As the Daily Mailnoted on Thursday, CNN, ABC, CNN and MSNBChave
devoted little to no time discussing Cuomo's nursing home scandal, or
explosive new sexual harassment claims levied against the New York
governor.
WATCH: CNN’s Jim Acosta confronted at CPAC over his network’s failure to cover Cuomo’s multiple scandals. pic.twitter.com/5AWGIeZ55F
ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday avoided discussing the explosive new sexual harassment claims against New York Gov Andrew Cuomo during their evening news broadcasts.
Earlier on Wednesday, Lindsey Boylan, shared on Medium that
during her more than three years in the Democrat's administration,
Cuomo 'would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and
legs,' compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once
remarked they should play strip poker.
And according to Fox News,
which cited Grabien transcripts, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening
News, and NBC's Nightly News made no mention of Cuomo or the
allegations against him.
CNN and MSNBC also skipped over the allegations
against the governor whose spokesperson Caitlin Girouard said that all
Boylan's 'claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false'.
During
CNN host Chris Cuomo's segment Wednesday night, he discussed why
Democrats can't get a deal on pandemic relief, the January 6 Capitol
riot and the Boeing 777 incident from last weekend.
Maybe Marcus learned to interrupt people from Acosta?
vice | Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone
has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a
number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air
Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic
Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to
“provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the
warfighter.” It’s responsible for developing the technology behind the
Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines.
The patents all build on each other, but at their core is something Pais called the “Pais Effect.” This is the idea that,
“controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated
vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid
acceleration transients, in order to generate extremely high energy/high
intensity electromagnetic fields.”
Essentially,
Pais is claiming to use properly spun electromagnetic fields to contain
a fusion reaction. That plasma fusion reaction he claims to have
invented will revolutionize power consumption. Experts theorize that a functioning fusion reactor would lead to cheap and ubiquitous energy.
One of Pais and the Navy’s patents described what the propulsion system
and fusion drive would be used for—a “hybrid aerospace-underwater
craft.” According to the patent, the craft could travel land, sea, and
outer space at incredible speeds. Other patents invented by Pais and
filed by the Navy include a “high temperature superconductor,” a
“electromagnetic field generator,” and a “high frequency gravitational
wave generator.”
It
all sounds like science fiction, and the Navy has been skeptical too.
Navy authorities called bullshit on Pais’ inventions and his patents
went through a lengthy internal review at NAVAIR. The War Zone
obtained emails about the bureaucratic fight between Pais and the Navy
through a Freedom of Information Act Request and revealed that the mad scientist won. According to the patents, some of the technology is “operable.” That means the Navy is claiming some of Pais’ wild tech works and has been demonstrated to Navy officials.
The
physics of what Pais is claiming are beyond theoretical and beyond the
ken of the layman or lowly science reporter. But a paper about his
compaction fusion reactor was accepted by the peer reviewed Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Plasma Science and published in its November 2019 issue.
“The fact that my work on the design of a Compact Fusion Reactor was
accepted for publication in such a prestigious journal as IEEE TPS,
should speak volumes as to its importance and credibility - and should
eliminate (or at least alleviate) all misconceptions you (or any other
person) may have in regard to the veracity (or possibility) of my
advanced physics concepts,” Pais told The War Zone in an email.
Pais
continued to toot his own plasma horn. “Do realize that my work
culminates in the enablement of the Pais Effect (original physical
concept),” he said. “Such high energy [electromagnetic] radiation can
locally interact with the Vacuum Energy State (VES) - the VES being the
Fifth State of Matter (Fifth Essence - Quintessence), in other words the
fundamental structure (foundational framework), from which Everything
else (Spacetime included) in our Quantum Reality, emerges. The
Engineering of the Pais Effect can give rise to the Enablement of
Macroscopic Quantum Coherence, which if you have closely been following
my work, you understand the importance of.”
rhythmodynamics |What will, or
what should be the energy of the future? What natural phenomena and processes
will be at its bottom line? At what level of matter organization should one
look for these phenomena and processes? These questions increasingly trouble
the scientists engaged in exploring the new sources of energy, new means of its
production.
Traditional means of energy production, for
example, electricity, are known for their use of kinetic energy obtained
from the wind, heated steam or pressure of falling water. In the first and
second cases, it’s pressure difference which causes propulsion force, in the
third case – it’s the force of gravitation. To obtain pressure difference
artificially one has to use energy, burn fossil or nuclear fuel at power
plants. Hydroelectric power stations require no fuel of course, as they are
using a natural force of propulsion. Let’s examine the origin of this force and
assess a possibility of designing its artificial analogy.
Little is known of the nature of the force
of gravitation applied to experimental bodies. Lots of hypotheses exist, but
the question remains: what mechanism creates propulsion force causing bodies to
fall? What exactly causes the body to react by its free fall?
Note: experimental
body, a body whose potential is too small to disturb the outside field.
If it’s the field which ‘catches’ body
m
and then ‘drags’ it toward the earth’s surface, what’s the mechanism
of this?
Could the field be exerting its influence
on body m if the body stayed unaffected by the field’s presence? If
body m is to react, then why?
Is the cause of free fall entirely
external, or there are some changes taking place inside the body?
What is to change inside the body so as
make it move?
Rhythmodynamics
views bodies as systems of interacting synchronous elements (oscillating
experimental bodies) situated in a wave medium, the medium which has a
propensity to carry periodic disturbances and propagate them with constant
speed.
All principles
are examined in the case of the least possible elementary system (fig.1) made
up of two oscillating elements linked together by the standing wave.
Fig.1. The system has no reason to move in the wave
medium because positions of the sources-oscillators and potential holes (nodes)
coincide. The system is internally balanced.
The standing
wave, being a disturbed state of the medium, plays the role of a common
platform for the elements. Although this platform is floating in the wave
medium, it’s also rigid, because the system’s elements, engaged in exchange of
the wave energy, create potential holes and thereby fix each other there at a
set distance.
The elementary
system coming under pressure of internal or external factors may develop phase
or frequency displacements which break wave synchronism and upset the existing
balance.
Balance [equilibrium], a
state created by the forces of a different vector cancelled out so that the
system’s properties remain unaffected.
Dynamic
balance [dynamic equilibrium], a process in which the controlled system
develops in such a way which prevents significant deviation of the system from
the set trajectory caused by the medium disturbances.
NASA |
ABSTRACT - A new propulsion concept has been developed based on a
proposed resonance between coherent, pulsed electromagnetic wave forms
and gravitational wave forms (or space-time metrics). Using this
concept, a spacecraft "propulsion" system potentially capable of
galactic and inter-galactic travel without prohibitive "travel times"
has been designed. The "propulsion" system utilizes recent research
associated with magnetic field line merging, hydromagnetic wave effects,
free-electron lasers, laser generation of megagauss fields, and special
structural and containment metals. Research required to determine
potential, field resonance characteristics and to evaluate various
aspects of the spacecraft "propulsion" design is described.
ASSUMPTIONS The
field resonance "propulsion" concept has been developed utilizing
recent research into causes of solar flares, magnetic substorms, black
holes, quasars, and UFOs. The concept is based on two assumptions:
(1) Space-time is a "projection" of a higher dimensional space in
much the same way that a hologram is a projection or a subset of our
space-time reality, (2) A relationship exists between
electromagnetic / hydromagnetic fields and gravitational fields - that
is, Einstein's long sought for unified field theory can be developed.
Mathematical relationships have been developed and theoretical concepts
have been proposed to describe the causes and effects associated with
the assumptions, but experimental data is required to develop the
correct theoretical basis for the assumptions (Rachman and Dutheil,
1979). Specific research in a number of areas is needed and will be
described later.
ASTROPHYSICAL RESEARCH There does exist, however, some astrophysical data which tends to support these assumptions.
For
example, astronomers have speculated that a relationship may exist
between black holes and quasars (white holes). The energy and matter
which leaves space-time in a black hole may reappear at a white hole at
some distant space-time point. For this transfer of energy from one
space-time point to another to occur, some type of hyperspace or higher
dimensional space (4th & 5th) is required. Assumption 2 may be the
cause of the large amount of energy released in solar flairs. In
sunspot regions where solar flairs occur, the 2-3 thousand gauss
magnetic fields are configured such that the positive and negative
polarities are in close proximity with each other. Where the positive
and negative magnetic field lines are nearly anti-parallel a process
called magnetic field line merging can take place.
In this
process the oppositely directed field lines break and re-connect
expelling fields and plasma out from the sides. As a result magnetic
energy is converted into kinetic energy.
The magnetic field line
merging process has been proposed as the most likely explanation for
solar flare eruptions. However, some flares can release energy which
equals 10% of the suns' total output in a second. This large amount of
energy is difficult to achieve with the magnetic field line merging
concept.
Thus it may be that the configuration of the magnetic
fields and associated hydromagnetic waves (oscillation of field lines)
may induce a "resonance" with gravitational fields resulting in a
release of gravitational as well as magnetic energy.
It is well
known that the geometrical relationships of the magnetic fields (and
thus the field gradients) are more important to the production of solar
flairs than the magnitude of the field strength.
A strongly
convoluted boundary between magnetic polarities results in a high
probability for large and frequent flares. Another fact of interest is
that hydromagnetic waves generated by solar flare have been observed to
propagate across the chromospheric surface and trigger flares in other
sun spot regions.
Alfven waves, which appear to be the dominant
wave form involved, change only the geometry of the field lines. This
effect also indicates that the initiation of solar flares definitely
depends on geometrical relationships as do the properties of space-time
and gravitational fields.
Magnetic field line merging has also
been used to explain the interaction of the solar wind (and associated
fields) with the Earth's magnetic fields at the magnetopause and the
generation of magnetic substorms which often are triggered by solar
flairs.
The magnetic fields line merging process is also an essential part of the field resonance "propulsion" concept.
...., high on power and feeling their full Cartman, "respeck my author-i-teh!!!" these SUNY assclowns forgot they're a public university and that by extension, their censorship and censure of this kid is an explicit violation of his 1st Amendment rights.
jonathanturley | There could be a significant First Amendment case brewing in New York
after the School of Education at the State University of New
York-Geneseo suspended student Owen Stevens
for posting his view that gender is limited to biologically males and
females. As a state institution, SUNY is subject to the limitations of
the First Amendment and Stevens could challenge the action based on his
statements on Instagram.
I have not been able to find the letter sent to Stevens by the school but it is quoted on a conservative website, The Daily Wire. According to that report, Owen posted on Instagram that there are only two genders. This may be that posting:
The school reportedly maintains that such statements made on social
media are grounds for suspension and other disciplinary action. While
she did not refer to him by name, SUNY-Geneseo President Denise Battles
sent out a message stating that “[y]esterday, I was made aware of a
current student’s Instagram posts pertaining to transgender people.”
Battles acknowledges that “There are clear legal limitations to what a
public university can do in response to objectionable speech. As a
result, there are few tools at our disposal to reduce the pain that such
speech may cause.” However, the school then suspended Stevens.
A spokesperson is quoted by the Daily Wire declaring
students must follow the “professional standards” of their chosen field
by acting and behaving in ways that “may differ from their personal
predilections.”
That does not sound like an accommodation of the First Amendment,
which protects your right to express your “personal predilections.” Many
object to his view of transgender persons, but it is a view that often
expresses a myriad of religious, political, social, and biological
beliefs.
NYTimes | On Oct. 28, 2018, Ms. McCartney released a 35-page report from
a law firm with a specialty in discrimination investigations. The
report cleared Ms. Blair altogether and found no sufficient evidence of
discrimination by anyone else involved, including the janitor who called
campus police.
Still, Ms.
McCartney said the report validated Ms. Kanoute’s lived experience,
notably the fear she felt at the sight of the police officer. “I suspect
many of you will conclude, as did I,” she wrote, “it is impossible to
rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.”
The
report said Ms. Kanoute could not point to anything that supported the
claim she made on Facebook of a yearlong “pattern of discrimination.”
Ms.
McCartney offered no public apology to the employees after the report
was released. “We were gobsmacked — four people’s lives wrecked, two
were employees of more than 35 years and no apology,” said Tracey Putnam
Culver, a Smith graduate who recently retired from the college’s
facilities management department. “How do you rationalize that?”
Rahsaan
Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms.
Kanoute’s lawyer, cautioned against drawing too much from the
investigative report, as subconscious bias is difficult to prove. Nor
was he particularly sympathetic to the accused workers.
“It’s
troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by
the actual racism in our society,” he said. “Allegations of being
racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with
the consequences of actual racism.”
Ms. Blair was reassigned to a different
dormitory, as Ms. Kanoute lived in the one where she had labored for
many years. Her first week in her new job, she said, a female student
whispered to another: There goes the racist.
Anti-bias
training began in earnest in the fall. Ms. Blair and other cafeteria
and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by
Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which
many viewed as psychologically intrusive. Ms. Blair recalled growing
silent and wanting to crawl inside herself.
The
faculty are not required to undergo such training. Professor Lendler
said in an interview that such training for working-class employees
risks becoming a kind of psychological bullying. “My response would be,
‘Unless it relates to conditions of employment, it’s none of your
business what I was like growing up or what I should be thinking of,’”
he said.
nationalreview | Here’s the real story. What Senator Paul asked and what Levine refused
to answer was this: “Do you believe that minors are capable of making
such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?” And this, “Do you
support the government’s intervening to override the parent’s consent to
give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation
surgery of breasts and genitalia?”
As Senator Paul referenced, these are the very same questions that
appeared before the High Court in England and Wales last year. In his
questioning of Levine, Senator Paul cited the plaintiff in that case,
Keira Bell:
I would hope that you would have compassion for Keira
Bell, who’s a 23-year-old girl who was confused with her identity. At
14, she read on the internet about something about transsexuals and she
thought, “Well, maybe that’s what I am.” She ended up getting these
puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, she had her breasts amputated.
But here’s what ultimately she says now, and this is a very
insightful decision from someone who made a mistake, but was led to
believe this was a good thing by the medical community.
“I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do,
trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life
will be negatively affected,” she said, adding that the medicalized
gender transitioning was a very temporary superficial fix for a very
complex identity issue.
Having reviewed the evidence from all sides, the judges in Bell’s
case concluded that it was “highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or
under would be competent to give consent to the administration of
puberty blockers,” adding that it was also “doubtful that a child aged
14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences
of the administration of puberty blockers.”
Accordingly, the court ordered a National Health Service moratorium
on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for
gender-dysphoric young people.
Got that New York Times, et al.? The Keira Bell decision
happened in Enlightened, secular Britain — and at the behest of
impartial and liberal-minded judges. Unfortunately, in the absence of a
similar judicial intervention — or indeed of a centralized health-care
system — the situation in the United States is far more out of control.
There are currently 40+ transgender-youth clinics (and counting) in
the United States, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The largest
transgender-youth clinic in Los Angeles saw more than 1,000 patients in
2019; the youngest patient was four years old. And the director of that
clinic has admitted to personally recommending double mastectomies for
“probably about 200” adolescent females, a decision she has justified by
the argument that “they don’t identify as girls,” thus breast removal
is actually “chest reconstruction.” Similarly, a study entitled “Age Is
Just a Number,” published in 2017 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, reveals
that eleven out of the 20 surgeons interviewed admitted to having
performed vaginoplasty — that is, castration followed by the inversion
of the penis to form a pseudo-vaginal canal — “1 to 20” times on males
under the age of 18.
If the British judges think that minors can’t consent to taking drugs
and hormones to halt puberty, how likely is it that a minor can consent
to having his or her sexual organs removed or mutilated?
conandaily |Jessica Marie Watkins is a white transgender woman from Ohio, United States. Here are 13 more things about her:
She lives in Woodstock, Champaign County, Ohio. (a)
In 2001, she graduated from high school and joined the U.S. Army.
She completed airborne training before being deployed to Afghanistan. (a)
From 2010 to 2014, she worked for the Stoney Point Fire Department
in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina, USA. She started as
a volunteer before becoming a full-time firefighter and emergency
medical technician. (a)
She met her longtime boyfriend Montana Siniff playing
“Magic: The Gathering” in a card shop in Hilliard, Franklin County,
Ohio. In 2018, they bought a bar in Woodstock and moved into the
apartment upstairs. (a)
She is a member of the Oath Keepers. She is also the commanding officer of the Ohio State Regular Militia,
which she formed in 2019 after a string of tornadoes ripped through
Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio. In the same year, she and Siniff
started running their newly purchased bar in Woodstock. (a) (b)
In 2020, she renamed her bar in Woodstock as the Jolly Roger and regularly watched videos on Infowars, the far-right conspiracy-driven website run by Alex Jones, according to Siniff. In the same year, answering a nationwide call from Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, Ohio State Regular Militia members patrolled Louisville, Kentucky, USA amid protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor. (a)
Days after Donald Trumplost to Joe Biden
in November 2020, Siniff accompanied her as they answered a call from
the Oath Keepers to go to Washington, D.C. to attend Trump’s Million
MAGA March. She and Siniff stayed at the farm of Oath Keepers member Thomas Edward Caldwell in Virginia, USA. (a)
On January 4, 2021, she left Ohio with Ohio State Regular Militia members. (b)
Wearing goggles, a bulletproof vest and fatigues bearing Oath Keeper
insignias, she went to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.,
USA on January 6, 2021 with eight other Oath Keepers members including Donovan Crowl.
usatoday | On his first day in office last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order which
threatened to pull federal funding from schools unless they allow
transgender women to compete on girls’ sports teams. On Thursday, the
House passed a bill that would write this policy permanently into law.
Like
many Americans with common sense, we strongly oppose these radical and
unfair measures. And like many parents, our opposition is rooted in the
care and concern we have for our daughters.
Participation
in sports has had a positive impact on countless young women, helping
them to develop leadership skills and learn to work together as a team.
Striving to be the best is the goal, and valuable opportunities can stem
from the competition. However, these lessons and opportunities would
be seriously endangered if transgender women are allowed to compete in
girls' sports.Indeed, the entirety of women's athletics would be deeply imperiled.
This reality cannot be ignored. It could even be dangerous.
For
example, consider the implications of a young woman competing in boxing
or another physical sport being matched up with a biological male
opponent. Besides likely being at a fundamental disadvantage, she might
also be at increased risk of severe injury based on physical
differences. Unfortunately, this hypothetical has already played out in a 2013 incident, and it could have major consequences on the whole of women’s sports should such situations become more normal.
CNN |Caster Semenya,
the South African Olympic champion runner, has appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights to end "discriminatory" testosterone limits
imposed on female athletes.
Semenya
is hyperandrogenous -- meaning she has naturally high levels of the
male sex hormone -- and is fighting against new rules introduced in 2019
by track and field's governing body World Athletics (previously known
as the IAAF) that regulate levels of the hormone in female athletes.
This fight is not just about me, it's about taking a stand and fighting for dignity, equality and the human rights of women in sport. All we ask is to be able to run free as the strong and fearless women we are!! Thank you to all of those who have stood behind me✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/0PdBiujH8b
World Athletics said the rules were about "leveling the playing field" because, it said, testosterone "provides significant performance advantages in female athletes."
Semenya
took the 800 meters gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics but the rules
mean she will now need to take testosterone-reducing medication in order
to compete internationally over distances between 400
She is now training to qualify for the 200 meters at the postponed Tokyo Olympics, which will take place later this year.
In
April 2019, Semenya lost an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for
Sport. In September 2020, she lost an appeal made to Switzerland's
Federal Supreme Court but vowed to continue to "fight for the human
rights of female athletes."
The
latest appeal, to the European Court of Human Rights, was announced
Thursday in a press release from Semenya's lawyers, Norton Rose
Fulbright.
The
press release calls on the court to find that, in its dismissal of
Semenya's appeal, Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court "failed" in its
obligations to uphold her human rights.
NYTimes | It’s often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an
unknown source, and people can be led astray by false information. Influenced by the research
of Sam Wineburg, a professor at Stanford, and Sarah McGrew, an
assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Mr. Caulfield argued
that the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere, a concept called lateral reading.
For instance, imagine you were to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist
message board, to try to understand racist claims in order to debunk
them. “Even if you see through the horrible rhetoric, at the end of the
day you gave that place however many minutes of your time,” Mr.
Caulfield said. “Even with good intentions, you run the risk of
misunderstanding something, because Stormfront users are way better at
propaganda than you. You won’t get less racist reading Stormfront
critically, but you might be overloaded by information and overwhelmed.”
One way to combat this dynamic is to change how we teach media literacy:
Internet users need to learn
In 2016, Mr. Caulfield met Mr. Wineburg,
who suggested modeling the process after the way professional fact
checkers assess information. Mr. Caulfield refined the practice into
four simple principles:
1. Stop.
2. Investigate the source.
3. Find better coverage.
4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.
Otherwise known as SIFT.
Mr.
Caulfield walked me through the process using an Instagram post from
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, falsely
alleging a link between the human papillomavirus vaccine and cancer. “If
this is not a claim where I have a depth of understanding, then I want
to stop for a second and, before going further, just investigate the
source,” Mr. Caulfield said. He copied Mr. Kennedy’s name in the
Instagram post and popped it into Google. “Look how fast this is,” he
told me as he counted the seconds out loud. In 15 seconds, he navigated
to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page,
highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which reads that Mr.
Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.
“Is
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best, unbiased source on information about a
vaccine? I’d argue no. And that’s good enough to know we should probably
just move on,” he said.
that our attention is a scarce commodity
that is to be spent wisely.
tabletmag | Of
course there are real inequities in America, some of which are grounded
in the legacies of racial discrimination. But visions to transform the
country must reflect as complete and accurate a picture of social
reality as can possibly be achieved. Steamrolling or suppressing
inconvenient facts leaves us with a picture of reality that’s likely to
be incomplete, erroneous, and consequently, harmful to progress.
Which
brings us to the media’s selective and race-driven reporting on deadly
police shootings. If the ultimate goal of such media coverage and the
protests they generate is to effect police reform—greater transparency,
accountability, etc.—the fetishization of Black victims of police
shooting is hard to understand. Indeed, if this objective is paramount,
then it would be best served by saturating the newswire whenever a
person of any race is unjustly killed by law enforcement.
Indeed, the more radical the goal of the movement, the more important it
would appear to be that it attempt to appeal to the largest possible
segment of the populace. That there is no dispositive evidence of racial bias in police use of deadly force would make this approach even more advisable. However, a recent analysis of mine shows that the opposite is happening.
Using data from TheWashington Post Police Shootings database
(2015-2020), I tallied and compared the number of search results for
unarmed white versus Black police-shooting victims in a large data
archive (ProQuest). In the end, and as depicted in the graph below,
unarmed Black police-shooting victims generated nine times the number of
news search results as white victims. What is more, roughly 32% of
white victims generated zero search results as compared to just 12% of
Black victims. None of
these differences are explained by the elapsed time since the shooting
nor any of the contextual, victim, or incident-related variables
included in The Washington Post dataset (e.g., whether the
victim fled from the responding officer, whether the victim attacked the
responding officer, or whether the responding officer wore a body cam).
What
the data presented here suggests is that editorial decisions made over
the past decade at some of the most powerful media outlets in the world
about what kind of language to use and what kind of stories merited
coverage when it came to race—whatever the intention and level of
forethought behind such decisions—has stoked a revival of racial
consciousness among their readers. Intentionally or not, by introducing
and then constantly repeating a set of key words and concepts,
publications like The New York Times have helped normalize
among their readership the belief that “color” is the defining attribute
of other human beings. For those who adopt this singular focus on race,
a racialized view of the world becomes baseline test of political
loyalty. It requires adherents to overlook the immense diversity among
so-called “People of Color” and “People Not-of-Color” (i.e., whoever is
being lumped together as “white” according to the prevailing ideological
fashion). In doing so, it has made stereotypes socially acceptable, if
not laudable.
The
same media institutions that have promoted revanchist identitarianism
and the radical transformation of American society along racial lines,
could instead have focused their attention and influence on improving
the quality of life for all. Working to ensure that
Americans of any background aren’t unjustly victimized by the police and
have access to quality health care, schools, and affordable housing
doesn’t require the promotion of a “race-consciousness” that divides
society into “oppressed” and “privileged” color categories. To the
contrary, it requires that we de-emphasize these categories and unite in
pursuit of common interests. This may not suit the media’s
prerogatives, and it may not appeal to activists whose desire for
cultural “recognition” trumps their devotion to material progress, but
it does offer the potential benefit of improving the lives of ordinary
Americans.
aier | The Overestimated Dangers of Covid and Underestimated Dangers of Lockdowns
Covid-19 is disproportionately lethal to the very old and ill, and heavily so. In the United States as of February 17th, 2021, nearly a third (31.8%) of “All Deaths Involving Covid-19” – as defined and reported by the CDC
– were of persons 85 years old and older. Nearly 60 percent (59.6%) of
these deaths were of persons 75 years of age and older. More than 81
percent (81.3%) were of people 65 years of age and older. Despite
media-trumpeted exceptions, serious suffering from Covid-19 is largely
an experience for very old people.
Covid’s overall lethality compared to that of the seasonal flu is no more than 10 times greater. (Some estimates have Covid’s lethality, compared to that of the flu, to be as low as 3.5 times greater.)
Of course, because Covid’s lethality undeniably rises significantly
with age, for the elderly Covid is far more than 10 times as deadly than
is the flu, and for young people Covid is much less than ten times as
deadly. (Keep in mind that the numbers in this and the previous two
paragraphs come chiefly from before any vaccines were administered.)
Lockdowns
themselves have negative health consequences. How could they not, even
if the only such effect arises because of people’s increased difficulty
of visiting physicians for non-Covid-related illnesses and injuries? But there is evidence that negative health consequences of lockdowns extend beyond those that arise from delayed or foregone medical treatments.
Lockdowns
have negative personal and social consequences. Avoiding contact with
family and friends, even during holidays. Inability to fraternize at
your favorite gym, coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Restrictions on
travel. Even if you believe that these costs are worth paying, you
cannot deny that these costs are serious.
Lockdowns have a
severe negative impact on economic activity. How could they not, given
that people are prevented from going to work and from engaging in much
ordinary commercial activity? There’s debate about how much of the
decline in economic activity is caused by voluntary action and how much
is caused by the forcible lockdowns. Even in light of the likelihood
that people’s fear of Covid is further stoked by the very fact that
governments’ resort to the dramatic action of locking us down, evidence exists that a great deal of economic damage was caused by the lockdowns themselves.
forbes |Minor reactions
following Covid-19 vaccination are common, and can include fever,
chills, fatigue, body aches, a bump or redness at the injection site, or
lymph node swelling. All of these are signs that the immune system is
appropriately responding by developing antibodies. This is a good thing
(although do not fear if you have no reaction at all— this is also
fine). These reactions are more commonly seen in younger individuals,
and because lymph node swelling tends to develop as a reaction to a
nearby area of the body, the nodes in the armpit region can become
inflamed after the Covid-19 vaccine. As these lymph nodes are near the
outer breast tissue, women have raised valid concerns that these lymph
nodes are breast masses or breast cancer metastases.
As one in eight women will develop breast cancer in her lifetime,
this is an important distinction to address. Because as common as breast
cancer is, inflamed lymph nodes due to breast cancer are very rare, and
cause for more concern. Less than 0.5% of patients
with breast cancer present with axillary (armpit) lymph nodes, but when
they are present in the setting of cancer, there is a 50% chance that
they are either cancerous or representing another type of cancer such as
leukemia or lymphoma. This finding has led many women to seek early
evaluation, including surgical consultations and mammography or
ultrasonography to assess these lymph nodes following their Covid-19
vaccine.
Axillary lymph node swelling was seen in both men and women during both the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccine trials. The Moderna trial
reported approximately 6% of patients after the first dose and about 8%
after the second dose with temporary axillary lymph node swelling. The
overwhelming majority of these swellings did not require pain
medications or medical assessment, and most lasted no more than three
days. Trial participants under age 64 developed axillary lymph nodes
twice as often as those ages 65 years and older. The Covid-19 vaccine is
not the first vaccination
to present with axillary lymph node swelling. This has also been
reported after the flu vaccine, hepatitis vaccines, polio vaccine, and
the tetanus vaccine, to name a few. These similarly lead to local,
temporary reactions to the body’s immune response.
In the January 2021 issue of Clinical Imaging, the authors discuss four cases of women presenting with axillary lymph nodes
following Covid-19 vaccination, under the same arm as the injection
site. The recommendation in their article is to repeat imaging several
weeks after this finding, instead of heading to more aggressive
interventions such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or biopsy. Dr.
Sunny Mitchell, Medical Director of Breast and Women’s Services and
Director of Breast Surgery at Montefiore Nyack Hospital in New York
commented, “We are seeing unilateral axillary adenopathy on breast
imaging, [such as] Mammogram, Ultrasound, and Breast MRI after Covid-19
vaccinations are administered. This is presenting in individuals with a
history of breast cancer as well as no history of breast cancer. Breast
Radiologists are considering short term follow-up/repeat imaging prior
to recommending a biopsy in these situations.”
consentfactory | So, good news, folks! It appears that GloboCap’s Genetic Modification
Division has come up with a miracle vaccine for Covid! It’s an
absolutely safe, non-experimental, messenger-RNA vaccine that teaches
your cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response, just
like your body’s immune-system response, only better, because it’s made
by corporations!
OK, technically, it hasn’t been approved for use — that process
normally takes several years — so I guess it’s slightly “experimental,”
but the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines
Agency have issued “Emergency Use Authorizations,” and it has been
“tested extensively for safety and effectiveness,” according to
Facebook’s anonymous “fact checkers,” so there’s absolutely nothing to
worry about.
Imagine all the diseases we can cure, and all the genetic “mistakes”
we can fix, now that we can reprogram people’s genes to do whatever we
want … cancer, heart disease, dementia, blindness, not to mention the
common cold! We could even cure psychiatric disorders, like “antisocial personality disorder,” “oppositional defiant disorder,” and other “conduct disorders” and “personality disorders.”
Who knows? In another hundred years, we will probably be able to
genetically cleanse the human species of age-old scourges, like racism,
sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, transphobia, etcetera, by
reprogramming everyone’s defective alleles, or implanting some kind of
nanotechnological neurosynaptic chips into our brains. The only thing
standing in our way is people’s totally irrational resistance to letting
corporations redesign the human organism, which, clearly, was rather
poorly designed, and thus is vulnerable to all these horrible diseases,
and emotional and behavioral disorders.
The US has been blanketed by an orgy of hand-wringing, pearl-clutching,
handkerchief-soaking grief and horror occasioned by this once-vibrant
nation reaching a memorable reported Megadeath Virus of Doom death
total.
Here are just a handful of headlines memorializing this grim milestone:
_________________________________________
theverge | The Economic Security Project is trying to make a point
about big tech monopolies by releasing a browser plugin that will block
any sites that reach out to IP addresses owned by Google, Facebook,
Microsoft, or Amazon. The extension is called Big Tech Detective,
and after using the internet with it for a day (or, more accurately,
trying and failing to use), I’d say it drives home the point that it’s
almost impossible to avoid these companies on the modern web, even if
you try.
Currently, the app has to be side-loaded onto Chrome, and
the Economic Security Project expects that will remain the case. It’s
also available to side-load onto Firefox.
By default, it just keeps track of how many requests are sent, and to
which companies. If you configure the extension to actually block
websites, you’ll see a big red popup if the website you’re visiting
sends a request to any of the four. That popup will also include a list
of all the requests so you can get an idea of what’s being asked for.
It’s worth keeping in mind that just because a site
reaches out to one or more of the big four tech companies, it doesn’t
mean that it’s necessarily snooping or doing something nefarious. Many
websites use fonts from Google Fonts, or host their sites using Amazon
Web Services or Microsoft Azure. That said, there are pages that connect
to those IP addresses because they use trackers provided by one of the
big four companies. The examples I’m about to list were selected because
they’re common sites, not necessarily because they should be shamed. Fist tap Dale.
foxnews | America is becoming a "totalitarian state before our eyes" under President Biden's leadership, feminist author and former Democratic adviser Naomi Wolf told "Tucker Carlson Tonight" Monday.
Wolf, who served as an adviser on Bill Clinton's reelection campaign in 1996,
told host Tucker Carlson that in her view, the United States is swiftly
"moving into a coup situation, a police state" as a result of Biden's
ongoing coronavirus-related
economic shutdowns. Wolf added that she believes the orders are being
improperly extended under the "guise of a real medical pandemic."
If I’d known Biden was open to ‘lockdowns’ as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic, and a terrifying practice, one that won’t ever end because elites love it, I would never have voted for him.
"That
is not a partisan thing," Wolf told Carlson. "That transcends
everything that you and I might disagree or agree on. That should bring
together left and right to protect our Constitution."
Wolf has ramped up her warnings against extended lockdowns on Twitter in recent months. In November, the author wrote on Twitter that Biden’s openness to reinstating additional shutdowns made her question her decision to vote for him.
"The state has now crushed businesses, kept us from gathering in free
assembly to worship as the First Amendment provides, is invading our
bodies ... which is a violation of the Fourth Amendment,
restricting movement, fining us in New York state ... the violations go
on and on," she said.
The outspoken liberal, who previously
authored a book outlining the ten steps that "would-be tyrants always
take when they want to close down a democracy," believes the United
States is heading toward what she refers to as "step 10."
"Whether
they are on the left or the right, they do these same ten things," Wolf
explained, "and now we’re at something I never thought I would see in
my lifetime ... it is step 10 and that is the suspension of the rule of
law and that is when you start to be a police state, and we’re here.
There is no way around it."
thebureauinvestigates | Pfizer has been accused of “bullying” Latin American governments in
Covid vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up
sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a
guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases, the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism can reveal.
In the case of one country, demands made by the pharmaceutical giant
led to a three-month delay in a vaccine deal being agreed. For Argentina
and Brazil, no national deals were agreed at all. Any hold-up in
countries receiving vaccines means more people contracting Covid-19 and
potentially dying.
Officials from Argentina and the other Latin American country, which
cannot be named as it has signed a confidentiality agreement with
Pfizer, said the company’s negotiators demanded additional indemnity
against any civil claims citizens might file if they experienced adverse
effects after being inoculated. In Argentina and Brazil, Pfizer asked
for sovereign assets to be put up as collateral for any future legal
costs.
One official who was present in the unnamed country’s negotiations
described Pfizer’s demands as “high-level bullying” and said the
government felt like it was being “held to ransom” in order to access
life-saving vaccines.
Campaigners are already warning of a “vaccine apartheid”
in which rich Western countries may be inoculated years before poorer
regions. Now, legal experts have raised concerns that Pfizer’s demands
amount to an abuse of power.
“Pharmaceutical companies shouldn't be using their power to limit
life-saving vaccines in low- and middle-income countries,” said
Professor Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization’s
Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “[This] seems to
be exactly what they're doing.”
Protection against liability shouldn’t be used as “the sword of
Damocles hanging over the heads of desperate countries with a desperate
population,” he added.
Pfizer has been in talks with more than 100 countries and
supranational organisations, and has supply agreements with nine
countries in Latin America and the Caribbean: Chile, Colombia, Costa
Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay.
The terms of those deals are unknown.
Pfizer told the Bureau: “Globally, we have also allocated doses to
low- and lower-middle-income countries at a not-for-profit price,
including an advance purchase agreement with Covax to provide up to 40
million doses in 2021. We are committed to supporting efforts aimed at
providing developing countries with the same access to vaccines as the
rest of the world.” It declined to comment on ongoing private
negotiations.
Most governments are offering indemnity – exemption from legal
liability – to the vaccine manufacturers they are buying from. This
means that a citizen who suffers an adverse effect after being
vaccinated can file a claim against the manufacturer and, if successful,
the government would pay the compensation. In some countries people can
also apply for compensation through specific structures without going
to court.
Bill Gates recently stated that he views Pfizer(NYSE:PFE) as the leader in the coronavirus vaccine race.
In a CNBC interview, he said, "The only vaccine that, if everything
went perfectly, might seek the emergency use license by the end of
October, would be Pfizer."
The Gates Foundation also owns shares of the big drugmaker. However,
this investment wasn't initiated because of Pfizer's coronavirus
program. Actually, the foundation first bought a stake in Pfizer back in
2002 with the stated intention of "expand[ing] access to the
pharmaceutical company's all-in-one injectable contraceptive, Sayana
Press, giving women in the developing world an affordable option."
Gates is probably correct in assessing Pfizer as the coronavirus
vaccine leader. The company expects to report initial results next month
from a late-stage study of BNT162b2, the COVID-19 vaccine candidate
that it's developing with BioNTech(NASDAQ:BNTX). If all goes well, BNT162b2 could very well become the first coronavirus vaccine available to Americans.
BioNTech
It's not surprising that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation also
owns shares of BioNTech. Again, though, the nonprofit foundation didn't
invest in the German biotech stock because of its coronavirus program.
The Gates Foundation first bought a position in
BioNTech in September 2019, well before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It
invested $55 million in the biotech, with the potential for total
funding to reach $100 million. The foundation's goal with this
investment was to work with BioNTech to develop vaccines and
immunotherapies for preventing HIV and tuberculosis (TB) infection.
BioNTech began developing its BNT162 COVID-19 vaccine program earlier
this year. It had already made significant progress with this program
when it announced a partnership with Pfizer in March.
Toward a Biophysics of Poetry
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My long-term interest in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” (KK) is shadowed by an
interest in “This Line-Tree Bower My Prison,” (LTB) which is one of the
so-calle...
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
Monsters are people too
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Comet 3I/Atlas is on its way out on a hyberbolic course to, I don't know
where. I do know that 1I/Oumuamua is heading for the constellation Pegasus,
and ...
Remembering the Spanish Civil War
-
This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
War, an epoch-defining event for the international working class, whose
close study...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
post this)
SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
First Member of Chumph Cartel Goes to Jail
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
them convicted and jailed is going to do too much better than your run of
the mill ...
