Authority Crumbles When The Truth Is Shared

aeromagazine  |  The First Amendment of the US Constitution specifies that Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.” In fairness, Congress has made no such law. The executive branch is simply stating that it will invoke its power to censor by fiat in collaboration with social media companies, on the pretext of a national emergency.

Given that the federal government enjoys the cooperation of the vast majority of media outlets, the fact that competing social media narratives are sufficient to prevent them from being able to convince the nation that their message is correct represents a significant problem with the message itself, the effectiveness of its communication or the credibility of their sources.

Of these three factors, credibility seems especially weak. Since the start of the pandemic, health leaders have made definitive statements that have subsequently needed to be reversed. First, early in 2020, they insisted the wearing of masks by the public was unnecessary, as it was not believed that the virus spread via airborne transmission. That was incorrect. The hypothesis that the origin of the virus was a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology was labelled a conspiracy theory, but has now been deemed as likely as a natural origin. In late March, the current CDC cirector, Rochelle Walensky, announced that vaccinated individuals were unable to carry the virus, even though existing studies confirmed that they could both carry and spread it. The CDC later awkwardly walked these comments back. In May it was announced that vaccinated individuals were free to roam unmasked in most settings because they would not spread or contract the virus except in the rarest of circumstances. This directive has now been reversed again due to the rise of the Delta variant, as data have shown that vaccinated individuals may have the same viral load as the unvaccinated, and may indeed be able to spread it to others. The CDC says that vaccinated individuals should return to masking indoors. Even though some of these reversals were due to changing circumstances, the ongoing back-and-forth leads many to question the credibility of the messengers.

It has also become clear that leaders are disseminating misinformation—or, in some cases, disinformation—on behalf of those who know the truth but are making statements to the contrary.

In a 21 July 2021 CNN Town Hall, President Biden insisted: “You’re not gonna get Covid if you have these vaccinations.” This was a completely inaccurate statement. Vaccinated people have contracted Covid since the vaccinations began, and this trend is increasing now that the Delta variant is the dominant viral strain. Data from the Israeli Ministry of Health reveal that, at five months and six months after the second vaccine dose, individuals are only protected from symptomatic Covid at levels of 44% and 16% respectively. Meanwhile, a new study from Israel indicates that protection from serious disease has fallen to 80%.

It may be that this misinformation was conveyed accidentally as a result of inelegant delivery by the president. But this was a very dangerous statement, as it promoted a false impression that the vaccines are completely protective, and was likely to make many question and potentially resist the new announcement from the CDC that vaccinated people should wear masks indoors.

The CDC director declared that this was a pandemic of the unvaccinated—and was soon echoed by President Biden. A large number of health leaders and media contributors have continued to parrot this phrase. But case data from Israel, the UK and many other countries prove that vaccinated individuals are being significantly impacted. Israel recently announced that 60% of its hospitalised Covid patients were fully vaccinated. The newest Public Health England technical report reveals that 25% of Delta hospitalisations and 54% of Delta deaths have occurred in the fully vaccinated. Iceland has achieved a vaccination rate of almost 90% among adults, but still needed to reinstate public health measures due to a surge in Delta infections. Now that the Delta variant has taken hold in the US, there have been numerous instances of vaccinated individuals being infected, including the notable breakthrough infections in Provincetown, Massachusetts that were a central factor prompting new CDC guidance on indoor masking. It is clear that the Delta variant has produced a much more complicated landscape, in which merely the amount of vaccine that has been administered is a less significant data point. In short, it is false to claim that the pandemic affects only the unvaccinated.

In addition to being inaccurate, the narrative that the pandemic now only affects the unvaccinated has created division and hostility between different groups, which is extremely unhelpful given the many cases of shootings in the US, as well as violent outbursts in public spaces including airlines. I have seen vitriolic statements on social media by vaccinated individuals who are blaming the unvaccinated for the Delta variant, even though it was discovered in autumn of last year, before vaccinations were available to the general public. Even some in the media have engaged in blaming the unvaccinated. CNN host John Berman insisted: “If the unvaccinated aren’t to blame, who is?” We urgently need to promote a climate in which people work together rather than being turned against one another.

Some leaders have suggested that increased vaccination levels will arrest the surge in the Delta variant. After the second dose, it takes 35 days with Pfizer or 42 days with Moderna to achieve fully vaccinated status. It is obvious that new vaccinations, which take more than a month to provide full protection, cannot prevent a viral surge that is presently underway. Additional vaccines may indeed help more people to have better health outcomes if they were to become infected—but that is an entirely different claim.

 

We Don't Need No Stinking Public Discussion Of Our Political Decisions...,

britishmedicaljournal |  Transparency advocates have criticised the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision not to hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval of its covid-19 vaccine.

Last year the FDA said it was “committed to use an advisory committee composed of independent experts to ensure deliberations about authorisation or licensure are transparent for the public.”1 But in a statement, the FDA told The BMJ that it did not believe a meeting was necessary ahead of the expected granting of full approval.

“The FDA has held numerous meetings of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) related to covid-19 vaccines, including a 22 October 20202 meeting to discuss, in general, the development, authorisation, and licensure of covid-19 vaccines,” an FDA spokesperson said.

“The FDA also has held meetings of the VRBPAC on all three covid-19 vaccines authorised for emergency use and does not believe a meeting is needed related to this biologics license application.”

The spokesperson added, “The Pfizer BioNTech covid-19 vaccine was discussed at the VRBPAC meeting on 10 December 2020.3 If the agency had any questions or concerns that required input from the advisory committee members we would have scheduled a meeting to discuss.”

The vaccine has already been rolled out to millions of Americans through an emergency use authorisation. Companies typically apply for full approval after a longer period has elapsed so that more data are available for review.

But with the US government indicating this week that it plans to start making booster shots widely available next month, experts said the decision not to meet to discuss the data was politically driven.

Data scrutiny

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who serves as a consumer representative on the FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee,4 said the decision removed an important mechanism for scrutinising the data.

“These public meetings are imperative in building trust and confidence especially when the vaccines came to market at lightning speed under emergency use authorisation,” she said. “The public deserves a transparent process, especially as the call for boosters and mandates are rapidly increasing. These meetings offer a platform where questions can be raised, problems tackled, and data scrutinised in advance of an approval.”

Petition To The FDA To Refrain From Premature Final Approval Of mRNA Neo-Vaccinoids

britishmedicaljournal |  We are part of a group of clinicians, scientists, and patient advocates who have lodged a formal “Citizen Petition” with the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), asking the agency to delay any consideration of a “full approval” of a covid-19 vaccine. The message of our petition is “slow down and get the science right—there is no legitimate reason to hurry to grant a license to a coronavirus vaccine.” We believe the existing evidence base—both pre- and post-authorization—is simply not mature enough at this point to adequately judge whether clinical benefits outweigh the risks in all populations.

The covid-19 vaccines in widespread use have emergency authorizations (EUA), not actual approvals, a crucial regulatory distinction that reflects major differences in the level of regulatory scrutiny and certainty about the risk-benefit balance.

Our petition doesn’t argue that risks outweigh benefits—or that benefits outweigh risks. Rather, we focus on methods and processes, outlining the many remaining unknowns about safety and effectiveness—and suggest the kinds of studies needed to address the open questions.

If the FDA listens to us, they won’t give serious consideration to approving a covid-19 vaccine until 2022. Our first request is that the FDA require manufacturers to submit data from completed Phase III trials—not interim results. Trials by vaccine manufacturers were designed to follow participants for two years, and should be completed before they are evaluated for full approval, even if they are now unblinded and lack placebo groups. These Phase III trials are not simply efficacy studies; they also are necessary and important safety studies (as the study titles say), and all collected data remain invaluable.

We also call on FDA to require a more thorough assessment of spike proteins produced in-situ by the body following vaccination—including studies on their full biodistribution, pharmacokinetics, and tissue-specific toxicities. We ask the FDA to demand manufacturers complete proper biodistribution studies that would be expected of any new drug and request additional studies to better understand the implications of mRNA translation in distant tissues. We call on data demonstrating a thorough investigation of all serious adverse events reported to pharmacovigilance systems, carried out by independent, impartial individuals, and for safety data from individuals receiving more than two vaccine doses, in consideration of plans for future booster shots. We ask the FDA to request necessary studies in specific populations, including those previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, pediatric subjects, and those with immunological or other underlying medical complexities. Given the nature of the novel vaccine platforms, our petition asks for experts in gene therapy to be included among the external committee advising the FDA.

These are several of our major requests. The petition has been signed by a group of 27 clinicians, researchers, and consumer advocates with diverse experiences and thoughts about the pandemic. We all agree that there remain many open, unanswered questions surrounding the efficacy and safety of covid-19 vaccines that must be answered before the FDA gives serious consideration to granting full approval.

Political Tripling-Down To Back mRNA Neo-Vaccinoid Mandates Starts Monday...,

NYTimes  |  The Food and Drug Administration is pushing to approve Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, further expediting an earlier timeline for licensing the shot, according to people familiar with the agency’s planning.

Regulators were working to finish the process by Friday but were still working through a substantial amount of paperwork and negotiation with the company. The people familiar with the planning, who were not authorized to speak publicly about it, cautioned that the approval might slide beyond Monday if some components of the review need more time.

An F.D.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.

The agency had recently set an unofficial deadline for approval of around Labor Day.

The approval is expected to pave the way for a series of vaccination requirements by public and private organizations who were awaiting final regulatory action before putting in effect mandates. Federal and state health officials are also hoping that an approved vaccine will draw interest from some Americans who have been hesitant to take one that was only authorized for emergency use, a phenomenon suggested by recent polling.

 

Anti-Vaccination Isn't What's Roiling Consensus Reality - It's Refusal To OBEY Cooperate

I’ve started wondering about the question of the confidence in, and even the tolerance of, various levels of governance by the people. All government, after all, relies on unspoken intimidation to some extent to stay in power. That being so, determined resistance from 5-10% of the population is usually enough to frustrate government, and can in fact actually bring it down. And here, we might be talking not about a change from Party A to Party B, but a change in the entire political system, with consequences impossible to foresee. This doesn’t have to be (and probably won’t be) violent or even armed resistance, but rather a sullen, passive, mass refusal to cooperate. It’s a question of numbers. If you break the law, you have a problem. If a million people break the law, the government has a problem.

Does this sound alarmist? Well, try for a moment to envision a scenario – one of many possible ones – in 4 months’ time. The virus is still with us, and new strains appear every month, many from abroad brought by travellers. The first signs of long Covid illnesses are now evident. The hospitals are always full, the health services are perpetually over-extended. There are bitter debates about which vaccines, if any, are still effective and how many doses are needed. There are equally bitter debates about the usefulness of prophylactics and treatments.

The government consensus on these issues, such as it is, changes all the time, and differs from county to county. Supply chains continue to be badly affected. Lockdowns are now a regular feature of life. There are multiple, often contradictory, rules about how you can travel and with what medical documents or certificates. Schools and universities remain mostly closed but try to open for a few weeks or a month when they can. Restaurants, theatres and concert halls in many states are progressively closing down. Sports events are only played before empty stadiums. And the key part of this is that the restrictions will already have been in place for a year, with no sign that they will ever be lifted. This is what “living with Covid” means, insofar as it means anything at all. It could be worse than that of course.

What about the political consequences? Three things stand out, I think. First, most of the population of the United States has never known large-scale insecurity, political upheaval, the risk of hunger or, of course, long-lasting pandemics. We have grown up in a narcissistic culture where What I Want is what counts, and politicians who wish to prosper have to accept that.

Second, few political systems are actually geared to dealing with complex, multi-faceted problems. We can see this already with Covid, and it’s going to get worse. The politics of spin and slogan have been around for so long now, that the ability of most governments to deal with, or even properly appreciate, complex problems, has largely disappeared.

Third, it’s almost impossible to pass complex political messages, even when times are calm. In the age of Twitter, it’s impossible. It’s this, rather than mendacity or conspiracy, which explains the constant flailing of government after a single message, and the fact that these messages change frequently.

With Covid I don’t think it’s possible to pass simple messages, and I suspect it will be more and more difficult as time goes on. In the end, the government has already shown that it is overwhelmed by the complexity of the problem, and by its inability to settle on any coherent policy, much less explain it.

Things are about to get very sticky.

The Great Reset Is The Corporate Takeover Of Global Governance

opendemocracy  |  The plan from which the Great Reset originated was called the Global Redesign Initiative. Drafted by the WEF after the 2008 economic crisis, the initiative contains a 600-page report on transforming global governance. In the WEF’s vision, “the government voice would be one among many, without always being the final arbiter.” Governments would be just one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder model of global governance. Harris Gleckman, senior fellow at the University of Massachusetts, describes the report as “the most comprehensive proposal for re-designing global governance since the formulation of the United Nations during World War II.”

Multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage

Who are these other, non-governmental stakeholders? The WEF, best known for its annual meeting of high-net-worth individuals in Davos, Switzerland, describes itself as an international organization for public-private cooperation. WEF partners include some of the biggest companies in oil (Saudi Aramco, Shell, Chevron, BP), food (Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, Nestlé), technology (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple) and pharmaceuticals (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

Instead of corporations serving many stakeholders, in the multi-stakeholder model of global governance, corporations are promoted to being official stakeholders in global decision-making, while governments are relegated to being one of many stakeholders. In practice, corporations become the main stakeholders, while governments take a backseat role, and civil society is mainly window dressing.

The multi-stakeholder ecosystem

Perhaps the most symbolic example of this shift is the controversial strategic partnership agreement the United Nations (UN) signed with the WEF in 2019. Harris Gleckman describes this as a move to turn the UN into a public-private partnership, creating a special place for corporations inside the UN.

The multi-stakeholder model is already being built. In recent years, an ever-expanding ecosystem of multi-stakeholder groups has spread across all sectors of the global governance system. There are now more than 45 global multi-stakeholder groups that set standards and establish guidelines and rules in a range of areas. According to Gleckman, these groups, which lack any democratic accountability, consist of private stakeholders (big corporations) who “recruit their friends in government, civil society and universities to join them in solving public problems”.

Multi-stakeholderism is the WEF’s update of multilateralism, which is the current system through which countries work together to achieve common goals. The multilateral system’s core institution is the UN. The multilateral system is often rightly accused of being ineffective, too bureaucratic and skewed towards the most powerful nations. But it is at least theoretically democratic because it brings together democratically elected leaders of countries to make decisions in the global arena. Instead of reforming the multilateral system to deepen democracy, the WEF’s vision of multi-stakeholder governance entails further removing democracy by sidelining governments and putting unelected ‘stakeholders’ – mainly corporations – in their place when it comes to global decision-making.

Put bluntly, multi-stakeholder partnerships are public-private partnerships on the global stage. And they have real-world implications for the way our food systems are organized, how big tech is governed and how our vaccines and medicines are distributed.

 

mRNA NeoVaccinoid Prevented Him From Succumbing To SUPERDEATH

RT  | As experts extol the life-preserving qualities of Covid jabs, a news story has claimed that the condition of a man who perished from the virus could have been worse had he not been vaxxed, kindling philosophical debate on Twitter.

The metaphysical social media chatter was triggered by national media coverage of the recent death of Texas native Patricio Elizondo, a diabetic who suffered from heart problems. After Elizondo fell ill in early August, his daughter suspected that he may be suffering from a resurgence of congestive heart failure. The 76-year-old was soon hospitalized after he began having difficulty breathing – a common symptom of heart failure, which can lead to fluid building up in the lungs causing shortness of breath.

But doctors said that a chest X-ray revealed that Elizondo had actually caught Covid. He passed away on August 3 due to lung damage caused by the virus, a cardiologist who treated Elizondo said. 

The Texan’s age and medical history placed him at high risk for contracting a severe case of coronavirus – but the fact that he was fully vaccinated caught the attention of local, then national media. 

Aside from being fully inoculated against Covid, Elizondo “rarely left the house, was always masked up, and even wore gloves,” Yvonne Rodriguez, the daughter of the deceased, told San Antonio news station KSAT. Although she said she couldn’t understand how her father caught the virus, Rodriguez stressed that she felt the vaccine had still been helpful. 

“I saw my dad, how sick as he was,” she said. “I can’t imagine how much more he would have suffered if he had not gotten the vaccine.”

KSAT spoke with a local doctor and infectious disease specialist who suggested that Rodriguez was “right” to think that the vaccine had aided her father.

mRNA Neo-Vaccinoids Damn Near Worthless At Preventing Covid-21 Infection

FT  |  A rise in vaccinated people becoming infected with coronavirus has cast doubt over the lasting efficacy of Covid-19 vaccines, according to new studies, including one that found protection gained from the BioNTech/Pfizer shot declined more rapidly than that from the AstraZeneca jab. An Oxford university study published on Thursday found that the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine against symptomatic infection almost halved after four months, and that vaccinated people infected with the more infectious Delta variant had as high viral loads as the unvaccinated. Two research papers from the US and Qatar have also fuelled debate over the need for top-up booster shots as they found higher numbers of “breakthrough infections” than anticipated, even though protection against serious cases of the virus appears to hold. Natalie Dean, a biostatistics professor at Emory University, said the spread of the Delta variant had made it “a lot harder” to stop transmission. “The situation has changed with respect to how far we think vaccines can take us,” she said. “We’ve been brought back to a more modest — but still critical — goal: to prevent severe disease, hospitalisations and deaths.” 

The Oxford scientists showed vaccine efficacy falling since the Delta strain became dominant in the UK in May. While the Pfizer shot was more effective at first, by four to five months after the second dose its efficacy was roughly the same as AstraZeneca’s jab, as the protection offered by the latter has barely budged. The paper’s authors were not involved in the creation of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which originated at Oxford university. Tomas Hanke, professor of vaccine immunology at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, speculated that the AstraZeneca shot generates longer-lasting immunity because its spike protein sticks around for more time, promoting a bigger immune response. “When you deliver RNA, like the Pfizer vaccine, you deliver a finite number of mRNA molecules which are eventually cleared from the system,” he said. “But when you deliver the adenovirus, as AstraZeneca does, you deliver a template which then keeps producing these mRNAs that then produce the spike protein, so there’s no ceiling.” A preprint based on evidence collected at the Mayo Clinic hospital chain in the US state of Minnesota showed protection against infection fell from 91 per cent to 76 per cent between February and July for the vaccine made by Moderna, and from 89 per cent to 42 per cent for the Pfizer jab. 

mRNA NeoVaccinoids HIGHLY EFFECTIVE At Disrupting Women's Menstrual Cycles

thegrayzone  | Amid rising reports of vaccine-related menstrual disruptions, the CDC and FDA are dismissing women’s concerns and denying them information while corporate media pathologizes them in sexist fashion.

This August 11, the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) overhauled its COVID-19 vaccine guidance for pregnant women, now “urging” them to accept their shots.

Just 23% of pregnant women in the US have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Only something like 11.1% have been fully vaccinated. 

The CDC is seeking to drive these numbers up, but it is not doing the one thing that would, perhaps more than anything else, assuage the “hesitations” of these so-called “anti-vaxxers”: investigate and explain widespread reports of menstrual disruption post-Covid 19 vaccine – and, if necessary, add a warning about it.

Why?

I have five female friends who, after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, experienced disruption to their menstrual cycles. Their symptoms have included hemorrhagic bleeding lasting more than a month; heavy intermittent bleeding for four months; passing golf-ball size clots of blood; and extreme cramping, serious enough to land one friend in the ER.

Most of these women are in their 20s and 30s, and at least one of them thinks she might want to have children. She now worries that her symptoms might be the harbinger of long-term fertility problems. At least two of my friends have symptoms that have not resolved. All are feminists and have throughout the years been consistent Democratic Party voters.

Other women of childbearing age have reported becoming temporarily “postmenopausal” after their second mRNA shot; conversely, women in menopause are reporting suddenly beginning to bleed again; trans men on hormone therapy have also reported sudden bleeding. Apparently, the number of vaccinated women around the world reporting alarmingly disrupted menstruation is, to be conservative, in the tens of thousands. 

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, does not warn women who get the shots that they may experience a disrupted menstrual cycle. 

Why is this? In part because even though menstruation is sometimes called the sixth vital sign and directly implicates fertility, and the fact that women on average suffer higher rates of adverse reaction to vaccines of all sorts and medication in general, the effects of Covid vaccines on women’s health specifically, including the menstrual cycle, were not studied as part of the Emergency Use Authorization process.

Can You Even Imagine The Press Kwestioning Biden Like This?!?!?!

thesaker |   The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.

The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.

Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.

Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and

here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.

These are the key takeaways.

– No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insists, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”

– The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.

– Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.

– A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.

– Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”

– The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.

For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.

On the key issue of opium/heroin: the Taliban will ban their production. So, for all practical purposes, the CIA heroin rat line is dead.

As eyebrow raising as these statements may be, the Taliban did not even get into detail on economic/infrastructure development deals – as they will need a lot of new industries, new jobs and improved Eurasian-wide trade relations. That will be announced later.

The go-to Russian guy

Sharp US observers are remarking, half in jest, that the Taliban in only one sitting answered more real questions from US media than POTUS since January.

What this first press conference reveals is how the Taliban are fast absorbing essential P.R. and media lessons from Moscow and Beijing, emphasizing ethnic harmony, the role of women, the role of diplomacy, and deftly defusing in a single move all the hysteria raging across NATOstan.

The next bombshell step in the P.R. wars will be to cut off the lethal, evidence-free Taliban-9/11 connection; afterwards the “terrorist organization” label will disappear, and the Taliban as a political movement will be fully legitimized.

Moscow and Beijing are meticulously stage-managing the Taliban reinsertion in regional and global geopolitics. This means that ultimately the SCO is stage-managing the whole process, applying a consensus reached after a series of ministerial and leaders meetings, leading to a very important summit next month in Dushanbe.

It's Like Cornpop Let Jen Psaki Run The Operation, And Not Just Her Mouth....,

tandfonline | It is an old cliché that the Pashtun highlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan are highly resistant to state authority, and old masters of ‘the art of not being governed’ (to use James Scott’s phrase).¹ Like so many clichés, this has a real basis in historical fact. The old name ‘Yaghistan’ (the land of lawlessness, rebellion or dissent)² was given to them by the people of the region, not by Western observers. This name, and what it indicates, also corresponds very closely to patterns in other Muslim tribal regions, first systematically analysed by Ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century ce in the Maghreb.

As an index of the Afghan state’s failure to make its society ‘legible’ (in another phrase of Scott’s), it may be noted that in the whole of modern Afghan history there has never been a census that could be regarded as remotely reliable. As for Max Weber’s classic definition of a state as ‘a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory’,³ that has never been true of Afghanistan. Even when the Afghan state was at its strongest, local communities insisted, usually successfully, on keeping rifles, on conducting limited armed disputes with other kinship groups, and on executing their own members who violated traditional community norms.

Only in the late 1940s, as a result of the import of modern tanks and aircraft, did the Afghan state army become strong enough to defeat a general tribal uprising – and that superiority lasted a bare 30 years. It collapsed with the anti-communist revolts and army mutinies of the late 1970s, and since then, no Afghan state – not even the Taliban, which came closest – has successfully possessed a monopoly of organised armed force across the whole of Afghanistan.⁴

This basic truth obscures an important nuance, however. The Pashtun tribes have not been categorically hostile to state authority as such; after all, Pashtun tribes created the kingdom of Afghanistan in the first place, and most rural Pashtuns accepted Taliban rule in the 1990s willingly enough. Rather, they have been hostile to three kinds of government: those lacking traditional or religious legitimacy; those which force them to pay too many taxes; and those which try rapidly to change their lives, their society and their traditions. In the traditional Pashtun tribal view, the legitimate role of the state, though essential, is also highly limited. Apart from leading the people against invaders, it is to judge tribal disputes, and thereby prevent these disputes from creating a state of permanent warfare.⁵ Given the traditional omnipresence of weapons in Pashtun society, and the cultural obsession with honour and prestige, journalist Anand Gopal has observed that ‘the role of dispute resolution in Pashtun society cannot be emphasised enough … In post-2001 Kandahar, the Taliban’s judicial services became one of the key advantages that the movement had over the state.’⁶

The Pashtun tragedy lies in the fact that in practice, this rejection of state interference has usually amounted to a rejection of the modernising state as such, since modernising states need to raise taxes to pay for development, find it very hard to base themselves on tradition, and by definition have to set out to change society.

Scott, as an anarchist, sympathises unconditionally with the hill peoples of Southeast Asia in their flight from and resistance to local states. The melancholy history of Afghanistan, by contrast, would suggest that the only thing worse than having a state is not having a state; and indeed, this tragic dilemma is summed up in a very old Pashtun proverb: ‘feuding ate up the mountains, and taxes ate up the plains’.⁷

The great value of Scott’s approach is that it reminds us of something that Western societies have long forgotten, and that the vast majority of the Western ‘experts’ who tried (or pretended) to develop Afghanistan after 2001 simply could not comprehend (as was probably true also of their Soviet equivalents 20 years earlier): the intense nastiness of most states in history, especially in their formative stages. As a famous nineteenth-century British-Indian policeman wrote of the history of South Asia in general:

There has seldom been any idea of reciprocity, of duties and rights, between the governor and the governed … For in India, the difference between the army of a prince and the gang of a robber was, in the general estimation of the people, only in degree – they were both driving an ‘imperial trade’, a padshahi kam.⁸

In other words, if Pashtuns have often revolted against the Afghan state (whether foreign-backed or purely indigenous), they have often had good reasons to.

There is, however, a reciprocal relationship between state nastiness and tribal resistance. It takes a great deal of nastiness (or at least the threat of it) to persuade tribes to pay taxes, but without taxes, what is the state? Either an impotent shadow, or a dependency of some foreign state and its subsidies. Both of these fates have befallen Afghanistan repeatedly over the past 200 years.

Key to the West’s failure successfully to build a new order in Afghanistan after 2001 was not just an inability to understand the historic alienation of ordinary Afghans in general, and Pashtuns in particular, from ‘their’ state, but also a refusal to recognise that, given the miserable history and eventual collapse of Afghan states, the Taliban may have been the best state-building option left, at least as far as rural Pashtuns were concerned. Not by any means a good option – just better than all the others.

The Islamic Emirate Of Afghanistan

asiatimes  |  Geopolitically, what matters now is how the Taliban have written a whole new script, showing the lands of Islam, as well as the Global South, how to defeat the self-referential, seemingly invincible US/NATO empire.

The Taliban did it with Islamic faith, infinite patience and force of will fueling roughly 78,000 fighters – 60,000 of them active – many with minimal military training, no backing of any state – unlike Vietnam, which had China and the USSR – no hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO, no trained army, no air force and no state-of-the-art technology.

They relied only on Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and Toyota pick-ups – before they captured American hardware these past few days, including drones and helicopters.  

Taliban leader Mullah Baradar has been extremely cautious. On Monday he said: “It is too early to say how we will take over governance.” First of all, the Taliban wants “to see foreign forces leave before restructuring begins.”

Abdul Ghani Baradar is a very interesting character. He was born and raised in Kandahar. That’s where the Taliban started in 1994, seizing the city almost without a fight and then, equipped with tanks, heavy weapons and a lot of cash to bribe local commanders, capturing Kabul nearly 25 years ago, on September 27, 1996.

Earlier, Mullah Baradar fought in the 1980s jihad against the USSR, and maybe – not confirmed – side-by-side with Mullah Omar, with whom he co-founded the Taliban. 

After the American bombing and occupation post-9/11, Mullah Baradar and a small group of Taliban sent a proposal to then-President Hamid Karzai on a potential deal that would allow the Taliban to recognize the new regime. Karzai, under Washington pressure, rejected it. 

Baradar was actually arrested in Pakistan in 2010 – and kept in custody. Believe it or not, American intervention led to his freedom in 2018. He then relocated to Qatar. And that’s where he was appointed head of the Taliban’s political office and oversaw the signing last year of the American withdrawal deal.

Baradar will be the new ruler in Kabul – but it’s important to note he’s under the authority of the Taliban Supreme Leader since 2016, Haibatullah Akhundzada. It’s the Supreme Leader – actually a spiritual guide – who will be lording over the new incarnation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. 

The collapse of the Afghan National Army (ANA) was inevitable. They were “educated” the American military way: massive technology, massive airpower, next to zero local ground intel.

The Taliban is all about deals with tribal elders and extended family connections – and a peasant guerrilla approach, parallel to the communists in Vietnam. They were biding their time for years, just building connections – and those sleeper cells.

Afghan troops who had not received a salary for months were paid not to fight them. And the fact they did not attack American troops since February 2020 earned them a lot of extra respect: a matter of honor, essential in the Pashtunwali code.

It’s impossible to understand the Taliban – and most of all, the Pashtun universe – without understanding Pashtunwali. As well as the concepts of honor, hospitality and inevitable revenge for any wrongdoing, the concept of freedom implies no Pashtun is inclined to be ordered by a central state authority – in this case, Kabul. And no way will they ever surrender their guns. 

In a nutshell, that’s the “secret” of the lightning-fast blitzkrieg with minimal loss of blood, inbuilt in the overarching geopolitical earthquake. After Vietnam, this is the second Global South protagonist showing the whole world how an empire can be defeated by a peasant guerrilla army.

And all that accomplished with a budget that may not exceed $1.5 billion a year – coming from local taxes, profits from opium exports (no internal distribution allowed) and real estate speculation. In vast swaths of Afghanistan, the Taliban were already, de facto, running local security, local courts and even food distribution.  

Taliban 2021 is an entirely different animal compared with Taliban 2001. Not only are they battle-hardened, they had plenty of time to perfect their diplomatic skills, which were recently more than visible in Doha and in high-level visits to Tehran, Moscow and Tianjin.

They know very well that any connection with al-Qaeda remnants, ISIS/Daesh, ISIS-Khorasan and ETIM is counter-productive – as their Shanghai Cooperation Organization interlocutors made very clear.

Biden Is A Pathetic, Expendable, Crash-Test Sock-Puppet...,

michael-hudson  |  After Carter, George W. Bush and Barack Obama funded Al Qaeda (largely with the gold looted from destroying Libya) to fight for U.S. geopolitical aims and oil in Iraq and Syria. The Taliban for its part fought against Al Quaeda. The real U.S. fear therefore is not that they may back America’s Wahabi foreign legion, but that they will make a deal with Russia, China and Syria to serve as a trade link from Iran westward.

Biden’s second myth was to blame the victim by claiming that the Afghan army would not fight for “their country,” despite his assurances by the proxies whom the U.S. installed – that they would use U.S. money to build the economy. He also said that the army did not fight, which became obvious over the weekend.

The police force also did not fight. Nobody fought the Taliban to “defend their country,” because the U.S. occupation regime was not “their country.” Again and again, Biden repeated that the United States could not save a country that would not “defend itself.” But the “itself” was the corrupt regime that was simply pocketing U.S. “aid” money.

The situation was much like what was expressed in the old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto finding themselves surrounded by Indians. “What are we going to do, Tonto,” asked the Lone Ranger.

“What do you mean, ‘We,’ white man?” Tonto replied. That was the reply of the Afghan army to U.S. demands that they fight for the corrupt occupation force that they had installed. Their aim is to survive in a new country, while in Doha the Taliban leadership negotiates with China, Russia and even the United States to achieve a modus vivendi.

So all that Biden’s message meant to most Americans was that we would not waste any more lives and money fighting wars for an ungrateful population that wanted the U.S. to do all the fighting for it.

President Biden could have come out and washed away the blame by saying: “Just before the weekend, I was told by my army generals and national security advisors that it would take months for the Taliban to conquer Afghanistan, and certainly to take control of Kabul, which supposedly would be a bloody fight.” He could have announced that he is removing the incompetent leadership engrained for many years, and creating a more reality-based group.

But of course, he could not do that, because the group is the unreality-based neocon Deep State. He was not about to explain how “It’s obvious that I and Congress have been misinformed, and that the intelligence agencies had no clue about the country that they were reporting on for the last two decades.”

e could have acknowledged that the Afghans welcomed the Taliban into Kabul without a fight. The army stood aside, and the police stood aside. There seemed to be a party celebrating the American withdrawal. Restaurants and markets were open, and Kabul seemed to be enjoying normal life – except for the turmoil at the airport.

Suppose that Biden had said the following: “Given this acquiescence in support for the Taliban, I was obviously correct in withdrawing the American occupation forces. Contrary to what Congress and the Executive Branch was told, there was no support by the Afghans for the Americans. I now realize that to the Afghan population, the government officials that America installed simply took the money we gave them and put it into their own bank accounts instead of paying the army, police and other parts of civic society.”

Instead, President Biden spoke about having made four trips to Afghanistan and how much he knew and trusted the proxies that U.S. agencies had installed. That made him seem gullible. Even Donald Trump said publicly that he didn’t trust the briefings that he was given, and wanted to spend money at home, into the hands of his own campaign contributors instead of abroad.

Biden could have picked up on this point by saying, “At least there’s a silver lining: We won’t be spending any more than the $3 trillion that we’ve already sunk over there. We can now afford to use the money to build up domestic U.S. infrastructure instead.”

But instead President Biden doubled down on what his neocon advisors had told him, and what they were repeating on the TV news channels all day: The Afghan army had refused to fight “for their country,” meaning the U.S.-supported occupation force, as if this was really Afghan self-government.

The media are showing pictures of the Afghan palace and one of the warlord’s office. I did a double-take, because the plush, wretched-excess furnishings looked just like Obama’s $12 million McMansion furnishings in Martha’s Vineyard.

MSDNC On Behalf Of The MIC Slapped The Taste Out Of Cornpop's Lying Mouth...,

Greenwald  |   Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack, interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan military, described in detail why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and takeover by the Taliban.

Virtuous Presidential SoftHeadedness: Any Genuine C-in-C Would've Fired These Two AssClowns..,

 exiledonline |  Was there ever a plan there?

So what was supposed to happen back in October 2001, when the US forces invaded? I’ve been going through the papers of record, the NYT and WaPo, to see what the official line was, year by year. The first years of an occupation are the most important, so I’ve focused on the first five full years of US occupation, 2002-2007. You can find a good timeline of these years here, but it’s much harder to find any trace of a plan.

The US invaded both Afghanistan (October 2001) and Iraq (March 2003), but not all invasions are equal. For the DC elite, Iraq was a war of choice, while Afghanistan was just a grim preliminary chore. They had to invade Afghanistan quickly after the WTC attacks, because it was all over the news that Al Qaeda had its HQ there and the voters were angry. Public support for invading Afghanistan was higher than for invading Iraq.

But those in the know, in the three-letter agencies and the DC elite, knew Afghanistan was hopeless. They knew this because the Taliban, officially the enemy in Afghanistan, was sponsored and protected by the Pakistani armed forces. And Pakistan was never going to hand over Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban, to the Americans. The Pakistani intel elite, one of the scariest, murkiest groups in the world, cherished its pet jihadis as its one reliable weapon against the hated Indians. It was never going to help destroy them, or even cooperate in any serious pruning operation.

A decade after the US invaded with the supposed help of Pakistan, Osama was found in a big compound inside Pakistan, a few hundred meters from a Pakistani military. At that point even us rubes knew that the Pakistani government had never intended to betray its Taliban allies. (Note: “Taliban” here means the “Afghan Taliban,” as opposed to the later “Pakistani Taliban,” which the Pakistani gov’t, or at least some elements of that gov’t, really does dislike. Like I said, it’s murky.)

Nobody at the CIA or the 16 other US intel agencies really thought the Pakistani gov’t would give up their friends. And nobody in DC really thought that Afghans, as they imagined Afghans, would welcome American troops. So from the start, this was the poor stepchild invasion, while Iraq was coddled.

They had high hopes for Iraq. Iraqis, in the neocon dream, were really proto-Americans, just waiting for a Shock and Awe Apocalypse to free their inner Republican. Afghans, OTOH, were scary and alien. Brave, yes; remember all those Reagan-era movies on the glorious Afghan resistance?

Maybe too brave, in fact. The DC elite had heard that cliché about “Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires” and believed it. Who wants to invade a dirt-poor country full of brave warriors who don’t seem like good candidates for transformation into suburban Americans?

The DC blob had no real hopes or plans for Afghanistan — and the stories from NYT and WaPo reflect that. These stories use several different models, which I’ll try to characterize here. They overlap, over the years 2002-2007, but they’re not in any strict chronological order. It’s more that those whose unlucky job it was to explain the invasion used whichever model retained a figleaf of plausibility at the time.

 

Illinois Brings You Vaxx Verify Mark Of The Beast Verification Portal (By Experian)

The CDC, and the entire federal public health apparatus in the United States, has been an absolute disaster for the entire duration of this pandemic. It's embarrassing how incompetent they are. A pandemic is an emergency and requires proactive action. The CDC has been anything but proactive. As stated in the article, it seems as if they're reacting to every event that occurs with a month-long delay.

Data Collection--It's an absolute disgrace that there is no federal central repository of COVID-19 breakthrough infection data. We are navigating this mess completely blindfolded. Instead, we have to rely on individual state reporting, and sometimes data is only available on a county-level.

Wide-scale Home Testing--It took the FDA an entire year and a half to approve a lateral assay antigen test. Yet, they're on retail for $20 at CVS. That's far too expensive for a simple piece of nitrocellulose paper with immunofluorescent antibodies. If we were serious about curtailing the spread of Delta, we would invest funds in a federal effort to mass-produce these tests at a $1 price point, and distribute them to all households for daily testing.

Mutations--It seems as if everyone forgot the concept of a "derivative" from entry-level calculus. Everyone is focused on Delta without exerting the slightest effort in thinking about the future. We need to get proactive, folks. Immune evasion to Delta may be low, but what about future variants? We need to model the rate of mutations in the spike protein based on the magnitude of transmissions. This is possible if effort is put into it. Doing such, we can forecast antibody evasion in future variants based on current cases.

Booster Doses--I truly hope that the boosters that are being planned are not simply a third dose of the same Spike encodement. The spike region has mutated since the Alpha iteration of the virus. Current vaccines encode for that old version of the Spike protein. The boosters should have the mRNA encoding of the Delta spike. Giving senior citizens a booster of the old Spike sequence would be extremely short-sighted.

Treatments--Why is the United States investing so little in COVID-19 infection treatment? Why are we hedging all our bets on prophylaxis? We must invest far more into Coronavirus inhibitors.

In short, I have lost all faith in our federal public health apparatus. The CDC is nowhere near as agile as it needs to be to deal with a pandemic.

Jamelle Bouie: Conspiracism Of Smug Virtue Signaling With No Factual Underpinning...,

NYTimes |  When asked if he had gotten a Covid-19 vaccine, Lamar Jackson, a quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, declined to answer. “I feel it’s a personal decision,” he said. “I’m just going to keep my feelings to my family and myself.”

Jackson echoed another N.F.L. quarterback, Cam Newton of the New England Patriots, who said much the same a few days earlier. “It’s too personal to discuss,” Newton replied, when asked if he was vaccinated. “I’ll just keep it at that.”

Jackson and Newton are not the only prominent people to say hey, it’s personal when asked about the vaccine. It is a common dodge for public-facing vaccine skeptics or those using vaccine skepticism for their own ends. “I don’t think it’s anybody’s damn business whether I’m vaccinated or not,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, told CNN last month. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote similarly (albeit less abrasively) in May that vaccination was a “personal and private decision” and that “no one should be shamed, coerced or mandated to take Covid-19 vaccines that are being allowed under an emergency use authorization.”

Johnson and all the others are wrong. Wearing a helmet while bike riding, strapping on your seatbelt in a car — these are personal decisions, at least as far as your own injuries are concerned. Vaccination is different. In the context of a deadly and often debilitating contagion, in which the unchecked spread of infection has consequences for the entire society, vaccination is not a personal decision. And inasmuch as the United States has struggled to achieve herd immunity against Covid-19 through vaccination, it is because we refuse to treat the pandemic for what it is: a social problem to solve through collective action.

Fall Of Afghanistan: Cornpop Hiding, Blinken Eating Shit Sandwiches, Kamala Devi Looking Good...,

Talked to a buddy who was an Embedded Tactical Trainer with the ANA in Afghanistan for a few tours.

Some of his observations as to why the Afghan National Army is folding so quickly were quite interesting to me, so here goes

1. The Taliban has had 20 years to build lists. pic.twitter.com/5Q05xqV7rg

— TheHuntForTomClancy (@HuntClancy) August 14, 2021

In addition to not being paid, fed, or resupplied by leadership that fled the country with cars full of embezzled $$$ - the Afghan National Army folded quick, fast, and in a hurry for the following reason(s):

1. The Taliban has had 20 years to build lists.

2. So, the Taliban knows who the ANA Kandak commanders are. Everyone's got a cousin in the Taliban and a cousin in the ANA/ANP/ABP/CTPT whatever. The ANA Kandak commanders get a phone call from the Taliban commanders: we've got your family in X province under our protection now.

3. When the American ETT's lost operational control over their advisors, the ANA officers and NCOs had no one to put a check on the tendency to abuse new Askars, and also the tendency to steal the new Askars' money (Here's $100, we'll take $90 back now for your food and uniform).

4. Morale within the units is shit, and the trust and mutual respect needed for effective small-unit combat actions to actually work doesn't really exist. Corruption runs wild, drug abuse is a big problem, and again, everyone's got a cousin on the other side, so fuck it, right?

5. Plus, the US concentrated on developing combat forces in their own image, supplying the ANA with surplus Flag of United States arms, vehicles, uniforms & commo gear. The US spent thousands upon thousands of dollars training and equipping each ANA Askar, but forgot something: they didn't issue eyeglasses.

6. I have shit uncorrected eyesight, like, I really need glasses to do just about anything, certainly to shoot an M4 or an M203 accurately enough to kill the person I'm aiming at. Don't you reckon there might be myopic askars? None of the Askars had eyeglasses.

7. Afghanistan was a complete, total, and epic fuckup by the Administration, the Intelligence Community, the American Deep State. Sheer and utter incompetence played out over 20 years to the nth degree. For any of us looking, all I got is that we should now understand our Vietnam veterans better. And, man, every administration since Jimmy Carter (or hell, you can go back to Eisenhower and Morrison-Knudsen's dam building efforts) fucked up afghanistan.

p.s. the Talibs also have cousins who are Askars in the army. The difference is that the Talibs believe they're right and the Askars don't. That's the biggest difference. Weapons and big spending can't buy that.

This may become the most infamous — and devastating — press conference ever held by an American President. pic.twitter.com/j4kKwyPDVm

— BDW (@BryanDeanWright) August 15, 2021

Despite His Having Called Her The "Best Looking AG" Kamala Devi Is Not An Obama Protege...,

taibbi  |  Cast out, the Times said, were “the majority of former Obama administration officials… who generally credit themselves with helping create the Obama legacy,” including former top aide David Axelrod, who’d just called Obama an “apostle of hope” in the Washington Post and sat for a three-hour HBO documentary deep-throat of his ex-boss. Remaining on the list were celeb couples Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, as well as Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union, along with Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Questlove, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Don Cheadle, and other Fabulous People, who drank “top shelf liquor,” puffed stogies, and hit the links at the Vineyard Golf Club (membership fee: $350,000). An early report that Pearl Jam had been hired to perform was later refuted. Eddie Vedder would just be there, but not to play.

One attendee called it the “party of all parties,” while another added, “Y’all never seen Obama like this,”  There’s a glorious moment in the life of a certain kind of politician, when either because their careers are over, or because they’re so untouchable politically that it doesn’t matter anymore, that they finally get to remove the public mask, no pun intended. This Covid bash was Barack Obama’s “Fuck it!” moment.

He extended middle fingers in all directions: to his Vineyard neighbors, the rest of America, Biden, the hanger-on ex-staffers who’d stacked years of hundred-hour work weeks to build his ballyhooed career, the not quite A-listers bounced at the last minute for being not famous enough (sorry, Larry David and Conan O’Brien!), and so on. It’d be hard not to laugh imagining Axelrod reading that even “Real Housewife of Atlanta” Kim Fields got on the party list over him, except that Obama giving the shove-off to his most devoted (if also scummy and greedy) aides is also such a perfect metaphor for the way he slammed the door in the faces of the millions of ordinary voters who once so desperately believed in him.

Obviously, getting rich and not giving a shit anymore is the birthright of every American. But this wasn’t supposed to be in the script for Obama, whose remarkable heel turn has been obscured by the Trump years, which incidentally were at least partly his fault. The history books and the still-starstruck press will let him skate on this, but they shouldn’t.

Obama was set up to be the greatest of American heroes, but proved to be a common swindler and one of the great political liars of all time — he fooled us all. Moreover, his remarkably vacuous post-presidency is proving true everything Trump said in 2016 about the grasping Washington politicians whose only motives are personal enrichment, and who’d do anything, even attend his wedding, for a buck. Trump’s point was that he, Trump, was already swinishly rich, while politicians have only one thing to sell to get the upper class status they crave: us.

Sick Of Covid - Let's Look At Kamala Devi For A Minute...,

alicefromqueens |  Harris opposed legalization as recently as 2014, in her re-election campaign for attorney general of California, even as her Republican opponent supported it. Incidentally, the answer Harris gave a local reporter on the subject that year was the first time her laugh got her in real trouble. Hold onto that for bar trivia-night.

TO BE CLEAR: I HAVE NO PROBLEM with Kamala’s personality type as such. But before she dropped out of the primaries, it amazed me that no one else found her fish-out-of-waterness worth remarking on. Surely it’s not problematic to discuss frankly whether any politician as feminine as Kamala can win a presidential election.

The nearest thing to a high-profile criticism of Harris’s personality was delivered unwittingly in The Washington Post. In an Opinion piece titled, “Vogue got too familiar, too fast,” the paper’s former fashion critic, Robin Givhan, blamed Vogue for making Harris look relatable: “The cover did not give Kamala D. Harris due respect. It was overly familiar. It was a cover image that, in effect, called Harris by her first name without invitation.”

Givhan goes on to suggest that the cover reflected solely the preferences of Vogue’s editor and Hollywood-villain Anna Wintour, and that Wintour’s cluelessness exemplified Vogue’s ongoing problems with race. Astonishingly, this all came after Givhan acknowledged, “Harris styled herself. She chose her ensembles.” 

No one inflicts relatability on Kamala, and no one needs an invite to call her by one name. There’s an invitation in every smile and word from her mouth. Whether Americans want such an invitation from their president is a different question, one we’ll be returning to in this series

What Was Up A Month Ago When Kamala Harris Couldn't Catch A Break?

independent |  The response from the office of Kamala Harris to reports that her office was a mess of dysfunction and distrust is to say the anonymous critics are "cowards".

An incendiary story in Politico based on leaks from within and around the vice president’s orbit describes her office as chaotic, tense, dour, abusive, and an unhealthy work environment where "people feel treated like s***".

The report quotes 22 current and former vice presidential aides, administration officials and associates of both Ms Harris and Joe Biden to paint a picture of a toxic and incompetent operation from the top-down, with particular ire aimed at the VP’s chief of staff Tina Flournoy.

“People are thrown under the bus from the very top, there are short fuses and it’s an abusive environment,” said a person with direct knowledge of how Ms Harris runs her office.

The report claims Ms Flournoy created an insular environment where ideas are ignored and she refuses to take responsibility for delicate issues and blames staffers for negative results that follow, like the bungled trip to the Mexico border that blindsided members of the vice president’s own office.

In response to Politico, Ms Harris’ chief spokeswoman said people criticizing Ms Flournoy "are cowards to do this this way".

“We are not making rainbows and bunnies all day. What I hear is that people have hard jobs and I’m like ‘welcome to the club,’” Ms Sanders said.

“We have created a culture where people, if there is anything anyone would like to raise, there are avenues for them to do so. Whoever has something they would like to raise, they should raise it directly.”

Does This Video And This Write-Up Make Dr. Dan Stock A "Domestic Violent Extremist"?

DHS – The Secretary of Homeland Security has issued a new National Terrorism Advisory System (NTAS) Bulletin regarding the current heightened threat environment across the United States. […] These threats include those posed by domestic terrorists, individuals and groups engaged in grievance-based violence. […] Such threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions. 

Indystar |  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that K-12 schools adopt universal masking for all students, teachers and staff members, regardless of vaccination status. The Indiana State Department of Health has recommended that schools follow the CDC guidance. 

But the decision has been left to local school boards, the very people that Stock is telling not to listen to the CDC or the state health officials.

State health officials have pushed back on Stock’s video, while maintaining the position that Indiana is a "home rule state" and decisions around masking and more are up to local officials.

“Throughout this pandemic, we have relied on data and science to make recommendations, and we will continue to do so,” said Megan Wade-Taxter, a spokesperson for the Indiana State Department of Health. “The COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalizations and deaths, as evidenced by the fact that more than 98% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since mid-January are unvaccinated."

That’s true even as the delta variant drives a surge of new cases. More than 97% of Hoosiers who have been hospitalized with COVID-19 since June 1 have not been vaccinated, she said.

"Decisions about school protocols rest with school boards and local leaders," she said, "including local health departments and elected officials."

The Hancock County Health Department has also advised all schools in the county, including Mt. Vernon, to follow the CDC and state health recommendations.

"You’ve got so many things coming at you," said Kellie Freeman, a member of the Mt. Vernon Community Schools board that heard from Stock last week. "It’s difficult to know."

At that meeting of the Mt. Vernon board, members were considering parameters that would require individual school buildings to increase cleaning and move toward a mask mandate, based on the percentage of students out due to illness or quarantine. Currently, the district is mask-optional.

Ultimately, the board decided to table the discussion after hearing Stock's comments. 

"I think we have an obligation to… find the facts that were shared today," said board member Shannon Walls.

 

Covid-21 Continues To Evolve EXACTLY The Way VandenBossche Said It Would...,

geertvandenbossche |  The WHO’s mass vaccination program has been installed in response to a public health emergency of international concern. As of the early days of the mass vaccination campaigns, at least a few experts have been warning against the catastrophic impact such a program could have on global and individual health. Mass vaccination in the middle of a pandemic is prone to promoting selection and adaptation of immune escape variants that are featured by increasing infectiousness and resistance to spike protein (S)-directed antibodies (Abs), thereby diminishing protection in vaccines and threatening the unvaccinated. 

This already explains why the WHO’s mass vaccination program is not only unable to generate herd immunity (HI) but even leads to substantial erosion of the population’s immune protective capacity. As the ongoing universal mass vaccination program will soon promote dominant propagation of highly infectious, neutralization escape mutants (i.e., so-called ‘S Ab-resistant variants’), naturally acquired, or vacinal neutralizing Abs, will, indeed, no longer offer any protection to immunized individuals whereas high infectious pressure will continue to suppress the innate immune defense system of the non-vacinated. This is to say that every further increase in vaccine coverage rates will further contribute to forcing the virus into resistance to neutralizing, S-specific Abs. 

Increased viral infectivity, combined with evasion from antiviral immunity, will inevitably result in an additional toll taken on human health and human lives. Immediate action needs, therefore, to be taken in order to dramatically reduce viral infectivity rates and to prevent selected immune escape variants from rapidly spreading through the entire population, whether vaccinated or not. This first critical step can only be achieved by calling an immediate halt to the mass vaccination program and replacing it by widespread use of antiviral chemoprophylactics while dedicating massive public health resources to scaling early multidrug treatments of Covid-19 disease.