Today's News: August 20, 2021

Taliban demands U.S. withdraw all troops, gives a humiliating Sept. 11 deadline

WND – Thanks to his anemic leadership, Taliban terrorists are ordering President Joe Biden around like he’s their unpaid intern.

Taliban spokesman Suhail Shaheen said Biden should withdraw all U.S. troops by Sept. 11 pursuant to a 2020 agreement the group had made with the Afghan government.

Former President Donald Trump had negotiated the historic peace accord between the warring factions last year, including setting a May 1, 2021 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S forces from Afghanistan.

“I think they should get their troops out of Afghanistan,” Shaheen told Sky News on Tuesday.

“They have already violated the time frame which was enshrined in the Doha agreement, when they announced that they will withdraw all their forces until Sept. 11. So they should withdraw all their forces.”

‘Unfit to Lead’: Biden Supporters Enraged After Afghanistan Debacle

Breitbart – As Afghanistan continues its descent into chaos, prominent media figures are beginning to have doubts after supporting President Joe Biden (or at least strongly opposing Trump) during the 2020 election.

In an Instagram post on Thursday, Meghan McCain, former co-host of The View, said she felt “physically ill” over what has happened in Afghanistan and declared that President Biden is “unfit to lead.” Though Meghan McCain has not yet said for whom she cast her vote in the 2020 election, she virulently opposed former President Donald Trump on the basis of character, often spoke fondly of Biden throughout the election cycle, said she felt “relieved” upon Biden’s victory, and supported Trump’s impeachment.

“I have been physically ill, more depressed than I have been since the beginning stages of the pandemic and filled nothing short of pure rage and anger since the calamity of a ‘pull out’ which will be seen as one of the greatest foreign policy catastrophes of my lifetime,” McCain said in her Instagram post on Thursday.

Breitbart – Europe’s politicians have had enough of President Joe Biden, the man whose arrival in the Oval Office just eight months ago they were treating like the second coming of the Messiah.

Leaders such as Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Angela Merkel have been careful not to make direct criticisms. But their parliaments have done an excellent job of doing their dirty work for them.

In Britain’s House of Commons, for example, Biden was accused by various MPs of ‘throwing us and everybody else to the fire’, of ‘shameful’ behaviour, of being ‘distasteful and dishonouring’, and of making ‘absolutely the wrong call.’

House Republicans vow to probe Biden’s Afghanistan exit if they win in 2022

CNN – Some Republicans see the fallout over the US exit from Afghanistan as their new Benghazi — a foreign policy blunder ripe for investigation that could provide just the political ammunition they need to dent a popular Democratic President.

Amid scenes of a chaotic and rushed evacuation from Afghanistan, multiple House Republicans are vowing to launch congressional investigations into the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal if they win back the chamber next year, with some specifically calling for an “Afghanistan Select Committee.”

“This makes Benghazi look like a much smaller issue,” Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, a member of GOP leadership who sits on the Armed Services Committee, told CNN. “This may be one of the worst and most consequential foreign policy and national security disasters in our history. There will be a lot of answers to seek and questions to be answered, and I think it will be a top priority.”

Many of Biden’s harshest GOP critics had scant criticism for former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban, which would have seen an even more rapid timeline for withdrawal. Nevertheless, some have started reviving attacks on President Joe Biden’s mental capacity and questioning his fitness to serve as the commander in chief, with some even calling for Biden to be impeached or to resign over the Afghanistan debacle.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Says She’ll Submit Impeachment Documents Against Biden

Newsmax – Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she will submit articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on Friday.

The Georgia Republican’s announcement came Thursday during an event with Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., in Iowa. A video of her comments was tweeted by RSBN.

“Yes I do have articles of impeachment drawn up to submit tomorrow,” a smiling Greene told a cheering crowd. “Because I believe in firing people when they’re corrupt, and they do a bad job. And Joe Biden is failing America and he needs to be impeached.”

Greene had previously announced she had filed articles of impeachment against Biden one day after he was sworn into office.

At the time, Greene had said she was citing in the impeachment papers Biden abusing his power while vice president by allowing his son, Hunter, to serve on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

“President Joe Biden is unfit to hold the office of the presidency,” Green had said. “His pattern of abuse of power as President (Barack) Obama’s vice president is lengthy and disturbing. President Biden has demonstrated that he will do whatever it takes to bail out his son, Hunter, and line his family’s pockets with cash from corrupt foreign energy companies.”

Newsweek noted her latest comments come as Biden faces criticism over how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is being handled.

Greene has harshly criticized Biden over Americans who have been unable to leave Afghanistan, Newsweek reported.

NY Business Owners Fight Back Against ‘Unscientific and Arbitrary’ Vaccine Mandate

Free Thought Project – Earlier this month, many Americans were shocked as New York City became the first major city in the country to roll out the incredibly fascist vaccine passports for entry into indoor restaurants, bars and gyms. While many fearful Americans applauded the fact that government can take away your right to freely travel by forcing you to take a vaccine, others made sure to stand up against this massive power grab by the state.

Shortly after New York announced their tyrannical order, New Orleans and San Francisco followed suit. Luckily, however, there appears to be a growing resistance and New York is ground zero for it.

“We followed all rules with the masks and six-foot distancing, curfew, cleaning logs, temperature checks,” Alison Marchese, co-owner of the Italian restaurant Max’s Es-ca on Staten Island, told DailyMail.com. “Come on, it’s enough is enough right now.”

Marchese is part of a group of business owners who have gone on the offensive against the government’s “arbitrary” and “unscientific” vaccine mandate. And unscientific is right as even the CDC has admitted that the vaccines do not prevent transmission or infection.

The mandates are also incredibly arbitrary as other businesses like grocery stores and hair salons are exempt. Apparently if you get your haircut without the vaccine, you are safe but in a restaurant, you are not safe — according to government.

In the lawsuit, which is Independent Restaurant Owners et al v. Bill de Blasio, the plaintiffs claim that COVID restrictions have “severely and irreparably damaged” their businesses and others throughout the city, which have been “struggling to bounce back” since Governor Andrew Cuomo lifted all limits in mid-June.

The restaurants involved in the lawsuit include Deluca’s Italian Restaurant and Max’s Esca in Staten Island, and Pasticceria Rocco in Brooklyn. The Independent Restaurant Owners Association Rescue and two gyms, Evolve-33 and Staten Island Judo Jujitsu, are also plaintiffs in the complaint.

The lawsuit seeks a court order to block de Blasio’s vaccine mandate, calling the requirement “irrational.” Given the recent data to come out about vaccinated individuals both spreading and contracting COVID-19, the lawsuit called into question the efficacy of vaccines saying it is “an uncontested fact that unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals can both contract Covid-19 and the so-called ‘Delta’ variant, further illustrating the arbitrariness of this executive order.”

New York City’s mayor is remaining steadfast however, and believes that they will beat any lawsuits like this one.

This California school district will require all eligible students to be vaccinated by mid-November

CNN – Culver City Unified School District plans to require all eligible students aged 12 and older to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by mid-November, the Southern California district announced this week.

In a letter sent to families Tuesday, the district, located in Los Angeles County, said it would mandate vaccines for all eligible staff and students.

“The deadline for providing the proof of vaccine is Friday, November 19, 2021, to give everyone the opportunity to make their vaccines plans,” the letter said.

A spokesperson for the district, which started school Thursday, said the decision has had “great support from the community” so far.

Culver City USD will also require mask wearing and weekly testing for students and staff, regardless of vaccination status, according to the district.

The district said it has not determined how it will handle students and teachers who decide not to comply with the vaccine mandate.

Georgia governor bars local officials from ordering businesses to enact mask mandates

NBC – Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed an executive order Thursday to prevent local officials from requiring businesses to enact Covid-related mandates and other restrictions to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

Kemp urged unvaccinated Georgians to speak with trusted sources and “see about getting vaccinated if they have not already.”

“But Georgians know the risk of Covid-19, and they also know how to go about their lives,” he said. “That’s why the executive order I signed today will ensure that businesses cannot be forced to follow local government ordinances regarding Covid-19. Local governments will not be able to force businesses to be the city’s mask police.”

Study: COVID Vaccines Are Less Effective Against Delta

Newsmax – COVID-19 vaccines are less effective against the delta variant, according to results in the U.K. from one of the largest real-world studies into the efficacy of the shots.

Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE’s messenger RNA vaccine lost effectiveness in the first 90 days after full vaccination, though that shot and the one made by AstraZeneca Plc still staved off a majority of COVID infections. When vaccinated people did get infected with delta, they were shown to have similar levels of virus in their bodies as those who hadn’t had shots.

Blood Clot Formation: Visual Display of How mRNA Vaccine Affects Cells

Global Research – Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, told health officials that his patients were suffering adverse effects from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines

Hoffe was quickly accused of causing “vaccine hesitancy” and local health authorities threatened to report him to the licensing body

The spike protein in the vaccine can lead to the development of multiple, tiny blood clots because it becomes part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium; these cells are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly, but the spike protein means there are “spiky bits sticking out”

Hoffe has been conducting the D-dimer test on his patients to detect the potential presence of blood clots within four to seven days of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine; 62% have evidence of clotting

The long-term outlook is very grim, Hoffe said, because with each successive shot, it will add more damage as you’re getting more damaged capillaries

Repeated Booster Jabs May be Lethal Researcher Warns

Global Research – A researcher has warned that the Covid vaccine spike protein could destroy natural immunity. Immune failure may be due to a buildup of vaccine-induced spike proteins inside the body, said Walter Chesnut of WMCResearch.org.

Chesnut warned that the “robust immune response” triggered by the jabs “may come at a lethal cost,” even at a later stage. In reviewing a peer-reviewed scientific study, he noted that the vaccine recipient’s telomeres become inactivated.

The vaccine “turns off transcription of/depletes AUF1 and WRN deleting telomeres,” Chesnut tweeted. “It is a catastrophe. This is what you are now seeing just the beginning of.”

Telomerase is an enzyme in human DNA that regulates aging. The telomeres that encapsulate DNA, shorten over time as humans age. The study in question was published in the Journal of Bacteriology & Parasitology, showing that the vaccine spike proteins have “deleterious effects on telomerase, impairing its synthesis,” Chesnut underscored.

“With this activity inhibited, it takes time for the inevitable immune cell exhaustion to appear. This may be the signature Trojan Horse ‘gift’ of the spike. Whatever short-lived immune response is fool’s gold replacing the ability of the immune system to replenish itself.”

Spike proteins “may be chronically present” in the injected and “continually suppressing telomerase”.

According to Chesnut, “we are basically seeing the effects of chemotherapy with the spike protein. But in a very unique way. Quickly replicating cells are being exhausted. We can now explain the all too common reports of hair loss, for example.”

FDA Expands Supplement Attack, Targets Hemp Oil

Alliance for Natural Health – The FDA is signaling a change in how supplements are regulated that threatens not just hemp oil, but the entire industry. Action Alert!

The FDA recently rejected two “new supplement” notifications for full spectrum hemp oil products. Previously the agency targeted CBD oil, stating that CBD is not a dietary supplement. These new actions are extremely concerning since they indicate that the FDA will block other hemp products from the market in addition to CBD. Even more concerning is a shift in the agency’s thinking about the safety standard required for “new supplements” that threatens access to thousands of products. We need Congress to support policies that ensure continued access to dietary supplements, including hemp oil and CBD.

The FDA’s actions against CBD, a beneficial compound found in the hemp plant, are an effort to protect drug industry monopolies. Recall that CBD was approved as a drug for a rare form of epilepsy and costs a reported $32,500 a year. CBD and hemp are helpful for a variety of conditions, including pain, anxiety, depression, and even heart disease. The FDA doesn’t want consumers to be able to buy cheap CBD supplements when they can spend thousands on the drug.

Full spectrum hemp oil is an extract of the hemp plant that contains CBD and a host of other beneficial compounds. We reported previously that while the agency was targeting CBD products, the status of hemp oil was unclear. It is discouraging, but not all that surprising, that the FDA is also now blocking the path forward for affordable hemp oil dietary supplements.

How did we get here? Congress legalized hemp at the federal level but preserved the authority of the FDA to regulate products within its jurisdiction that contain hemp, including supplements, cosmetics, and food. The FDA’s current position on the legality of using hemp or CBD in these various products can be found here.

The most concerning aspect of these new actions is the specific language used by the FDA in the rejection of the “new supplement” notifications for hemp oil. By law, any dietary supplement introduced to the market in the US after 1994 is considered “new” and the manufacturer must provide data to the FDA indicating that the “new supplement” can “reasonably expected to be safe.” But in the rejection letters to the marketers of hemp oil, the FDA has applied a different, more stringent safety standard for “new supplements,” requiring that companies now prove there is “reasonable certainty of no harm.” This standard is from an earlier version of the “new supplement” guidance document from 2011—a version which ANH-USA and other stakeholders successfully pushed back against until the FDA withdrew it. The agency then released a new version in 2016 that amended the safety standard called for in the 2011 guidance. Both versions of the guidance are deeply flawed and threaten thousands of supplements—but applying the old safety standard makes it even harder to comply with these requirements.

Safety studies for supplements may sound reasonable, but just remember: requiring these studies is part of the FDA approval process for drugs. Drugs can afford them because they are patentable. Supplements are natural and are not strongly patentable, so if they are also required to conduct pre-market studies, they don’t have the same ability to recoup those costs. This will either force companies to go out of business or it will make supplements so expensive that they are priced out of the market. Supplements also have a consistently sterling record of safety.

It is deeply troubling that after years of inaction, the FDA is reverting back to a standard that will make it more difficult for hemp oil and tens of thousands of other beneficial supplements to reach consumers.

Congress must step in and ensure that Americans can continue to access safe supplements like hemp, CBD, and a host of other products.

Action Alert! Write to Congress, telling them to support policies that ensure continued access to dietary supplements, including hemp oil and CBD. Please send your message immediately.