US food production threatened by mysterious fires in meat plants
Free West Media | April 25, 2022
More and more food processing plants are going up in flames in the US. Sixteen such incidents have been recorded so far. The background is unclear, but terrorism is being ruled out.
The fact is, however, that the basic needs of the population are massively threatened in some places by these attacks on infrastructure while authorities downplay the incidents.
Throughout the past year, but especially since February 2022, a series of devastating fires in the United States and Canada have destroyed or severely damaged food processing plants – mostly meat plants (slaughterhouses, hog and poultry farms), but also silage and large-scale grain production plants. As a result, there could be food shortages and price increases in many areas.
Devastating damage
The damage is catastrophic: an employee of an affected factory in Texas estimates that 50 to 100 truckloads of onions were destroyed there alone. A factory in Oregon was completely destroyed by a boiler explosion and all 244 employees had to be laid off. A fire in California had to evacuate 2 700 people around the affected factory.
Food prices are already at record highs in the US. The Rockefeller Foundation released an analysis of when a “massive, immediate food crisis” could start, and added that it would probably be “in the next six months”. The foundation shares the outlook of the World Economic Forum (WEF), advocating for the “Great Reset”.
Fires and explosions: possible connections
Officially, there are various reasons for the fires: the authorities downplay the possibility of any connections, and the Homeland Security Department does not assume terrorist attacks. At least one fire in Georgia last week was caused by a plane crashing onto a factory site. Since fires and explosions on factory premises and similar events repeatedly broke out for unknown reasons, some experts also suspect the likelihood of serial perpetrators and targeted attacks.
Conceivable would be militant animal or nature conservationists, climate activists or enemies of industrial food production, who are resorting to increasingly uncompromising means in the US just as they are in Europe.
Food crisis is getting worse
It is undisputed that the never-ending series of incidents will further exacerbate the food crisis, which is also noticeable in the US, as a result of supply chains that are already strained. In any case, the extent of the damage caused by the destruction in this sensitive key sector cannot yet be quantified; it also depends on how quickly the damaged or completely destroyed facilities can be repaired.
The FBI’s Cyber Division meanwhile published a warning about increased “cyber-attack threats” on agricultural cooperatives.
“Ransomware actors may be more likely to attack agricultural cooperatives during critical planting and harvest seasons, disrupting operations, causing financial loss, and negatively impacting the food supply chain,” the notice read, adding 2021 and early 2022 ransomware attacks on farming co-ops could affect the current planting season “by disrupting the supply of seeds and fertilizer”.
The agency warned, “A significant disruption of grain production could impact the entire food chain, since grain is not only consumed by humans but also used for animal feed … In addition, a significant disruption of grain and corn production could impact commodities trading and stocks. ”
Why We Sued to Overturn the Federal Travel Mask Mandate — And Why We Won
By Leslie Manookian | The Defender | April 22, 2022
In America, the ends don’t justify the means. There are legal guardrails in place to protect our basic liberties and rights — even during a pandemic.
That was the message in the decision handed down Monday by a federal judge in our lawsuit to overturn the federal travel mask mandate.
Since early 2021, anyone traveling on a plane, bus or train, or anyone who used a shared ride service — or even walked into an airport or train station — was compelled to wear a face covering, often for hours at a time.
President Biden, on his first full day in office, signed an executive order on mandatory masking.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), citing a public health emergency, promulgated the order just eight days later.
The CDC circumvented a required notice and comment period and issued no scientific justifications for the specifics of the order.
Americans were supposed to take the government’s word for it, put on our masks and ask no questions.
But when flight attendants announced — repeatedly on each flight — that compliance is required “by federal law,” did you ever wonder: what federal law?
I did. And it led us at the Health Freedom Defense Fund to file suit against the mandate in federal court.
With assistance from our lawyers at the Davillier Law Group, we learned there is no “federal law” compelling masks for travel.
The CDC does not have the statutory authority to issue a sweeping mandate requiring masking. Nor does the agency have the authority to penalize Americans for non-compliance.
The Biden administration claimed its mask mandate was rooted in authority granted under the Public Health Service Act.
However, a careful reading of that law shows Congress never intended to grant such sweeping powers. In fact, the law is limited and specific, as the court pointed out in its decision.
One of the bigger red flags for the court was the CDC’s claim it could bypass a period of public notice and comment.
The CDC cited the pandemic “emergency” as justification for bypassing notice and comment.
Yet, as we all recall, by early 2021, the pandemic had been wreaking its havoc for nearly a year, yet the agency had proposed no such travel mask mandate.
It is hard to justify requiring emergency powers and circumventing all citizen comments when the CDC was marking time on masks for more than a year.
Indeed, if a mask mandate was key to the pandemic battle, Congress could have enacted such a bill, with debate, transparency and accountability. It did not.
In fact, public comment is at the core of credible and transparent regulatory policy because it allows for flaws and pitfalls to be cited and hopefully corrected.
Despite telling us all for years to “follow the science,” the CDC cited no scientific research to justify the mandate, nor did it offer justification for choosing the age of 2 for its exemption — clearly indicating the agency arbitrarily chose that age.
An abundance of research in major medical and scientific publications, including in the Journal of the American Medical Association, details the negative effects of prolonged mask-wearing, including among medical professionals and the military.
The CDC also ignored the serious, and medically verified, concerns voiced by Americans about how mask-wearing creates severe anxiety, as the two individual plaintiffs in our case detailed.
Clearly the federal government simply brushed away bona fide questions about mask efficacy and risk, and chose not to cite rationale of its own.
The government’s rationale is what we parents say often when our children question our demands: “Because I said so.”
That approach usually doesn’t work well with kids — and it sure falls short in setting policy for hundreds of millions of Americans.
As our lawsuit pointed out, never has a president entered an executive order mandating that every American citizen be required to don a type of garment or device, whether when traveling or otherwise, for any reason whatsoever.
And the U.S. Constitution certainly doesn’t grant the president power to enact nationwide edicts just because Congress failed to pass legislation he deems needed.
So now that you can choose to fly or ride mask-free, remember: Even in response to a pandemic, your government cannot do what it wants, when it wants and to whom it wants.
We are governed by laws, not the preferences of elites, and the Constitution is not suspended in an emergency.
Leslie Manookian is president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund, a nonprofit which seeks to rectify health injustice through education, advocacy and legal challenges to unjust mandates, laws and policies that undermine our health freedoms and human rights.
© 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.
EU commission sued over Covid-19 vaccine secrecy
Samizdat | April 23, 2022
Five Green MEPs are suing the European Commission over its ultra-secretive vaccine contracts, arguing that the heavily redacted versions released by the EC “made it impossible to understand the content of the agreements,” in a statement published Friday.
“Secrecy is a breeding ground for distrust and skepticism, and it has no place in public agreements with pharmaceutical companies,” Margrete Auken, a Danish MEP involved in the suit, declared, adding that “the European Commission’s refusal to provide transparency on its vaccine contracts affects the public’s confidence in the EU’s ability to obtain the best possible outcome for its citizens.”
The MEPs are demanding the details of the contracts the EC signed with vaccine-makers BioNTech, Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax, including price per dose, advance payments, conditions for vaccine donations, liability, and indemnification matters.
“Purchases made with public money should come with public information, definitely in matters of health,” Dutch MEP and party to the lawsuit Kim van Sparrentak said in the group’s statement, noting that “confidentiality under the guise of trade secrets only fuels uncertainty and fear.”
In addition to Auken and van Sparrentak, the MEPs signing on to the suit are Tilly Metz (Luxembourg), Jutta Paulus (Germany), and Michele Rivasi (France), the chair of the parliament’s committee on Covid-19.
The lawsuit, filed in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, comes as EC President Ursula von der Leyen revealed that every EU member state would be required to adopt EU Digital Covid Certificates, a digital health passport issued to those with proof of vaccination, a negative PCR test, or proof of recovery from Covid-19. While the validity period for such certificates was due to lapse at the end of June, the EC is not only renewing it another year, but making it mandatory for all 27 EU countries from July 1. Only 15 are currently using it, according to von der Leyen.
The move comes despite many EU states winding down their Covid-19 restrictions, moving away from some of the stricter measures imposed in the first 18 months of the pandemic. Germany, which had initially sought to require all citizens over the age of 60 to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, has been forced to axe those plans after they were voted down in the Bundestag, though the country’s health minister has warned that the government may reimpose mask mandates, as he expects infections to increase in the fall.
In response to the lawsuit, the EC has insisted it cannot reveal the contracts it signed with the vaccine-makers back in 2020, claiming “the commission is in the business of respecting contracts.” At the time, EU lawmakers who wanted to see the contracts were prohibited from taking notes and forced to sign non-disclosure agreements.
Much of the world seemed to be headed for mandatory Covid-19 vaccination six months ago. However, the realization that despite their manufacturers’ initial promises, the vaccines were no magic bullet – not only incapable of stopping the spread, but incapable of preventing further infection – has cooled public fervor for mandates. Health concerns and complaints of discrimination against the unvaccinated have also contributed to the backlash. However, the manufacturers, as well as most officials, continue to insist that the vaccines are “safe and effective.”
Bavaria to introduce ‘eco-token’ to reward ‘environmentally conscious behavior’
Free West Media | April 22, 2022
MUNICH – In Bavaria, in the course of the creeping establishment of a climate dictatorship, climate-friendly good behavior will soon be rewarded with an “eco-token”. It is nothing more than a points system to indirectly punish unruly citizens.
This new control system is to be introduced later this year. This is a project that was first described in the Bavarian “Climate Protection Offensive” of 2019, has been in preparation for a long time and is designed to “promote sustainable behavior in everyday life by rewarding environmentally conscious action”.
Specifically, a documentation system is to be developed in which users can collect bonus points for “environmentally conscious behavior” in the form of sustainability tokens. These can then be redeemed at swimming pools or theaters, for example. For better implementation, a state office and a financial service provider are involved.
Unstoppable
Even if these are only the first steps of a model that can be expanded – and is intended to be expanded – it will not be long before even more companies, cultural and leisure facilities and ultimately government agencies will grant privileges for “climate protectors” (or supporters of coercive state measures). At a certain point, social “privileges” will inevitably be those things which are now taken for granted.
The Corona crisis, as the perfect blueprint for this development, has already ensured through 2G/3G apartheid rules or compulsory masks that fundamental rights and even bodily autonomy can easily be suspended by the state and Corona profiteers.
Similar programs are being implemented not only at EU level, but also within the member states: In Austria, the “ID Austria” app was introduced, which records driving licenses, passports and one’s own car. The entire identity is linked to the smartphone as is the “pilot project” of a “Smart Citizen Wallet” in Bologna, Italy.
Has Le Pen paved the way for more Macron?
By Richard Ings | TCW Defending Freedom | April 23, 2022
TOMORROW the French go to the polls to finish the job begun two weeks ago and choose their next elected monarch; if opinion polls can be trusted (with their manipulative influence on voting having become a major discussion point in France over the last few weeks) it looks as if Emmanuel Macron will be returned to the throne for another five years.
If Marine Le Pen, who has never been closer to power, falls at the final fence, she will not be blameless in her failure to take advantage of the seething resentment against the present incumbent. In the traditional head-to-head television debate four days before polls open, with the chance to voice the anger felt towards Macron by her potential supporters, she chose the route of trying to out-technocrat the technocrat. The result was that the smirking, supercilious bean-counter was invited to play on his home turf, within minutes deflecting the discussion away from his record in power to Le Pen’s record in opposition. The opportunity for a reckoning on Macron’s use of state forces against his own people, his enthusiastic embrace of digital IDs to coerce people into taking a novel medical intervention and his contempt for health workers who declined it, was squandered. At the end of the confrontation, he praised the fact that it had been much more ‘controlled’ than their previous meeting in 2017. It was clear to most who had been in control throughout.
Le Pen clearly also has only herself to blame for her political programme. Having once supported lockdowns and the huge accumulation of debt associated with them, she is largely joined at the hip with Macron in her plan to borrow and spend France’s way out of a problem caused by astronomical government borrowing and spending. Her flagship policy of reducing VAT on 100 ‘essential products’ is no match for Macron’s policy of continuing to send people cheques to bail them out, both a pitiful response to the enormous economic problems his decisions have created. Meanwhile, her desire to ban the wearing of the Muslim headscarf in public spaces as a puny symbol of the fight against Islamism essentially codifies the state’s right to decide what you are permitted to wear in public (indeed, Le Pen defended its enforceability in law by pointing out that Macron had found a way of policing his mask mandates).
Her own shortcomings aside, however, Le Pen is handicapped by the fact that, although she mobilised more than 8million people to vote for her, no one is allowed to say publicly that they support her without choosing the path of ostracism. In Britain by 2019 we had become painfully aware of the phenomenon of the ‘shy Brexiteer’, unable to ‘come out’ among friends and family without attracting a torrent of insults which often included the word ‘Nazi’. That’s been the norm in France for Le Pen voters for a long, long time.
However, something not widely reported happened ten days ago when a panellist on a major television show, former Miss France Delphine Wespiser, ‘came out’ in front of millions and said she understood why people might vote for Marine, suggesting she was like ‘France’s mum’. Did she realise what a pile-on would happen in saying that? She got a taste from her colleagues in the studio, but over the next few days found herself threatened on social media for daring to ‘contribute to the normalisation of the far Right’.
Removed from the show under byzantine French rules to do with ‘political balance’, she had to come back as an unpaid guest to report how her accidentally courageous opinion had seen her receive thousands of threats, as well as the call for her to be stripped of other sources of income, such as her featured role on the TV show Fort Boyard. Not being able to make a living for having expressed a view deemed unacceptable by the media (and not even an unpopular view) was, she said, ‘the price of my freedom’, adding defiantly: ‘I’m the spokeswoman for all those unhappy about what has happened over the last five years.’
Wespiser’s small, principled stand for freedom of speech and conscience is a marker of a very positive development. Dissenters are beginning to abandon their natural reticence and defend the right to have a different ‘non-mainstream’ point of view in the public square. The form that seems to be taking at the moment is voting for Marine Le Pen. Whatever her political shortcomings, Le Pen represents the dissident point of view. Crudely expressed, she is the biggest middle finger French people can currently give to the system which has crushed and oppressed many of them over the last few years.
And if not Le Pen, who? Macron has not ruled out a return to mandatory masking, and vaccine passports remain in place for access to hospitals. Le Pen has said she will scrap the system, has called vaccinating children against Covid ‘a kind of child abuse’, and will reinstate the health-workers ‘kicked out like scum’ for refusing to take the vaccine. Macron set up an undemocratic ‘citizens’ convention’ on the environment (only to ignore it) while touring the country in what he called his ‘great debate’ during which he lectured an invited audience for several hours. He’s committed to continuing to bore on if re-elected. Le Pen, on the other hand, has proposed a ‘Citizen’s choice referendum’ which, while it may struggle to get passed into law, holds out the promise of a new avenue for political change.
Take her at face value or not, Le Pen has put the word ‘freedom’ front and centre of her campaign. She is making commitments that will, in however limited a way, expand the power of ordinary people to influence what happens in their country. This promise to extend and defend liberty and democracy would be hard to break in circumstances where (unlike Boris Johnson and his smug party-loyal 80-seat majority) she would have to work hard to maintain the trust of those who lent her their vote.
Moreover, the prospect of her coming to power has so spooked the European establishment that they have taken the unprecedented step of calling for the French not to vote for her in what used to be called ‘interference in national elections’ but is now, it seems, just seen as doing the morally correct thing.
With all this in mind, the French now need to consider how much of a defiant middle finger they are brave enough to give to the established order when even today’s poster-boy of ‘democracy’ Volodymyr Zelensky says he is rooting for Macron. Will they stand up to conventional opinion and take the kind of risk Delphine Wespiser, or a nation of Brexiteers, were willing to take? The door to more freedom is definitely ajar. Dare they step through it?
Rhode Island bill plans to DOUBLE tax for parents of unvaccinated children
By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | April 21, 2022
A bill recently placed before the Rhode Island legislature contains clauses that would make Covid vaccination mandatory for everyone over the age of 16, and double state income tax for all parents who refused to inject their children with Covid the experimental Covid “vaccines”.
The bill, titled “HEALTH AND SAFETY- IMMUNIZATION AGAINST COVID-19 ACT” and introduced by State Senator Samuel Bell lays out in S1 (a) and (b):
(a) Every person of at least sixteen (16) years of age who is eligible for immunization against COVID-19 and who resides in the State of Rhode Island, works in the State of Rhode Island, or pays personal income taxes to the State of Rhode Island pursuant to chapter 30 of title 44 shall be required to be immunized against COVID-19.
(b) Every resident of Rhode Island eligible for immunization against COVID-19 who is under sixteen (16) years of age or under guardianship shall be required to be immunized against COVID-19, with the responsibility for ensuring compliance falling on all parents or guardians with medical consent powers pursuant to § 23-4.6-1.
And then details stringent financial penalties in S1(e) [emphasis added]:
Any person who violates this chapter shall be required to pay a monthly civil penalty of fifty dollars ($50.00) and shall owe TWICE THE AMOUNT OF PERSONAL INCOME TAXES as would otherwise be assessed pursuant to chapter 30 of title 44.
This is by far most punitive “anti-vaxxer” legislation we’ve seen (so far). Even if it does not pass, it shows us that the Covid agenda is still very real, and they are not even close to done trying to bully people into compliance.
You can download the whole bill here.
Lockdown ideology remains a widespread global plague upon humanity
Faucism infects Shanghai
By Jordan Schachtel | April 18, 2022
To the ruling class, human rights are an afterthought.
Far from perceiving each other as adversaries, the Public Health cartel in the West and in China are more accurately defined as competitors in a friendly game of chess, and humanity are their pawns.
As global leaders remain noticeably silent on the situation in Shanghai (some have taken to explicitly endorsing the lockdowns), there seems to be unanimous approval for the idea that top-down draconian lockdowns are both ethical and moral, no matter how many human beings must suffer in the process. In China, a large swath of the United States, and almost everywhere in between, COVID Mania has shined a light on the negligence and inhumanity of our ruling class, which views citizens as subjects and serfs unworthy of their unalienable rights.
The lockdown ideology, or in one-word, Faucism, remains prevalent everywhere. And in Shanghai, the projected commitment to Zero COVID remains intact.
If you thought the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — which first popularized the lockdown ideology in Wuhan — was ready to admit to the catastrophic failures of its Zero COVID lockdown program, think again.
Now almost a month into its hard lockdown of over 25 million people in Shanghai, China continues to rally behind its purported commitment to Zero COVID, or the fraudulent notion that a respiratory virus can be eliminated from a population through top-down government action.
In a front-page article in Monday’s Study Times (the publication for the CCP’s Central Committee), Ma Xiaowei, China’s minister of its National Health Commission, stood behind China’s “dynamic zero-Covid” policy. Dismissing dissent from the Zero COVID narrative, Ma attacked the “erroneous” idea of “coexisting with the virus.”
China’s state-run Global Times and other Party platforms echoed the message:
“Scientific, precise and dynamic zero tolerance is a major decision made by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and President Xi Jinping based on science and laws, Ma said, urging officials to oppose claims about co-existing with the virus and treating the virus as flu.”
In another interesting tidbit, the Global Times interviewed a senior Chinese CDC epidemiologist, whose pro-lockdown message may sound remarkably similar to that of his western counterparts:
“Those three deaths serve as an alarm for the country not to let its guard down in the face of Omicron, as it is extremely dangerous for unvaccinated vulnerable groups with underlying diseases, a senior expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told the Global Times on condition of anonymity, noting that this is a fundamental reason why many epidemiologists agree not to ease the current antivirus strategy.”
As we’ve observed over the course of COVID Mania, China is not unique in its depravity. Though their lockdowns are the most strict to date, quarantine camps, movement restrictions, and digital tyranny has populated every corner of the globe.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the top government health bureaucrat in America, and the go-to “public health expert” for COVID doctrine in the West, unsurprisingly has no issue with the humanitarian catastrophe that is the Shanghai lockdown.
In an interview this weekend, Fauci remarked: “you use lockdowns to get people vaccinated,” endorsing government barbarism to compel behavior.
If this was only a China problem, surely, world leaders would be lining up to condemn the human rights crimes being committed against Shanghai citizens.
However, throughout the world, the hubris-fueled Public Health cartel remains absent from commenting on the Shanghai situation. Instead, with plenty of lockdown blood on their own hands, they stick to the message, and remain insistent upon top-down pandemic policies that have resulted in societal and economic ruin.
As COVID Mania has made clear, the entire “Public Health” system is a force for destruction, whether its proponents propagandize for it in English, Chinese, or another language.
