019 amid a partial government shutdown and asserted that only a border wall can keep out dangerous illegal immigrants.
His second such address on Wednesday night was again couched in terms around the need to resist a foreign invasion that is someone else’s fault. The problem is that the coronavirus is already inside America and spreading.
And the message was delivered by a 73-year-old man with a sniffing habit who did not seem to be a glowing picture of health nor entirely at ease reading from a TelePrompter. His bold assertion last week – “I like this stuff. I really get it … Maybe I have a natural ability.” – seemed even more incredible than before.
Addresses to the nation from the Oval Office are meant to be defining moments for a president to act as commander in chief or consoler in chief.
After the crew of the space shuttle Challenger perished in a disaster in 1986, Ronald Reagan promised: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.”
George W Bush made half a dozen Oval Office addresses, including on the night of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Barack Obama delivered three. Trump has typically resisted conventions – it has been exactly a year since the last White House press briefing – but even he finds some of them necessary or useful.
On Wednesday he wore a blue suit, white shirt and blue patterned tie – not his favourite red. He also sported a stars and stripes pin and had hands his folded before him (he said nothing about the potential perils of shaking hands). His face looked undeniably orange. Behind him were framed photos, including portraits of his parents, and flags and gold curtains. Advertisement
At 9.02pm, Trump began as presidents so often do: “My fellow Americans.” But in the next breath, he reverted to his familiar us-versus-them nationalism, referring to the coronavirus outbreak “that started in China” and is now spreading throughout the world. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.” Not just a virus. A foreign virus.
The president touted his own sweeping travel restrictions on China and, far from expressing sympathy and solidarity with allies, argued the European Union “failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hotspots. As a result, a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.”
Trump announced the US will bebanning travelers from many European countries to the US for the next 30 days with exemptions for Americans, permanent residents and family of US citizens who have undergone screenings and, mysteriously, the UK, despite it having a higher caseload than some other European countries. Could Brexit be the new TSA PreCheck?
The president then made an awful bungle. He said “these prohibitions will not only apply to the tremendous amount of trade and cargo, but various other things as we get approval”. Such words could trigger global economic panic. Trump was forced to hastily clarify on Twitter: “… very important for all countries & businesses to know that trade will in no way be affected by the 30-day restriction on travel from Europe. The restriction stops people not goods.”
He went on to talk of the pathogen as if it was a foreign army or terrorist network. “The virus will not have a chance against us,” he said. “No nation is more prepared or more resilient than the United States.”
And seen in the midst of an emergency, Trump could not resist some campaigning. “Because of the economic policies that we have put into place over the last three years, we have the greatest economy anywhere in the world by far,” he said.
“This is not a financial crisis, this is just a temporary moment of time that we will overcome together as a nation and as a world.”
Many observers found the address unreassuring and downright weird. Susan Glasser, a staff writer from the New Yorker, tweeted: “The militaristic, nationalistic language of Trump’s speech tonight is striking: a ‘foreign virus,’ keeping out China and Europe.”
David Litt, who wrote speeches for Obama, posted: “As a former presidential speechwriter, my careful rhetorical analysis is that he’s gonna get us all killed.”
Trump’s second Oval Office address was over in 10 minutes. Then a man off camera said: “We’re clear.” The president unbuttoned his jacket and exclaimed with relief: “OK!”
To millions of viewers, it was anything but.
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By Ryan Bort
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) announced on Monday that he is quarantining himself after being informed that he came into contact with an attendee of the Conservative Political Action Conference who tested positive for COVID-19. Gaetz, a Trump loyalist known for orchestrating outlandish stunts to get media attention, mocked coronavirus last week by wearing a gas mask onto the House floor to vote for an emergency spending bill to combat the virus.
In a Twitter thread, Gaetz’s office claimed the congressman donned the gas mask as a sincere precautionary measure rather than as a stunt to get headlines, writing that he was simply “demonstrating his concern.” His office added that “while the Congressman is not experiencing symptoms, he received testing today and expects results soon,” and that “he’ll remain self-quarantined until the 14-day period expires this week.”
This is the second time in two days Gaetz has had to pretend that wearing the mask was not a stunt. On Sunday, he argued from his personal Twitter account he was “quite serious” when he wore the prop around the Capitol. He was responding to a Washington Post story about one of his constituents dying of COVID-19.
“We have been bumped off of television the last two nights because of the coronavirus, and I am just low-key convinced that Jillian would give me coronavirus to get me back on television,” he said, in reference to his chief of staff, Jillian Lane Wyant. When Wyant rattled back a handful of statistics about the low prevalence of infections among infants and children, Gaetz joked, “Do you think someone weaponized the disease to take out the boomers?”
Also working against Gaetz’s argument is that the Centers for Disease Control has urged Americans who are not experiencing symptoms to refrain from wearing masks for fear of causing undue panic. God forbid he consult with an expert.
Gaetz joins Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Doug Collins (R-Ga.) in quarantining himself after learning that late last month he was exposed to a CPAC attendee who later tested positive for COVID-19. It’s unclear which other conservative lawmakers came into contact with the unnamed conference attendee. So too is whether President Trump — who in a speech at CPAC suggested the coronavirus scare was a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats — may have come into contact with anyone infected.
Regardless of whether Trump was exposed to the attendee in question, the president could be at risk. Last week, he greeted and shook Collins’ hand during a trip to Georgia, and on Monday he flew with Gaetz on Air Force One. Trump was also photographed at CPAC shaking hands with American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schapp, who has since announced he had contact with the attendee who tested positive. The White House is reportedly concerned that the president could contract the virus, given his exposure and old age.
Though Trump has publicly played off the threat, telling reporters on Saturday that he’s “not concerned at all” about contracting the virus, this may not be the case behind closed doors. Earlier on Monday, Vanity Fair reported that the president is in a “total meltdown” over coronavirus, and has even expressed concern that journalists in his press pool may purposely contract COVID-19 in order to infect Trump while on Air Force One.
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The Age of Blasphemy 