PP NewsBrief: 2021-05-10

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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AG Garland pushing for increased DOJ budget to combat domestic terrorism

"Attorney General Merrick Garland is putting his focus on domestic terror when it comes to the Justice Department’s budget. On Tuesday, he told the members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that the DOJ needs an additional $85 million over last year’s budget.

Garland said the budget bump would include $45 million to be delegated to FBI domestic terrorism investigations and $40 million for U.S. attorneys to manage increasing domestic terrorism caseloads. The attorney general argued that the threat of a terror attacks on U.S. soil is what keeps him up at night.

“So we have an emerging and accelerating threat and the department is putting its resources into defending the country with respect to both,” Garland stated. “Needless to say, this is an all of government problem and not all of government solution. The Department of Homeland Security (is) extraordinarily important in these areas.”"

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Biden supports suppressing online “misinformation” press secretary says

"“The president’s view is that the major platforms have a responsibility related to the health and safety of all Americans to stop amplifying untrustworthy content, disinformation, and misinformation, especially related to COVID-19, vaccinations, and elections. And we’ve seen that over the past several months, broadly speaking. I’m not placing any blame on any individual or group; we’ve seen it from a number of sources,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.

“He also supports better privacy protections and a robust anti-trust program. So his view is that there’s more that needs to be done to ensure that this type of misinformation; disinformation; damaging, sometimes life-threatening information is not going out to the American public,” she added."

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COVID-19: An Overview of the Evidence

"Moving forward, we would recommend the following steps:

--Reinstate the existing pandemic planning policies from 2019, pending a detailed review of the policies adopted in 2020. Look to countries and states which did things differently. There should be a clear commitment from the Government that we will never again lockdown.

--Stop mass testing healthy people. Return to the principles of respiratory disease diagnosis (the requirement of symptoms) that were well researched and accepted before 2020. Manufacturers’ guidelines state that these tests are designed to assist the diagnosis of symptomatic patients, not to ‘find’ disease in otherwise healthy people.

--Stop all mask mandates. They are psychologically and potentially physically harmful whilst being clinically unproven to stop disease spread in the community and may themselves be a transmission risk.

--Vaccination. Abandon the notion that vaccine certification is desirable and that children should be vaccinated. There is no logical or ethical argument for either.

--Devise a public education programme to help redress the severe distortions in beliefs around disease transmission, likelihood of dying and possible treatment options. A messaging style based on a calm presentation of facts is urgently needed.

--A full public enquiry into the extent to which severe/fatal COVID-19 is spread in hospitals and care homes. There is stark recent evidence on this from Public Health Scotland and if true for the rest of the UK, there needs to be better segregation of COVID-19 patients and staff within these settings.

--More funding and investigation of treatments for COVID-19, instead of only focusing on vaccination as a strategy. Given the high rates of hospital transmission, encourage a drive for more early treatment-at-home using some of the protocols discussed herein.

--Divert funds. The not inconsiderable money saved from ceasing testing programmes can be diverted to much needed areas, such as mental health, treatment research and an increase in hospital capacity and staffing. The vast debts accrued during 2020 will also need to be paid off, a fact that seems to be worryingly absent from economic recovery plans."

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Canada approves Pfizer vaccine for children aged 12-15 after trial shows 100% efficacy in young teenagers

"Canada has allowed children as young as 12 to receive the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine. The company said the move will help protect them before the next school year starts.

The review of medical data has shown that the Pfizer vaccine is “safe and effective” for younger teenagers, Supriya Sharma, a chief medical adviser to Health Canada, the government's medical agency, told reporters.

Sharma said that, while younger people are generally less likely to have severe cases of Covid-19, giving them the vaccine will help reduce the risk of infecting their family members and friends, and allow a return to “a more normal life” amid the pandemic. She added that the most common side effects for children are mild and temporary, like “a sore arm, chills or fever.”

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The minimum age for Covid-19 vaccination in the US is 16, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The minimum age for people who can receive a Pfizer vaccine in the UK is also 16."

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900k Covid deaths in America? Gates-backed institute claims global coronavirus toll MORE THAN DOUBLE the official number

"An outfit whose statistical models were used to justify early Covid-19 lockdowns is now arguing that the true death toll of the pandemic is far higher than the official numbers – and closer to their own apocalyptic predictions.

Covid-19 has killed more than 900,000 Americans and over 6.9 million people worldwide, the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) claimed on Thursday, citing their own statistical models based on excess mortality.

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The institute apparently suggests that official Covid data is not to be trusted – and their extrapolated “statistics” imply that some nations are even more untrustworthy than the others. For instance, they claim that Russia had almost six times more coronavirus deaths than its official numbers – almost as many as Brazil, whose official numbers are supposedly off by a third, again by IHME metrics. By contrast, the UK “undercounted” its deaths by only 60,000 or so.

The bombshell claim, while promptly parroted by major media outlets, was met with some skepticism by other scientists. William Hanage of Harvard University told NPR in an email that IHME’s claim that Covid-19 deaths have been “substantially undercounted” in some places more than others “is likely sound, but the absolute numbers are less so for a lot of reasons.”

“Their estimate of excess deaths is enormous and inconsistent with our research and others,” said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University. “There are a lot of assumptions and educated guesses built into their model.” Woolf’s team of researchers published a study on excess mortality in the US in last month’s Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)."

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Emergency Use Authorization: The ‘New Normal’ for Pharma Vaccines?

"A recent Oxford University press release announced that scientists working at its Jenner Institute have succeeded in developing a vaccine against malaria. Known as R21/Matrix-M, the vaccine was tested in a 12-month trial involving 450 young children in Burkina Faso and is claimed to have shown up to 77 percent efficacy. Quoted in the British media, Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, indicated that he might apply for emergency use authorization for the vaccine, thus bypassing the need for full clinical trials. Having already obtained such authorization for the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, which was similarly developed at the Jenner Institute, Hill’s intention to obtain this for the malaria vaccine suggests that emergency use applications are becoming seen as the ‘new normal’ in the field of vaccine development.

A life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes, the World Health Organization estimates there were 229 million cases and 409,000 deaths from malaria worldwide in 2019. The search for a successful vaccine against the disease has been going on for decades now. A vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been in use in parts of Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi for the past few years, but it requires four doses and has low efficacy. It also has serious safety concerns, including seizures and a tenfold increased risk of meningitis. An effective, safe approach to preventing malaria without the risk of side effects is therefore urgently needed.

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Following their decision to give experimental COVID-19 vaccines emergency use authorizations, regulatory bodies around the world are already saying that future vaccines adapted for coronavirus variants will not be required to undergo extensive safety testing. In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has specifically stated that lengthy randomized controlled trials will not be needed. European regulators have similarly said they will fast-track approvals of coronavirus vaccines that are adapted to combat mutations. Seemingly, therefore, preparations are underway to coerce the world into accepting annual COVID-19 vaccinations and emergency use authorizations as the norm.

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...the increasing reliance on emergency use authorizations for new pharmaceutical vaccines involves taking an enormous gamble with public health. Perhaps recognizing this, millions of Americans are reportedly now skipping their second doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Large numbers of people in Europe also seem unlikely to accept them. A recent survey found almost four in ten people in France and 23 percent in Germany say they definitely or probably won’t get vaccinated.

Patients have a right to expect that the preventive health therapies they use are safe. Putting the interests of drug companies and their stakeholders before public safety does nothing to achieve this. The growing reliance on emergency use authorizations should be a warning sign to us all."

Here's an example of how we can't handle big numbers. 400,000 deaths sounds like a lot of people but in a world of over 7 billion that's nothing. Certainly every death is a tragedy but our insistence on "none" rather than "less" leads us repeatedly down the path of chasing technological innovation & pharmaceutical interventions. Bed nets, making sure homes have screens, providing habitat for mosquito-eating creatures, improving basic healthcare facilities...none of these are going to make Bill Gates tons of money so they don't get done. Maybe those super-amazing social impact bonds will help motivate him and other billionaires to look at the little things?

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Empathy for the Thought Criminal

"The concept of restorative justice, introduced by leftist intellectuals and now spreading across America, regardless of whether or not it is inspired by Christian precepts, rejects imposing consequences proportional to the crime. Violence is a product of oppression. Looting is a consequence of poverty. Rather than punish offenders, we should give them counseling, give them money, and forgive their crimes.

This leniency toward crime, central to leftist ideology today, does not extend to cancel culture. People who commit thought crimes against values sacred to the Left are shown no mercy. They are not only denied the empathy that thugs and thieves are granted, they are typically punished in ways that are vastly disproportionate to alleged crimes.

A new website, CanceledPeople.org, provides a database of people who have been “canceled” for exercising their right to free speech. The database already has over 200 entries, with many recognizable names including James Damore, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Jordan Peterson, Charles Murray, Megyn Kelly, Nicholas & Erik Christakis, Bret Weinstein, Chris Matthews, Roseanne Barr, Gina Carano, Roger Pielke Jr., and, of course, Donald Trump.

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A strength of this well sourced, no frills database—they don’t even have a logo!—is the “Offense” column, where a lengthy explanation of exactly what happened is provided. Reading these explanations will trigger recollections in many cases where the event gathered national or international publicity for a time, but the name of the person canceled was forgotten. There is a common thread—the punishment is, almost always, far out of proportion to the crime.

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The CanceledPeople database, for all its value, doesn’t entirely illustrate the level of disproportionality that exists between the offense of thought crimes and their consequences from the cancel mob. In their definition of “reasonable expression,” they write, “Hate speech is not considered ‘reasonable expression’ although it is technically protected in America under the First Amendment…” and “Intent matters. Saying a racial slur in an academic context (for example, reading from a book) is very different from using a racial slur in a way intended to harm another person. Intent and context are important when judging a person’s actions.”

It’s perfectly acceptable if CanceledPeople wants to refrain from including on their list people who were canceled for “hate speech,” or, in plain English, for uttering words that people find offensive. But should people who—even in a moment of passion, or intoxication, or both—utter forbidden words, find their lives completely destroyed as a consequence?

This is an ethical question that deserves more consideration, and empathy, now that smartphones and the internet have made nearly every offensive public utterance a candidate for viral condemnation. A man has a few drinks too many and voices some anti-Asian slurs at a restaurant in California. There is no violence. There is no context; perhaps the man was provoked. The moment quickly passes. But thanks to YouTube, the video of his lapse goes viral. ABC anchor David Muir, perhaps the most contemptible hack in the world today, joins his colleagues across every major network and every major newspaper to treat this as a national news story. And the man’s fate? Fired. Career destroyed. Of course.

In a rational society, this incident wouldn’t even have made the local news. It would be unpleasant, it would be condemned by anyone witnessing it, but that would have been the end of it. And one may hope the man might feel some regret; that the parties to the tension might even find room to forgive each other. But not in wired, woke America.

What about transgressions that appear clearly wrong? Grossly offensive behavior? A recent incident where a man appeared to be following and mocking a teenaged prom attendee might fit that description. The man probably had too much to drink. The victim was a teenaged boy wearing a scarlet dress, on his way to his high school prom with his boyfriend.

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Should people have their lives ruined just because they have insulted someone? Never mind the double standard. To point that out is obvious and beside the point. What if the insults this man directed at these boys were not generated by the spectacle they were making of themselves, but they were merely the trigger? Why is there no empathy for people who aren’t comfortable with this abrupt remaking of what have been understood to be fundamental truths for ages?

We live in a nation where every powerful institution is berating us to accept that men have periods and women have penises. Not only are we expected to accept this, but we are condemned if we question any of it in the slightest. Maybe this man had had enough."

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The Supreme Court Fails To End The Feres Doctrine . . . Now It Is Up To Congress

"The often-divided Supreme Court reached an almost unanimous decision on Monday. It was the wrong decision.

The court refused to review the case of a rape victim who was barred from having her case heard in federal courts because “Jane Doe” was serving in our military. Only one justice demanded justice for the former West Point cadet: Clarence Thomas.

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The court missed the opportunity to overturn one of its most infamous, indefensible doctrines. Created more than 70 years ago, the Feres Doctrine has victimized hundreds of thousands of service members and their families. The court’s failure should now put pressure on Congress to finally act to end the tragic legacy of the Feres decision.

I have been a vocal critic of Feres for decades and wrote a three-part study of the military legal system 20 years ago that detailed how this doctrine began in 1950 with a clearly erroneous reading of the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). The doctrine is named after Army Lt. Rudolph Feres, who died in a fire allegedly caused by an unsafe heating system in his New York barracks. It was one of three cases combined for review by the court, including a soldier who sued after an Army doctor left a 30-by-18-inch towel (marked as “Medical Department U.S. Army” property) inside him.

These should have been easy cases of breathtaking negligence. The FTCA only bars lawsuits against the military for “combat-related” injuries — a logical and clear exception. However, the court set out to create a sweeping new immunity for the military and declared that any lawsuit by military personnel would be considered “combat related.” It was entirely nonsensical since there would be no reason to refer to combat if Congress wanted to grant total immunity for the military. Indeed, the late Justice Antonin Scalia denounced the doctrine as raw judicial activism. He was joined in his condemnation from the left by the late Justice John Paul Stevens.

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The former cadet is not alone when it comes to negligence in handling criminal cases. In Illinois, eight women sued the Army for “harassment and retaliation, including rape, sodomy, unwelcome sexual advances and touching, requests for sexual favors, sexual innuendos, harassing phone calls, threats of physical harm, non-consensual sex and duress.” A federal court dismissed their lawsuit under Feres.

My study found an array of such cases. For example, soldier Julius Pringle was severely injured at a bar on a military reservation in Kansas that served both civilians and military personnel; a gang had effectively taken over the bar. After Pringle exchanged words with members of the gang who were harassing his girlfriend, bar managers had him thrown outside into the midst of waiting gang members. He was beaten so severely that he suffered brain damage. Yet, he was barred from suing.

I found many deaths caused by contractors who failed the most basic obligations in maintaining or using equipment, along with negligent acts that were long addressed in civilian businesses and deterred through civil liability. For example, Lt. Joseph McConnell was killed while waterskiing after a boat rented in Arizona from an Air Force recreation center surged out of control because of a mechanical failure and hit him.

In the area of medical malpractice, the study found practices and conduct that would be considered primeval in modern torts cases. When civilian doctors leave a patient paralyzed or crippled for a lifetime of care, family members often receive millions in compensation. In the military, families receive a couple thousand dollars a month and more military medical care. Take Dorothy Meagher, who found herself caring for her son after he entered a Navy hospital to have a cyst removed; due to an alleged overdose of anesthetics and the failure of a Navy doctor to call immediately for assistance, her son was left a quadriplegic.

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There is one other body that can do justice for military personnel: Congress. For 30 years, I have called on Congress to correct this judicial error. It needs to state expressly what already should be obvious in the FTCA: Military personnel have the same access to the courts except for injuries related to actual wartime or combat operations. Politicians are keen to use military personnel as props at Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day events. However, they have left them fodder for negligent military and contractor operations.

It is time for Congress to act and to put an end to the Feres Doctrine."

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Florida Governor DeSantis signs controversial election bills on voter ID & ballot harvesting, accused of silencing minorities

"“Right now I have what we think is the strongest election integrity measures in the country,” he said, according to Fox News. “We’re making sure we enforce voter ID…we’re also banning ballot harvesting. We’re not going to let political operatives go and get satchels of votes and dump them in some drop box.”

Similar to Georgia’s recently controversial voting laws, Florida’s new legislation places restrictions on things like ballot drop boxes. To prevent ballot harvesting, one can only return ballots from immediate family and up to two people unrelated to them. Drop boxes are also required to be supervised and will have hours limited to when election offices and voting sites are open.

Changes to a registration record also require an identifying number, which could either be a driver’s license number or social security number. Voters are similarly required to provide such identification for absentee ballots in Georgia, something activists say discourages voting, but many conservatives have argued is necessary for preventing fraud.

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A prohibition on private funds being used for “election-related expenses” is also banned in the new legislation. That decision follows Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg being among some that helped provide financial support to cities last year to help with their election process."

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The People Have Lost Faith in the State, and the State Has Lost Faith in its People

"Democracy is fundamentally about advocacy: the people are free to advocate for their interests and form groups to represent their shared interests. In the broadest scope, the people are free to advocate for what they hold as the common good, policies and programs that benefit the entire populace rather than one special-interest group.

Since the state (all levels of government) concentrates wealth and power via taxation and a monopoly on force, groups advocate/lobby the state to recognize and respond to their interests. At the local level, this advocacy entails contacting city council members, speaking at council meetings, developing outreach tools (email lists, website, etc.), holding rallies at city hall, etc.

People advocate when they still have faith in their government. When they lose that faith, their only option is dissent. When advocacy yields zero results because government really only responds to corporations and the super-wealthy, then people lose faith in the representational branch of the state.

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The state tolerates polite advocacy because it is easily dismissed, but it views dissent as a threat, and responds accordingly. The state's elected officials and unelected functionaries view citizen advocacy as an annoyance, but dissent is understood as a direct challenge to the state's monopoly on force and its concentration of wealth via taxation, and a challenge to the state's freedom to exercise its powers whenever and however it wants.

Dissent is thus intolerable, especially if it demands transparency, which threatens the cozy corruption of politicos and functionaries, or threatens the wealth and power of the parasitic elites that control virtually all the nation's wealth and power.

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When the state views dissent as an existential threat to its monopoly powers, it has lost faith in its own citizenry. Fearful that the citizenry might not approve of the corruption of political deal-making and the state's Imperial machinations globally, the state devotes enormous resources to hiding its actions, policies and intentions.

Since the citizenry can't be trusted with the truth, lest they disagree with the elites' choices, whistleblowers are savagely punished and dissenters are marginalized, suppressed or silenced.

As dissent is crushed, the citizenry lose faith in the state's judiciary, law enforcement, taxation and security agencies--in effect, faith in the state is completely destroyed....

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This is how states and empires decay and slide into the dustbin of history. When the citizenry lose faith in the state and the state has lost faith in its citizenry, then everything become theater and artifice: the pantomime of elections, the carefully curated simulacra of "free speech," (free as long as you mouth the approved narratives), the flood of absurd promises (free money for everyone forever!) that can never be fulfilled, the tiresome parade of politically expedient fake-fixes, a central bank slavishly devoted to expanding already jaw-dropping wealth and income inequality, and a political leadership so clueless they believe their pathetic strutting on stage is actually persuading the audience of their competence and sincerity."

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Fauci claims there’s ‘no doubt’ US has ‘UNDERCOUNTED’ its Covid-19 deaths

"“I think there’s no doubt that we are and have been undercounting,” Fauci said on Sunday during NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ program. Asked by host Chuck Todd about a University of Washington study which said there were more than 900,000 US Covid-19 deaths, exceeding the official count of 581,000, the doctor replied, “That’s a bit more than I would have thought the undercounting was, but sometimes the models are right on line, sometimes they’re a bit off.”

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When Fauci ended the interview by saying that the study was a reminder of the pandemic’s historic proportions, “the likes of which we haven’t seen in over 100 years,” Todd said, “That’s true, and it looks like these numbers are going to make 1918 look a bit smaller than what we’ve dealt with now.”

According to the CDC, the 1918 influenza pandemic killed at least 50 million people globally – 15 times Covid-19’s current toll – and 675,000 in the US. The US per-capita death toll in 1918 was nearly 2.5 times the per-capita rate implied by the University of Washington's death estimate for Covid-19.

That’s the same university which warned New York would need 49,000 regular hospital beds and 8,000 intensive care unit beds to deal with its Covid-19 carnage. The actual peaks were 18,825 regular beds and 5,225 ICU beds in April 2020. “They were all wrong, they were all wrong,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said of the projections by the University of Washington and others.

Critics of Covid-19 lockdowns, such as author Alex Berenson, have argued that deaths from the virus were overcounted, not undercounted. Additional causes of death are listed for 94% of the people who are counted as US Covid-19 deaths, according to the CDC."

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India, COVID and the Need for Scientific Integrity Not Sensationalism

"There does indeed seem to be a major problem in parts of the country. However, we need to differentiate between the effects of COVID-19 and the impacts of other factors. We must also be very weary of sensationalist media reporting which misrepresents the situation.

For instance, in late April, the New York Post ran a story about the COVID ‘surge’ in India with the headline saying, “footage shows people dead in the streets”. Next to it was an image of a woman lying dead. But the image was of a woman lying on the floor from a May 2020 story about a gas leak in Andhra Pradesh.

To try to shed some light on the situation and move beyond panic and media sensationalism, I recently spoke with Yohan Tengra, a political analyst and healthcare specialist based in Mumbai.

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For India, he says:

“We will never know statistically if the infections have really increased. To be certain, we would need data of symptomatic people who have tested positive with either a virus culture test or PCR that uses 24 cycles or less, ideally under 20.”

He adds that India is experiencing mainly asymptomatic cases:

“For example, in Mumbai, they declared two days back that of total cases in the city, 85 per cent were asymptomatic. In Bangalore, over 95 per cent of cases were asymptomatic!”

In his report, Tengra offers scientific evidence that strongly indicates asymptomatic transmission is not significant. He asserts that as these cases comprise most of India’s case numbers, we should be questioning the data as well as the PCR tests and the cycles being used to detect the virus instead of accepting the figures at face value.

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He notes:

“The medical system itself works to boost the number of positive cases. Even with a negative PCR test, they are using CAT scans and diagnosing people with COVID. These scans are not specific to SARS-CoV-2 at all. I personally know of people who have been asked to be hospitalised by their doctors just based on a positive test (doctors can get a cut of the total bill made when they refer a patient to a hospital). This also happened to a Bollywood celebrity, who was asked to be admitted by his doctors with no symptoms and just a positive PCR.”

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Addressing the much-publicised shortage of oxygen, Tengra implies this too is a result of inept policies, with exports of oxygen having increased in recent times, resulting in inadequate back-up supplies when faced with a surge in demand.

According to Tengra, the case fatality rate for COVID-19 in India was over three per cent last year but has now dropped to below 1.5 per cent. The infection fatality rate is even lower, with serosurvey results showing them to be between 0.05 per cent to 0.1 per cent.

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Tengra argues that the principle is the same for all infectious agents: they infect people, most can fight it off without even developing symptoms, some develop mild symptoms, a smaller number develop serious symptoms and an even smaller number die.

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As has occurred in many other countries, Tengra notes the way that death certificate guidelines are structured in India makes it easy for someone to be labelled as a COVID death just based on a positive PCR test or general symptoms. It is therefore often difficult to say who has died from the virus and who has been misdiagnosed.

And the issue of misdiagnosis should not be brushed aside lightly. In a recent article by long-term resident of India Jo Nash, ‘India’s Current ‘COVID Crisis’ in Context’, it is noted that the focus of the media’s messaging and the source of many of the horrifying scenes of suffering – Delhi – is among the most toxic cities in the world which often leads to the city having to close down due to the widespread effects on respiratory health.

Nash also argues that respiratory diseases like TB and respiratory tract infections such as bronchitis leading to pneumonia are always among the top ten killers in India. These conditions are severely aggravated by air pollution and often require oxygen which can be in short supply during air pollution crises as happens at this time of the year.

As a result, it is reasonable to state that all is not what it might seem to be with regard to media reporting on the current situation.

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Tengra is working with lawyers and other concerned citizens to file legal cases to challenge the idea of asymptomatic transmission and the testing of healthy people. The aim is to also improve the testing in line with evidence-based protocols.

But that is not all:

“We will also be challenging the current vaccine rollout, highlighting the issues with trials that have been conducted, adverse events, deaths, vaccine passports and other issues surrounding the subject.”

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In finishing, let us place COVID and the global media reporting of the situation in India in context by returning to Jo Nash.

“Even as the alleged COVID deaths reach their peak, more people die of diarrhoea every day in India and have done for years, mostly due to a lack of clean water and sanitation creating a terrain ripe for the flourishing of communicable disease.”"

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U.S. Army Used Virtual Town Hall to Convert — and Coerce — Vaccine Skeptics

"The virtual town hall followed this format:

--Affirm soldiers who took the experimental vaccine or question soldiers who have not yet taken the vaccine.

--Legitimize an Army doctor as a drug expert to counter risks or concerns without citing any references for the information provided.

--Leverage the influence of the Sergeant Major of the Army, the highest ranking non-commissioned officer, to persuade soldiers to risk taking the experimental drug without providing factual informed consent.

This format was designed to not only promote maximum conversion of soldiers to take the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) drug, but also to convince them to persuade their friends and family to do the same.

The overall tone of the town hall was respectful and caring, but the false efficacy claims and risk omissions are indicators of dysfunctional groupthink at best, or cult mentality at worst.

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The one-hour session addressed three main concerns about the COVID vaccine among military members: infertility, variants of the virus and the speed with which the vaccines were developed.

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In the case of the COVID vaccine, informed consent requires doctors inform soldiers of the following:

--Risk of disease: Most people have a 99.9% survival rate for SARS-CoV2, with increased risk of severe disease in elderly populations with co-morbid health conditions. Per the CDC, the most frequent underlying medical conditions were obesity (35.1%), diabetes (8.4%) and pulmonary disease (7.8%).

--Efficacy of Intervention: EUA COVID vaccines did not demonstrate prevention of infection or transmission of the virus in the clinical trials. Symptom prevention is the primary endpoint for the clinical trials. Consent to a COVID vaccine is equivalent to voluntary participation in an ongoing phase 3 clinical trial ending in 2022 or 2023.

--Risks of Intervention: The manufacturers reported a comprehensive list of known adverse reactions in the Moderna COVID-19 EUA Fact Sheet and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 EUA Fact Sheet including severe reactions of anaphylaxis, appendicitis, Bell’s Palsy and death. On April 13, U.S. health officials temporarily suspended the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over concerns of potential fatal blood clotting disorders. In the event of an adverse reaction, participants are not eligible for compensation because COVID vaccines are shielded from liability under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act of March 2020 as a “countermeasure.”

--Alternatives: There is a research-based meta-analysis of more than 562 studies of effective preventative alternatives including long-term established therapeutics of Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and vitamin D.

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Although pregnant women were excluded in the original clinical trials, Cersovsky claimed that over the past several months after vaccine rollout there is a ”very robust data set that the CDC has and others … very safe vaccines for use in pregnancy.”

Cersovsky added that for pregnant women, “the safety profile has been excellent. No adverse events in that group, just as we have seen in the broader population.”

Yet Cersovsky did not mention that as of April 16, 462 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System. The reports included 132 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.

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Cersovsky refuted any possibility of the vaccine impacting the fertility of women, declaring,“there is no possible mechanism for that to happen.”

However, if there were no mechanism of reproductive risks, then why is the CDC dedicated to studying the unknown effects of the vaccine through the Vaccine Safety Datalink, which states: “Miscarriage and stillbirth that occurs among people who received COVID-19 vaccine during pregnancy; Adverse outcomes in pregnancy following COVID-19 vaccination, including: Pregnancy complications, Birth outcomes, Infant outcomes for the first year of life (includes infant death, birth defects, and developmental disorders)?

Cersovsky is gaslighting women in uniform.

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Cersovsky sermonized the idea that vaccines can stop, block or suppress the natural mutation of viruses to become more transmissible: “The vaccine is our mechanism in which we can stop these variants” and “The way to block that is through vaccination.”

He alluded to variants becoming stronger, without acknowledging that viruses naturally become less virulent as they become more transmissible.

In his concluding remarks, Cersovsky contradicted himself, stating there is limited data on the ability of the vaccine to actually block infection after previously stating that the vaccine blocked infection for both the virus and variants.

He contradicted himself a second time when he stated the vaccine is preferred over natural immunity because it “locks in immunity” and even boosts immunity with a greater protection in the previously infected, after stating that it is also likely that booster doses will be needed annually.

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Grinston added that soldiers can “take some leave without spending all their leave on restricted movement” which has been recently revised as a virus-containment strategy only for the unvaccinated sect.

This containment strategy is based on the CDC’s unsubstantiated belief of asymptomatic transmission. A November 2020 Nature research study of 10 million people in China found “no evidence of transmission from asymptomatic positive persons to traced closed contacts.”

A December 2020 JAMA meta-analysis of 54 studies by the University of Florida research concluded “no asymptomatic or presymptomatic spread.”

Yet Army leadership is blindly following CDC pseudoscience without any scrutiny, just as it did with the anthrax vaccine program, actively facilitating a program that is potentially even more dangerous.

Grinston expressed his concern for the “readiness” of the Army, and yet seems oblivious to the inherent risk of a goal to inject an experimental drug into 100% of soldiers with no data on long-term effects.

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During the town hall, Grinston expressed valid concerns about the behavioral health and harmful impacts of wearing masks, social distancing, quarantines and social isolation. He then suggested that beneficial social interactions could resume with the vaccine.

It is disappointing to see a respected leader and mentor advocate that social well-being can be restored only by taking an experimental drug, when quarantines for healthy people were never justified in the first place.

Grinston defended the policies of Army gyms that require a COVID vaccine card, and dining facilities that allow seated meals only to soldiers with COVID19 vaccine cards. Grinston said, “There should be an advantage to this.” He added:

   “If there is no advantage, if I still have to wear a mask, or stay apart and I can’t do this, I can’t do that, and I’ve been vaccinated, I’d be sitting here going, why get vaccinated, what’s the point?”

And with that statement, the Sergeant Major of the Army disqualified anyone with natural immunity from having the same access and privileges as the vaccinated, who now have preferential treatment despite not knowing how long natural immunity lasts and if the vaccine confers immunity at all.

...

How can anyone be expected to trust the lockdown proponents who claimed the lockdowns were protective, and are now also claiming the vaccine is protective? This breach of trust is why one-third of service members are declining this vaccine.

In response, the CDC has given the military orders to use “trusted leaders in the community” to persuade uptake, just as the CDC also requested church leaders persuade uptake in civilian communities."

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New York Yankees & Mets to Segregate Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Fans

"Unvaccinated people are to be segregated from those who have received the COVID-19 jab at New York Yankees & Mets games, it has been revealed.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the news in a tweet, adding that capacities will be reduced to 33% in unvaccinated areas “to comply with CDC social distancing rules.”

All fans will be forced to wear face masks, despite CDC guidelines stating that those who have received the vaccine should no longer have to wear masks outside.

...

While unvaccinated fans will be allowed to attend games, albeit in a segregated area, there’s no guarantee they won’t be prevented from entering stadiums in the near future when the vaccine has been offered to everybody.

The segregation policy is also being implemented by other countries, including Hong Kong, where unvaccinated people are seated in different areas of restaurants and restricted to a total of 4 people per table."

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Keep those shots coming: Pfizer seeking full FDA approval for Covid vaccine as pharma firms begin push for yearly booster doses

"Pharma giants Pfizer and BioNTech have applied for full FDA approval for their Covid vaccine, becoming the first to do so in the US as drug firms say regular booster shots may be needed to ward off “concerning” virus variants.

The two companies filed their application to the FDA on Friday, requesting full authorization for use of their vaccine in people aged 16 and older.

...

The companies said they plan to send their vaccine data “on a rolling basis,” also requesting the FDA fast-track the review process, hoping for a decision within six months rather than the standard 10. In addition to their trial data, they are also required to submit information on their manufacturing process and facilities.

Pfizer and BioNTech could soon be joined by AstraZeneca, who is now considering whether to bypass the emergency approval process and seek full authorization instead, according to a Friday report in the Wall Street Journal."

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Coca-Cola Faces Challenge to Race-Based Hiring Quota

"In January, Coca-Cola announced an initiative that would target law firms contracted to work on behalf of the company, wherein all firms would be hit with a 30 percent reduction in their overall payment unless 30 percent of that firm’s workforce was “diverse.” Of those 30 percent, 15 percent had to be black.

Subsequently, D.C. attorney Boyden Gray sent a letter to Coca-Cola accusing them of violating the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits all forms of racial discrimination in private contracting.”

“Racial quotas and the notion of group rights,” Gray continued, “perpetuate pernicious racial categories and rest on a false, offensive, and racist notion that blacks and other racial minorities cannot compete…It is not enough for Coke to pause this policy; it needs to publicly revoke it.”

...

This incident is not the first time that Coca-Cola has faced backlash after internal policies were revealed to negatively impact White people. In February, an insider with the company leaked materials from an internal training session which explicitly asked employees to “be less White,” with little explanation of what exactly “being White” means."

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The Covidian Cult (Part II)

"How did we ever get to this point … to the point where, as I put it in The Covidian Cult, “instead of the cult existing as an island within the dominant culture, the cult has become the dominant culture, and those of us who have not joined the cult have become the isolated islands within it?”

To understand this, one needs to understand how cults control the minds of their members, because totalitarian ideological movements operate more or less the same way, just on a much larger, societal scale. There is a wealth of research and knowledge on this subject (I mentioned Robert J. Lifton in my earlier essay), but, to keep things simple, I’ll just use Margaret Singer’s “Six Conditions of Mind Control” from her 1995 book, Cults in Our Midst, as a lens to view the Covidian Cult through.

...

1. Keep the person unaware of what is going on and how she or he is being changed a step at a time. Potential new members are led, step by step, through a behavioral-change program without being aware of the final agenda or full content of the group.

...

2. Control the person’s social and/or physical environment; especially control the person’s time.

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3. Systematically create a sense of powerlessness in the person.

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4. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments and experiences in such a way as to inhibit behavior that reflects the person’s former social identity.

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5. Manipulate a system of rewards, punishments, and experiences in order to promote learning the group’s ideology or belief system and group-approved behaviors. Good behavior, demonstrating an understanding and acceptance of the group’s beliefs, and compliance are rewarded, while questioning, expressing doubts or criticizing are met with disapproval, redress and possible rejection. If one expresses a question, they are made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to be questioning.

...

The point is, this kind of ideological conditioning is happening everywhere, every day, on the job, among friends, even among families. The pressure to conform is intense, because nothing is more threatening to devoted cultists, or members of totalitarian ideological movements, than those who challenge their fundamental beliefs, confront them with facts, or otherwise demonstrate that their “reality” isn’t reality at all, but, rather, a delusional, paranoid fiction.

The key difference between how this works in cults and totalitarian ideological movements is that, usually, a cult is a subcultural group, and thus non-cult-members have the power of the ideology of the dominant society to draw on when resisting the mind-control tactics of the cult, and attempting to deprogram its members…whereas, in our case, this balance of power is inverted.

Totalitarian ideological movements have the power of governments, the media, the police, the culture industry, academia, and the compliant masses on their side. And, thus, they do not need to persuade anyone. They have the power to dictate “reality.” Only cults operating in total isolation, like Jim Jones’ People’s Temple in Guyana, enjoy this level of control over their members.

...

6. Put forth a closed system of logic and an authoritarian structure that permits no feedback and refuses to be modified except by leadership approval or executive order. The group has a top-down, pyramid structure. The leaders must have verbal ways of never losing.

...

They are cultists, desperately trying to get you to conform to their paranoid beliefs, pressuring you, manipulating you, bullying you, threatening you. Do not engage them on their terms, or let them goad you into accepting their premises. (Once they’ve sucked you into their narrative, they’ve won.) Expose them, confront them with their tactics and their motives.

You will probably not change their minds in the least, but your example might help other New Normals whose faith is slipping to begin to recognize what has been done to their minds and break with the cult."

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“Kierstien Hening Refused To Kneel”: Virginia Tech Sued By Student Who Alleges Abuse Over Her Refusal To Support BLM and Diversity Displays

"The lawsuit of Virginia Tech student Kierstien Hening begins with a simple statement: “Kierstien Hening refused to kneel.”  The lawsuit filed this week against Virginia Tech soccer coach Charles “Chugger” Adair (in his official capacity) alleges that when Hening refused to kneel and support Black Lives Matter, she was benched, harassed and ultimately forced off the team. If the allegations are true, she could have not only a winning case but a case that could set important precedent for the freedom of speech.

Adair implemented changes after a mandated diversity training order from the Atlantic Coast Conference. We have seen such mandated training programs in colleges and corporations — programs that can raise concerns over compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination. As a state school, Virginia Tech is subject to the limitations imposed on the government under the First Amendment.

Hening alleges that Adair wanted the student to emulate former NFL Colin Kaepernick  in kneeling before games and wanted to replace the name “Hokies” on the back of their jerseys with the names of people killed by police.

During meetings, Hening objected to the changes as compelled speech and said that she disagreed with aspects of the BLM movement. She was then allegedly labeled a “racist” by some on the team.

...

One issue may be that she elected to resign. The school can argue that she was allowed to refuse to participate in the displays and that the decision to use players is based on a coach’s discretion.  She did in fact play, though not as a starter or not for very long in these games. Moreover, she resigned only after a few games rather than raise the issue with the university and allow time for resolution.

Nevertheless, the complaint alleges clear forms of retaliation and harassment against a student for her political and social views. If true, Adair was using his position to pressure and abuse a student for not adhering to the preferred view of BLM and diversity displays."

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Windham, N.H. residents launch formal petition to present simple majority to start election audit

"Residents in Windham, New Hampshire are fighting back against the city board’s decision to appoint a known election audit critic to take charge of the state’s 2020 review.

Meanwhile, another member of the Board of Selectmen said he will vote to appoint Jovan Pulitzer to lead the election fraud audit if that’s what the majority of the citizens want.

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Residents are now organizing a formal petition that’s required to change the votes of their selectmen. This came after citizens turned their back on Windham board members Monday night in defiance of their plans to appoint Lindeman.

Board members walked out of the meeting without making the final decision. New Hampshire now has roughly 30 days to begin the audit of 2020 elections.

Windham residents are calling on all patriotic Americans to follow their fight on Telegram and MeWe as well as the local politics website called Granite Grok."

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The Wokest Place on Earth

"...In the past year, Disney executives have elevated the ideology of critical race theory into a new corporate dogma—and bombarded employees with trainings on “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,” and launched racially-segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

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The core of Disney’s racial program is a series of training modules on “antiracism.” In one module, called “Allyship for Race Consciousness,” the company tells employees that they must “take ownership of educating [themselves] about structural anti-Black racism” and that they should “not rely on [their] Black colleagues to educate [them],” because it is “emotionally taxing.” The United States, the document claims, has a “long history of systemic racism and transphobia” and white employees, in particular, must “work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed.” Disney recommends that employees atone by “challeng[ing] colorblind ideologies and rhetoric” such as “All Lives Matter” and “I don’t see color”; they must “listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues” and must “not question or debate Black colleagues’ lived experience.”

In another module, called “What Can I Do About Racism?,” Disney tells employees that they should reject “equality,” with a focus on “equal treatment and access to opportunities,” and instead strive for “equity,” with a focus on “the equality of outcome.” The training also includes a series of lessons on “implicit biases,” “microaggressions,” and “becoming an antiracist.” The company tells employees that they must “reflect” on America’s “racist infrastructure” and “think carefully about whether or not your wealth, income, treatment by the criminal justice system, employment, access to housing, health care, political power, and education might be different if you were of a different race.”

In order to put these ideas into action, Disney sponsored the creation of a program called the “21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge” in partnership with the YWCA and included the program in the company’s recommended resources for employees. The challenge begins with information on “systemic racism” and asks participants to accept that they have “all been raised in a society that elevates white culture over others.” Participants then learn about their “white privilege” and are asked to fill out a white privilege “checklist,” with options including: “I am white,” I am heterosexual,” “I am a man,” “I still identity as the gender I was born in,” “I have never been raped,” “I don’t rely on public transportation,” and “I have never been called a terrorist.”

Next, participants learn about “white fragility” and are asked to complete an exercise called “How to Tell If You Have White Fragility,” with beliefs such as “I am a good person, I can’t be racist” and “I was taught to treat everyone the same” interpreted as evidence of the participant’s internalized racism and white fragility. Finally, at the conclusion of the 21-day challenge, participants are told that they must learn how to “pivot” from “white dominant culture” to “something different.” The document claims that “competition,” power hoarding,” “comfort with predominantly white leadership,” “individualism,” “timeliness,” and “comprehensiveness” are “white dominant” values that “perpetuate white supremacy culture”—and must be rejected.

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Multiple Disney employees told me the political environment at the company has intensified in recent months. There are “almost daily memos, suggested readings, panels, and seminars that [are] all centered around antiracism,” said one employee. The company is “completely ideologically one-sided” and conservative and Christian employees are actively discouraged from expressing their views. “I attended several [training sessions] at the beginning just to see what the temperature of the discussion would be and to gauge if I would be able to bring up my own objections in a safe way—safe meaning for my career. And I’ve continually gotten the unspoken answer: ‘no,’” said the employee. “It’s been very stifling to feel like everyone keeps talking about having open dialogue and compassionate conversations, but when it comes down to it, I know if I said one thing that was truthful, based on data, or even just based on my own personal experience, it would actually be rather unwelcomed.”"