nationalinterest | The Pentagon is massively fast-tracking its
Next-Generation Interceptor program to deploy a missile defense
technology capable of tracking and destroying a new sphere of enemy
threats to include high-speed, precision-guided intercontinental
ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and hypersonic weapons potentially traveling
through space.
Mobile ICBM launchers, nuclear weapons
traveling at hypersonic speeds, multiple precision-guided re-entry
vehicles and multiple missiles attack at once, each with several
separating warheads are all very serious threats the Missile Defense
Agency (MDA) and industry are working quickly to counter through a
series of innovations, science and technology efforts, new weapons
development such as a Next-Generation Interceptor (NGI) initiative aimed
at deploying a new missile defense weapon by the end of the decade.
Intended to introduce paradigm-changing technologies, the emerging
NGI is being engineered to destroy multiple ICBMs at one time while also
distinguishing actual ICBMs from debris, decoys or enemy
countermeasures. This requires a new measure of seeker discernment able
to discriminate actual threats from decoys or track multiple threats at
once.
The initial thinking was that the new NGI will emerge by the end
of the decade, and it now appears the MDA is working with a
Raytheon-Northrop Grumman NGI team to see if the timeframe can be accelerated and possibly
be ready by as early as 2028. Northrop Grumman and Raytheon Missiles
& Defense are slated to provide the interceptor booster, kill
vehicle, ground systems, fire control and engagement coordination for
the country’s Ground Midcourse Defense (GMD) system.
Missile Defense Agency Director Vice Adm. Jon Hill said the
Pentagon’s number one requirement with the NGI is “speed and schedule,”
adding “we’ll be testing a little bit earlier.”
While a lot of detail about the technological configuration and
components of the emerging NGI are likely not available for security
reasons, the Pentagon’s request to industry did mention the possibility
of engineering a single interceptor able to carry multiple kill
vehicles.
“It is a really complex threat set and there is a lot of complex technology coming forward,” Hill said.
Northrop Grumman has partnered with Raytheon on an NGI development program to optimize innovations and technical progress from
each company through programs such as Northrop’s Ground Based Strategic
Deterrent ICBM and Raytheon’s Standard Missile-3 Block IIA interceptor,
both of which harness breakthrough technologies in the areas of sensing
discrimination, targeting precision, range and functional reliability.
spectatorworld | A more concerning tactic has been the application of negative
pressure to achieve social conformity. The vaccine-resistant have been
called ‘Covidiots’, ‘granny killers’ and, lately, ‘refuseniks’. Tony
Blair said recently that it was ‘time to distinguish’ between the
vaccinated and the unvaccinated: substitute race or another protected
characteristic and this is an ugly look. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz
described ultra-Orthodox Jews who do not follow the state’s vaccination
rules as ‘COVID insurgents’ and ‘terrorists’ in starkly obvious
bio-political language.
The implications are obvious: the vaccinated are clean and safe; the
unvaccinated are unclean, unsafe, worthy of ridicule and exclusion. The
writer Nick Cohen predicts a period of ‘class and racial strife’ and
observes ‘it is only a matter of time before we turn on the
unvaccinated’. Such a narrative of dehumanization is a serious threat to
weigh against encouraging vaccines and adherence to lockdowns.
‘Behavioral psychologists focus on what you can get people to do, on
short-term issues of behavior, not long-term issues of trust,’ says Dr
Jackie Cassell. In the haste to bring a speedy resolution to a pandemic,
to fast forward to a happy ending, what might happen to long-term
confidence in public health messaging, including future vaccination
programs? Emergency recourse to oversimplified pressure might not be the
best solution for the unsure, who may be more likely to benefit from an
in-depth conversation with a healthcare provider than from a cash
prize.
Fear has created a morality play where heavy-handed get-the-shot
tactics are privileged over the development of long-term trust. While
the current pandemic may necessitate a quick-fix approach, the long-term
objectives of improving vaccine confidence and overall trust in medical
science must not be lost. More threatening still, dehumanizing tactics
to deter anti-vax sentiment will divide us.
Some will rush, arms outstretched and sleeves rolled up, toward
syringes and sweets. Some will hang back, deterred by an eerily hard
sell. In the desperate desire to end the Horrible Story of the COVID-19
Pandemic, are we rushing toward a conclusion without being certain of
our priorities?
kunstler | America is on a bad trip. The country has lost its way
psychologically. Two things will be required to bring it out of the
fugue state it tripped into five years ago: some significant shocks to
the system and the passage of time. Those shocks are in the offing and
the “Joe Biden” regime — meaning Barack Obama and his wing-people who
run things — are looking more and more desperate as auguries manifest.
Their current tactical hustle is to amp up paranoia over the receding
Covid-19 episode. It looks like an attempt to smokescreen the emerging
evidence of massive and widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, and
the growing eagerness of a few other states besides Arizona to mount
audits of what went on last November 3rd. The supposed surge in new
Covid cases is really just a tiny blip, considering it comes off a
baseline of close to zero cases in many places. 11,140 so far have died
from Covid vaccinations, according to the Vaccine Adverse Event
Reporting System (VAERS). Last week 2,092 deaths from vaccinations were
added versus 1,918 deaths from the virus. Countries with the highest
vaccination rates are showing the most new Covid cases.
Yet, it’s looking like the idea is to set up the unvaxed for blame as
“Joe Biden’s” legitimacy dissolves and the country finds itself in a
political crisis because there’s nothing in the constitution that
provides for removing a president elected fraudulently, even if the
nation is crumbling around him. Vaccine disinformation is killing
people, Mr. “B” warned last week. CBS 60-Minutes led its Sunday
night show with more Covid scare stories. The message is everywhere
that you must get vaxed-up, and, if you don’t, there may be severe
penalties. Those likely to opt out of a vax are exactly those people who
distrust what the government tells them, meaning probably people who
did not vote for the current occupant of the White House. As it happens,
though, the number of people who distrust government is expanding even
beyond that demographic.
The regime must know that evidence of massive voting fraud and the
loss of political legitimacy will coincide with a financial train wreck
that looks to be chugging out of the station this very morning with all
asset indexes tanking as I write. There are even fresh reports of an
asteroid heading directly towards Washington DC this week. (So said
Devin Nunes, ranking member on the House Intel Committee, over the
weekend.) The asteroid is the long-rumored return from deep space of
Special Prosecutor John Durham with some interesting announcements
concerning the most poisonous narrative of this era: the RussiaGate
collusion hoax finally revealed as a seditious conspiracy by high
government officials in the Department of Justice and the Intel
agencies. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Obama and his wing-people
turned up in that mix. Won’t that be a nice accessory to “Joe Biden’s”
presidential flame-out? And won’t that be just the ripe moment for China
to move against Taiwan? Lawkes a’mighty… feets don’t desert me now!
The turmoil could get pretty hairy by summer’s end. Money will be
flooding the system with the predictable loss of money’s legitimacy, at
the same time that a massive debt repudiation gets under way.
Hyperinflation and debt default at the same time? Sounds improbable, I
know, since the former means too much money and the latter means money
is disappearing like crazy. What it really means is that everything gets
repriced rapidly and violently, and not necessarily in US dollars.
Banks will not like this one teensy weensy bit.
AL | Dr. Brytney Cobia said Monday that
all but one of her COVID patients in Alabama did not receive the
vaccine. The vaccinated patient, she said, just needed a little oxygen
and is expected to fully recover. Some of the others are dying.
“I’m
admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID
infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in
Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday.
“One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for
the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s
too late.”
Three COVID-19 vaccines
have been widely available in Alabama for months now, yet the state is
last in the nation in vaccination rate, with only 33.7 percent of the
population fully vaccinated. COVID-19 case numbers and hospitalizations are surging yet again due to the more contagious Delta variant of the virus and Alabama’s low vaccination rate.
For
the first year and a half of the pandemic, Cobia and hundreds of other
Alabama physicians caring for critically ill COVID-19 patients worked
themselves to the bone trying to save as many as possible.
“Back in 2020 and early 2021, when the vaccine wasn’t available, it was just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy,” Cobia told AL.com this week. “You know, so many people that did all the right things, and yet still came in, and were critically ill and died.”
“A
few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook,
“I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their
loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to
do the same.”
“They cry. And they
tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it
was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a
certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just
the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But
they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back
to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this
loss will save more lives.”
More
than 11,400 Alabamians have died of COVID so far, but midway through
2021, caring for COVID patients is a different story than it was in the
beginning. Cobia said it’s different mentally and emotionally to care
for someone who could have prevented their disease but chose not to.
townhall | By a vote of 216 to 207 Tuesday evening, Democrats in the House of
Representatives blocked consideration of a bill that would require the
Director of National Intelligence to declassify information related to
the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, specifically information
about any role the Wuhan Institute of Virology may have played in the
pandemic's outbreak.
— House Rules Republicans (@RulesReps) July 20, 2021
The COVID-19
Origin Act was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Josh Hawley (R-MO) and
Mike Braun (R-IN) and passed unanimously in May.
Rep. Michael
Burgess (R-TX) brought the COVID-19 Origin Act to the House floor for
consideration with Reps. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and Darin LaHood (R-IL)
explaining its importance shortly before Democrats voted down the
measure Tuesday night.
"The best disinfectant is sunlight and that's what we can provide today," Wenstrup explained
of the COVID-19 Origin Act. "The bill first establishes that we must
identify the precise origins of COVID-19 because it is critical for
preventing a similar pandemic in the future."
"I cannot stress
enough that this bill is not controversial by any means," Wenstrup
continued. "In fact, it passed the Senate in May with unanimous consent —
not one senator objected. Not Senators Ted Cruz or Rand Paul, not
Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. If those four members can get on
board with this bill, should not we be able to do the same?"
caitlinjohnstone | The weirdest thing about the Biden administration tasking itself
with the censorship of “disinformation” on social media is that the
United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is built upon a
foundation of disinformation, maintained by disinformation, and
facilitated by disinformation.
If the propaganda engine of the US-centralized empire
ceased actively deceiving the public about the world, it would collapse
immediately. There would be mass unrest at home and abroad, status quo
politics would be abandoned, alliances and coalitions would crumble,
leaders official and unofficial would be ousted, and US unipolar
hegemony would end.
The
only thing keeping this from happening is the vast amounts of wealth
and energy which are poured into continuously deceiving the people of
America and its allies about what’s really going on in their nations and
political systems, and in the world as a whole.
Getting
people believing they live in separate, sovereign nations which
function independently from one another, instead of member states within
a single undeclared empire which moves as one unit on the international
stage.
Getting
people believing they control the fate of their nation via the
democratic process, when in reality all large-scale politics are
scripted puppet shows controlled by a plutocratic class who owns both
the politicians and the media outlets which report on them.
Getting
people believing they are part of a virtuous rules-based international
order which opposes totalitarian regimes to spread freedom and
democracy, instead of a tyrannical empire that works to destroy any
nation which disobeys its dictates.
And above all, manufacturing the illusion that the oppressive, exploitative imperialist status quo is normal.
My
mother, especially in her years as a busy young wife of an Air Force
officer, tended to shed things, rather than save and curate them, as we
moved every year or two.
So
when I was going through her belongings after she died in 2015, I
wasn’t surprised to find that there were not very many artifacts of my
early years.
One
of the few items she thought was important enough to keep was a little
yellow booklet, a small document with many addendums, held together by
staples that rusted decades ago.
On
the front cover, above my name, it says, “International Certificates
of Vaccination as Approved by the World Health Organization.” Inside are
page after page of records of the immunizations and boosters I received
— for typhus, typhoid, polio, flu, cholera, smallpox.
There
are those on the right today who would call this a “vaccine passport.”
Demanding that people show evidence of their covid-19 vaccination status
has become a front in the raging culture wars. States across the country
are moving to restrict schools and other institutions from requiring
people to demonstrate their vaccination status or immunity to the virus.
How
did we come to this? Immunizations have long been required for
international travel. Do residents of this country deserve any less
transparency and protection? There exist vaccines that are safe and
effective against a virus that has killed more than 600,000 in the United States and whose new strain is turning its fury on the unvaccinated.
The stipulations of my own immunization record were unbending: “It is the responsibility of the traveler to have the ‘approved stamp’ applied to the smallpox vaccination certificate or the cholera vaccination certificate. The certificate is not valid without the stamp and may not be accepted when required in international travel.”
wcvb | Massachusetts public health officials reported 716 new COVID-19
breakthrough cases in fully vaccinated individuals in the past week,
data from the Department of Public Health shows.
A breakthrough case is when an individual tests positive for COVID-19 after they've been fully vaccinated against the disease.
Advertisement
Numbers from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health show there
have been 5,166 cases of COVID-19 in fully vaccinated individuals as of
July 17, a significant increase from the 4,450 reported one week
earlier.
As of Tuesday, the DPH reported 1,649 new positive COVID-19 cases between July 10 and July 16.
When
analyzing the number of overall COVID-19 cases reported by the DPH
between July 10 and July 16, the breakthrough cases account for 43.4
percent of all new COVID-19 cases.
Massachusetts doctors say the
biggest cause is the arrival of the COVID-19 delta variant, which is
twice as infectious than the original virus.
"We also know that people who have the Delta variant actually have
1,000 times the amount of virus in their nose, in their bodies," Dr.
Katherine Gergen Barnett with Boston Medical Center said.
"the science demonstrates that if you are fully vaccinated, you are protected."
No qualifications at all.
The problem is that if you are indeed allowing a vaccinated person to have minimal symptoms at the same time the virus is not sterilized, you have effectively turned that person into an incubator for more mutant expression.
And then multiply that person by millions. You have to think in large numbers here. Allowing this much genetic mutation capability is a real issue for future variants that could be a lot more toxic.
If the vaccines were sterilizing, the person would have no symptoms AND the virus would be inactivated and unable to change.
That is the concern with non-sterilizing vaccines. It is basically what could happen in the future.
You have to think in large numbers, and exponential growth. The UK already gave us Delta, starting with the lumpenproletariat in globalization-blasted Kent, and Delta went round the world and dominated very, very quickly.
p.s., This (and other insights about the non-sterilizing nature of the current vaccines) implies that vaccine passports — e.g. showing proof of vaccination to enter a restaurant or board a plane — is ENTIRELY pointless.
IMDoc Anecdote:
I did not feel well when I got home from work last night. As the night wore on, I began to have a very severe cough, very loud wheezing (I do not wheeze), a mild headache, and a fever of 101. I knew exactly what was going on. As soon as I could, I called work to tell them I was not going in and headed right to medical care to be checked – and indeed I am now positive for COVID. I was fully vaccinated in mid April.
To me, this day was not and if but when. From the very first day in my internship in the big city in the middle of the AIDS pandemic – one of the leading internists in the country told my class – “We do not run from pandemics, we run into them.” My office of fully vaccinated staff has already had one wave of COVID go through about a month ago that somehow I missed – my time was up last night.
I am in great physical shape for my age – very healthy – and am already feeling much better today – I am going to be fine. But what has happened in the interim since this AM – has been eye-opening.
I was actually called by a health department phone operator within an hour or two of my diagnosis. They then put another administrative person on the line who informed me that I was vaccinated – and therefore no quarantine was necessary. I told them right away that was ridiculous – and I would be staying at home for now. Within 30 minutes, someone from the state health department contacted me – and I will be brief – informed me that it was very reckless for me as a physician to be talking about quarantine of myself a vaccinated person – the CDC has told us this is not necessary – you cannot spread the virus – doing this would potentially discourage others from vaccination – It may cost lives – My response – “so having me, a positive COVID patient, hang out in exam rooms or the grocery store with obese diabetic cancer patients is not going to cost lives? Please if you think I am being reckless – report me to the Medical Board – I will happily discuss this with my peers.”
These are the kinds of things that occur with pathologic lying. People actually begin to believe the accumulated lies are truth. All rational thought is completely clouded. I will state for the record – that neither person who spoke to me today was an MD DO RN or MPH. All administrative. I truly believe that most health care workers are beginning to wake up. I think a real genuine health worker would have rotted in hell before making such statements.
I called one of my old students/residents right after this call. He is currently the head of the Internal Medicine Dept at one of our big universities in Blue America. I was informed that out of the 20 or so faculty members in his division – all 100% vaccinated – 7 of them had become ill with COVID in the past few weeks. We kind of laughed nervously about the 95% number for relative risk reduction – and how we as a profession were about to learn that misrepresenting numbers like this to the public was a very bad idea. Then some profound statements from him ——
“I have been dealing with this nightmare called evidence-based medicine for years. Students and residents both now tell me that only peer-reviewed RCT are what they should be looking at – nothing else matters. They would not know the difference between a relative risk reduction and an incidence if they had to – they do not even bother to look at anything but an RCT – therefore they know nothing of medical statistics. This has been on full display for the world to see the past 18 months. Just look at any Twitter feed. We have a lot of work to do.”
And I, IM Doc, have several times discussed the human theater, the “stupid human tricks” of putting your vaccination photos on Facebook or TV as a motivator. And then spend days talking about the bad reaction you had to your vaccine – “I got really sick – Hallelujah – I know it has activated my immune system”. I got so so tired of that chestnut – but it was all over the Internet for months. Any vaccinologist, immunologist – etc – would tell you that was just horse shit. And now you know why that was a very very bad unprofessional thing to be doing. It literally motivates no one, and now there is going to be lots of explaining going on.
My old student today – “Actually the Facebook vaccination meme was the second worst thing. The absolute worst was the whole health care TikTok Video dancing – often done in ERs where there were lines of sick people waiting. It made me want to punch the wall. But now all these kids that put their Facebook vaccination photos online and bragged about it – are going to get to explain to all their patients and friends how they still got COVID after the vaccines – we have quite a few housestaff and students fully vaccinated becoming positive – not just the faculty.”
“Young Grasshopper – pride goeth before a fall”. There are those of us who have been warning that all was not well with our entire approach for months – and were laughed and scoffed out of the room. We as a profession are going to have a lot to answer for.”
All that is from my old student – now a leader in academic medicine – I am so so relieved – people are starting to wake up.
The take home message from where we are today – These vaccines are non-sterilizing. That means they may limit or eliminate symptoms – but they do nothing for the spread. There are probably all kinds of vaccinated patients harboring active infections at this very minute and they have no clue – the vaccine is making them not sick. But they are sharing it with all around them. Many if not most of them taking no measures because the CDC told them they did not have to – YOU ARE VACCINATED. The good news for today is that the symptoms, hospital, and death all seem to be low. The bad news is all of these harboring the virus are further playgrounds for the virus to mutate. And when you allow it to become more and more widespread – the more likely a really bad mutant will come to the fore. That is THE danger of non-sterilizing vaccines being used for a virus that is profoundly capable of mutating.
My advice today – DO NOT PLAY INTO THE DIVISIVE UNVACCINATED/VACCINATED GAME – at this point and in the near future – it is going to become increasingly obvious this is just not a hill to die on. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF and YOUR FAMILY. Find and identify any elders in your community that may need help. Plenty of sleep – plenty of sunshine – lose weight, exercise, eat well – vitamin D 2000 daily. AND SMILE. It does wonders.
unherd | Humans model danger based on their own experiences and those of their
ancestors. Solar storms were nothing new, in 2024, but the jeopardy
they posed to humanity had increased only very gradually since the last
really big storm, in 1859 — the year Darwin had published The Origin of Species.
That storm caught the eye of a British astronomer named Richard
Christopher Carrington, who noticed unusual solar activity and linked it
to the spectacular aurora that had appeared. What became known as the Carrington Event
damaged telegraph systems and delivered shocks to a number of
operators. Some found they could send messages even with the loss of
power, because the storm had induced currents in the wires. Fascinating,
but not the stuff of the nightmares, on a planet not heavily dependent
on industry. And as our civilisation became overwhelmingly electrical,
solar flares never produced enough harm to focus our collective
attention — there was no real prelude to the event that precipitated our
downfall.
In the initial weeks after the collapse, the military was tasked with
a vital mission. Even dormant nuclear reactors — and their spent fuel
pools — need to have cold water circulated through them constantly to
prevent reactor meltdowns and devastating fuel-pool fires. Regulations
required that each complex have a week’s worth of backup diesel
generator fuel on hand. Many had four times that amount, but none had
planned for a blackout that would last a year or more, and that is what
they were facing in the best-case scenario. It fell to the Army to make
sure these backup diesel generators and pumps never failed or ran dry.
For six months, they accomplished that mission across all the affected
reactors, with one exception.
The Army had quickly found that for most reactors, creating a
defensible perimeter around the site and delivering fuel by helicopter
was the most reliable approach. In the third week after the collapse, a
helicopter clipped a light pole in the fog and crashed at the North Anna
reactor in Virginia, spilling its fuel and sparking a devastating fire
that engulfed the generators. Retardant dropped from above was sucked
into the air intakes, and the combination killed the power, which
remained out long enough for the reactor cores to meltdown and slump.
The containment breached, forcing the site to be abandoned.
As the fuel pools boiled and ran dry, the heat from radioactive decay
caused the cladding on the fuel rods to burst into flame; a plume of
highly radioactive smoke rose above the site, contaminating the region
and driving essential governmental functions out of Washington D.C., one
of few Eastern seaboard cities that had been successfully stabilised.
The danger of the radioactive fallout was kept officially quiet, but
rumours spread, confirmed by those few citizens with access to
battery-powered Geiger counters. This sparked a massive refugee crisis
as the region’s population fled their homes, dodging precipitation,
every squall now raining radioactive isotopes onto the earth below.
Ultimately, the spreading collapse of civilisation would cause every
nuclear reactor complex on Earth to be abandoned, guaranteeing that all
of its radioactive material would escape into the environment and begin
to circulate.
BREAKING NEWS. “[Ballot image] Audit of 2020 Election in Volusia County [Florida] Reveals Flaws in [ES&S] Voting System.” h/t Ray Lutz & @susanpynchon1. 1/ pic.twitter.com/OBTUXTjyYg
outsidevoices | GOP propaganda still has many conservatives thinking in terms of
partisan binaries. Even the dreaded RINO (Republican-In-Name-Only) slur
serves the purposes of the party, because it implies that the Democrats
represent an irreconcilable opposition. But many Trump supporters see
clearly that the Regime is not partisan. They know that the same
institutions would have taken opposite sides if it had been a Tulsi
Gabbard vs. Jeb Bush election. It’s hard to describe to people on the
Left, who are used to thinking of American government as a conspiracy
and are weaned on stories about Watergate, COINTELPRO, and Saddam’s WMD,
how shocking and disillusioning this was for people who encouraged
their sons and daughters to go fight for their country when George W.
Bush declared war on Iraq.
They could have managed the shock if it
only involved the government. But the behavior of the press is what
radicalized them. Trump supporters have more contempt for journalists
than they have for any politician or government official, because they
feel most betrayed by them. The idea that the corporate press is driven
by ratings and sensationalism has become untenable over the last several
years. If that were true, there’d be a microphone in the face of every
executive branch official demanding to know what the former Secretary of
Labor meant when he said that Jeffrey Epstein “belonged to intelligence.”
The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime these people
are now seeing in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee
that, period.
This is profoundly disorienting. Again, we’re not
talking about pre-2016 Greenwald readers or even Ron Paul libertarians,
who swallowed half a bottle of red pills long ago. These are people who
attacked Edward Snowden for “betraying his country,” and who only now
are beginning to see that they might have been wrong. It’s not because
the parties have been reversed, and it’s not because they’re bitter over
losing. They just didn’t know. If any country is going to function over
the long-term, not everyone can be a revolutionary. Most people have to
believe what they’re told and go with the flow most of the time. These
were those people. I’m pretty conservative by temperament, but most of
my political friends are on the Left. I spend a good deal of our
conversations simply trying to convince them that these people are not
demons, and that this political moment is pregnant with opportunity.
Many
Trump supporters don’t know for certain whether ballots were faked in
November 2020, but they know with apodictic certainty that the press,
the FBI, and even the courts would lie to them if they were. They have
every reason to believe that, and it’s probably true. They watched the
corporate press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of
people will always see Brett Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on an
unproven accusation, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They
helped lead a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on the
most deadly and destructive riots in decades.
Conservatives have
always complained that the media had a liberal bias. Fine, whatever:
they still thought the press would admit the truth if they were
cornered. They don’t believe that anymore. What they’ve witnessed in
recent years has shown them that the corporate press will say anything,
do anything, to achieve a political objective, or simply to ruin someone
they perceive as an opponent. Since my casual Twitter thread ended up
in the mouths of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, I’ve received hundreds
of messages from people saying that I should prepare to be targeted.
Others don’t think that will happen, but even most of them don’t think
it’s an irrational concern. We’ve seen an elderly lady receive physical
threats after a CNN reporter accosted her at home to accuse her of aiding Kremlin disinformation ops. We’ve seen them threaten to dox someone for making a humorous meme.
Throughout 2020, the corporate press used its platform to excuse and encourage political violence. Time Magazine told us
that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls
involving - among others - leaders of the protests, local officials
responsible for managing them, and members of the media charged with
reporting on the events. They worked together with Silicon Valley to
control the messaging about the ongoing crisis for maximum political
effect. In case of a Trump victory, the same organization had protesters
ready to be activated by text message in 400 cities the day after the
election. Every town with a population over 50,000 would have been in
for some pre-planned, centrally-controlled mayhem. In other countries we
call that a color revolution.
Throughout the summer,
establishment governors took advantage of COVID to change voting
procedures, often over the protests of the state legislatures. It wasn’t
only the mass mailing of live ballots: they also lowered signature
matching standards, axed existing voter ID and notarization
requirements, and more.
Many people reading this might think those were necessary changes,
either due to the virus or to prevent potential voter suppression. I
won’t argue the point, but the fact is that the US Constitution states
plainly that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections... shall
be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” As far as
conservatives were concerned, state governors used COVID to
unconstitutionally usurp their legislatures’ authority to unilaterally
alter voting procedures just months before an election in order to help
Biden make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot
system. Lawyers can argue over the legitimacy of the procedural
modifications; the point is that conservatives believe in their bones -
and I think they’re probably right - that the cases would have been
treated differently, in both the media and in court, if the parties were
reversed.
And then came the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. Liberals
dismiss the incident because, after four years of obsessing over the
activities of the Trump children, they insist they’re not interested in
the behavior of the candidate’s family members. But this misses the
point entirely. Big Tech ran a coordinated censorship campaign against a
major American newspaper while the rest of the media spread base propaganda
to protect a political candidate. And once again, the campaign crossed
institutional boundaries, with dozens of former intelligence officials
throwing their weight behind the baseless and now-discredited claim that
the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation campaign. That lie was
promoted by Big Tech companies, while the true information being
reported by The New York Post about the laptop’s contents was suppressed. That is what happened.
Even
the tech companies themselves now admit it was a “mistake” - Twitter
CEO Jack Dorsey said it was an error and apologized - but the election
is over, Joe Biden has appointed Facebook’s government regulations executive as his ethics arbiter, so who cares, right? It hardly needs saying that if The New York Times
had Donald Trump Jr.’s laptop, full of pictures of him smoking crack
and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, and emails with
pretty direct discussions of political corruption, the Paper of Record
would not have had its accounts suspended for reporting on it. Let’s
remember that stories of Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes
and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact across the media spectrum
and used as the basis for a multi-year criminal investigation, when the
only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its primary source.
The
reaction of Trump supporters to all this was not, “no fair!” That was
how they felt about Romney’s “binders of women” in 2012 or Harry Reid’s
lie that Romney paid no federal taxes. This is different. Now they were
beginning to see, accurately, that the institutions of their country —
all of them — had been captured by people prepared to use any means to
exclude them from the political process. And yet they showed up in
record numbers to vote. Trump got 13 million more votes than in 2016 -
10 million more than Hillary Clinton had gotten.
nature | The recent dramatic appearance of variants of concern of
SARS-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) highlights the need for innovative
approaches that simultaneously suppress viral replication and circumvent
viral escape from host immunity and antiviral therapeutics. Here, we
employ genome-wide computational prediction and single-nucleotide
resolution screening to reprogram CRISPR-Cas13b against SARS-CoV-2
genomic and subgenomic RNAs. Reprogrammed Cas13b effectors targeting
accessible regions of Spike and Nucleocapsid transcripts achieved
>98% silencing efficiency in virus-free models. Further, optimized
and multiplexed Cas13b CRISPR RNAs (crRNAs) suppress viral replication
in mammalian cells infected with replication-competent SARS-CoV-2,
including the recently emerging dominant variant of concern B.1.1.7. The
comprehensive mutagenesis of guide-target interaction demonstrated that
single-nucleotide mismatches does not impair the capacity of a potent
single crRNA to simultaneously suppress ancestral and mutated SARS-CoV-2
strains in infected mammalian cells, including the Spike D614G mutant.
The specificity, efficiency and rapid deployment properties of
reprogrammed Cas13b described here provide a molecular blueprint for
antiviral drug development to suppress and prevent a wide range of
SARS-CoV-2 mutants, and is readily adaptable to other emerging
pathogenic viruses.
The remarkable capability of RNA viruses to adapt to selective host and
environmental pressure is highly dependent on their ability to generate
genomic diversity through the occurrence of de novo mutations46.
Mutation-driven viral evolution can generate drug resistance, immune
escape, and increased efficiency of transmission and pathogenicity, all
of which are detrimental to the host. Although our understanding of
SARS-CoV-2 mutation-driven escape mechanisms remains limited, the
emergence of new variants, which possess increased infective potential8
or are resistant to recombinant monoclonal antibodies and antibodies in
the sera of convalescent patients and vaccinated individuals7,8,17,18,36
are of major global concern. In this study, we leveraged an innovative
CRISPR-pspCas13b technology and employed two key strategies to silence
SARS-CoV-2 RNA and counteract its intrinsic ability to escape standard
therapies through the generation of de novo mutations.
Something really odd is going on:
In Europe we are seeing surges at many places where most of the population has already been vaccinated.
At the same time, the 15 least vaccinated countries don‘t seem to face any problem.
At some point, denying this problem will get painful.
Mass vaccination with vaccines narrowly targeted at the S-protein, that prevent disease & death, but not infection & transmission, in the midst of a pandemic caused by a rapidly mutating virus that spreads asymptomatically, will lead to fully resistant variants.
@GVDBossche: mass vaccination with vaccines narrowly targeted at the S-protein, that prevent disease & death, but not infection & transmission, in the midst of a pandemic caused by a rapidly mutating virus that spreads asymptomatically, will lead to fully resistant variants. https://t.co/tLZWB6gqP1pic.twitter.com/9ZmnEz6HDB
Guardian | Within 72 hours of the French learning they would soon need to be vaccinated or tested to go to the cafe,
more than 3 million had booked appointments and France had broken its
vaccination record, administering 800,000 shots in a single day.
At
the same time, daily infections, driven by the more contagious Delta
variant, continued to climb, reaching nearly 9,000 on Wednesday – and on
Bastille Day, about 20,000 demonstrators nationwide protested against what some called a “dictatorship”.
Polls show more than 65% public support for the range of measures unveiled by Emmanuel Macron on Monday,
aimed, in the president’s words, not at “making vaccination immediately
obligatory for everyone … but at pushing a maximum of you to go and get
vaccinated”.
Critics,
however, accuse the government of discriminating against vaccine
sceptics and those who will not be fully inoculated before the rules
come into effect, while others say the government is effectively
imposing general vaccination by stealth, trampling on individual rights
and freedoms.
Macron announced that from 21
July, anyone visiting a theatre, cinema, sports venue or festival with
an audience of more than 50 people would need a health pass proving they
were either fully vaccinated, had tested negative or were immune.
The
same requirement will be extended to bars, cafes, restaurants, shopping
centres (though not supermarkets), hospitals, long-distance trains,
coaches and planes from 1 August, he said – including for children aged
between 12 and 17 from 1 September.
People
unable to present a valid health pass risk up to six months in prison
and a fine of up to €10,000 (£8,500), according to the draft text of the
law, while owners of “establishments welcoming the public” who fail to
check patrons’ passes could go to jail for a year and be hit with a
€45,000 fine.
Meanwhile, non-essential free
coronavirus testing will also end in September, “to further encourage
vaccination”, and healthcare professionals and retirement home workers
who have not been vaccinated by 15 September will be suspended for a
month to allow them to do so. Thereafter, they risk dismissal.
The
big stick approach to vaccination, which goes further than that adopted
by most governments, has had an immediate impact on take-up.
heisenbergreport | It’s never capitalism or the hyper-hierarchical society capitalism created in America.
This situation isn’t an accident, of course. The fact is, virtually
all of the people who weigh in on the subject — from economists to
analysts to bankers to investors — sit somewhere near the top of that
hierarchical society. The hierarchy is constructed atop the meritocracy
myth, which is used to justify otherwise indefensible manifestations of
inequality. Blaming monetary policy for everything obviates the need to
face an uncomfortable reality: The hierarchy, like almost all historical
hierarchies, isn’t natural. Rather, it’s the product of a system which,
over time, evolved and optimized around itself in order to preserve the
privileges accorded to the people at (or near) the top of the pyramid.
On the fiscal side of things, a similar cognitive dissonance is
observable. Economists, analysts, bankers and market participants of all
shapes and sizes habitually bemoan the plight of “Main Street.” How
many times have you heard the anecdote about the “average” American not
being able to afford a $400 emergency medical bill or home repair? In
the same vein, how often have you read derisive takes (always cloaked as
concern) bemoaning America’s “bartender and waitress economy”? And so
on and so forth.
The concern isn’t always feigned, but it is always
disingenuous, if only by accident. The number of economists, analysts,
bankers and investors who care about the family that can’t afford to buy
a new refrigerator is generally proportionate to the percentage of
economists, analysts, bankers and investors who know a family that
doesn’t have $400 in spare cash. In other words, zero — or somewhere
close to it.
Some of those expressing concern may be genuinely disheartened at the
increasingly precarious economic prospects of the American
everyman/woman, but generally speaking, one’s position at (or near) the
top of the social hierarchy precludes empathy because it doesn’t permit
one to acknowledge that the hierarchy itself is almost entirely
arbitrary. Consider the following passage from Immanuel Wallerstein’s
discussion of universalism:
Universalism means in general the priority to general
rules applying equally to all persons, and therefore the rejection of
particularistic preferences in most spheres. On the one hand,
universalism is believed to ensure relatively competent performance and
thus make for a more efficient world-economy, which in turn improves the
ability to accumulate capital. Hence, normally those who control
production processes push for such universalistic criteria. Of course,
universalistic criteria arouse resentment when they come into operation
only after some particularistic criterion has been invoked. If the civil
service is only open to persons of some particular religion or
ethnicity, then the choice of persons within this category may be
universalistic but the overall choice is not. If universalistic criteria
are invoked only at the time of choice while ignoring the
particularistic criteria by which individuals have access to the
necessary prior training, again there is resentment. When, however, the
choice is truly universalistic, resentment may still occur because
choice involves exclusion, and we may get “populist” pressure for
untested and unranked access to position. Under these multiple
circumstances, universalistic criteria play a major social-psychological
role in legitimating meritocratic allocation. They make those who have
attained the status of cadre feel justified in their advantage and
ignore the ways in which the so-called universalistic criteria that
permitted their access were not in fact fully universalistic, or ignore
the claims of all the others to material benefits given primarily to
cadres. The norm of universalism is an enormous comfort to those who are
benefiting from the system. It makes them feel they deserve what they
have.
America’s economists, analysts, bankers and (most) investors benefit
handsomely from the system and are deeply indebted psychologically to
the meritocratic myth. In almost all cases, they fail to acknowledge the
extent to which, as Wallerstein put it, “universalistic criteria are
invoked only at the time of choice while ignoring the particularistic
criteria by which individuals have access to the necessary prior
training.”
This makes it impossible to truly empathize with the family for whom a
$400 emergency expense is an economic death knell. Sad though it may
be, the situation is, in one way or another, attributable to the choices
someone made, not to a system which dooms a slim majority of society to
economic precarity. That’s how nearly everyone you hear from on the
economy thinks about things. Crucially, liberal-minded economists (and
politicians) will vociferously deny that accusation. They’ll say they do
think the system is at fault. “That was the centerpiece of my
campaign!,” they’ll exclaim. Or: “I wrote a whole book about our failed
system!” But if you ask them to reconcile the admission that the system
doesn’t work with their own success in the same system, rarely will you
see any economist or politician shrug their shoulders and say “To be
totally honest with you, it’s pure luck.”
taibbi | Combating racism becomes a convenient alternative to attacking
inequality and inequality, even those inequalities that appear or the
manifest themselves as racial disparities. Because the struggle against
racism is exactly parallel to the struggle against terrorism… It can go
on forever, because the enemy is an abstraction that you can define
however you want to define it, at the moment that you wanted to find it.
DiAngelo’s not the first person to do this. There was a woman named Peggy McIntosh who going back to the eighties had the “knapsack of privilege,”
or some shit like that. I know people who have had careers at racial
sensitivity trainings, and the people that I know, in my world — the
people who came out of the movement actually came out of anti-Klan
politics, or rather left politics in the seventies, and they started
doing this stuff. It makes sense in the same way that people who were
graduate students in the late sixties and early seventies who were left
theory-inclined people got into the Frankfurt School. That became the
cornerstone of their academic careers.
Well, that’s what’s
happened in the anti-racism or the racial sensitivity training world.
And one of the things that’s happened over time is that the material
incentives — and it’s funny, pardon this aside, but it’s funny how many
political-economy-oriented leftists we encounter who apply critical
political economic thinking to every domain in the world — outside
the movement that they’re operating in. So the material incentives
evolved, and changed over time. And some of my friends who have done
this work have said to me that they used to do it for community groups,
used to do it for unions and so forth and so on. Then, as the material
incentives change, they want to build and do more for corporations, or
for local governments who were under consent decrees.
So this
becomes part of the thing. You’re under a consent decree for actual
discrimination. One of the remedies that’s likely to be imposed as part
of the decree is that you submit to this training. And we see it all the
time now. Even the insurgencies within NGOs, right? Where the staff or
whatever is going batshit crazy about how the leadership of the
organization is all racist, sexist, whatever. And one of the first calls
is to bring in some minor-league version of Robin DiAngelo to do the
racial sensitivity training. So in that sense, it’s taken hold as part
of what I’ve often described as the broader political economy of race
relations.
WaPo | This
week at the Oklahoma State Department of Education building, I was
schooled in how the stealthy, well-orchestrated movement against
teaching honestly about America’s racist history operates. It is fast
and furious and determined to steamroll over truth in education.
But
Monday morning, one Black woman and a Black high school student tried
to hold the line. Though they were on the losing side of that steamroll —
this is Oklahoma, after all— their courage and resistance in the face of white supremacy deserve to be celebrated.
The occasion was consideration of item 8(b) on the Oklahoma Board of Education’s meeting agenda:
emergency rules for implementing a bill passed in May by the
Republican-controlled state legislature limiting what students in the
state can be taught on race and gender.Notice of the item was publicly posted only last Friday, giving educators and advocates next to no time to organize a response. The actual rules,
too, were made available just minutes before the meeting. They included
chillingly harsh penalties, such as teacher suspensions and district
defunding, for instruction that makes any individual feel “discomfort,
guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of
his or her race or sex.”
Carlisha
Williams Bradley arrived knowing she would cast one of the most
consequential votes of her professional life. The only Black member of
the board, she wondered whether she would be removed from her position
for pushing back. But the education advocate and former executive
director of Tulsa Legacy Charter School spoke truth: that the
right-wing’s current bête noire, “critical race theory” — which the
legislature claimed to be responding to — means merely the examination
of laws and legislation that uphold racism and oppression. Oklahoma’s
new education law and harsh punishment, she said, would serve only to
generate fear in teaching an accurate history of the United States.
“We are robbing students of the opportunity to have a high-quality education,” Williams Bradley said.
In a 22-page publication intended to allow only one standard for acceptable discussion as sanctioned by the U.S.
government, the Surgeon General tells Big Tech what to do:
“Prioritize
early detection of misinformation “super-spreaders” and repeat
offenders. Impose clear consequences for accounts that repeatedly
violate platform policies.”
The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as "problematic" so that Facebook can remove them.
This is the union of corporate and state power -- one of the classic hallmarks of fascism -- that the people who spent 5 years babbling about fascism support. https://t.co/U2Ee3DgXJe
alt-market | If there is one rule liberty minded people need to remember, it is
that the establishment does not like losing control of the narrative.
And when they do, noticeably weird things start to happen. For example,
it is becoming painfully obvious that the narrative on the experimental
mRNA “vaccines” has slipped right through the fingers of the Biden
Administration, and as a consequence they are now in a scramble to get
millions of vaccines injected into as many skeptical arms as possible
before the public organizes for a full push-back against the agenda. It
seems to me that they are in a bit of a panic.
The issue became more evident since January when various government
entities and the media began to openly complain about the number of
vaccine doses that were being thrown in the garbage because of
expiration. Why were the vaccines expiring before use? The media spin
suggests that it was due to “government mismanagement”, while officials
at the state level have admitted that it has been due to a significant drop in demand.
In the meantime, Biden has shipped over 500 million covid vaccine
doses overseas in June while at the same time claiming that the US was
on track to meet his 70% vaccination goal by July 4th.
Needless to say this never happened. The Biden admin now claims that the
US population is now 67% vaccinated, and if this was actually true then
it would be very close to meeting Anthony Fauci’s original guidelines
for herd immunity. So why all the frantic hype about unvaccinated
people?
Firstly, Fauci has continually moved the goal posts for herd immunity
to the point that he is now telling the public to ignore herd immunity
altogether and that the only option is to get EVERYONE vaccinated. Many
of us in the liberty media said this is exactly what he would do, and he
has proven to be incredibly predictable. Secondly, the CDC vaccination
numbers seem to be inflated in order to create a manufactured consensus.
While claiming an overall vaccination rate of 67%, CDC stats indicate
a maximum of around 184 million Americans with at least one dose, then
indicate 160 million people with a double dose. Yet, according to the Mayo Clinic data map,
only four states have a vaccination rate of 67% or more, all in the
Northeast. Even California and New York are well under 67%, and the vast
majority of states are sitting at around 50% or less.
Frankly, I don’t believe the CDC vaccine numbers at all. New dosage
numbers are plunging across the US according to state officials; anyone
who hasn’t been jabbed by now is not going to get jabbed unless they are
forced to. There are no long lines for vaccines. No wait times. The CDC
has even removed the wait time between doses. And still, CVS and
Walgreens have been throwing away expired doses by the hundreds of thousands.
If we look at the CDC stats for full vaccination we are closer to 51%
of the total US population, which matches more accurately with the Mayo
Clinic state statistics. There is no indication that this percentage
will be growing beyond the 51% mark anytime soon, if the stats are
accurate at all.
This means that at least half the US population is in defiance of the
program. This is probably why Fauci and Biden have become more
aggressive in their vaccination agenda the past month. If they were
getting the nearly 70% vax rates they claim, then they would not be
stomping their feet indignantly over unvaccinated people. The stats show
a HUGE number of Americans are refusing to take the jab – There’s a
vast army of us out there, and this is a good thing.
Why? Because there is simply no reason to take the experimental mRNA vaccine.
Guardian | The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of
ivermectin – a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice –
in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in
Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November.
It
claimed to be a randomised control trial, a type of study crucial in
medicine because it is considered to provide the most reliable evidence
on the effectiveness of interventions due to the minimal risk of
confounding factors influencing the results. Elgazzar is listed as chief
editor of the Benha Medical Journal, and is an editorial board member.
The
study found that patients with Covid-19 treated in hospital who
“received ivermectin early reported substantial recovery” and that there
was “a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in
ivermectin treated groups” by 90%.
But the drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns”. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were.
A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper,
leading to the retraction. He first became aware of the Elgazzar
preprint when it was assigned to him by one of his lecturers for an
assignment that formed part of his master’s degree. He found the
introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely
plagiarised.
It appeared that the authors had
run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin
and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. “Humorously, this
led to them changing ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ to ‘extreme
intense respiratory syndrome’ on one occasion,” Lawrence said.
The data also looked suspicious to Lawrence, with the raw data apparently contradicting the study protocol on several occasions.
“The
authors claimed to have done the study only on 18-80 year olds, but at
least three patients in the dataset were under 18,” Lawrence said.
“The
authors claimed they conducted the study between the 8th of June and
20th of September 2020, however most of the patients who died were
admitted into hospital and died before the 8th of June according to the
raw data. The data was also terribly formatted, and includes one patient
who left hospital on the non-existent date of 31/06/2020.”
WaPo | U.S.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Thursday calling
misinformation a threat to vaccination efforts and attempts to control
the pandemic. “We live in a world where misinformation poses an imminent
and insidious threat to our nation’s health,” he said at a news briefing.
Fed up, CoxHealth chief executive Steve Edwards, a frequent social media presence, tweeted July 1:
“If you are making wildly disparaging comments about the vaccine, and
have no public health expertise, you may be responsible for someone’s
death. Shut up.”
32% symptomatic pos. rate, very concerning! (From 4%) 4 pediatric Covid inpatients yesterday. Age…a few weeks old to 18 y/o
If you are making wildly disparaging comments about the vaccine, and have no public health expertise, you may be responsible for someone’s death. Shut up. pic.twitter.com/TqkNbZKsYE
That
tweet won praise from people seeking catharsis when anti-vaccine voices
have been loud and belligerent, but it also unleashed a backlash.
Nick
Reed, a local conservative radio talk show host, devoted a show the
next day to Edwards’s tweet. He said the message would erode community
trust further and make patients with legitimate concerns about side
effects more wary of getting honest answers from doctors at CoxHealth.
In an interview, Reed expressed sympathy for health-care workers frustrated from seeing the daily toll of the virus.
“It
makes it difficult to understand there are people going about living
their life and recognize what’s going on and recognize it can be very
deadly and many have lost loved ones, but they have the luxury of
standing back and evaluating the situation as a whole and wondering
about the long-term effects of vaccines,” Reed said.“It’s two
different worlds that people are in, and sometimes we don’t give grace
and understanding to the other person’s world, and that can lead to this
separation.”
Edwards
stood by his tweet, which he said was clearly targeting people
spreading false information and not those concerned about side effects.
“This
is my hometown. I don’t treat it as a job. … When I’ve been in our
covid ICU, I’ve seen people I know and it breaks my heart,” Edwards said
in an interview. “I really don’t care about any kind of backlash I get
by speaking the words that I do that I think will save lives.”
WaPo | On July Fourth, President Biden celebrated dramatic progress in the war on the coronavirus,
with more than 150 million adults fully vaccinated and infections
plunging 93 percent since Inauguration Day. “Together, we’re beating the
virus,” Biden said at a party on the White House lawn.
But at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference,
attendees celebrated a different — essentially opposite — milestone:
that Biden had missed his goal of vaccinating 70 percent of adults.
“Clearly
they were hoping — the government was hoping — that they could sort of
sucker 90 percent of the population into getting vaccinated,” activist
Alex Berenson told the crowd Saturday, seeming to inflate Biden’s
target. “And it isn’t happening.”
The crowd clapped and cheered at that failure.
What
began as “vaccine hesitancy” has morphed into outright vaccine
hostility, as conservatives increasingly attack the White House’s
coronavirus message, mischaracterize its vaccination campaign and, more
and more, vow to skip the shots altogether.
The
notion that the vaccine drive is pointless or harmful — or perhaps even
a government plot — is increasingly an article of faith among
supporters of former president Donald Trump, on a par with assertions
that the last election was stolen and the assault on the U.S. Capitol
was overblown.
Appearing
at CPAC, lawmakers like Reps. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) and Lauren
Boebert (R-Colo.) took aim at Biden’s push for “door-to-door” vaccine
outreach, framing efforts to boost inoculations as a creeping menace
from big government.
“We’re
here to tell government, we don’t want your benefits, we don’t want
your welfare, don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchie,”
Boebert said, referring to Biden’s top medical adviser, Anthony S.
Fauci, her voice rising as she paced the stage and shook her finger.
“You leave us the hell alone!”
reuters | Police in Paris
clashed with protesters railing against President Emmanuel Macron's
plan to require a COVID-19 vaccine certificate or negative PCR test to
gain entry to bars, restaurants and cinemas from next month.
Macron
this week announced sweeping measures to fight a rapid surge in new
coronavirus infections, including the mandatory vaccination of health
workers and new health pass rules for the wider public.
In doing so, he
went further than most other European nations have done as the highly
contagious Delta variant fans a new wave of cases, and other governments
are watching carefully to see how the French public responds. (Graphic
on global cases)
The
police fired tear gas on several occasions as pockets of protesters
overturned garbage cans and set a mechanical digger alight. Some
protesters away from the skirmishes wore badges saying "No to the health
pass".
Some
critics of Macron's plan - which will require shopping malls, cafes,
bars and restaurants to check the health passes of all patrons from
August - accuse the president of trampling on freedoms and
discriminating against those who do not want the COVID shot.
"It's totally arbitrary and wholly undemocratic," said one protester who identified himself as Jean-Louis.
Macron
says the vaccine is the best way to put France back on the path to
normalcy and that he is encouraging as many people as possible to get
inoculated.
There were protests in other cities including Nantes, Marseille and Montpellier.
The
show of discontent took place on Bastille Day, the anniversary of the
1789 storming of a medieval fortress in Paris which marked the turning
point in the French Revolution.
Among
other proposals in the government's draft bill is the mandatory
isolation for 10 days of anyone who tests positive, with police making
random checks, French media reported. The prime minister's office did
not respond when asked to confirm the detail.
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