Douglas Caddy

Why JFK Went to Texas https://lbjthemasterofdeceit.com/2020/03/31/why-jfk-went-to-texas/ From Phil Nelson’s Blog

takeaways from the brutal new report on FBI surveillance Washington Post Carter Page arrives at a New York courthouse on April 16, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) By Aaron Blake Aaron Blake Senior political reporter, writing for The Fix Email Bio Follow March 31 at 1:37 PM The FBI’s surveillance of Americans including former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page isn’t exactly the issue du jour amid a global pandemic. But on Tuesday, a brutal inspector general’s report suggested that this will be something that the bureau and Congress will have to reckon with in the near future. Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz issued interim findings of an ongoing review of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications beyond the Page application. And the results suggest that Page was hardly alone. [Problems with FBI surveillance extended far beyond probe of Trump campaign, Justice Dept. inspector general says] The report honed in on 29 cases it selected — from more than 700 such applications in the past five years — in which the FBI sought similar warrants. It found that, as with Page’s, there were problems with all of them. More specifically, Horowitz sought to determine whether the FBI in these cases had followed mandatory procedures for documenting accurate information about why the surveillance was necessary, also known as Woods files. Of the 29 cases, 25 featured errors in their Woods files. In the other four cases, a Woods file could not even be found and, Horowitz suggests in some cases, might never have been created in the first place. It also found significant problems in the Justice Department’s separate, internal review process for the accuracy of FISA information, despite it finding a similarly prevalent number of problems. Here are a few key sections of the report. 1. The summary “As a result of our audit work to date and as described below, we do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy,” begins a key section. The report reaches that conclusion citing four main reasons: “[W]e could not review original Woods Files for 4 of the 29 selected FISA applications because the FBI has not been able to locate them and, in 3 of these instances, did not know if they ever existed.” “[O]ur testing of FISA applications to the associated Woods Files identified apparent errors or inadequately supported facts in all of the 25 applications we reviewed, and interviews to date with available agents or supervisors in field offices generally have confirmed the issues we identified.” “[E]xisting FBI and [Justice Department National Security Division] oversight mechanisms have also identified deficiencies in documentary support and application accuracy that are similar to those that we have observed to date." “FBI and NSD officials we interviewed indicated to us that there were no efforts by the FBI to use existing FBI and NSD oversight mechanisms to perform comprehensive, strategic assessments of the efficacy of the Woods Procedures or FISA accuracy, to include identifying the need for enhancements to training and improvements in the process, or increased accountability measures.” 2. The number of errors Horowitz previously found 17 serious errors in the Page applications. The errors in these 25 other cases are also numerous. Horowitz stressed that the review was ongoing, but said that “at this time we have identified an average of about 20 issues per application reviewed, with a high of approximately 65 issues in one application and less than 5 issues in another application.” Horowitz said the problems cited involved lack of supporting documentation, lack of corroboration from the documentation, and inconsistencies in the documentation. One way to look at this is that the problems with Page’s application weren’t extraordinary, and perhaps that a Trump campaign adviser wasn’t singled out for ill treatment. Trump supporters have alleged that Page was politically targeted and have played up Horowitz’s previous findings as evidence of what Trump calls a “witch hunt.” But another is that the entire system is rife with problems and ripe for real reforms, which the FBI has said it is pursuing in the aftermath of the Page findings and which Congress has considered. 3. Horowitz isn’t saying whether these errors mattered As with the Page application, Horowitz here doesn’t weigh in on whether the errors actually impacted the approval or appropriateness of the surveillance. “During this initial review, we have not made judgments about whether the errors or concerns we identified were material,” the report states. “Also, we do not speculate as to whether the potential errors would have influenced the decision to file the application or the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s] decision to approve the FISA application.” Defenders of the FISA process after the Page situation came to light were quick to emphasize this. But it’s important to note that Horowitz is saying that determining these things just wasn’t part of his review. Hypothetically replaying the decisions of FISC judges would indeed be difficult to do. And Horowitz adds: “Nevertheless, we believe that a deficiency in the FBI’s efforts to support the factual statements in FISA applications through its Woods Procedures undermines the FBI’s ability to achieve its ‘scrupulously accurate’ standard for FISA applications.” In other words, the FBI is failing according to the very high standard it needs to meet. 4. DOJ’s internal reviews have also discovered errors, but the process is broken Horowitz also reviewed 34 cases in which the Justice Department conducted its own reviews of the accuracy of the information in 42 applications. In those cases, numerous errors were also found. “Although reports related to 3 of the 42 FISA applications did not identify any deficiencies, the reports covering the remaining 39 applications identified a total of about 390 issues, including unverified, inaccurate, or inadequately supported facts, as well as typographical errors.” In these cases, though, the Justice Department itself did seek to determine whether these errors were material. It found that none of them were, but Horowitz indicates that the process was mishandled. “However, we were told by NSD [Office of Intelligence] personnel that the FBI had not asked NSD OI to weigh in on materiality determinations nor had NSD OI formally received FBI CDC accuracy review results, which accounted for about 250 of the total issues in the reports we reviewed,” Horowitz’s report says. As the report notes, a 2009 policy memorandum prescribes that the “OI determines, in consultation with the FBI, whether a misstatement or omission of fact identified during an accuracy review is material.” Horowitz is saying there is a breakdown in the Justice Department’s and the FBI’s own accountability system when it comes to accuracy of this information. And his own findings suggest the scope of the problem — and perhaps the need for addressing it — are even bigger than previously known.

Problems with FBI surveillance extended far beyond probe of Trump campaign, Justice Dept. inspector general says Washington Post FBI Director Christopher A. Wray arrives at the White House in January ahead of remarks by President Trump. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) By Devlin Barrett and Devlin Barrett Reporter focusing on national security and law enforcement Email Bio Follow Ellen Nakashima Ellen Nakashima National security reporter Email Bio Follow March 31 at 7:29 PM The Justice Department inspector general revealed Tuesday that his investigators found errors in every FBI application to a secret surveillance court examined as part of an ongoing review — suggesting that problems exposed in the bureau’s probe of President Trump’s 2016 campaign extend far beyond that case alone. The memorandum issued by Inspector General Michael Horowitz stems from an audit launched last year after his office found 17 serious problems with the FBI’s surveillance applications targeting former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. These interim results seem to indicate that other sensitive counterintelligence and counterterrorism cases have been similarly plagued by mistakes. [DAVID: This is what I have been referring to in relation to Robert Merritt's testifying before the grand jury in Washington in the fall of 2018. The Inspector General's report covers five years. The grand jury investigation covers the actions by the FBI from 1972 up to the present. The FBI's philosophy was the end justified the means.]

David: This may help answer your questions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huston_Plan

David: Grand jury proceedings are secret and not open to the public. Robert Merritt was a witness, not a target or defendant. The prosecutor believed that Merritt possessed information relevant to the grand jury's investigation and for that reason he was summoned to testify. Merritt did not resist testifying. He did so willingly. When I started working with Merritt in 2008 on his revelations about Watergate, I, too, questioned the veracity of what he was telling me. Then I asked him whether he had contacted the National Archives and he said he had not. He did so promptly and the Archives released to him several dozen documents that supported to a T what he had told me. These are contained in our 2010 book, "Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set-Up by Robert Merritt as told to Douglas Caddy, original attorney for the Watergate Seven." The book can be ordered though Amazon. Michael Powell, Pulitzer Prize winning reporter of the New York Times, wrote an article about Merritt that the Times published in 2014. In the article Powell said that everything Merritt told him checked out for veracity. What happened in 1970-1972 in the secret pre-FISA court is part of the infamous Huston Plan, which has never been released publicly. Chief Judge Sirica, who was a key figure in carrying out the plan, sealed the White House copy of the plan in the Court's files in 1973. Even a subpoena from Congress cannot get it released. There is no doubt that Merritt testified before the federal grand jury in Washington in 2018. He had no reason to lie about it because it did not pertain to his three meetings with President Nixon in 1972, which is the subject of this topic. His testimony was about a different matter entirely. That matter will hit the news later this year as part of Attorney General Barr's plan to help Trump get re-elected.

Spy vs. Spy: The Bay of Pigs and the Battle for the Soul of the CIA https://warontherocks.com/2016/12/spy-vs-spy-the-bay-of-pigs-and-the-battle-for-the-soul-of-the-cia/?fbclid=IwAR3-y3VonirpGmyUg7TLfyA5vdO4cotTbmsK25AeoeQ3WFVOZFhhLVfN9SQ

Yes. It is in the title and later on inside the body of the text occurs the exchange between Nixon and Merritt in July 1972 that I quoted above.

Thank you, Joe, for your welcoming back. Actually I never went away. Instead I have been composing the wrap-up of my July 28, 2019 posting in the forum’s Watergate Topic, “Watergate, Trump’s Space Force and 2020.” As recounted in that posting President Nixon told Robert Merritt at their third and final meeting in mid-July 1972: “It was then at Nixon made a cryptic remark, apparently to emphasize the importance of the assignment that he had given Merritt. Nixon said, “I took my order from above and have followed it to the T.” “Merritt was taken aback by the remark and asked Nixon what he meant. Nixon did not reply directly but instead declared that “the year 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the world.” “Merritt asked Nixon how he knew this would happen. Nixon replied, ‘Think of me a prophet.’” The coronavirus entered America’s consciousness in January 2020. Its impact has been horrific and the worst of it lies in the coming months. Nevertheless it does not fit the definition of being a cataclysmic event, which is one of violent change or upheaval, because soon a vaccine will be developed to deal with it The real cataclysmic event will take place later this year. Actually it will be two events, the first immediately triggering the second. In a sense they are joined at the hip. .

John F. Kennedy’s back: chronic pain, failed surgeries, and the story of its effects on his life and death T. Glenn Pait MD 1 and Justin T. Dowdy MD 1 View More View Less 1 Department of Neurological Surgery, Jackson T. Stephens Spine and Neurosciences Institute, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, Arkansas DOI: https://doi.org/10.3171/2017.2.SPINE151524 Journal of Neurosurgery https://thejns.org/spine/view/journals/j-neurosurg-spine/27/3/article-p247.xml?fbclid=IwAR3LtUIq4L4XSDaqSqLVK5opgIBSKktEYqkeuWLwgUBjWA1r6v9Zlw8LGNs

13 Deaths in a Day: An ‘Apocalyptic’ Coronavirus Surge at an N.Y.C. Hospital Hospitals in the city are facing the kind of harrowing increases in cases that overwhelmed health care systems in China and Italy. Video An emergency room doctor in Elmhurst, Queens, gives a rare look inside a hospital at the center of the coronavirus pandemic. “We don’t have the tools that we need.”CreditCredit...Colleen Smith By Michael Rothfeld, Somini Sengupta, Joseph Goldstein and Brian M. Rosenthal March 25, 2020Updated 9:21 p.m. ET The New York Times In several hours on Tuesday, Dr. Ashley Bray performed chest compressions at Elmhurst Hospital Center on a woman in her 80s, a man in his 60s and a 38-year-old who reminded the doctor of her fiancé. All had tested positive for the coronavirus and had gone into cardiac arrest. All eventually died. Elmhurst, a 545-bed public hospital in Queens, has begun transferring patients not suffering from coronavirus to other hospitals as it moves toward becoming dedicated entirely to the outbreak. Doctors and nurses have struggled to make do with a few dozen ventilators. Calls over a loudspeaker of “Team 700,” the code for when a patient is on the verge of death, come several times a shift. Some have died inside the emergency room while waiting for a bed. A refrigerated truck has been stationed outside to hold the bodies of the dead. Over the past 24 hours, New York City’s public hospital system said in a statement, 13 people at Elmhurst had died. “It’s apocalyptic,” said Dr. Bray, 27, a general medicine resident at the hospital.

David: Thank you for your relevant question. I believe that I answered it previously in my posting of January 31 in this topic. I invite you to read it. Merritt testified in 2018 pursuant to a subpoena and was bound by an order from the judge not to disclose publicly what he testified to. He was not singled out as all the witnesses before the grand jury were bound by the order. My guess is that the prosecutors were interested in Merritt in 2018 because of the role that he played with the FBI from 1970-1972 in appearing before the secret pre-FISA court in testifying to that court as the veracity of the affidavits that he submitted to the court. In reality the FBI composed the affidavits and gave Merritt only 15 minutes to read them before he appeared before the secret pre-FISA court that was part of the still covered-up Huston Plan. The FBI continued to circumvent the law in the Carter Page case, again submitting false information in its affidavit to the FISA court. It finally got caught. The prosecutors in my opinion in 2018 wanted to show that really nothing had changed with the FBI from the early 1970s in regard to submissions it made to the FISA court. I should add that the prosecutors in 2018 considered Merritt's testimony so important that they told him that on short notice he would have to leave his apartment and go into a limited form of witness protection. As the matter before the grand jury evolved over time, it never came to the point of Merritt having to do so. I expect that Attorney General Barr as the November election approaches will take official action against persons in the FBI who misled the FISA court in the Carter Page case. In other words the issue is still very much alive.

NIXON’S SECRET MESSAGE TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND THE CORONAVIRUS At the July 1972 meeting that President Nixon had with Robert Merritt in his office deep beneath the White House he told Merritt that 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the whole planet At that same meeting as previously recounted here: “The President spoke about the goals of his presidency that were now in jeopardy. He said it might be years before the historians would realize what he had hoped to accomplish, which was to assure the security and well being of Americans alive and those of future generations. “Then the President swore Merritt to secrecy. Once Merritt had assured him of this the President said that he had prepared a document that would explain why and what he had done to assure national and international security. The document was his “Message to the American People.” He had hidden this historical document inside the White House in a secret location where it might be many decades before it was discovered. He informed Merritt of the secret location and told him that if the time came when Merritt was still alive and believed it was the right time for the document to be revealed he was giving permission to Merritt to reveal its secret location.” We need to focus on what is known about Nixon’s Message to the American People. Merritt told me in January 2018 that Nixon had hidden the Message that he himself had typed in a small box that was embedded in the wall in the White House Library behind Volume II of American History. The document was in a sealed White House envelop on which Nixon had written “Not to Be Opened Until 2018” under which he affixed his signature. I wrote about this in my autobiography, Being There: Eye Witness to History.” Because the publication of the book was scheduled for June 2018 and because Merritt was in extremely poor health, I arranged for him to be interviewed by Daniel Liszt on Dark Journalist. The interview was posted on YouTube on February 14, 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpItY5t4EuY The interview with Merritt did not go unnoticed by people in high places. A few months later in April 2018 Merritt told me he had learned the Message had been discovered. He said that an agent with whom he had a close relationship who worked in the Counter Intelligence Section of the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department had informed him that a team of CIA agents had entered the Library with a thermal imaging machine to locate an envelope bearing Nixon’s signature and had found the small box embedded inside the wall. President Trump had promptly been alerted and rushed to the Library and took possession of the envelope whose whereabouts today are unknown. However there is a second copy of the Message still hidden in the Library of Congress. In the fall of 2018 Merritt received a subpoena to appear before the grand jury in Washington, D.C. Two U.S. Marshals escorted him in his wheelchair on a late night flight from Washington and placed him securely in a hotel. He was scheduled to appear before the grand jury the next day. Early in the morning there was a knock on his door. When he opened it a man said, “Do not mention President Trump’s name when you testify” and promptly departed. Merritt did testify before the grand jury. He told me that on the prosecutor’s lectern were two books, my 2018 autobiography and a 2010 book, “Watergate Exposed: How the President of the United States and the Watergate Burglars Were Set Up” as told to me by Merritt. The two books complement each other on vital information about Watergate that has been ignored by the mass media. After he completed his grand jury testimony Merritt told the prosecutor in the corridor outside about his three meetings with Nixon. The prosecutor showed no interest in the topic. Before he left Washington to return to his home in the Bronx, NBC contacted Merritt and requested that he sit for an hour long interview for the network’s archive. Merritt agreed to do so. Merritt told me afterwards that he revealed a great deal in the recorded interview but also said he held back much. A month after he returned home Merritt said that the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York sent a car to transport him to his office. Upon arrival Merritt found there the grand jury prosecutor from Washington who told him that he had confirmed that Nixon’s Message to the America People had been found in the White House Library. He wanted to know what else Merritt knew about unknown grave matters of national security. Merritt told me that he declined to provide any more information. In May 2018, there months after Merritt’s interview on Dark Journalist appeared on YouTube, Trump dissolved the National Security Council’s global health security office that was responsible for the planning of responding to disease outbreaks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/nsc-pandemic-office-trump-closed/2020/03/13/a70de09c-6491-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html Trump later said, “Some of the people we cut, they haven’t been used for many, many years, and if we ever need them we can get them very quickly and rather than spending the money.” I believe that because Trump possesses knowledge of Nixon’s Message that his decision to dismantle the NSC’s global health security office was motivated by evil intentions. I think it is likely that Trump discussed the contents of Nixon’s Message with Russian Premier Putin at their secret meeting in July 2018 in Helsinki and they agreed on a plan. https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/donald-trump-putin-helsinki-summit/index.html On February 23, 2020, in this posting I wrote that “Daniel Estulin, described in the article as a 24-year veteran of Russian Military Counterintelligence, explains in the Power Hour interview in the link below how Putin, Trump and Xi after Trump's re-election will meet in a Yalta-like setting to impose world-wide rule, in other words a world-wide dictatorship. I have always believed ever since Trump was elected that this was the ultimate goal. Now it is confirmed.” You are invited to read what I posted a month ago. President Trump’s decision to dissolve the NSC’s global health office in May 2018, his meeting with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018, and his inactivity for three months once the Coronavirus became known in December 2019, and his actions since then up to the present time are part of a plan to weaken America and bring it to its knees. It is not a coincidence that Attorney General Barr is proposing indefinite detainment upon arrests of certain people. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/doj-suspend-constitutional-rights-coronavirus-970935/?fbclid=IwAR0lknc5FOnJtqniGa_rZqhrHhvjDZxaocI-cafBTj9xxWowNrAL8gpoECE Another reason Trump has covered up his early knowledge of the pandemic is he wanted to use the time to make trades on the stock market that would benefit him financially fantastically while avoiding public disclosure in doing so. Some senators and congressmen later engaged in the same illegal activity to benefit themselves. Nixon’s Message discovered in 2018 obviously included many other crucially important things besides a possible reference to a lethal pandemic virus that would sweep America and the world in 2020. Nixon’s words to Merritt in 1972 that he said in the midst of his lengthy discussion of the Alien Presence were “I took my order from above and have followed it to the T” and “Think of me as a prophet.” As horrific as the Coronavirus pandemic is it does not exactly fit Nixon’s prediction that 2020 would be cataclysmic not only for America but for the whole planet. A cataclysmic event is one of violent change or upheaval. His prediction is apocalyptic in its essence. Thus, it appears that event is still to come later this year.

It doesn’t exist a word to define this image. Those military trucks across Bergamo are carrying coffins to other cities of Lombardy region so to proceed with cremation process, as the city and cemetery morgue can’t take the overload. This is how far #coronavirus wentpic.twitter.com/SkvdLZdlic 728 replies 8,409 retweets 11,317 likes Reply 728 Retweet 8.4K Retweeted 8.4K Like 11K Liked 11K

Sorry, America, the Full Lockdown Is Coming Politicians won’t admit it yet, but it’s time to prepare—physically and psychologically—for a sudden stop to all life outside your home. By Laurie Garrett | March 18, 2020, 3:05 PM https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/18/america-united-states-lockdown-coming/

Jeff: Thank you for the detailed explanation about Zheng. and for our intelligence community's geopolitical outlook on China. Still I think what Trump is doing in essentially smearing China and the Chinese residing in the United States has only negative effects.. Best to let China slumber than arouse it.

Your posts easily stand on their own merit for credibility and thus need no redundant support from others. If you disagree, file a lawsuit to force me to retract.

Questions that I would like to see answered: 1) In January a cancer researcher, Zaosong Zheng, was indicted for trying to smuggle 21 vials of biological material out of the US to China and lying about it to federal investigators. Zaosong, 30, whose entry was sponsored by Harvard University, had hidden the vials in a sock before boarding the plane. Precisely what did the 21 vials contain and was this the first time Zaosong had smuggled biological material or was it one of many times? 2) President Trump keeps publicly taunting China about the virus originating there. Will the Chinese Government retaliate for these gratuitous insults? if it does what actions might China take that would drastically affect American consumers and businesses since China manufactures so many essential products America uses?

Detroit automakers to close all plants over coronavirus fears https://www.axios.com/detroit-automakers-plants-coronavirus-e3722189-180c-4040-9cfe-6f77d87ed0e3.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100&fbclid=IwAR2cMFRhDMYQ3iWV7ZWXGqgMfp8DR-qsE3Jfqw18BPvZlY4LzdAOvGI-l7M

Posted by Joseph McBride on Facebook today: Jan 20: "I know more about viruses than anyone.” Jan 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” Feb 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” Feb 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”... Feb 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” Feb 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.” Feb 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” Feb 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.” Feb 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” Feb 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.” Mar 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?” Mar 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.” Mar 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.” Mar 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” Mar 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!” Mar 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.” Mar 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.” Mar 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it ... Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” Mar 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.” Mar 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.” Mar 9: “This blindsided the world.” Mar 13: “National emergency, two big words.” See More

The Washington Post published this article by the daughter-in-law of lifelong friend: Hello from Italy. Your future is grimmer than you think. Within weeks, our old lives were gone Cyclists pass closed cafe terraces in Milan last week. Italy has all but put a halt to normal life, paring the economy down to essential services only in a bid to stem the advance of the novel coronavirus. (Alberto Bernasconi/Bloomberg News) By Ida Garibaldi Ida Garibaldi lives in Vicenza, Italy. She was born in Italy, and, for many years, lived in Alexandria, Virginia. March 17, 2020 at 8:18 p.m. GMT+1 My family lives in the Veneto, in Northern Italy, one of the regions worst hit by the novel coronavirus. We are on lockdown. It’s scary. It’s lonely. It’s uncomfortable. And did I mention scary? I’ll spare you the statistics and the sermons; both are already abundant. But I do want to make one thing clear: If you think that by stocking up your pantries you have absolved yourself from the responsibility of preparing for this virus, you are mistaken. This is a crisis like none before. Be skeptical of both naysayers and doomsayers; there’s no way of knowing how this will end. The restrictions came upon us slowly but steadily. Within two weeks, our old lives were gone. First the schools closed, then came social distancing. Then the government locked down the hardest-hit areas: no more going in and out of certain provinces; limited movements within the “red zones.” Then the whole country shut down. Most stores closed their doors. People who could were asked to telework; those who could not, and did not have a job related to the continuation of essential services, were placed on part-time schedules or unpaid leave. When we went out, we had to carry a pass explaining our reasons for being outside to show to the law enforcement officers patrolling the streets. The priority became keeping everyone inside, at all times. For some people, the gradual rollout made these measures hard to accept: Skeptical observers questioned the seriousness of the disease, given that the restrictions were not draconian from the start. And yet without time to adjust to a progressive loss of freedom, we wouldn’t have accepted it. We might have rebelled. Instead, we rallied, coming together as one — protecting each other’s health, even as we could no longer socialize. Living under these conditions is difficult to describe. We can only leave the house out of medical necessity or to get food. We can go on short walks but not in groups. We can’t hug, kiss or shake hands with anyone outside of our family. We must stay at least four feet from everyone else, at all times. My family tries to maintain a routine: In the mornings, I home-school our four children, who range from kindergarten to eighth grade, while my husband teleworks. My eldest son’s school was the best prepared for distance learning and began remote lessons from the first week of the lockdown. He gets live lessons, homework, regular interaction with his teachers — and just as importantly, regular interaction with friends, which lessens his sense of isolation. It’s great, really, but it also requires a dedicated laptop and bandwidth from 8:10 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. daily, limiting what everyone else can do online. My other children’s schools, which shut down at the same time, have only started distance learning this week. In the afternoon, my husband and I both work as best we can, while the children keep themselves busy. With guitars we had on hand and a drum set they built from scratch, they’re putting together a garage band. (Literally — they have to stay in the garage and can’t practice or perform anywhere else.) For the first time in my life, I’ve come to think that having four children sometimes can be less work than having one or two: They can entertain each other. Counterintuitively, the days somehow end incredibly fast. We are always doing something: organizing lessons, fighting with a malfunctioning printer or about our overloaded WiFi, tutoring each child one-on-one, getting the kids outside, feeding them, drinking coffee, repeat. When, after two or three days, we can’t take the confinement anymore, one of us makes a run to the grocery store to buy fruits and vegetables and whatever else we need. (The stores, at least, are well stocked.) We go out by bike to get some exercise. That, too, is a challenge, because we are always tired. My mother and sisters, my little niece, my aunt, and cousins live in Lombardy, the region worst affected by the pandemic. If my mother, who is 81 (or almost 81, as she would point out) catches this virus, she will probably die. I speak to and text them frequently, but I don’t know when, or if, I will be able to see them. It’s bizarre: Everyone is going through the same emotions — fear, anger, exhaustion — no matter where we live or what we do. We don’t need many words to know how the other person feels. We end every call with “Forza!” We must keep going. Yes, most people who become ill will survive. Yes, people younger than 45 will probably be fine. But right now, doctors across Northern Italy have to choose between who gets the respirator and lives, and who does not and dies. Italy’s health system, for all its shortcomings — the long waits for certain tests, some aging buildings, the sometimes crowded hospital wards — is among the best-performing in the Western world. A 2017 report by the World Health Organization, for example, reported that Italian health care has among the lowest mortality rates in Europe and a strong acute-care sector. And yet this virus has overwhelmed the health system of one of the richest areas of the European Union. Statistics change daily, as the hospitals scramble to build capacity. On Thursday, there were only 737 intensive-care beds open for new coronavirus patients in Lombardy; the region is home to 10 million people, and as of this writing, 16,220 people have tested positive for the disease there. Depending on how many coronavirus patients go into or out of the hospitals each day, if you have a chronic condition or a heart attack or are in a car crash, you might not be able to access care. Writing this from Italy, I am also writing to you from your own future. From our state of emergency, we have been watching the crisis unfold in the United States with a terrible sense of foreboding. Please stop waiting for others to tell you what to do; stop blaming the government for doing too much or too little. We all have actions we can take to slow the spread of the disease — and ensuring that your own household has enough canned goods and cleaning supplies is not enough. You can do a lot more. You should do a lot more. Stay away from restaurants, gyms, libraries, movie theaters, bars and cafes, yes. But also: Don’t invite people over for dinner, don’t let your kids go on playdates, don’t take them to the playground, don’t let your teenagers out of your sight. They will sneak out with their friends, they will hold hands, they will share their drinks and food. If this seems too much, consider the following: We are not allowed to hold weddings or funerals. We can’t gather to bury our dead. For us, it might be too late to avoid an incredible loss of life. But if you decide against taking actions because it seems inconvenient, or because you don’t want to look silly, you can’t say you weren’t warned.

I deleted my support about what you said about Obama and 2008 because it sounded redundant.

Deleted.

U.S. Virus Plan Anticipates 18-Month Pandemic and Widespread Shortages The 100-page federal plan laid out a grim prognosis and outlined a response that would activate agencies across the government. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-plan.html?referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwAR3MNHnIH6PlDkSShTolKUIPOVIKAKApuSR_580bBSI8u2DzP6eJWcsEKZs

Waste of time to talk to you.

Putin must be smiling at this news: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/03/no_author/us-halts-deployment-recalls-troops-from-natos-biggest-drill-defender-europe-2020-due-to-coronavirus-threat/