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New York gun control law requires social media checks

Samizdat | July 2, 2022

New York has adopted a sweeping gun control law aiming to ban firearms from a number of “sensitive areas,” including Times Square, also requiring social media checks for gun permit applicants to ensure their “character and conduct.”

The Democrat-sponsored bill advanced through the New York legislature during a special session on Friday, with Governor Kathy Hochul signing it soon after.

“This to me is the embodiment of what it means to be an American,” Hochul said of the law soon after it passed the state Senate, adding she would sign it “in honor of our Fourth of July weekend.”

The law bans guns from a long list of “sensitive areas” around the Empire State, such as popular tourist sites in New York City, as well as schools, libraries, universities, government buildings, playgrounds and parks, public transit and stadiums. Residents will also no longer be allowed to carry firearms into private businesses unless the owners post clear signage stating it is permitted.

A more controversial measure in the bill requires those looking to obtain a gun permit to send the government “a list of former and current social media accounts… from the past three years” in order to confirm the “applicant’s character and conduct.” Additionally, they will be made to submit at least four “character references” who can “attest to the applicant’s good moral character.”

The bill was passed during a special legislative session called after the US Supreme Court shot down a century-old gun control law in New York last week. While the provision forced permit-seekers to demonstrate that they required a gun for self-defense, the court concluded that it violated the 14th Amendment “by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

Though Democratic supporters have said it will help “make New Yorkers safe,” the new legislation has faced intense criticism from Republicans and gun advocates, with the executive director of the New York State Firearms Association, Aaron Dorr, blasting it as “the kind of bill that the Gestapo would be proud of.”

“This will never survive a court challenge,” he added.

GOP Rep. Lee Zeldin – who won the party’s nomination for an upcoming governor’s race earlier this week – was also highly critical, arguing the law would only make residents less safe.

“Only under one party Democrat rule can criminals run amuck armed with illegal guns, while law abiding New Yorkers are stripped of their right to safely and securely carry a firearm solely for self-defense,” Zeldin said.

Debate over gun control has been rekindled by a spate of mass shootings in recent months – including a rampage in Buffalo, New York which left 10 dead in May – prompting new legislation across a number of states and on the national level. Late last week, President Joe Biden signed a major bipartisan gun bill into law, aiming to limit access to firearms from those considered dangerous, the most significant legislation of its kind to clear Congress in nearly 30 years.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Twitter ‘Silenced’ Physicians Who Posted Truthful Information About COVID, Lawsuit Alleges

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | June 30, 2022

Three physicians are suing Twitter, alleging the company violated its own terms of service and community standards when it suspended their accounts for posting “truthful statements regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment.”

Drs. Robert Malone, Peter McCullough and Bryan Tyson on Monday filed the lawsuit in Superior Court in California, San Francisco County.

The complaint alleges Twitter breached the terms of its contract when it permanently suspended the plaintiffs’ accounts, silenced their voices and failed to provide them with “verified” badges.

Plaintiffs allege Twitter’s actions were a substantial factor in causing them harm, and are asking the judge to order Twitter to reactivate their accounts.

All three doctors are represented by attorneys Bryan M. Garrie and Matthew P. Tyson (no relation to the plaintiff, Bryan Tyson).

Matthew Tyson on May 12, sent a letter to the directors and managing agents of Twitter requesting the company reinstate the accounts of five physicians, including the plaintiffs, and provide them with “verified” badges. Twitter failed to respond.

In the letter, Matthew Tyson acknowledged Twitter is a “private company” and its terms state it can “suspend user accounts for any or no reason.”

“However, Twitter also implemented specific community standards to limit COVID-19 misinformation on the platform, and Twitter was bound to follow those terms,” he added.

According to the complaint, Twitter’s content-moderation terms included removal procedures for ineffective treatments and false diagnostic criteria, and measures for “labeling” information as “misleading.”

Twitter has a “five-strike policy” as part of its COVID-19 misinformation guidelines and community standards.

Twitter’s website states:

“The consequences for violating our COVID-19 misleading information policy depend on the severity and type of the violation and the account’s history of previous violations. In instances where accounts repeatedly violate this policy, we will use a strike system to determine if further enforcement actions should be applied.”

Strike 1 is “no account-level action.” Strike 2 results in a 12-hour account lock. Strike 3 results in another 12-hour account lock. Strike 4 results in a seven-day account lock and five or more strikes lead to permanent suspension.

Plaintiffs claim they relied on Twitter to employ and enforce its terms in good faith and it was foreseeable to Twitter that plaintiffs would rely on the terms the company is obligated to follow.

According to the complaint, a “truthful tweet regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment” would not violate Twitter’s terms of service, community standards, content moderation policies or misinformation guidelines.

“None of these physicians posted false or misleading information, nor did they receive five strikes before suspension,” Matthew Tyson stated in his letter to Twitter.

“It’s no accident that Twitter violated its own COVID-19 misinformation guidelines and suspended the accounts of Drs. Zelenko, Malone, Fareed, Tyson and McCullough,” he wrote.

The letter stated:

“Twitter received express and implied threats from government officials to censor certain viewpoints and speakers, lest Twitter face the amendment or revocation of Section 230, or antitrust enforcement. This was a financial decision for Twitter.

“For the sake of profits, it chose to abandon its role as a neutral internet service provider and instead openly and intentionally collude with government to silence lawful speech.”

In an email to The Defender, lead attorney Garrie and co-counsel Matthew Tyson said:

“In this political climate, honesty is a rare commodity, and concerns over new and experimental vaccines and drug therapies and the safety and effectiveness of alternative outpatient treatments should be the subject of full and transparent public debate.

“Drs. Malone, Tyson and McCullough are highly qualified and credentialed physicians and scientists who posted truthful information on Twitter that contradicted the mainstream narrative regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis, and treatment.

“They shared fact-based information which furthered an important public interest as people around the world try to decide how to treat themselves and their loved ones for COVID-19. Twitter silenced them.

“Our clients seek to hold Twitter liable not as a Section 230 publisher, but as a counterparty to a contract, as a promisor who has breached the very terms it put in place to moderate tweets. We will hold Twitter accountable in court and prove the truth of our clients’ statements for the world to see.”

Twitter refused to verify physicians’ accounts

In addition to being suspended from Twitter, the company refused to verify the plaintiffs’ accounts even though the accounts met Twitter’s criteria for verification.

To be verified, an account must be “notable and active.”

Twitter defines a notable account to include “activists, organizers, and other influential individuals,” including “prominently recognized individuals.”

According to the complaint, Malone is an “internationally recognized scientist and physician” who completed a fellowship at Harvard Medical School as a global clinical research scholar and was scientifically trained at the University of California and Salk Institute Molecular Biology and Virology laboratories.

Malone is the “original inventor of mRNA vaccination technology, DNA vaccination and multiple non-viral DNA and RNA/mRNA platform delivery technologies,” and has “roughly 100 scientific publications, which have been cited more than 12,000 times.”

He holds an “outstanding” impact factor rating on Google Scholar and sits as a non-voting member on the National Institutes of Health [Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines] committee, which is tasked with managing clinical research for a variety of drug and antibody treatments for COVID-19.

The complaint states Malone used his Twitter account to post truthful statements regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment. He received no strikes for his content and he did not violate Twitter’s rules, yet his account was permanently suspended.

McCullough, according to the complaint, is a highly accomplished physician who is the founder and current president of the Cardiorenal Society of America.

He has been “published more than 1,000 times, made presentations on the advancement of medicine across the world and has been an invited lecturer at the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency.”

McCullough has also served on the editorial boards of multiple specialty journals and was a member or chair of data safety monitoring boards of 24 randomized clinical trials.

He was a “leader in the medical response to COVID-19, has more than 30 peer-reviewed publications on the infection, and has commented and testified extensively on COVID19 treatment, including before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,” the lawsuit states.

McCullough’s account was suspended, but Twitter allowed him to create a new account that is followed by more than 480,000 people. Yet, he is still unable to receive a “verified” badge.

In a June 28 tweet, McCullough said “trouble is on the horizon for the “common carrier” whose only role is to provide a platform for communications operations,” referring to the lawsuit.

Tyson is a licensed physician with15 years of hospital and emergency medicine experience. He practices with Dr. George Fareed, who also was suspended from Twitter for posting what he claimed was truthful COVID-19 information.

Tyson and Fareed have “gained international recognition for providing successful early treatment to more than 10,000 COVID-19 patients, with zero patient deaths when treatment was started within 7 days,” the complaint states.

Tyson testified in various proceedings about early treatment protocols and co-authored a book about COVID-19.

He also ran as a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 25th Congressional District, yet was not deemed a “notable figure of public interest” regarding COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment, which prohibited him from obtaining a “verified” badge on Twitter.

Tyson says he posted only truthful statements about COVID-19 policy, diagnosis and/or treatment with his account, and none of his tweets were classified as a “strike” or violated Twitter’s terms of service.

Like Malone’s, Tyson’s and Fareed’s accounts were permanently suspended.

“In a nutshell, these are five [physicians] of the most knowledgeable and helpful voices in the world regarding COVID-19 treatment,” Matthew Tyson wrote in his letter. “Disturbingly, Twitter silenced all of them.”

Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Rockefeller Foundation ‘Reset the Table’ Report Predicted COVID-Related Food Crisis — 2 Years Before It Happened

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | June 30, 2022

Just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic — and almost two years before global health officials warned of a food shortage crisis — the Rockefeller Foundation issued a report predicting the crisis and offering up solutions, including “shifts to online enrollment, online purchasing of food.”

In a report published July 28, 2020, “Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the U.S. Food System,” the foundation described “a hunger and nutrition crisis … unlike any this country has seen in generations.”

The authors blamed the crisis on COVID-19.

The report concluded the crisis would have to be addressed not by strengthening food security for the most vulnerable, but by revamping the entire food system and associated supply chain — in other words, we would need to “reset the table.”

The Rockefeller Foundation called for this food system “reset” less than two months after the World Economic Forum (WEF), on June 3, 2020, revealed its vision for the “Great Reset.”

Some of the contributors to the Rockefeller Foundation report are WEF members; a few of which, along with other proponents of “resetting the table,” also have ties to entities pushing vaccine passports and digital ID schemes.

Rockefeller Foundation: ‘changes to policies, practices, and norms’ are needed

The WEF describes the Rockefeller Foundation as a “science-driven” philanthropic organization that “seeks to inspire and foster large-scale human impact that promotes the well-being of humanity around the world” and which “advances the new frontiers of science, data, policy and innovation to solve global challenges related to health, food, power and economic mobility.”

In the foreword to its 2020 “Reset the Table” report, foundation President Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, who is a former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), states:

“America faces a hunger and nutrition crisis unlike any this country has seen in generations.

“In many ways, Covid-19 has boiled over long-simmering problems plaguing America’s food system. What began as a public health crisis fueled an economic crisis, leaving 33 percent of families unable to afford the amount or quality of food they want.

“School closures put 30 million students at risk of losing the meals they need to learn and thrive.”

The report did not explain how the Rockefeller Foundation was able to know about this food crisis mere months after the pandemic took hold — especially as the report states it was developed out of “video-conference discussions in May and June 2020.”

The report also didn’t provide any insight into the role pandemic countermeasures such as lockdowns — which the foundation championed along with the WEF — played in contributing to the food crisis.

In its report, the Rockefeller Foundation proposes a series of solutions, derived from “dialogues with over 100 experts and practitioners.”

One recommendation calls for moving away from a “focus on maximizing shareholder returns” to “a more equitable system focused on fair returns and benefits to all stakeholders — building more equitable prosperity throughout the supply chain.”

This may sound like a good idea, until one considers “stakeholders” in this case refers to “stakeholder capitalism” — a concept heavily promoted by the very same large corporations that have been beneficiaries of the shareholder capitalist system.

The WEF also heavily promotes “stakeholder capitalism,” defining it as “a form of capitalism in which companies seek long-term value creation by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.”

For some context, economic fascism, as personified by the regimes of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, encompassed government-mandated “partnerships” between business, government and unions organized by a system of regional “economic chambers,” and a philosophy where “the common good comes before the private good.”

It is, of course, unclear how the “needs [of] society at large” are determined — or by who.

The Rockefeller Foundation report declares, “Success will require numerous changes to policies, practices, and norms.”

What does such “success” entail? The report names three main objectives:

  • Data collection and digitization: The report calls for “shifts to online enrollment, online purchasing of food, direct farm-to-consumer purchasing, telemedicine, teleconsultations, as well as [broadband access that is essential to] education, finance, and employment.”

The report describes the lack of universal broadband access in this context as “a fundamental resiliency and equity gap.”

  • “Stakeholders” working together with the goal of forming a “collaborative advocacy movement.”
  • “Changes to policies, practices and norms,” which the report says would be “numerous.”

These objectives, dressed up in “inclusive” language, are further described in the report as being beneficial to human health, ensuring “healthy and protective diets” that “will allow Americans to thrive and bring down our nation’s suffocating health care costs.”

The report goes as far as to describe this as a “legacy” of COVID-19, even predicting that doctors will “prescribe” produce for patients.

According to the report:

“One of Covid-19’s legacies should be that it was the moment Americans realized the need to treat nutritious food as a part of health care, both for its role in prevention and in the treatment of diseases.

“By integrating healthy food into the health care system, doctors could prescribe produce as easily as pharmaceuticals and reduce utilization of expensive health services that are often required because of nutrition insecurity.”

But as Dr. Joseph Mercola pointed out, despite this purported emphasis on healthy, nutritious food, the words “organic,” “natural” and “grass fed” do not appear in the report.

What does appear is the phrase “alternative proteins,” in this case referring to proteins derived from the consumption of insects — another concept promoted by the WEF.

In 2021, for instance, the WEF published a report titled “Why we need to give insects the role they deserve in our food systems,” suggesting that “insect farming for food and animal feed could offer an environmentally friendly solution to the impending food crisis.”

Yet again, an “impending food crisis” is forecast, which may lead some to ask how entities such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the WEF even knew what was coming.

As stated by Mercola:

“COVID was declared a pandemic March 11, 2020, so by the time this Rockefeller report was published, the pandemic had only existed for four months, and while certain high-risk groups did experience food insecurity, such as children whose primary meal is a school lunch, widespread food shortages, in terms of empty shelves, were not widely prevalent or particularly severe in the U.S.

“It seems nothing escapes the prophetic minds of the self-proclaimed designers of the future. They accurately foresee ‘natural disasters’ and foretell coincidental ‘acts of God’. They know everything before it happens.

“Perhaps they truly are prophets. Or, perhaps they’re simply describing the inevitable outcomes of their own actions.”

Mercola suggests such crises are inevitable because they are part of “an intentional plan” by the very same actors.

The Rockefeller Foundation’s amazing ‘predictions’ of future crises, and its ties with Big Tech and Big Pharma 

Lending credence to Mercola’s view, and as recently reported by The Defender, the Rockefeller Foundation, WEF and other entities accurately predicted a remarkable number of crises that then came to pass.

For instance, Event 201, held in October 2019 and co-organized by the Rockefeller Foundation, accurately “predicted” the global outbreak of a coronavirus.

Similarly, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), which co-organized a “tabletop simulation” predicting the global outbreak of monkeypox in March 2021, with an imaginary start date of May 2022, has received $1.25 million in grants from the Rockefeller Foundation since January 2021.

In turn, the other co-organizer of the monkeypox “tabletop simulation,” the Munich Security Conference, in May 2022 held a roundtable with the Rockefeller Foundation on “Transatlantic cooperation on food security.”

Among the suggestions arising from this roundtable include a “focus on transforming the global food system and making it more resilient to future shocks, with steps taken now and over the long term.”

The Rockefeller Foundation is also a partner and board member and donor to GAVI: The Vaccine Alliance — alongside the WEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which hosted Event 201.

As previously reported by The Defender, the GAVI Alliance proclaims a mission to “save lives and protect people’s health,” and states it “helps vaccinate almost half the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.”

GAVI is also a core partner of the World Health Organization (WHO).

The GAVI Alliance — and the Rockefeller Foundation — also work closely with the ID2020 Alliance. Founded in 2016, ID2020 claims to advocate in favor of “ethical, privacy-protecting approaches to digital ID,” adding that “doing digital ID right means protecting civil liberties.”

As reported previously by The Defender, ID2020’s founding partners include the Rockefeller Foundation, GAVI, UNICEF, Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank, while general partners of ID2020 include Facebook and Mastercard.

For the past two years, the Rockefeller Foundation and entities such as ID2020 and the WEF have been closely involved with the push for digital “vaccine passports.”

For instance, on July 9, 2020, the Commons Project, itself founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, launched “a global effort to build a secure and verifiable way for travelers to share their COVID-19 status” — that is, a vaccine passport.

The Commons Project also was behind the development of the CommonPass, another vaccine passport initiative, developed in tandem with the WEF.

In turn, the Good Health Pass was launched by ID2020, as part of a collaboration between Mastercard, the International Chamber of Commerce and the WEF. It was endorsed by embattled former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, now executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Other members of the Good Health Pass Collaborative include Accenture, Deloitte and IBM — which developed New York’s “Excelsior Pass” vaccine passport system.

The Rockefeller Foundation, along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also funded an August 27, 2021 document issued by the WHO titled, “Digital documentation of COVID-19 certificates: Vaccination status.”

The document is described as follows:

“This is a guidance document for countries and implementing partners on the technical requirements for developing digital information systems for issuing standards-based interoperable digital certificates for COVID-19 vaccination status, and considerations for implementation of such systems, for the purposes of continuity of care, and proof of vaccination.”

And in another remarkably prescient “prediction,” the Rockefeller Foundation, in 2010, published a report — “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development” — which presented four future scenarios.

One of these hypothetical scenarios was “Lock Step” — described as “[a] world of tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership, with limited innovation and growing citizen pushback.”

The description of this “Lock Step” scenario goes on to state:

“Technological innovation in ‘Lock Step’ is largely driven by government and is focused on issues of national security and health and safety.

“Most technological improvements are created by and for developed countries, shaped by governments’ dual desire to control and to monitor their citizens.”

This scenario also predicted “smarter” food packaging:

“In the aftermath of pandemic scares, smarter packaging for food and beverages is applied first by big companies and producers in a business-to-business environment, and then adopted for individual products and consumers.”

Moreover, the “Lock Step” scenario remarkably predicted China would fare better than most countries in a hypothetical pandemic, due to the heavy-handed measures it would implement:

“However, a few countries did fare better — China in particular.

“The Chinese government’s quick imposition and enforcement of mandatory quarantine for all citizens, as well as its instant and near-hermetic sealing off of all borders, saved millions of lives, stopping the spread of the virus far earlier than in other countries and enabling a swifter post-pandemic recovery.”

The Rockefeller Foundation’s involvement in public health is not new.

Going back more than a century, the foundation heavily promoted “scientific medicine” and formalized medical practice based on the European model on a global scale, at the expense of homeopathy and other traditional and natural remedies.

The foundation’s “philanthropic” activities have been described as “de facto colonialism in countries including China and the Philippines.”

Moreover, the foundation helped give rise to the first global public health entities, the International Health Commission (1913-16) and the International Health Board (1916-1927).

It also helped finance the earliest public health programs at universities such as Harvard and Johns Hopkins — today home to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | Leave a comment

Snake Oil: the most vaxxed country in Europe now has its worst COVID outcomes

Are those two things related?

By Jordan Schachtel | The Dossier | June 29, 2022

Virtually every single adult in Portugal has taken at least two doses of “miracle cure” COVID vaccine, with the vast majority “boosted” as well. Yet this month, the most vaxxed country in Europe has consistently reported its worst outcomes.

Once thought to be the best positioned nation in Europe to deal with future bouts with the coronavirus, a nuclear bomb of reality has hit Lisbon.

Out of all the countries in Europe, “Portugal has experienced the most dramatic wave,” the Guardian reports. “With infections per million remaining at a seven-day average of 2,043 on Monday – the second highest new case rate in the world.”

It appears the “miracle cure” vaccines have not only not failed to curb the COVID issue, but has potentially made it worse.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | | Leave a comment

Study: Boosted People Slowest to Clear COVID-19

That’s why PAXLOVID does not work for them

By Igor Chudov | June 30, 2022

A new study just came out:

It looked at how long “culturable virus” (that is, virus capable of infecting people) is present in Covid patients after the first positive test. The authors literally cultured swabs of patients, on various days past-diagnosis, and counted how many patients, by vaccination status, are still carrying live, replication-competent virus.

The result is shocking:

What this chart shows is that one-third of boosted people still carried live, culturable virus at 10 days after the beginning of the infection. This is contrasted with unvaccinated people, who had only 6% of persons still contagious at Day 10.

This means that the share of boosted people who are still contagious (31%) is over five times greater, than the share of still-contagious unvaccinated people (6%).

In other words: out of 100 boosted persons who catch Covid, fully one-third will be still carrying LIVE VIRUS on Day 10. Out of 100 unvaccinated persons, only one out of 16 would test positive on Day 10 — over five TIMES fewer people.

As a word of warning, the study involved a relatively small amount of people, so statistical significance is probably not quite what we’d like it to be — but it shows what we saw all along in other news.

It also means that boosted people, who might feel better in a few days, would be contagious for a few MORE days after recovery, thus becoming silent superspreaders of Covid. So much for “stopping the spread”!

This is why Paxlovid does Not Work for the Boosted

This study explains why Paxlovid does not work in vaccinated (and boosted) people. For the introduction into my paxlovid series, see the sad story of double-boosted Dr. Fauci, who relapsed on Paxlovid, with links to my Paxlovid articles shown chronologically:

What Paxlovid is, is a biomolecular “snooze button” that suspends viral replication for 5 days. However, as we can see, one-third of the boosted people still carry live virus at 10 days due to delayed, or disabled, immune responses. Those persons would be likely to rebound on Paxlovid.

The numbers also match other calculations: my guesstimate of unvaccinated Paxlovid rebound was 12% — that is not too far from 6% of unvaccinated people in this study who carried live virus on Day 10. 31% of boosted people who still have live virus on Day 10, matches Twitter reports of 40-50% rebound rates in vaccinated people.

In other words, while we had fairly certain evidence that Paxlovid does not work for vaccinated people, and suspected the vaccine, we were missing the most crucial proof: that of live virus not clearing in the boosted. The study I mentioned above, provides this proof.

It also exposes vaccines as merely “increasing tolerance” to Sars-Cov-2, as opposed to generating robust immune response that leads to rapid viral clearance.

Molnupiravir

I personally have not paid close attention to Merck’s Molnupiravir, due to it being a dead-end, mutagenic, cancer-causing, variant-generating, toxic-to-bones drug from hell, which is, fortunately, seeing little use. Our friend Modern Discontent discovered that Molnupiravir is also snake oil and does not work in vaccinated people.

Getting boosted is a great way to become unable to clear a Covid infection in 10 days and become a Covid superspeader.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Setback for US hypersonic program as another test ends in failure

Press TV – July 1, 2022

The latest test of a US hypersonic missile in the state of Hawaii failed on Wednesday, the Pentagon said, attributing the failure to an “anomaly” during the first test of the full system.

The failed test was part of the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program, under which aerospace and military equipment company Lockheed Martin is trying to develop weapons capable of flying at super high speeds for use on submarines and ships.

The test, carried out at the Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii, was supposed to launch the Common Hypersonic Glide Body atop a two-stage missile booster.

The booster is designed to launch the system and accelerate it to hypersonic speeds above Mach 5, at which point the glide body detaches and uses its speed to reach the target. It was the first time the entire system was tested, called an All Up Round test.

“While the Department was unable to collect data on the entirety of the planned flight profile, the information gathered from this event will provide vital insights,” Pentagon spokesman Tim Gorman said in a statement.

He did not provide any additional details on the nature of the anomaly or at what stage of the test it occurred, adding that the Pentagon is currently investigating the reasons for the failure of this missile test.

In October 2021, a similar test failed in Kodiak, Alaska. Despite the failure of both tests, the Pentagon has expressed confidence to develop offensive hypersonic capabilities by the early 2020s.

“Delivering hypersonic weapons remains a top priority and the Department remains confident that it is on track to field offensive and defensive hypersonic capabilities on target dates beginning in the early 2020s,” the Pentagon spokesman stated.

The Pentagon has focused its attention recently on hypersonic weapons development amid concerns that the country could lag behind the Chinese and Russian programs.

China successfully tested a hypersonic weapon last year that orbited the globe before striking its target. Russia has also greatly developed its hypersonic weapons in recent years.

The latest test failure, which was first reported by Bloomberg, has dealt another blow to the US in the race to develop hypersonic missiles.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | | 1 Comment

As West blames Moscow for ‘food crisis’, ships sail from Mariupol with Moscow’s help

Meanwhile Ukraine holds vessels in its ports

By Eva Bartlett | Samizdat | July 1, 2022

Without much notice in the West, on June 21, the first foreign ship departed from the Port of Mariupol since Ukrainian and foreign mercenary forces were fully forced out of the Donbass city a month prior. Escorted by Russian naval boats, the vessel’s departure set the precedent for a resumption of normal port activity to and from Mariupol.

Russia’s Defense Ministry on May 20 announced the liberation of the Azovstal plant from Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion, and some days later stated that sappers had demined an area of one and a half million square meters around the city’s port.

In early June, the ministry declared the facility ready for use anew. “The de-mining of Mariupol’s port has been completed. It is functioning normally, and has received its first cargo ships,” Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said at the time.

Russia promised to give ships safe passage, and on June 21, the Turkish ship Azov Concord left with a Russian escort. At Mariupol port that day, prior to setting off, the captain of the ship, Ivan Babenkov, spoke to the media, telling us that the vessel, without cargo, was heading to Novorossiysk for loading, and then on to its destination.

Rear Admiral Viktor Kochemazov, commander of the Russian naval base in Novorossiysk on the Black Sea’s northeastern coast, down the Kerch Strait from Mariupol, explained that while the corridor has been operational since May 25, the nearly one-month delay in departing was because “ships were significantly damaged during the conduct of hostilities.” Notably, he also said that some ships were deliberately damaged by Ukrainian forces in order to prevent them from leaving.

From aboard a Russian anti-sabotage forces boat, media watched the Azov Concord leave port. Further on, the ship would be met by warships of the Novorossiysk base and escorted to the Kerch Strait where FSB border control ships would continue to escort the ship.

A Bulgarian ship, the Tsarevna, was readying to depart the port next, “also following the same humanitarian corridor to its destination in accordance with plans for the use of the court by the owner,” Rear Admiral Kochemazov said.

Western press ignoring developments

Predictably, just as the Western media continues to ignore Ukraine’s war crimes against the Donbass republics, including not only the bombing of houses, hospitals, and busy markets –  plus the killing and maiming of civilians – so too do they omit coverage of anything positive emanating from areas where Ukrainian forces have been ousted and stability restored.

Instead, Western media continues to spin the story that it’s Russia that’s blocking ports and preventing grain exports, and blame Moscow for “aggravating the global food crisis” – when in reality, it is Ukraine that has mined ports and burned grain storages.

In fact, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defense, “70 foreign vessels from 16 countries remain blocked in six Ukrainian ports (Kherson, Nikolaev, Chernomorsk, Ochakov, Odessa and Yuzhniy). The threat of shelling and high mine danger posed by official Kiev prevent vessels from entering the high seas unhindered.”

While Russia maintains it has opened two maritime humanitarian corridors in the Black and Azov Seas, Kiev is apparently not engaging with representatives of states and ship-owning companies about the departure of docked foreign ships.

Meanwhile, in the same vein, media outlets like the New York Times (writing as always from afar) claim that Mariupol is “suffering deeply” under Russian rule (citing the runaway former mayor, nowhere near the city for months, who is the source of previous war propaganda) even describing the Azov Neo-Nazis as “the city’s last military resistance.”

Yet, what I’ve seen in multiple trips to Mariupol in the past couple of weeks is rubble being removed so that the rebuilding process can begin, newly established street markets, public transportation running, and calm in the streets.

The people of Mariupol have indeed suffered, but now that the Azov Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists no longer reign, they can live without fear of persecution, execution, rape, torture, and all of the other ‘democratic values’ of the forces backed by the West.

The rebuilding will take time, but with the port functioning anew, and the possibility now of also bringing reconstruction materials by sea, it can begin, ship by ship.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | 1 Comment

‘Ridiculous’: Russia dismisses claims of NATO being ‘defensive alliance’

Press TV – July 1, 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the claim of NATO being an exclusively defensive alliance is “ridiculous and disgraceful.”

He made the remarks on Friday while addressing students and teachers at the Belarusian State University, in response to recent statements by a number of NATO members’ officials.

“Recently, a representative of the White House once again reiterated that Russia should not be afraid of NATO and that no one should be afraid of it at all, because NATO is a defensive alliance. But it is already ridiculous to hear adults say such obvious nonsense. I would say, it is simply disgraceful,” Russia’s TASS quoted Lavrov as saying.

Pointing to the history of NATO’s establishment and its confrontation with the Warsaw Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union, he said both the Warsaw Treaty and the Soviet Union are gone but “NATO has moved eastward five times.”

“Who are they defending themselves from then?” he asked rhetorically, adding, “When someone pushes forward, establishes control of territories, and deploys armed forces and military infrastructure there, it is not exactly what is called defense. It’s just the opposite.”

The remarks come as the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid wrapped up on Thursday with the bloc’s decision to strengthen its forces along the eastern flank while also officially inviting Sweden and Finland, which share borders with Russia, to join the alliance.

“NATO is a defensive alliance and poses no threat to any country,” reads part of the declaration of the Summit.

The declaration also named Russia as a “direct threat” to NATO members’ security, noting that the military alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat” to Russia.

At the same time, it went on to threaten to respond in a “united and responsible way” to any threat from Moscow.

‘Joke of the century’

Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian also rejected the notion of NATO being only a defensive alliance.

“NATO is a ‘defensive’ alliance? Joke of the century,” he tweeted on Friday while also sharing a combination of images portraying NATO’s military intervention in several countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.

In a separate tweet, the Chinese official also pointed to the role of the US and its allies in the continuation of the war in Syria and its devastating effects on people’s lives.

“[The] US and its allies continue to fuel the war in Syria. More than 300,000 civilians have died in the conflicts according to UN statistics, 1.5% of Syria’s population,” he wrote on Friday, also sharing a photo of war damages in Syria with a note which read “who is the threat to peace?”

NATO members had also alleged that China poses a “challenge” to the bloc’s “interests, security, and values.”

Speaking in a daily briefing on Thursday, Zhao stressed the futileness of hyping up the so-called “China threat.”

“NATO has extended its reach to the Asia-Pacific region in an attempt to export the Cold War mentality,” he said, urging the bloc to stop making baseless accusations and provocation against China, abandon the outdated Cold War mentality, and stop dangerous acts that disrupt Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | 1 Comment

US should pull out of NATO: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Samizdat | July 1, 2022

Washington should pull out of NATO instead of sending billions of taxpayer dollars to Ukraine and risking a nuclear war, according to a Republican congresswoman who has been highly critical of Washington’s response to the Ukraine crisis.

Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, made the case in a series of tweets on Thursday.

Ukraine is the “new Iraq wrapped up with a pretty little NATO bow, with a nuclear present inside,” she wrote.

“The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one. We should pull out of NATO.”

She described the provision of military aid to Ukraine, which she voted against in Congress, as a “proxy war” against Russia that Americans have no appetite for.

“Grinding up Ukraine to fight with Russia is disgusting, they could have been an ally,” she tweeted.

Marjorie Taylor Greene also listed a host of problems that she sees as more pressing for the American people, from soaring inflation to fentanyl overdoses and rampant crime. The only people vying for a conflict with Russia are “those who make money off of it,” she claimed.

“NGOs, defense contracts of all kinds, grants, business deals, even humanitarian aid, political consultants, & more,” she wrote. “War is an industry. A deadly profitable industry.”

Warmongers in Washington seeking war with Russia “should suit up and go fight it” themselves, she suggested. “Send your kids and leave ours alone. Pay for it yourself.”

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism | , , | 3 Comments

Alabama is first state to seek ban on gender-affirming treatments for children

Samizdat | July 1, 2022

The state of Alabama has called on a federal court to uphold a ban on so-called gender-affirming medical treatments for transgender youths, citing a recent Supreme Court ruling that allowed state governments to prohibit abortions.

In a 76-page brief filed with the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall insisted that a previous injunction on the state’s ban of transgender treatments should be overturned, since such care is not protected under the 14th amendment to the US Constitution as it is not “deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.”

“The Legislature determined that transitioning treatments in particular are too risky to authorize, so it is those treatments Plaintiffs must show the Constitution protects,” the brief says. “But no one –adult or child– has a right to transitioning treatments that is deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition.”

The state’s argument closely resembles the reasoning behind the recent US supreme court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which removed federal abortion protections and placed the responsibility for legalizing or banning the procedure on individual states and their citizens.

Supreme Court judges that ruled in favor of overturning the legislation argued that terminating a pregnancy was not a fundamental constitutional right because it was not explicitly mentioned in the US constitution and was not “deeply rooted in this nation’s history and tradition.”

In the brief, Marshall goes on to insist that the Constitution reserves to the state, and not courts or medical interest groups, the authority to determine that “sterilizing interventions” are too dangerous for minors, adding that the State has a right to regulate or prohibit such interventions for children “even if an adult wants the drugs for his child.”

The Attorney General also noted that research regarding these “novel interventions” was poor and that they were unproven to offer lasting relief to children suffering from gender-related distress. “What research does exist is already outdated – a remarkable fact given that the seminal study on transitioning children was published less than a decade ago and has not been replicated,” he added.

Marshall also drew attention to the fact that gender-related distress has become “a tsunami” as clinics offering “‘transitioning’ treatments on kids are seeing their patient loads increase by thousands of percent,” noting that the new trend was “troubling.”

In April, Alabama governor Kay Ivey signed into law a bill which made it a felony to provide gender-affirming treatments to minors, and sought a 10-year prison sentence and a $15,000 fine for anyone providing puberty blockers, hormones or surgical procedures to transgender youths under the age of 19.

However that legislation was partially blocked one month later by a federal judge, who dismissed the state GOP leader’s claim that puberty blockers were “experimental,” and insisted that transitioning medications were “well-established, evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors” endorsed by “at least 22 major medical associations.”

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Covid-19 originated from US biolab – Lancet commission chair

Samizdat | July 1, 2022

Covid-19 did not come out of some natural reservoir but rather “out of US lab biotechnology” in an accident, world-renowned economist and author Jeffrey Sachs has claimed, speaking at a conference hosted by the GATE Center think tank in Spain in mid-June.

While introducing this “provocative statement,” Sachs suggested that he was in the loop, as he chairs the Covid-19 commission at prestigious medical journal The Lancet.

“So it’s a blunder, in my view, of biotech, not an accident of a natural spillover,” he reiterated.

The academic noted that while “we don’t know for sure” if this is the case, there is “enough evidence” pointing to this, which “should be looked into.” Sachs lamented that this version is, however, “not being investigated, not in the United States, not anywhere.”

Back in May, Sachs, along with Columbia University professor of molecular pharmacology and therapeutics Neil Harrison, penned an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggesting Covid-19 had originated in a laboratory. In the paper, the two academics called for greater transparency on the part of US federal agencies and universities, arguing that a lot of pertinent evidence was not disclosed.

Virus databases, biological samples, viral sequences, email communications, and laboratory notebooks could all help shed light on the pandemic origin, according to Sachs and Harrison. However, none of these materials had been subjected to “independent, transparent, and scientific scrutiny,” they argued.

As an indicator that Covid 19 had originated from a laboratory, the authors brought up the fact that a sequence of eight amino acids on a critical part of the virus’s spike protein is similar to an amino acid sequence found in cells that line human airways.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | 2 Comments

FOREIGN MERCENARIES WERE BURNED TO THE GROUND AS UNNECESSARY WITNESSES AT AZOVSTAL

The_Saker | June 29, 2022

The war reporter Andrey Rudenko is in Azovstal bomb shelter, talking about the separate place for (may be killed) mercenaries bodies.

July 1, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment