PP NewsBrief: 2021-05-05
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.
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How’s that unity going? Even normally sympathetic polls think Biden has made the US more divided
"The first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency have passed, and a glut of polls show the Democrat enjoying majority support. Furthermore, Biden’s address to Congress last week, in which he pushed liberal police reform, gun control and immigration bills, was rated positively by 85% of viewers.
However, these polls don’t tell the whole story. Biden’s majority support was first laid out in an ABC/Washington Post poll last Sunday, but that poll oversampled Democrats by nine points, relying on them and on left-leaning independents to reach Biden’s apparent 52% approval rate. The CBS/YouGov poll that found 85% support for his message to Congress was even more farcical, with 54% of respondents identifying as Democrats and only 18% identifying as Republicans.
A fresh ABC/Ipsos poll this Sunday found that nearly two thirds of Americans (64%) are feeling optimistic about the direction of the country under Biden, the highest level of national optimism since 2006. Yet the poll’s methodology is vague, and doesn’t mention the partisan breakdown of its participants."
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Documents reveal California officials worked with Big Tech to censor election conversations
"According to nearly 550 pages of documents obtained under California Public Records Act (CPRA), there was pressure on Google and its YouTube platforms, Twitter and Facebook to use censorship to suppress information by treating it as misinformation, as revealed in “daily misinformation briefings” emails the California Secretary of State’s Office received from SKDK – a communications company whose most important client last year was the “Biden for President” campaign.
The documents reveal that California Secretary of State’s Office of Election Cybersecurity engaged in tracking and building a database of posts on social media and determining which of them contained misinformation, to then 31 times ask that these posts be deleted – to which Big Tech complied on 24 occasions.
Among the content censored in this process of state bodies pressuring social media was that of Judicial Watch itself, published on YouTube, that concerned vote by mail and California voter roll clean up – practices from which the group said Democrats benefited.
YouTube received a message from the office of the Secretary of State, which went directly to the social media company to say that they wanted the video flagged because they believe it misleads viewers, read one example from the documents that have now come to light.
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The documents reveal detailed internal communication among state officials, how they contacted representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google, and other social media sites to prod them to work with the state authorities in order to fight “misinformation.”"
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Colorado allows maskless indoor gatherings… if 80% of attendees are fully vaccinated & can show PROOF
"Governor Jared Polis (D) extended the state’s indoor mask mandate for 30 days on Sunday. While there is no outdoor mask requirement and face coverings are largely not mandatory in areas with less than 35 cases per 100,000 residents – the mandate will remain in effect for harder-hit counties, and for all government, medical and care facilities, as well as jails, indoor children’s camps and schools.
However, fully vaccinated Coloradans have been offered some leeway, but only while gathering in groups of like-minded, socially responsible individuals, according to an executive order issued Sunday.
“Notwithstanding any provision of this Executive Order, individuals are permitted to remove their medical or non-medical cloth face coverings in Public Indoor Spaces if 80% of the individuals in the Public Indoor Space have shown proof of vaccination,” reads an executive order issued on Sunday.
The governor did not specify what type of document would serve as a “proof of vaccination,” possibly wary of a strong pushback against any kind of standardized so-called ‘vaccine passports’."
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Concerns Mount Over Integrity of Windham New Hampshire Election Audit
"In a 3-1 vote, the Board selected Mark Lindeman, a co-director of team left political activist organization Verified Voting to represent Windham in the process. Lindeman is on record as objecting to the Maricopa County, Arizona vote audit. Citizens in Windham are concerned that someone who has elsewhere spoken out publicly against an approved recount on strictly partisan political grounds will not be able to set aside personal bias in the performing of their duties in this particular instance.
Now, Windham Selectman Bruce Beton, the only person who voted against the selection of Lindeman, is urging the board reconsider. He has received support from New Hampshire Republican Chairman Chris Ager.
Under the statute, the secretary of state office selects one member, Windham was to choose another, and the two selected members together would choose a third. The selection process mirrors one that is commonly used in the setting of commercial real estate prices.
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Adding to the concerns of Windham residents regarding the integrity of the audit is that Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Chong Yen will be overseeing the process on behalf of state law enforcement. Chong Yen has been on record as to having questioned the need for such a process. This has led to some citizens attempting to organize a letter campaign to have him removed from the process.
As reported by Human Events News in February, the Windham Board of Selectmen unanimously requested an investigation into what exactly happened on November 3, as did several of the republicans and democrats involved in the races. A recount of the Windham votes cast in the November 3 election revealed the largest discrepancy between machine and hand counts for any election in New Hampshire’s history. It was the magnitude of the difference that led to the special-purpose legislation being passed. The vote recount did find that while the declared winners (all republicans) did not change, each winning candidate had votes materially undercounted by just over six-percent. Candidates for both parties joined in calling for the audit."
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The Corporate Food Takeover
"The recent joint report – by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and the ETC Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration – is ominous, to say the least.
A Long Food Movement, principally authored by Pat Mooney with a team including IPES-Food Director Nick Jacobs, analyses how food systems are likely to evolve over the next quarter century with technological and other changes.
The report notes that ‘hi-tech’, data processing and asset management corporations have joined established agribusinesses in reshaping world food supply chains.
If current trends continue, the food system will be increasingly controlled by large transnational corporations (TNCs) at the expense of billions of farmers and consumers.
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The Davos World Economic Forum’s (WEF) much touted ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (IR4.0), promoting digitisation, is transforming food systems, accelerating concentration in corporate hands.
New apps enable better tracking across supply chains, while ‘precision farming’ now includes using drones to spray pesticides on targeted crops, reducing inputs and, potentially, farming costs. Agriculture is now second only to the military in drone use.
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Meanwhile, hi-tech and asset management firms have acquired significant shareholdings in food giants. Powerful conglomerates are integrating different business lines, increasing concentration while invoking competition and ‘creative disruption’.
The IPES-ETC study highlights new threats to farming and food security as IR4.0 proponents exert increasing influence. The report warns that giving Big Ag the ‘keys of the food system’ worsens food insecurity and other existential threats.
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But the report also presents a more optimistic vision for the next quarter century. In this alternative scenario, collaborative efforts, from the grassroots to the global level, empower social movements and civil society to resist.
New technologies are part of this vision, from small-scale drones for field monitoring to consumer apps for food safety and nutrient verification. But they would be cooperatively owned, open access and well regulated.
The report includes pragmatic strategies to cut three quarters of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions and shift US$4 trillion from Big Ag to agroecology and food sovereignty. These include “$720 billion in subsidies” and “$1.6 trillion in healthcare savings” due to malnutrition.
IPES-ETC also recommends taxing junk food, toxins, carbon emissions and TNC profits. It also urges criminal prosecution of those responsible for famine, malnutrition and environmental degradation.
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Touted as the best means to achieve food security, corporate investments in recent decades have instead undermined remaining ‘traditional’ agrarian ecosystems.
Big Ag claims that the food, ecological and climate crises has to be addressed with its superior new technologies harnessing the finance, entrepreneurship and innovation only they can offer.
But in fact, they have failed, instead triggering more problems in their pursuit of profit. As the new food system and corporate trends consolidate, it will become increasingly difficult to change course."
I'm not sure how much technology we really need to be bringing into farming. The greater the tech the larger the footprint of agriculture. A human laborer is powered largely by the sun and is self-repairing. A tractor or drone, even an electric one, contains many non-renewable resources.
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YouTube CEO compares boosting of “authoritative” sources to scientific process
"During an appearance at a panel titled “The Future of Technology and Democracy” which was hosted by self-described “non-partisan do-tank” The McCain Institute, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki suggested that the way YouTube selects and boosts sources that it deems to be “authoritative” is comparable to a scientific process.
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Rather than a process that’s based on scientific references and citations, Wojcicki described something more subjective where YouTube’s decision to act on so-called “misinformation” is determined by her own personal assessment of the consequences of this misinformation:
“When YouTube first got started, we were really focused on things like new music or lots of how to videos like crafts, and for those, like, it’s actually fine. You know, you can have some new person post a craft video or tell you how to fix your dishwasher and there are many different ways to do it and if there’s some misinformation about it, you know, maybe the craft doesn’t come out as well and there’s no real consequence.
But when you’re dealing with really sensitive information, whether that’s news or medical or science information, that’s a place that actually we treat very differently because we recognize that we need to be very careful in terms of the content that we’re recommending and that’s actually why for those sensitive categories, we focus on the background, the authoritativeness of the publisher whose providing that information.”"
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Florida takes VACCINE-PASSPORT BAN a step further as governor signs bill into law, halts all local Covid-19 restrictions in state
"Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed legislation banning all business and government entities from requiring proof of vaccination status and has ordered that all remaining city and county Covid-19 restrictions be lifted.
The new law, which will take effect on July 1, follows through on an emergency order that DeSantis signed in April to ban so-called vaccine passports. At the time, he urged the Florida Legislature to make it tougher for a future administration to overturn the ban by passing a bill to make it permanent.
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Unlike vaccine passport bans in some other Republican-controlled states, such as Indiana and Utah, the Florida law prohibits not only government entities, but also businesses and schools from demanding proof of vaccination. DeSantis had warned previously of such passports creating a two-tiered society in which part of the population is blocked from assessing certain goods, services and jobs.
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“I think folks that are saying that they need to be policing people at this point, if you're saying that, you really are saying you don't believe in the vaccines, you don't believe in the data, you don't believe in the science,” DeSantis said.
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Despite having the second-highest percentage of 65+ population in the US, Florida's Covid-19 death rate of 164 per 100,000 ranks behind 27 other states, according to CDC data. The four states with the highest death rates – New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island – are all Democrat-run and have imposed some of the strictest Covid-19 restrictions.
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“The legislation creates a default legal presumption that during any emergency, our businesses should be free from government mandates to close, and our schools should remain open for in-person instruction for our children,” DeSantis said."
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What’s up with our fact-checking blind spots?
"Three days ago I posted this tweet:
How do you know whether information from someone 'on our side' – whether me, or Tom Cowan, or Dolores Cahill – is actually true? You have to check our sources. But most people can't or won't do that. I think I know why....
It was of a one-minute-long video (embedded above) I’d done earlier that day.
In it, I talked about being puzzled by why the vast majority of people who can see holes in the official Covid narrative don’t check the accuracy of information from the leaders of the Covid-questioning crew who they’ve chosen to follow.
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Then two weeks ago a subscriber to my website told me about John Taylor Gatto (and also about Charlotte Iserbyt).
So I ordered a copy of Gatto’s book The Underground History of American Education from the library.
In it, I found a highly plausible — albeit depressing — explanation. And what Gatto documents in the US is paralleled in most other countries around the world.
Gatto shows that since at least the 1960s, if not for decades before that, public schools have been deliberately making children:
- believe they lack self-discipline and therefore need to be ‘educated’ on how to comply;
- believe that intellectual work and creative thinking are distasteful or too difficult labour for them;
- emotionally dependent on approval from authority; and,
- intellectually dependent on experts and authorities to think on their behalf.
For example, Gatto describes on pages 40-42 of Underground History three seminal papers that help underpin the dumbing down of hundreds of millions of American children. Private foundations that’d been established by Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Sr., and Henry Ford were among the funders of the trio of papers and disseminators of the concepts within them.
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Gatto succinctly summarizes what is being done in the name of ‘education’:
"Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy – these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another.”
So, that explains a lot.
I still don’t think it really excuses not doing even a modicum of fact-checking before believing information and passing it on to others. But it helps me understand why that’s so common."
I think time constraints play a bigger role than the author is willing to admit. Actually drilling down into even one study is going to take a decent amount of time. So people of all beliefs rely on various shortcuts. Some shortcuts will be better than others.
Another thing to consider is that skeptics have the benefit of being inundated with information contrary to their beliefs without having to do much digging. One shortcut that is often taken is if there is a totally flawed "debunking" of some idea or argument in the mainstream news then that idea or argument's truth potential is higher. Not a perfect shortcut by any means, especially as more and more is just completely ignored by the mainstream, but it's one people are going to continue to take.
Theoretically reading a diverse array of secondary sources should provide some protection from groupthink without digging into the primary sources as well. This is another shortcut people take and will continue to take.
In the current environment we likely still need to use those shortcuts if we hope to gain enough momentum to destroy the elite before the Final Cage is around us. So we need to be able to lean on each other and point out when we see what others are blind to. But we don't all have time to be Bertrand Russell, not yet at least. The most important thing is an attitude of humility and an acknowledgement that you too are vulnerable to believing false information.
"I make positional mistakes, I make tactical mistakes, and I usually make many of them in each and every game." --Magnus Carlsen
Admit that you will too and you'll be in a much better position.
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Fighting Cancel Culture to Win
"We now have lists of books that may not be read, films that must not be watched, jokes that are not to be told or laughed at, and words that must remain unspoken. Public statements past and present are subject to ruthless scrutiny in order to police adherence to the “woke” values of an activist few who rely on a self-referential and often contrived “victim” or “ally” status to exempt themselves from being challenged in any way. Disagreement, or mere toleration of others’ disagreement, is castigated as “violence” for which even hapless liberals can be cast out of what they imagine are elite jobs and desirable social circles into the pit of deplorables.
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Perhaps understandably, cancel culture is terribly unpopular, much as the Salem witch trials, the Jacobin terror, Stalin’s purges, and McCarthyism were unpopular when their dubious values malevolently ruled over their societies. Americans oppose cancel culture by a large majority, with 64 percent regarding it as a fundamental threat to freedom. That figure includes 48 percent of Democrats, supporters of the party that gave us Title IX tribunals and—at least until it nominated Joe Biden for the presidency—endorsed #MeToo.
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With nearly two-thirds of Americans opposing cancel culture, one could be forgiven for thinking that fighting it would be easy. But it isn’t. Cancel culture’s woke proponents, despite their small numbers, are loud, obnoxious, and convinced of their moral superiority. They are heavily overrepresented in our smug administrative-managerial-media caste, which fancies itself an “elite” justified by having attained questionable benchmarks of “merit.” Institutional and corporate employers often find it easier to support and even parrot their sanctimonious claptrap than risk workplace disharmony or potential threats to the bottom line.
Opponents already fatigued by the pandemic and its attendant economic woes are situationally checked against offering resistance lest they bring upon themselves stress, ostracism, and even violence amid accusations of racism, sexism, insensitivity, or just being “problematic”—the new catchall term used to dispose of non-compliant people while pretending to neutrality.
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If the path of the gracious loser has failed, then what is to be done? For anyone who has had the pleasure of telling off a wokester—a category that does not include the standard “conservative” think tanker adrift in the New York-Washington vortex of well-mannered uselessness—the answer is clear: Resist. Don’t be afraid to rock the boat.
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...The entire woke movement is based on emotion. The more it is challenged, the more hysterical it becomes for the simple reason that its tenets cannot withstand logic, reason, or ridicule. This is why it classifies logic and reason as features of oppressive “whiteness” to be devalued, and why it is deeply suspicious of humor, which requires abstract and counterintuitive thought that can easily be turned to undermine an arbitrary regime propped up by worthless propaganda like critical race theory.
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And if you find all of this harder to do in Manhattan than in Palm Beach, change islands. The weather is much better, everything is open, and there is no state income tax. We are waiting for you."
One issue with flocking to certain states is that the greater the population the more imported resources are required to sustain the state. This can leave the state in a more precarious or vulnerable situation should other states or corporations attempt boycotts or the like in response to actions they disagree with.
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Florida passes law to impose hefty fines on tech giants that deplatform politicians
"Under SB 7072, tech giants like Facebook and Twitter will be prohibited from “permanently” blacklisting a candidate running for political office. Fines of $250,000 per day will be issued for knowingly deplatforming a candidate for statewide office, while $25,000-per-day fines will be imposed for banning other office-seekers. The bill only applies to platforms with more than 100 million monthly users, and companies will still be allowed to sanction politicians with 14-day suspensions. Individual posts can also be removed if they violate the platform’s guidelines.
The bill passed both houses of Florida’s legislature on Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in the coming days.
DeSantis advocated for the new law as part of a pledge to take on the “Big Tech cartel.” In February, he called for measures to be taken against the “monopoly of communications platforms” that “monitor and control” Floridians.
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...Steve DelBianco, the chief executive of NetChoice, a group that promotes free expression on the internet, testified against the legislation last month, describing it as a clear assault on freedom of speech.
“Imagine if the government required a church to allow user-created comments or third-party advertisements promoting abortion on its social media page,” DelBianco said.
Democratic lawmakers also pointed to the fact that the bill exempts any company that “owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex,” essentially giving Disney-owned apps a free pass. Florida is home to Disney World."
@themorrigan1973 helpfully provides these local insights:
"Disney and Universal Studios as well as Busch Gardens did get a carve out.
If all of them ran theme parks as well as social media corporations they could ban as they saw fit.
Perhaps the plan is to force social media corporations to open theme parks and who wouldn't want to visit a your Twitter opinion isn't wanted woke theme park or a Facebook your vote doesn't count theme park?
Of course it may well be because Disney does have social media boards across Florida, it's just hard telling."
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I Won’t Take the Vaccine Because It Makes Liberals Mad
"Before this pandemic, I had a grand total of zero opinions on the issue of vaccines. I’ve never met an “anti-vaxxer” in my entire life, despite working in conservative politics, where, from my understanding, they can generally be found. Frankly, I don’t know a thing about their movement. I thought vaccines were what kids took periodically to eliminate the risk of ancient diseases like the mumps, which can only be found today in the illegal aliens we’re importing, and what people of a certain age took during autumn to avoid contracting the flu.
In fact, before the COVID-19 craze swept this nation, I devoted more attention to the liberal cause of preserving the Sea Turtle population than I did to thinking about vaccines. I like nature. (Tangentially related, an estimated 1.56 billion plastic masks ended up in the ocean in 2020 alone. Good work, liberals!)
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It wasn’t until the sociopathic mediocrity that is the entrenched liberal political class in Washington began bullying normal people into wearing masks, staying home, standing six feet apart from others at all times, mobilizing even less impressive liberal stormtroopers to play the role of COVID-19 prevention Gestapo, and then finally propped up the vaccine as the Holy Grail that would lead us back to “normalcy,” that I finally began to have an opinion on vaccines....
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So I have decided that because the vile political Left, which I despise in the abstract, wants me to take their coveted vaccine, I simply will not. After the horrifying displeasure of meeting several of their militant COVID-19 restriction enforcers in person over the past year, I have become even more steadfast in my stance.
My newly formed and well-developed opinion on vaccines is this: if those bastards want me to get the jab, I’m not going to do it, because it annoys them.
Perhaps you think I’m being obtuse. I do not care."
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Senate Minority Leader McConnell: No Republicans will support Biden infrastructure plan
"Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he does not expect any Republican to support Joe Biden’s sweeping infrastructure package. During a press conference in Kentucky on Monday, he indicated conservatives are standing firm by their $568 billion counteroffer, which is focused on transportation infrastructure over the next five years.
This comes as opposed to what they call a “grab bag” of tax increases and commercial spending proposed by Biden. McConnell said unlike the Democrat’s plan, the GOP’s plan would not revisit the 2017 tax bill to pay for it.
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Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) is leading negotiations on the GOP’s counteroffer. She said she hopes to come to an agreement with the White House and other Democrats in Congress.
“I think if you take an apples to apples comparison of the president’s plan and our plan, he’s not up into the $2 trillions when you’re looking a physical core infrastructure,” she explained. And so, that’s where I think our starting point is.”
Capito went on to say she thinks there’s a real hunger in both the country and Congress for compromise."
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Newsmax settles Dominion lawsuit, issues retraction on 2020 coverage
"Newsmax caved to left-wing pressure by reversing all stories covering fraud in the 2020 election. Early Friday, the media outlet posted a statement to “clarify its coverage” of Dominion voting machines and the ongoing fraud investigation.
In a statement, Newsmax admitted that while they did report — and in doing so — supported arguments and evidence brought forth by President Trump, among others, they themselves found no evidence of fraud.
Following the publication, Dr. Coomer, the director of Product Strategy and Security for Dominion, settled his lawsuit against Newsmax."
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Biden administration wants to use third-party ‘extremism’ researchers to spy on Americans – media
"The Department of Homeland security lacks the authority to spy on right-wing dissidents, but the Biden administration has reportedly found a workaround: using third-party researchers to snoop on so-called “domestic terrorists.”
In the aftermath of the pro-Trump riot on Capitol Hill in January, the Biden administration, with the support of sympathetic media outlets and pundits, focused the intelligence-gathering powers of the state inwards.
Biden added members to a domestic extremism team on the National Security Council, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declared homegrown “extremists” a “national priority area,” the FBI called for expanded domestic surveillance, and a top Justice Department official last week asked Congress for new powers to prosecute so-called “extremists.” In all cases, the same targets are identified: right-wing dissidents – including militia groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys – who took part in the Capitol riot.
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The DHS is limited in how it conducts surveillance, the report explains. It cannot, for example, impersonate right-wingers on forums and chat rooms. However, a panoply of researchers, journalists and nonprofits have been doing this for years. According to DHS officials who spoke to CNN, the agency wants to use research firms to gather the data it’s forbidden from gathering itself. The FBI and National Security Council are reportedly coordinating on the effort, a source added.
It is unclear who these firms could be. However, some of the biggest names in the area include so-called anti-hate groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League, and ‘fact checking’ firms like Bellingcat. All three of these organizations and others have been accused of pro-liberal, pro-Democrat bias, and have been extensively criticized.
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...A source told CNN that the DHS and FBI would likely use the broad data to “identify potential domestic terrorists,” and in CNN’s own words, “focus on specific individuals.”
The federal agencies would be entering a legal gray area. Many of the individuals spied-on would not be guilty of any crime, and their online activity may not meet the level of proof that the FBI would have to show to obtain a surveillance warrant.
Third-party organizations would bypass this bothersome roadblock. Furthermore, these organizations are not constrained by an institutional commitment to impartiality, and could engage in the sort of politically-motivated snooping that the FBI is, at least nominally, forbidden from doing.
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“What do you do about ideology that's leading to violence?” an unnamed intelligence source told CNN. “Do you have to wait until it leads to violence?”"
Yes. That's exactly what you do if you're not a tyrant.
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Sen. Bill Hagerty proposes bill to make platforms with over 100 million users “common carriers”
"Tennessee’s Sen. Bill Hagerty, Republican, is to introduce a bill that will redefine Big Tech platforms as common carriers, removing what he says are some protections these platforms enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Hagerty’s bill draws from a recommendation by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who said the censorship on Big Tech platforms could be ended if they were treated as common carriers.
In an article published by the Wall Street Journal, Hagerty argued that, like phone networks and trains, online platforms “are essential to everyday goings-on,” therefore, should be treated as common carriers, which are subject “to special regulations, including a general requirement to serve all comers without discrimination.”
The bill, called the 21st Century Free Speech Act, will apply to online platforms that have more than 100 million monthly active users. It would remove the protections online platforms enjoy under Section 230, which allows platforms to avoid liability for the content of their users.
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Hagerty argues that platforms would still be protected from being sued for third party content, a provision that allows them to host all sorts of speech.
For platforms to continue being family-friendly, some content moderation would be allowed. But as common carriers, people would be able to use online platforms without the fear that their unpopular opinion would be censored."
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Beyond ‘rookie’ blunder? Family of US Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt to sue police and the officer who shot her – reports
"The family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by a police officer while participating in the US Capitol riot, reportedly plans to file a wrongful-death lawsuit seeking at least $10 million in damages.
The lawsuit will target the US Capitol Police Department and the unidentified plainclothes lieutenant who killed Babbitt, lawyer Terry Roberts told Zenger News on Thursday. Roberts, who represents Babbitt's family, said he will serve notice to Capitol Police within 10 days that he plans to file the case in US Federal District Court in Washington.
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"A rookie police officer would not have shot this woman," Roberts told Zenger. "If she committed any crime by going through the window and into the Speaker's Lobby, it would have been trespassing, some misdemeanor crime. All a rookie cop would have done is arrest her."
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US Representative Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) went so far as to say the rioters would have hung black lawmakers if they had been able to breach the Speaker's Lobby and the House floor. "I have no doubt that some of us who look like me would have been hanging from the railings of the third floor onto the House floor, swinging like fruit, strange fruit," Johnson said in January.
But Roberts argued that Babbitt was clearly unarmed, and the lieutenant had other officers nearby to assist in arresting her. "She's not brandishing a weapon," he said. "She's on the window ledge, and there's no reason to think she's armed."
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Capitol Police have kept the name of the lieutenant who shot Ashli Babbitt a secret, though Roberts said he knows the man's identity and part of his service record. Conservatives have argued that the shooter's name should be made public, just as police in other violent incidents around the country have been identified amid a wave of Black Lives Matter protests."
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We'll need booster vaccine shots against Covid-19 variants ‘starting this fall,’ says Moderna CEO
"Speaking to Yahoo Finance news website, Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel was asked about the comments made by Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health in Rhode Island, who said last week that people may require additional annual booster shots against Covid-19 in the future.
“I think we're going to need boosters starting this fall,” Bancel said.
The Moderna chief said the research shows that “immunity is waning over time.” He argued that the second reason for a new injection are the new variants of the coronavirus."
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Vaccine maker BioNTech looking into reports of heart inflammation
"BioNTech is investigating reports of potential side effects of COVID-19 vaccines. The German start-up is seeking additional details after Israel reported several cases of heart inflammation in patients who received the Pfizer vaccine, which BioNTech produces alongside the German pharmaceutical firm.
The condition, also known as miocarditis, is a swelling of the heart muscle, which causes the organ to perform abnormally and can lead to more serious illness. According to BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin, the reports seem to be anecdotal and not representative of a wider trend as of now.
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Meanwhile, the Pentagon reported earlier this week it’s tracking 14 cases of heart inflammation experienced by military patients after receiving either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines."
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Windham, N.H. citizens protest board meeting, demand to stop the steal
"Citizens of Windham, New Hampshire have ramped up pressure on the Board of Selectmen to appoint Jovan Pulitzer to lead the 2020 election audit in their state. During a meeting of Windham Selectmen on Monday, citizens turned their backs on the board members over their plans to appoint audit critic Mark Lindeman as the state’s chief election auditor.
Board members then walked out of the meeting without making the final decision.
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Windham residents have said New Hampshire needs an audit similar to that in Arizona, but the Board of Selectmen has tried to fight their demands."