Aldous Huxley on oppression…
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GLAAD CEO calls for “government intervention” to stop “hate speech” online
Sarah Kate Ellis, the chief executive of the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization GLAAD, suggested that there is a need for government intervention in the prevention of online “hate speech” against the LGBTQ+ community.
In an appearance on “CBS Mornings,” Ellis was asked who and what should be cracking down on hate speech against LGBTQ+ people on online platforms.
“We do need government intervention here and we need the right policies,” Ellis responded.
“This has been going on for over a decade and congress has been really ineffective to say the best,” she added.
Ellis argued that online hate speech against the LGBTQ+ community is to blame for the increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation at the state level.
During the interview, Ellis cited a report by her organization that found that 84% of LGBTQ+ individuals aged 18 and above feel there are “not enough” protections in the online world against harassment and discrimination. The report singled out Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok as not having the essential protections needed to protect the LGBTQ+ community.
Researchers Grow Stem Cells Aboard International Space Station In New Study
Scientists are growing stem cells in space in an effort to discover new ways to produce large batches of certain stem cells to treat a variety of diseases.
Researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are behind the program that delivered stem cells to the International Space Station (ISS) over the weekend on a supply trip delivery.
“By pushing the boundaries like this, it’s knowledge and it’s science and it’s learning,” said Clive Svendsen, executive director of Cedars-Sinai’s Regenerative Medicine Institute.
The project is the seventh of its type that has included stem cells sent to space from experiments by the U.S., China, and Italy. The efforts are attempting to overcome the difficulty of growing large quantities of stem cells under the Earth’s gravity by conducting efforts beyond the planet’s atmosphere.
“In zero G, there’s no force on the cells, so they can just grow in a different way,” Svendsen said.
The particular cells used in the Cedars-Sinai experiment are pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These materials are utilized by scientists for a variety of treatments, ranging from skin to blood cells.
“Human iPSCs are ideal for creating and testing potential treatments that can be tailored to an individual,” ISS National Laboratory explains regarding the mission. “Microgravity may overcome some of the problems involved in the processes by which stem cells divide and become different types of cells, which could advance the manufacturing of iPSCs for the treatment of various diseases on Earth.”
House NDAA Would Authorize Training for Ukrainian Pilots to Use US Warplanes
The House version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that was passed Thursday night includes an amendment that would authorize $100 million to train Ukrainian pilots on how to use US warplanes.
Ukraine has been asking the US for F-15s and F-16s, but its pilots are only trained to use Soviet-designed MiG-29s and Sukhoi planes. According to Defense News, it would take about three months to train pilots to fly the F-15s and F-16s at a basic level.
The pilot training amendment was sponsored by Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), an ultra-hawk who has repeatedly called for direct US military intervention in the war. Kinzinger said the US was ready to start training Ukrainian pilots at the Columbus Air Force Base, Mississippi, and possibly at another base in Texas.
“There is no doubt to me that when this war ends, Ukraine is going to have to be outfitted with western military equipment. Plus, there’s just no more MiGs left and no more MiG supplies,” Kinzinger said.
So far, the US has not sent any fighter jets to Ukraine and declined a Polish offer to transfer MiG-29s to the Ukrainians earlier in the war. But the Biden administration has shown its willingness to escalate its military aid for Ukraine despite the risk of provoking Moscow.
Ukraine is piling pressure on the US to send more advanced equipment and sent two Ukrainian fighter pilots to Washington as part of their lobbying effort.
Chris Hedges on bread and circuses…
Bogus Report on Nicaragua by “60 Minutes” Exposed as Propaganda from CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy
[Below is an open letter to 60 Minutes written by Susan Lagos, a Spanish and ESL teacher who has lived in Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, Nicaragua for 18 years. The letter was originally posted by The Alliance for Global Justice.—Editors]
“A 60 Minutes team [should] actually come to Nicaragua to interview the people that live here whose lives have improved amazingly since 2007 with free universal education and health care.”
Dear 60 Minutes:
I was appalled to see your program on Nicaragua of June 19, 2022.
I have enjoyed many other 60 Minutes programs, but this one was totally one-sided and false. I have lived in Nicaragua since 2004, and traveled here many times in the 1980’s and 1990’s. So I have lived among people with a totally different reality than those you interviewed.
The two women you interviewed are the wives of Juan Sebastián Chamorro and Felix Maradiaga, from among the wealthy, closely connected with the U.S. government, who studied in U.S. universities and who speak English. Berta Valle, wife of Maradiaga, happens to be from the family down the block from me in Ciudad Dario, Matagalpa, Nicaragua.
The Chamorro and Maradiaga non-profits (IEEPP and FUNIDES respectively) were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), founded to do overtly what the CIA has done covertly and also by other U.S. organizations like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), U.S. foundations, and similar European organizations.
The USAID has given more than half a billion dollars to Nicaraguan nonprofits like these since the Sandinistas regained the presidency in 2007. The USAID also organized and funded a destabilization plan known as RAIN (Responsive Action in Nicaragua) for the pre and post November 2021 election periods which is likely still functioning.
In August 2021 the Public Prosecutor’s office accused Maradiaga and Chamorro of being part of a major group conspiring with the U.S. against Nicaragua continually since 2009 and headed by Manuel Orozco Ramírez. Orozco is an associate of Creative Associates International (CAI), a global agency funded by USAID to “engineer political transitions” with over US$2 billion in U.S. government contracts as reported by Mintpress.
Congress Grants Pentagon $58 Billion More Than Requested: DOD Report
US lawmakers granted the Department of Defense (DOD) more money than the Pentagon requested for in the fiscal 2022 defense budget, a recent Pentagon report shows.
In total, Congress sanctioned $58.55 billion in additional funds, according to the report. This includes $25.70 billion for operations and maintenance, $17.67 billion for procurement, $9.89 billion for research, development, test, and evaluation, $4.32 billion for military construction, and $947 million for military personnel.
The DOD initially had a base budget appropriation of $742.3 billion for fiscal 2022. As such, the extra $58.55 billion represents an almost 8 percent increase from the base budget. The Pentagon did not put in a request for any of the programs funded with the extra $58.55 billion.
These programs are not even in the so-called unfunded priorities lists—made up of items not included in the budget but considered critical—that departments and officers send to Congress annually.
The quantum internet has taken a major step forward
The development of a so-called quantum internet may have just seen a significant breakthrough, experts have declared.
Research from a team Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada published in the scientific journal Nature(opens in new tab) provides proof of principle that T centers, a specific luminescent defect in silicon, can provide a ‘photonic link’ between qubits (quantum computing’s counterpart to the binary digit or bit of classical computing).
As successfully harnessing quantum technology would benefit from communications technology that enables these qubits to link together at scale, this could be a huge step forward.
Billions Continue to Be Laundered Through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to China’s Biowarfare Program
The National Institutes of Health funds China’s biowarfare program in ways similar to shell companies laundering money.
It is now an indisputable scientific fact that the COVID-19 virus was created in a laboratory in China and that work was linked to China’s biowarfare program.
There is also an abundance of evidence that funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), specifically Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), contributed to that effort and U.S. government officials and members of the scientific community attempted to cover-up the laboratory origin of the COVID-19 virus and their potential complicity in its creation.
Judicial Watch recently received 1651 pages of records from the NIH revealing an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial funding of bat coronavirus “gain of function” research, experiments that can lead to viruses that are “more transmissible or more virulent than the original organism or those that evade current detection methods and available treatments.”
The records obtained by Judicial Watch include an April 21, 2022 NIH email thread regarding “additional subawardees,” referring to NIH grant R01AI110964 “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” given to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, a long-time institutional collaborator with Chinese scientists.
Ten facilities are listed, three of which are in China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Institute of Pathogen Biology in Beijing, and East China Normal University in Shanghai. A fourth, the Duke University-National University of Singapore is an institution closely linked to the Wuhan Institute of Virology
It is important to note, that Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance was the lead investigator on a 2018 research grant application to the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), which, quite literally, reads like a recipe for creating the COVID-19 virus.
Two of the other investigators on that DARPA application were from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Duke University-National University of Singapore facility.
Major Study Confirms COVID Vaccines Alter Women’s Periods
Since Covid vaccines first became available more than a year and a half ago, women have been sounding alarms about the shots’ adverse effect on their menstruation.
For example, in an August 2021 article at The Grayzone that criticized the U.S. medical establishment’s failure to study the effects of the vaccines on women’s reproductive systems, Marcie Smith Parenti recounted disturbing experiences from her own circle of friends:
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.
On social media, the The Grayzone was accused of “fearmongering,” being “anti-vax,” and peddling “dangerous disinformation.” Meanwhile, the response of the FDA and CDC to women’s pleas might be best characterized as a bureaucratic shrug.
In August, NPR said the FDA and all three U.S. vaccine manufacturers claimed “they have not seen evidence that any of the vaccines cause menstrual irregularities.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said it was “aware” of the complaints, but urged women to plunge forward with vaccinations anyway without regard to the timing of their cycles.
Now, however, a large-scale study adds substantial new confirmation of what thousands of women have been proclaiming since the jabs started. As NBC News reports:
“An analysis published Friday in the journal Science Advances found that 42% of people with regular menstrual cycles said they bled more heavily than usual after vaccination…14% reported a lighter period.“
The study also found many women who don’t typically menstruate—such as those beyond menopause and those on certain long-term contraceptives—experienced “breakthrough” or unexpected bleeding after receiving Covid vaccines.
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