PP NewsBrief: 2021-05-03
We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.
========
Election Integrity Bill Fails in Arizona Senate After One Republican Betrays Party
"The bill, SB 1485, would have made it easier to remove inactive names from the state’s early voting list by removing the word “permanent” from the state’s definition of said list. Following this change, anyone on the list who did not vote in the state’s elections after a certain period of time could have their names removed completely. Inactive names remaining on a state’s voting rolls, such as in Arizona, can lead to a greater chance of voter fraud when those names are used to sway an election in a crucial swing state.
But a single Republican state senator, Kelly Townsend (R-Ariz.), voted with the Democrats against the bill. Her reasoning, ostensibly, was to wait for the results of a GOP-led audit of all 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa County from the 2020 election.
However, the bill’s sponsor, State Senator Michelle Ugenti-Rita (R-Ariz.), claimed that the true reason for Townsend’s no vote was her anger over the fact that none of her election integrity bills made it out of committee. Comparing Townsend’s torpedoing of the bill to a “temper tantrum,” Ugenti-Rita also pointed out that Townsend had “voted for it twice on two occasions,” and “has never once talked about an amendment or language in the bill that would be of a concern.”
In response, Townsend ultimately admitted that she was, in fact, “absolutely…upset about all of my election bills dead,” but then issued a warning: “You want to see a temper tantrum? I can show you one if you really wanted me to.”"
========
Ariz. audit charges ahead, expected to be completed by deadline
"During an interview on Thursday, Dr. Kelli Ward said she expects the full forensic audit to find irregularities, mistakes and outright fraud. This comes as officials and election workers are inspecting at least 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots for potential cheating.
Dr. Ward added, at least 1,000 ballots were inspected just this week and the audit will move forward despite Democrat pushback.
Meanwhile, former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett said the audit of the 2020 elections in his state will be completed before the deadline. He assured they are making improvements every day.
Bennett, who is now the director of the 2020 fraud audit, told reporters Thursday that all 2020 ballots and voting machines will be fully examined by May 14...."
========
Pro-liberty groups file lawsuits after Connecticut ends long-standing religious vaccine exemption for kids in schools
"Hours after Connecticut became the sixth US state to disallow religious exemption from childhood vaccination requirements for schools, a coalition of pro-personal liberty groups has mounted legal challenges to overturn the law.
After three years of protests and controversy, Governor Ned Lamont signed bill HB6423 – which removes a clause enshrined in law since 1959 that allowed non-immunized children to attend school, college, and daycare – on Wednesday after it was approved by the Democrat-majority Senate late on Tuesday night.
Over 2,000 protesters – many holding up signs that said “Parents call the shots,” “My body, my kids, my choice,” and “Coercion is not consent” – had rallied outside the state Capitol building, contending that the legislation infringes on parental rights and religious liberties.
Two groups opposing the legislation – the CT Freedom Alliance and We the Patriots USA – said they are filing federal and state lawsuits challenging the new law, which will take effect in the 2022-23 school year.
...
In a statement posted to Twitter, Lamont said, “This law does not take away the choice of parents to make medical decisions for their children ... (it) best ensures that other children and their families will not be exposed to deadly diseases for hours each day in our schools.”
...
California, New York, West Virginia, Mississippi, and Maine are the other states to have removed the religious exemption, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The state will still permit medical exemptions to vaccination. The new law also contains a grandfather clause that covers any current students at the kindergarten level and older with an existing religious exemption.
“All we’re doing is closing a loophole for non-medical exemption,” said Senator Bob Duff, Senate majority leader. “People are abusing ‘religious exemptions’ for non-religious reasons only because they don’t believe in health and science.”"
A few people "abusing" religious vaccine exemptions: unacceptable.
A few people "abusing" welfare benefits: well, you know, we can't let a few ruin it for everyone...
========
The Big Lie: How COVID-19 became a disinformation operation wrapped in a virus
"At the turn of 2020, the novel coronavirus that originated in Wuhan, China rapidly took its place atop the global information stage, and it wasn’t because people suddenly became interested in respiratory diseases. Supercharging this process was the breathtaking, horrifying photos and videos coming out of Wuhan. What we were seeing through the lens of social media appeared to be an Ebola-like plague, something so horrifying that it seemed to belong in a Hollywood script. Ultra viral videos and photos often showed citizens in business attire, out and about, seemingly going about their day, when suddenly, they were captured on film dropping like flies. It was “like Walking Dead” in the way that the virus supposedly struck its victims, suddenly and without remorse.
...
If you break down the tactics of the COVID-19 disinformation operation, it’s easy to fill in the gaps and show how this style applies to the CCP’s COVID-19 operation.
1) The “cracks” in our society and politics are plentiful, and the West continues to abandon independent thought for total obedience to a corrupt ruling class.
2) The “Big Lie” is the idea that COVID-19 is a very lethal threat and that there must be dramatic measures, in the form of societal self-destruction that is initiated to “stop the spread.” The data in well over 100 countries proves otherwise.
3) The Big Lie is easier to pull off if it involves a kernel of truth. This was a critical component of the operation. Here, the kernel of truth is the virus itself, which causes a respiratory disease similar to seasonal Flu that results in an estimated 0.1 to 0.15% death rate.
4) China is concealing their hand by continuing to deceive the world about the origins of the virus, and more importantly, the origins of their deliberate propaganda campaign that resulted in global panic. Sadly, there have been zero government inquiries into what exactly happened in Wuhan.
5) There are countless useful idiots in this story, namely, almost every single Western government head of state, in addition to a class of pseudoscientists known as “public health experts,” who have leveraged this era to accumulate fame, fortune, and power. These useful idiots deployed China’s narratives for a variety of reasons, none of which were supported by any real scientific justification.
6) Given that the West has largely bought into Corona Mania, China does not even need to deny everything about their role in promulgating the insanity. China is surely entertained by the wild goose chases from afar in attempts to find a patient zero at some laboratories in Wuhan, but that’s more of a distraction than anything else. It’s vitally important that Western governments dedicate resources to investigating the origins of the disinformation operation. It is infinitely more important than finding a patient zero.
7) The long game is already playing out. China has emerged economically unscathed by Corona Mania, while the West is entirely depleted due to lockdowns and other self destructive measures. China has been open and thriving, without much of a vaccine rollout whatsoever, for more than a year, while the West is still inundated in lockdown madness. In the end, China launched WWIII in the form of the coronavirus, and won the war without firing a single shot.
COVID-19 should be understood not as a disease, but as nothing more than a Chinese disinformation operation that was presented in the form of a virus."
========
“Free expression” activists call on Biden to create an online disinformation task force
"Like many who have used the pandemic to increase and justify censorship, the coalition referenced what it says is the spread of falsehoods surrounding COVID-19 and its vaccines and the 2020 presidential election.
“We are writing as a coalition of human rights, free speech, democracy, and technology organizations to urge the creation of a federal interagency Disinformation Defense and Free Expression Task Force with domestic policy leadership,” the letter to Biden by the coalition reads.
“The prevalence of deceptions, propaganda, and conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election, COVID-19, and the recent Capitol insurrection illustrates the clear and present threat that disinformation poses to our democracy and national security,” the letter, which was provided to Axios, adds.
...
The letter was signed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, SimplySecure, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Pen America, Free Press, Access Now, Common Cause, the Center for American Progress, and Voto Latino.
“We know that fighting disinformation also means remaining vigilant against censorship and other threats to free expression,” said Matt Bailey, director of Pen America’s Digital Freedom Program. “We also know that disinformation itself is a profound threat to free speech, because it prevents the robust exchange of ideas and sows distrust and polarization.”"
========
Death TV: Drone Warfare in Contemporary Popular Culture
"Death TV is a new study that looks in depth at how popular culture informs public understanding of the ethics, politics, and morality of drone operations. It looks at a wide range of popular drone fictions, including Hollywood movies such as Eye in the Sky and Good Kill, prestige TV shows such as Homeland, 24: Live Another Day and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, and novels by authors including Dan Fesperman, Dale Brown, Daniel Suarez, and Mike Maden. Death TV looks at these cultural products and gets inside the way they work. It identifies six main themes that can be found across many of them, and examines the ways that they inform and shape the drone debate.
In broad terms, Death TV argues that popular cultural representations often have the effect of normalizing and justifying drone warfare. Enjoyable narrative texts such as films, TV series, novels, and some forms of popular journalism play a role in the process by which drone warfare is made comprehensible to those of us without first-hand experience of it. Importantly, they also do so in a way which has, however critical any individual story may appear to be, the general effect of making drone warfare seem a legitimate, rational and moral use of both cutting edge technology and lethal military force.
...
...The opening chapter of my study, “Just in Time”, shows that very often, films like Eye in the Sky and novels like Richard A Clarke’s Sting of the Drone streamline the ethics of killing into clear yet problematically oversimplified stories that show killing by drone strike as a routinely legitimate way of exerting military force....
...
...The second chapter of Death TV, “Collateral Damage”, explores how drone fictions address this important and sensitive issue....
...
In chapter three, “Technophilia”, Death TV shows how drone stories emphasize the technical perfection of drone systems....
...
...The fourth chapter of Death TV, “Hijack and Blowback”, reconciles this tension by exploring the ways in which drones are represented as vulnerable to hijack....
...
Chapter five of Death TV, “Humanisation”, shows how drone stories sympathetically portray drone operators....
...
Finally, chapter six, “Gender and the Drone”, explores how drone fictions address widespread anxieties about how drone warfare troubles conventional conceptions of gender...."
========
Off to live on a cyberfarm? NYPD retires robot cop dog after public outcry over ‘creepy’ & ‘dystopian’ tech
"The deputy police commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, John Miller, told the New York Times on Wednesday that the robot, named ‘Digidog’ by the department, would no longer be used, saying a contract with its creator was canceled after the canine became a target for public criticism.
“People had figured out the catchphrases and the language to somehow make this evil,” Miller said, calling the bot “a casualty of politics, bad information and cheap sound bytes.”
...
Developers at Boston Dynamics, however, insist the bot is meant only for non-violent purposes, with a spokeswoman saying on Wednesday that they are “not designed to be used as weapons, inflict harm or intimidate people or animals.”
But the ‘intimidation’ factor may have ultimately spelled the dog’s demise, as even a representative for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he was “glad the Digidog was put down.”
“It’s creepy, alienating and sends the wrong message to New Yorkers,” spokesman Bill Neidhardt told the Times."
========
Court scolds FBI for partnering with Google and others on warrantless surveillance but then renews it
"In a ruling, the surveillance court reprimanded the FBI for multiple episodes of analysts improperly searching for data involving Americans through the warrantless surveillance program. Despite the violations, and general controversy surrounding the program, the court still re-approved it for another year.
The ruling, made public this week, and obtained by Reclaim The Net here, was made last November by the presiding judge at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Judge James Boasberg, in the ruling, cited multiple instances where FBI analysts searched for information on Americans from data collected by the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.
...
...the project was legalized in 2008 by Congress, under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act.
The law allows the NSA, with the help of tech companies such as AT&T and Google, to harvest online messages and phone calls of non-citizens who are abroad without the need for a warrant. However, often these communications are between foreigners and Americans, which raises the question whether there should be different rules for US citizens’ messages that get intercepted.
The NSA provides relevant data from the program to the FBI, CIA, and the National Counterterrorism Center. The FBI receives data that the NSA deems relevant for investigation for national security reasons.
...
For example, between April and July 2019, an analyst at an FBI field office performed 124 searches using identifiers that did not meet the parameters set for searching US citizens, such as community leaders who applied to the “Citizens Academy,” which helps people better understand the role of the FBI. The analyst also searched for people who entered the FBI office to report crimes and perform repairs.
...
“While the court is concerned about the apparent widespread violations of the querying standard,” Judge Boasberg wrote, “it lacks sufficient information at this time to assess the adequacy of the F.B.I. system changes and training, post implementation.” Therefore, the court concluded that “the FBI’s querying and minimization procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”"
========
Fla. lawmakers ban use of so-called vaccine passports
"Florida lawmakers passed a bill, which bans mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations in the state. The legislation, SB 2006, was passed Thursday and placed a permanent ban on so-called “vaccination passports.”"
========
Florida Republicans Pass Election Reform Bill
"The bill, similar to the one passed in Georgia, passed both the House (77-40) and the Senate (23-17), and will soon be signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The new legislation would allow the use of ballot dropboxes, as long as election officials follow new constraints: limits on who can drop off ballots, a ban on moving boxes within 30 days of elections, restrictions on the location of boxes and requirement of monitoring by election officials, NBC News reports.
Voters will also be required to request to vote by mail more regularly. Additionally, the bill would prohibit election officials from using private money to pay for election administration, restrict third-party voter registration organizations, add new powers for partisan election observers and allow DeSantis to appoint replacements to fill local political positions vacated by people running for higher office.
...
During the House debate Wednesday, Democrats, to no surprise, blasted the bill as “Jim Crow,” restricting minority voters and Democrats who rely on mail-in voting.
...
It is crucial to point out a recent headline from the New York Times covering this exact story.
The headline reads as follows:
“Breaking News: Florida passed a host of voting limits in one of America’s most critical battlegrounds, adding to a national Republican push to reduce voting access.”
This headline highlights deliberate and open efforts to lie to and deceive honest Americans as to the nature of the problem and the efforts to reform."
A great example of emotionally-manipulating media...
========
CDC blames ‘Covid anxiety’ for adverse reactions, 164 times more people fainting after getting J&J vaccine compared to flu shot
"After receiving reports of “clusters of anxiety-related events,” the CDC has been studying such reactions in the recipients of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen) coronavirus vaccines at five vaccination sites in California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina between April 7 and 9. Out of 8,624 people who received the J&J shot during this period, 64 experienced anxiety-related events, with 17 of them fainting, the health authority said on Friday.
The adverse reactions led to a temporary suspension of vaccination at four out of the five facilities, but further investigation revealed that none of the events were serious.
...
However, the CDC pointed out that during the five weeks that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been in use in the US, reports of people fainting were 164 times more frequent compared to influenza jabs – at the rate of 8.2 and 0.05 cases per 100,000 shots, respectively. Fainting and other reactions “might be caused by anxiety about receiving an injection,” the CDC said.
Around a quarter of those who suffered such complications had a prior history of anxiety-related events. The overall stress of the pandemic, witnessing adverse reactions on site and media reports of complication caused by the vaccines might also provoke additional anxiety-related episodes, the CDC said."
========
Montana Legislature Passes Bill to Prohibit Employers Requiring a Vaccine
"The legislation, House Bill 702, makes it an unlawful discriminatory practice for employers to refuse or bar employment based on a person’s vaccine status or whether they have an immunity passport.
It also prohibits a person or governmental entity to deny services, goods, privileges, licensing, educational opportunities or employment opportunities based on whether they have been vaccinated.
However the bill still allows employers to strongly recommend vaccines and “does not in any way prevent any employer from taking reasonable safety precautions. It also doesn’t apply to vaccination requirements from schools or day care facilities.
The Montana House passed the measure on Monday by a 67-32 vote, after the Senate passed it 32-18 on Friday, according to The Hill’s report.
The legislation now heads to Gov. Greg Gianforte’s (R) desk for his signature. It would take effect on July 1, The Hill reports."
========
The New Antiracism Is the Old Racism
"Until just a few years ago, racial differences, according to polls, were more or less receding. Intermarriage between racial groups is at historic highs.
But by 2014-2015, with the birth of Black Lives Matter, its courting by the Obama Administration, and the emergence of the electronic social media mob and cancel culture, such progress seems to have ended. We have ceased seeing race as increasingly incidental, rather than essential to who we are.
The benchmarks of the Black Lives Matter and affiliated woke movements are overt racism, systemic untruth, and the hypocritical privilege of their elite architects.
...
Black intellectuals now use the stereotypical language of the old Jim Crow segregationists. Some vie in an apparent contest to see which woke trailblazer can be crowned the most overt racist antiracist.
So Elie Mystal writing in the Nation lectures the country that “White people haven’t improved; I’ve just been able to limit my exposure to them.” Would Mystal like to explain the consequences for the country at large, if everyone followed his own example and “limited their exposure” to racial groups that they felt “haven’t improved”? To “improve” whites, would Mystal advise genetic reengineering or more mundane mandatory reeducation camps?
Damon Young, a senior editor of The Root and an occasional New York Times contributor, adds, “Whiteness is a public health crisis. It shortens life expediencies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousnesses, and it kills people”
...
Data is often warped for political reasons. But in a country where 6,000-7,000 African Americans are fatally shot each year by other African Americans, in cities where often the mayors, the district attorneys, and the chiefs of police are African American, it is not a sustainable proposition to swear black America’s existential threats come from police harvesting of innocent young African Americans—not when families are disintegrating, drug use is normative, fathers are absent, crime is spiking, schools are corrupt, and no one is offering any help other than the failed policies of the last 60 years.
If one peruses the FBI data on those arrested for “hate crimes,” one does not find evidence of a toxic and deadly white majority preying on “the Other.” Whites are proportionally underrepresented as a group in committing such racially motivated violent crimes. Blacks, in contrast, are overrepresented. They commit them at about double their rate of their percentages in the population.
The media systematically has warped the news cycle to inflame racial tensions and to fuel progressive agendas that suffocate without the oxygen of hysteria....
...
The woke hyped the first few hours (and sometimes days and weeks) of the Duke Lacrosse hoax, the Covington kids hoax, and the Jussie Smollett hoax. Whether wokeism cares whether an unarmed suspect is lethally shot by the police tragically depends on the race of the shooter and victim.
So we knew within minutes the name and saw the photo of the officer who presumably accidentally lethally shot Daunte Wright. Fine. She is now charged with a serious crime. But we still don’t who intentionally shot unarmed Ashli Babbitt at the Capitol on January 6. We were told for weeks that officer Brian Sicknick was murdered by alt-Right Trump supporters, until he wasn’t, and the media could no longer hide that he had died of natural causes a day after the Capitol assault. A recent BLM protest in Minnesota over the lethal police shooting of an armed carjacker dissipated when it was suddenly announced the deceased was white. Is it All Lives Don’t Matter? Or support the police when they must use lethal force to protect the community?
...
...the woke movement is largely fueled by the upper- and self-segregating classes—elites who have done well and are using race either to do even better by seeking mandatory concessions, or whites who sympathize with such agendas, or believe they will win exemption from career impairment by their virtue-signaling fides. They recall calculating czarist Russian aristocrats who felt Lenin was inevitable but still easily leveraged.
...
Those whites smeared for having privilege, usually do not have it; those who smear them, white and non-white, usually do. But the common denominator of wokeism is rank ignorance: ignorance that a multiracial democracy is a combustible, fragile structure, easy for the arsonist to destroy but hard for first responders to save; ignorance that the wealth fueling the thousands in the street, equity commissars, the human resources sleuths, and the professionally aggrieved is predicated on a meritocracy that ensures in a ruthless world Americans and their political and economic system can outperform the competition that has no illusions about the evils of tribalism; and ignorance that the vision of wokeness is not just racialist payback but the nihilism of the Balkans sort.
And the odd thing is that these deluded appeasers of all this madness won’t even get to be eaten last."
========
Juror who vowed impartiality in George Floyd case, despite donning BLM shirt, now touts jury duty as activism
"Brandon Mitchell, the first juror to come out publicly and do media interviews about the Chauvin trial, told syndicated radio host Erica Campbell this week that serving on juries is important “if we wanna see change, we wanna see some things going different.” He added, “We gotta get out there and get into these avenues, get into these rooms to try to spark some change. Jury duty is one of those things – jury duty, voting. All of those things we gotta do.”
...
And yet Mitchell, a 31-year-old black man who coaches high school basketball in Minneapolis, where Floyd's infamous death occurred, reportedly told Judge Peter Cahill during jury selection in March that he hadn't heard anything about the George Floyd civil case. He said he may have heard some basic information in news reports about trial dates, but nothing that would prevent him from serving as an impartial juror.
Mitchell also told Chauvin's defense lawyer during questioning that he didn't know whether Chauvin did anything wrong and that he believed the officer had no intention of harming anyone.
However, a Facebook post last August by Travis Mitchell, uncle of Brandon Mitchell, appears to show the future juror wearing a BLM hat and a BLM T-shirt with a message that alluded specifically to the George Floyd incident: “Get your knee off our necks.”...
...
Lisa Christensen, an alternate juror in the case, said she feared “rioting and destruction” if Chauvin weren't convicted. “I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict,” she said.
But Mitchell said he felt no such pressure. “I don't think any of us felt like that,” he said in a CBS News interview."
Mitchell's view is a perversion of the idea of jury nullification. Instead of shielding someone from the unjust law of the state you further corrupt the justice system. Mitchell's stance is no different from that of those who acquitted individuals obviously guilty of lynchings & other crimes in, to use the term du jour, the "Jim Crow South."
========
Pfizer Is Obsessed with One Thing in this Pandemic. And It’s Not Saving Lives
"Unlike other corporations Pfizer has explicitly said it will profit throughout the pandemic. It has sold very small quantities to the global distribution body Covax and African Union “at cost”, which it claims to be about $6.75 per dose. In fact, experts have suggested these types of vaccines could cost as little as 60 cents to $2 per dose to make. However, Pfizer is selling to most countries at $19.50 per dose, supposedly a special pandemic price, but clearly one which allows the corporation to make a large profit.
But a large profit isn’t enough for Pfizer, and it seems clear prices will rise steeply once they decide the pandemic is ‘over’. A senior executive has suggested $150-175 per dose would be more ‘normal’ pricing for a vaccine of this sort.
Pfizer claims these astronomical prices are needed to recoup R&D costs. But a glance at their accounts last year shows that the corporation returned a whopping $8.4 billion to shareholdersin dividends and reported a profit of $8.7bn.
...
Pfizer’s former CEO was instrumental in developing the global patent agreement – known as TRIPS – and intellectual property is a bedrock of Pfizer’s profits. Pfizer’s CEO led the charge to bypass the WHO’s technology sharing programme CTAP, labelling it “nonsense”. This has helped render this important tool ineffective to date.
In its most recent annual report the corporation seems proud of its role in pushing for even stronger patent law stating “Our industry advocacy [lobbying] efforts focus on seeking a fair and transparent business environment for foreign manufacturers, underscoring the importance of strong intellectual property systems.” They say that “While the global intellectual property environment has generally improved following WTO-TRIPS and bilateral/multilateral trade agreements, our growth and ability to bring new product innovation to patients depends on further progress in intellectual property protection”
...
Last year, we looked at Pfizer’s troubling history of profiteering. In one example, Pfizer and its British distributor hugely hiked the prices of anti-epilepsy drug phenytoin which 48,000 NHS patients relied upon. NHS expenditure on the drug rose from £2 million a year to £50 million in a single year, with the cost of 100mg packs rising from £2.83 to £67.50. Overall, UK wholesalers and pharmacies faced price hikes of between 2,300% and 2,600%."
========
Texas lawsuit targets Biden aid to ‘socially disadvantaged’ farmers as RACIST
"Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Fort Worth this week, in his capacity as a rancher and private citizen. According to the Texas Tribune, the lawsuit is sponsored by America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Stephen Miller (no relation), former senior adviser to President Donald Trump.
At issue is the definition of “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers in the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus stimulus and relief bill Congress passed last month without any Republican votes. According to the US Department of Agriculture, some $4 billion of the plan’s funding is intended for debt relief for “farmers of color,” while another $1.01 billion will fund a “racial equity” commission at USDA
Miller, however, argues that USDA should not be able to “choose a minimum threshold of minority ancestry when determining eligibility for benefits,” arguing it “lurches America dangerously backward.”
...
...Miller’s complaint seeks to declare the program unconstitutional under a 1954 Supreme Court precedent that cleared the way for desegregating public schools in the US capital.
“An interpretation of the underlying statutes that excludes plaintiffs like Miller because he is not ‘black enough’ would raise grave constitutional concerns under Bolling v. Sharpe and it should be rejected for that reason alone,” the lawsuit says."
========
Spain extending gap between AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine doses from 12 weeks to 16, to buy time to address safety concerns
"People aged under 60 in Spain will now receive their second dose of AstraZeneca's Covid-19 vaccine 16 weeks after their first, to allow time to address changing guidelines following blood clot fears, the Health Ministry has said.
The extension from the current 12 weeks between jabs is to allow for more studies on the Anglo-Swedish vaccine and experiences of other countries to become available, the ministry said in a statement on Friday.
At first, Spain immunized key workers aged 18-65 with shots of AstraZeneca's Vaxzevria jab, but it then limited the vaccine to those aged 60 and over due to concerns about its association with blood clots in younger recipients."
========
US Supreme Court agrees to hear landmark 2nd Amendment case on carrying handguns in public
"Two gun owners and the New York affiliate of the NRA are looking to overturn a decision by a lower court, which rejected their challenge to the state's gun regulations. New York is one of just eight US states which currently limit a gun owner's right to carry their weapon in public.
The plaintiffs argued that those restrictions have violated their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, insisting instead that New Yorkers should also be able to carry guns outside their homes unhampered.
...
The Supreme Court, which had refused to examine the appeal last June, has now changed its mind, again embedding itself into the heated gun rights debate in America.
The case, which will likely be heard in autumn, could prove one of the most prominent rulings on the scope of the Second Amendment since the 2008 and 2010 decisions that established a nationwide right to keep a gun at home for self-defense."
========
Supersoldiers & AI generals? Top Space Force scientist says Pentagon must adopt ‘human augmentation’ tech to beat out adversaries
"The gradual merger of man and machine is not only inevitable, but “imperative” in the Pentagon’s drive to outdo US adversaries, the Space Force’s top scientist said, hailing a new era of “human augmentation” in military tech.
At an event hosted by the Airforce Research Laboratory (AFRL) on Wednesday, Dr. Joel Mozer, chief scientist for the Space Force, said “superhuman” technologies are on the horizon, insisting the US “cannot afford to lag in this area.”
“In the last century, Western civilization transformed from an industrial-based society to an information-based society, but today we’re on the brink of a new age: the age of human augmentation,” he said. “In our business of national defense, it’s imperative that we embrace this new age, lest we fall behind our strategic competitors.”
...
By integrating AI into warplanning, the Pentagon could “develop strategies and tactics that no human could,” Mozer said, suggesting that, eventually, “autonomous” programs could advise commanders in real time.
“This will extend to the battlefield, where commanders and decision makers will have at their disposal multiple autonomous agents, each able to control the execution of things like reconnaissance, or fire control, or attack,” the Space Force scientist went on, though warned that “we must think carefully about the ethics of this, and how we will trust these autonomous agents, especially in an era of lethal autonomous warfare.”
Automated AI has its risks as well, Mozer added, saying that advanced programs can come up with lines of attack so innovative they escape human comprehension, “and that is a little bit scary.”
Perhaps even more distressing, he urged for an expansion of augmentation tech beyond the military, suggesting it could produce “superhuman workforce,” presumably voluntarily
“Using technologies such as augmented reality and virtual reality and nerve stimulation, you could put [an] individual into a state of flow, where learning is optimized and retention is maximized,” he said. “This individual could be shaped into somebody with very high-performing potential.”"
These "leaders" are the biggest fools we've ever faced. These things can't be allowed to happen. If they do it's the end of humans.
========
The Targets of Biden's War on "Domestic Extremists" May Not Be Who You Think
"Last May, several months into a global pandemic that had capsized the economy, hog farmers had a problem on their hands. With restaurants closed, demand for their product had evaporated. With outbreaks shuttering meat processing plants all over the country, they had nowhere to send their animals to be slaughtered. If kept alive, the pigs would quickly outgrow facilities designed to hold them only for highly abbreviated lives, and the costs of feeding and watering them would become astronomical.
So some major pork producers, among them Iowa’s largest, Iowa Select Farms, made a horrifying decision. They would mass exterminate their animals in one fell swoop, using a technique that promised efficiency for themselves but guaranteed incomprehensible suffering for the pigs.
The method was called “ventilation shutdown,” and it entailed, basically, roasting the pigs alive. Workers would close all of the vents into the barns, shut down the air conditioning, and pipe steam into the buildings until the animals died by asphyxiation or hyperthermia, a process that took several hours. Then a worker would walk through the piles of corpses with a captive bolt gun, shooting whatever stragglers had survived.
The company, however, was unaware that there was a whistleblower within their ranks. An ISF truck driver named Lucas Walker, who had long been appalled by the company’s treatment of its pigs, had informed an activist named Matt Johnson of the company’s plans. Johnson snuck into the barns, placed hidden cameras, and recorded video and audio of the massacre to later release to the news media.
Neither Johnson nor Walker is what most people of conscience would consider a dangerous political extremist. They had no desire to bring any physical harm to anyone; on the contrary, they were moved by the cause of putting a halt to needless suffering. But both a new state law in Iowa and a bill currently being considered in Congress could render them such in the eyes of the criminal justice system. It is just one example of the moral hazard posed by the ongoing effort in Congress and within the Biden administration to erect a new domestic security state apparatus in response to the Trump years and the Capitol Riot — an effort the CIA has joined, while animal rights groups and environmental campaigners have been explicitly listed among its targets.
...
...Johnson has become the first person to be charged under the 2019 Ag Gag law for attempting to enter one ISF facility. He is facing a separate wiretap charge for the hidden cameras in the barn where the company carried out its ventilation shutdown. In the meantime, yet another Ag Gag law has passed through the Iowa legislature, which increases penalties for the crime of planting hidden cameras in animal agriculture facilities. Governor Reynolds is expected to sign the new bill into law any day now.
As should surprise nobody who lived through the political aftermath of 9/11, these laws were passed under the pretext of combatting “terrorism.” Radical animal rights and environmental activists have, in fact, long been among the FBI’s top “domestic terrorism” targets, as well as targets of draconian new legislation. In 2006, at the behest of the pharmaceutical and animal agriculture industries, Congress passed a law specifically defining animal rights activism aimed at “damaging or interfering with the operations of an animal enterprise” — whether or not violence was involved — as “terrorism.” Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), the group Johnson belongs to (I used to cover DxE as a reporter and have since become a member myself), was the subject of a major FBI investigation over the “theft” of two dying piglets from a factory farm. After he was discovered, the FBI interviewed Walker, asking him if DxE sells drugs or guns to finance their activism, and tried to recruit him as an informant into their activities.
...
Currently, a bill with 196 Democratic co-sponsors (and 3 Republicans) is before Congress, which would begin to build the legal and bureaucratic architecture for an interagency domestic terrorism response unit within the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. The legislation is explicitly a response to the Capitol Riot and is pointed particularly at “White supremacist” and “neo-Nazi” groups — a particularly unsympathetic and uncontroversial cast of culprits.
But the PATRIOT Act was also purported to target only the most hateful, murderous people in the world — Islamic terrorists — before it metastasized into a massive surveillance state infrastructure that spied on literally every single American with an internet connection. Are we to expect that a domestic analogue to the PATRIOT Act will draw the line at violent sociopathic racists? The intelligence community demonstrably does not: a recently declassified report lists animal rights and environmental activists, abortion activists on both the pro-life and the pro-choice sides, anarchists, and anti-capitalists as potential domestic terrorist threats."
"Terrorism," like "mass shooting," is designed to overwhelm your logical mind's defenses and make you react emotionally.
========
West Virginia Governor Signs Law to Protect Girls’ Sports
"Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia signed a bill into law Thursday aimed to protect girls’ sports.
The Save Girls Sports Act protects both high school and college female athletes from being forced to compete against biological males.
The bill cleared the state House last month in an overwhelming 78-20 vote before passing the state Senate 18-15.
...
The legislation states that there are “inherent differences between biological males and biological females,” and says “in the context of sports involving competitive skill or contact, biological males and biological females are not in fact similarly situated.”"