Today's News: May 09, 2024

WORLD NEWS

Astra-Zeneca is withdrawing its COVID-19 vaccine globally after admitting it’s a clot shot!

British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is taking its COVID-19 vaccine off the market worldwide. While the move follows hard on the heels of the company’s admission that its shot can cause potentially deadly blood clots and in the face of a class- action lawsuit brought by apparent victims and deceased victims’ families, AstraZeneca has attributed the withdrawal to commercial considerations.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine was a viral-vector vaccine developed in collaboration with Oxford University and produced for various companies by the Serum Institute of India. It relied upon a modified version of a chimpanzee adenovirus and was sold under various brand names, including Vaxzevria and Covishield.

The shot was approved for use in the U.K. in December 2020 and later approved by the World Health Organization. While never approved for rollout in the U.S., the Biden administration agreed to share up to 60 million doses with other nations.

Within a year of approval, the vaccine had been injected over 2.5 billion times worldwide.

The vaccine was not only touted by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as a “triumph for British science” but passed off as “safe and effective” by the mainstream media and various so-called experts on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some unfortunate members of the British public and others around the world similarly cajoled into getting the vaccine were soon left with a firsthand understanding that the so-called experts were dead wrong.

Doctors started noticing in 2021 that otherwise healthy people were ending up with grievous injuries or even dying after receiving the AstraZeneca shot. Facing mounting evidence of a link between the vaccine and adverse side effects, various countries temporarily took the shot off the market, citing reports of abnormal bleeding, low blood platelets, blood clots, and sudden deaths.

German and Nordic researchers determined that some vaccine recipients were developing a clotting disorder called “vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia,” which generated antibodies that activated platelets and led to clots. Researchers indicated that the odds of the vaccine harming recipients was one in 100,000 — a higher likelihood than the vaccine actually keeping patients under 30 out of the hospital with COVID.

Jamie Scott, a father of two who was left with a permanent clot-related brain injury following his AstraZeneca vaccination in April 2021, sued the company last year. His effort to hold the pharmaceutical giant accountable set off an avalanche of similar complaints. In the months since, over 50 other alleged vaccine victims have joined a class-action lawsuit against the company.

The company, which did over $12 billion in product sales in Q1 2024, is expected to follow suit in other markets around the globe where its vaccine was approved. The reason provided for the withdrawal is that the vaccine has been made redundant by other “updated vaccines.”

AstraZeneca reportedly said in a statement, “We are incredibly proud of the role Vaxzevria played in ending the global pandemic. According to independent estimates, over 6.5 million lives were saved in the first year of use alone and over three billion doses were supplied globally.”

WHO’s “Pandemic Treaty”: Technocrats planning on total control of everything!

The WHO Pandemic Treaty has turned out to be a Trojan Horse inside another Trojan Horse. As you pull all the layers apart, you see the hand of global elitists vying for total control over everything on earth, from biologics to inorganic material to all the systems between them. The U.S. should drop- kick the UN and the WHO into the Atlantic Ocean and tell them never to come back, but it’s not that easy: Far in advance of this Treaty, the Feds have already implemented One Health as an all-of- government initiative.

In other words, the infrastructure for total control is already in place. The WHO Treaty will bring the rest of the world into compliance.

One of the biggest problems the pandemic cartel now faces is that because of the audacity of their vaccine lies, much of the population no longer trusts them. Because of this (and their unwillingness to admit their mistakes and reform their actions), the only remaining option available to them is to outlaw all dissenting voices.

China drafts a law requiring military training for elementary school children!

The Chinese Communist regime has drafted a law that would require military training for children all the way down to the elementary school level. If the legislation is approved, it could go into effect this year.

Nikkei Asia noted this week that some Chinese high schools and universities already require students to participate in basic military drills, some of which involve tanks, armored personnel carriers, hand grenades, and rocket launchers.

Also, China’s conscription laws were amended in May 2023 to make all university students eligible for the draft.

The new law would require schools to include “defense education” in their budgets, make military training universal at the high school and college levels, and teach the “theory, knowledge, and skills associated with national defense” to even grade-school children.

There are several motives for China’s sudden interest in drafting children for military service, one of which is to frighten the Chinese population into believing they live under constant threat of attack, and only their authoritarian rulers can protect them.

Chinese subjects are asking some awkward questions about their sputtering economy; the sight of their teenage children running around with hand grenades might alter their thinking.

The regime in Beijing is also eager to project military strength amid heightened tensions with Taiwan and the Philippines, and it wants to make young people seem like enthusiastic supporters of China’s aggressive agenda. Nikkei Asia quoted a state newspaper, the People’s Liberation Army Daily, claiming that military enrollment among university students has soared to over 1.2 million, thanks in part to hefty government incentives for military service.

China is desperate to bring tech skills into the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a goal that could be enhanced by making children comfortable with military careers from a very young age. The PLA needs more experts in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics engineering, and space technology, so it needs to recruit more students.

RAND Corp. senior fellow Timothy Heath said the revised military education policies are nothing less than an effort by the nervous Chinese Communist Party to “legislate loyalty” during a “softening economy, worsening real estate market, and persistent corruption and malfeasance.”

Defense Secretary Austin: Some weapons deliveries to Israel delayed for review!

The Biden administration has delayed the delivery of some munitions to Israel as it reviews their use against civilians in Gaza.

The Pentagon is reviewing some of the planned weapons shipments to Israel against the backdrop of a possible Israeli siege of Rafah in southern Gaza, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a May 8 hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Austin clarified that no decision had been made to halt the shipments in question altogether.

“We are currently reviewing some near-term security assistance shipments in the context of the unfolding events in Rafah,” Mr. Austin said.

“We’re assessing. We have not made any final decisions on this yet. … There are some things that we’re taking a closer look at.”

There are currently about 1.5 million people in Rafah, most of whom were forced to flee their homes in the north because of Israel’s initial offensive. The Biden administration fears that a large-scale Israeli military operation in the region would mean tens of thousands of civilian deaths.

Mr. Graham said the delay in some weapons shipments was “disastrous,” comparing Israel’s use of large bombs in populated areas to the United States’ use of nuclear weapons against Japanese civilians during World War II, saying both were justified.

“This is obscene. It is absurd. Give Israel what they need to fight the war they can’t afford to lose,” Mr. Graham said.

“This is Hiroshima and Nagasaki on steroids.”

Globalist narrative collapses: Study shows mass migration not driving economic growth; UK!

In a rebuke of the neo-liberal orthodoxy which has dominated both major political parties in Britain, a study has found that mass migration has not actually stimulated the economy and has been a major drag on public services and the housing sector.

A report from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and co-authored by former immigration minister Robert Jenrick finds record levels of immigration imposed upon the country by the so-called Conservative Party — despite promising the public to reduce the influx of foreigners following Brexit — has not been correlated with an increase to economic growth per capita.

While globalist advocates of mass migration argue that it increases tax revenues and lifts overall GDP, thereby giving governments talking points, on an individual basis there is a different story.

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), while the United Kingdom’s GDP grew by 0.1 per cent last year — amid record levels of immigration — GDP per person fell by 0.8 per cent, drastically behind the G7 average of 1.2 per cent, despite the UK seeing the second-highest level of population growth, which has largely been driven by mass migration, The Telegraph reports.

The CPS report remarked: “If large-scale migration of the sort we’ve seen is really so great for the economy, we have to ask ourselves why we are not seeing this in the GDP per capita data”.

The think tank noted that although former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s post-Brexit immigration reforms promised to focus on “highly selective” skills-based immigration, the system has in practice allowed large waves of foreigners coming to the country who either don’t work or are employed in low- wage jobs, because the barriers to entry have been set so catastrophically low. The report found that of the net two million migrants who came to the UK from non-EU nations over the past five years, just 15% arrived in the country with the principal aim of working.

The report also found that the rush to import people from around the world has come with an economic cost. Migrants from Spain, for example, earn 40 per cent more on average than migrants from Pakistan or Bangladesh. Meanwhile, migrants from the Middle East, North Africa or Turkey between the ages of 25 to 64 were nearly twice as likely to be ‘economically inactive’ than native-born Britons.

In addition to not benefiting economically, the average Briton is also suffering costs from mass migration, in terms of public service resources spent on foreigners and soaring inflation in the housing market caused by ever-rising demand.

The report from the CPS said that net migration made up 89 per cent of the 1.34 million addition to the “housing deficit” which tracks the number of homes not built in comparison to population growth over the past decade.

Mass migration has also been a chief player in driving up the cost of rent, with estimates claiming that rent was increased by 10 per cent on average in 2022 due to the influx of migrants. Rent in cities has been particularly impacted, with over two-thirds (67 per cent) of private rentals in London going towards someone born in a foreign country.

On top of artificially driving up housing costs, the government’s mass migration agenda has also placed heavy strains on the National Health Service (NHS), with the number of GP surgeries (offices) only increasing by 4 per cent from 2011 to 2021, despite the UK population rising by 6.6 per cent, again mostly as a result of migration.

U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Stormy Daniels resumes testimony today in the Trump trial; will face attacks on credibility!

Stormy Daniels will return to the witness stand today in Donald Trump’s hush money trial as the defense tries to undermine the credibility of the porn actor’s salacious testimony about their alleged sexual encounter and the money she was paid to keep quiet.

The trial against the former president kicks back off with defense lawyers questioning Daniels, whose account is key to the prosecutors’ case accusing Trump of scheming to illegally influence the 2016 presidential campaign by suppressing unflattering stories about him.

MTG “pulls the trigger”; forces the House to vote to expel Speaker Mike Johnson!

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has filed a privileged motion to vacate the chair, forcing the House to vote within two legislative days to eject Speaker Mike Johnson (R- LA).

Greene pulled the trigger Wednesday after almost two months of warnings for Johnson to end his coalition government with Democrats, during which the endangered Speaker unleashed a torrent of President Joe Biden’s priorities into law.

While long anticipated, the motion’s inevitability seemed to wane this week as Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) met Monday and Tuesday with Johnson for a combined three hours to discuss a path forward. The pair proposed four accountability measures to ensure the Speaker would not advance an agenda opposed by a majority of Republicans, including preventing further American funding of Ukraine’s faraway war.

Johnson had continued to state he was hearing the duo out and considering their proposals, yet insisting it was “not a negotiation.”

ECONOMY & BUSINESS

Social Security will go bankrupt in 2035, one year later than prior projections!

A new report shows that the Social Security system’s main trust fund will be depleted by 2035—one year later than a prior estimate, though concerns remain about the fund’s solvency.

The Social Security Board of Trustees released its annual report on May 6 that projects that the Social Security trust fund, which consists of the combined asset reserves of the federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance (OASI and DI) Trust Funds, will become “depleted” in 2035.

At the point that the combined fund runs dry, Social Security will only be able to pay out 83 percent of scheduled benefits.

Martin O’Malley, commissioner of Social Security, said in a statement that the projected one-year delay in the fund’s go-broke date is good news for the millions of Americans who depend on Social Security. Still, he warned that the threat of the shortfall continues to loom large unless Congress takes action to extend the health of the fund.

“Eliminating the shortfall will bring peace of mind to Social Security’s 70 million-plus beneficiaries, the 180 million workers and their families who contribute to Social Security, and the entire nation,” he said.

Congress could eliminate the shortfall by increasing revenue, reducing benefits, or some combination of the two.

A Republican task force recently proposed a solution that involves raising the retirement age to account for increases in life expectancy while reducing auxiliary benefits for high-income earners.

Bill Hwang hedge fund trial underway in Manhattan over “pump and brag” scheme!

Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang arrived in court yesterday for the start of his criminal racketeering trial over the collapse of Archegos Capital Management, facing charges that he and a deputy broke the law in a stock scheme that unraveled in just days in 2021.

Hwang appeared in a dark suit and purple tie in the Manhattan federal courtroom for the first day of screening potential jurors.

The potential jurors were called into the judge’s chambers one by one for an initial round of questioning, which will focus on whether they can sit for the expected eight weeks of trial.

Those who pass that hurdle will face more detailed questioning regarding their suitability on Thursday before the final panel is chosen. (NOTE: They will have to understand how securities are traded and how the stock market operates in order to qualify as a juror of his peers.) The trial will delve into the implosion of Hwang’s lightly regulated family investment office, which prosecutors allege caused more than $100bn in shareholder losses at companies in its portfolio.

Federal prosecutors accuse Hwang of using derivatives to secretly amass positions in multiple stocks that were so large they eclipsed that of the companies’ largest investors, driving up stock prices. They also claim Hwang and the former Archegos chief financial officer Patrick Halligan then lied about their holdings to sustain their business relationship with global banks.

Hwang and Halligan are charged with racketeering conspiracy. Hwang faces an additional 10 counts of fraud and market manipulation, and Halligan an additional two counts of fraud.

The two men have pleaded not guilty and are expected to argue prosecutors are pushing a novel and nonsensical market manipulation theory. Hwang’s lawyers have described the case as the “most aggressive open-market manipulation case ever” brought by prosecutors. Each count carries a maximum potential sentence of 20 years.

Archegos’s head trader, William Tomita, and its chief risk officer, Scott Becker, have pleaded guilty to related charges and are expected to testify at the trial.

Archegos’s March 2021 collapse stemmed from Hwang’s use of financial contracts known as total return swaps to take outsized stakes in his favorite holdings without actually owning the stock.

Authorities have said Archegos borrowed aggressively to boost trading capacity and at its peak had $36bn in assets and $160bn of exposure to equities. Falling stock prices in March 2021 triggered margin calls that Archegos was unable to meet.

That led some banks to dump stocks backing his swaps, causing big losses for Archegos and its lenders, such as Credit Suisse, now part of UBS, and Nomura Holdings.

HEALTH

How Ultraprocessed Foods Can Shorten Your Life

People who eat large amounts of ultra-processed foods have a slightly higher risk of premature death than those who mostly shun the industrially produced eats, a new 30-year study says.

Those who ate the most ultra-processed foods – an average of seven servings a day – had a 4% higher risk of death overall, and a 9% higher risk of death from causes other than cancer or heart disease.

These higher risks of death “were mainly driven by meat/poultry/seafood based ready-to-eat products, sugar and artificially sweetened beverages, dairy based desserts, and ultra-processed breakfast foods,” wrote the team led by senior researcher Mingyang Song, an associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

Colon Cancer Rising Sharply Among Children, Teens

Colon cancer steadily increased among young people in the United States over the past two decades, with tweens enduring the most dramatic leap in cancer rates, a new study says.

The rate of colon cancer grew 500% among kids 10 to 14 between 1999 and 2020, researchers will report at the Digestive Disease Week medical meeting in Washington, D.C., later this month.

The rate also increased 333% among 15- to 19-year-olds, and 185% among 20- to 24-year-olds, researchers found.

“Colorectal cancer is no longer considered just a disease of the elderly population,” lead researcher Dr. Islam Mohamed, an internal medicine resident physician at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said in a news release.

Risk factors for colon cancer include a family history of inflammatory bowel disease or colon cancer, Mohamed said.

Other known risk factors include obesity, tobacco use, drinking and diet. Suspected risk factors include lack of physical activity, antibiotics and dietary additives, researchers said.

Power Mall Product of Interest: Living Streams Multi-Blend Liquid Probiotic (4 oz) (FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY – EVEN YOUR PETS!)

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Neuralink’s first human brain implant has experienced a (“Houston, we have a”) problem!

Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink on Wednesday said part of its brain implant malfunctioned after it put the system in a human patient for the first time.

Neuralink has built a brain-computer interface, or a BCI, that could eventually help patients with paralysis control external technology using only their minds. The company’s system, called the Link, records neural signals using 1,024 electrodes across 64 “threads” that are thinner than a human hair, according to its website.

In January, Neuralink implanted the device in a 29-year-old patient named Noland Arbaugh as part of a study to test its safety. The company streamed a live video with Arbaugh as he used the BCI in March, and Neuralink said in an April blog post that the surgery went “extremely well.”

But in the weeks afterward, a number of threads have retracted from Arbaugh’s brain, Neuralink said in a blog post Wednesday. This meant there were fewer effective electrodes, which inhibited the company’s ability to measure the Link’s speed and accuracy.

Neuralink did not disclose how many threads retracted from the tissue. The company did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

As a workaround, Neuralink said it modified the recording algorithm, enhanced the user interface and worked to improve techniques for translating signals into cursor movements, the blog post said. Neuralink reportedly considered removing the implant, but the problem hasn’t posed a direct risk to Arbaugh’s safety, according to The Wall Street Journal, who earlier reported on the problem. Neuralink shared its blog post after the Journal asked the company about the issue, according to the report.

DOJ prosecutors are investigating Elon Musk’s Tesla over misleading self-driving claims!

DOJ prosecutors are examining whether Elon Musk’s Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, sources familiar with the matter said.

Reuters reports that U.S. prosecutors are scrutinizing Tesla’s self-driving technology claims to determine if the company misled investors and consumers. Three sources familiar with the investigation say that the Justice Department is examining whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, and securities fraud by misleading investors. The SEC is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, according to one of the sources.

The probe has been in the works for some time, with prosecutors requesting information from Tesla about Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. Although Tesla has provided voluminous documents, no decision on how to proceed has been made, as the Justice Department reportedly continues to sift through the data. The investigation will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors.

Microsoft to build a $3.3-billion AI Data Center at the former FoxConn site in Racine, WI!

In a strategic move to bolster its AI capabilities, Microsoft has announced plans to construct a new AI data center in Racine, Wisconsin, with an investment of $3.3 billion. The project has political overtones, as Joe Biden’s White House attempts to attack Trump’s economic policies.

PC Mag reports that Microsoft is making a fresh investment in AI by building a new data center in Racine, Wisconsin, with a price tag of $3.3 billion. This move comes after a previous plan by Apple’s Taiwanese third-party iPhone manufacturer, Foxconn, to construct a display screen factory on the same land fell through. Microsoft promises the new data center will create around 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent jobs.

The announcement of the new data center comes as part of Microsoft’s broader commitment to AI development. Microsoft President Brad Smith is set to officially announce the plans in Wisconsin alongside President Joe Biden. The new facility will help Microsoft meet its increasing need for more computing power to fuel its energy-intensive AI projects.

In recent years, AI’s impact on power grids and the climate has become a growing concern. However, Microsoft is continuing its massive AI push, emphasizing the importance of developing this technology for the future. This week, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott highlighted the company’s commitment to AI development, stating that they have been building “big supercomputers to train AI models” for the past five years.

The new AI data center in Wisconsin will also host a “Datacenter academy” to train 1,000 people in the state for STEM jobs, addressing the growing need for skilled workers in the field. The “Co-Innovation Lab” that Microsoft will build in the state will further contribute to the development of AI technology.

The former Foxconn site was supposed to be home to a 20-million-square-foot factory for television and digital device screens before plans fell apart. Despite spending over $900 million on the project in four years and the state of Wisconsin investing over $200 million, the site remained largely unused.

SURVEILLANCE STATE

Virtual Home Invasions: We’re not safe from government “peeping toms”!

The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.

Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.

We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.

The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.

Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.

Just recently, in fact, the Michigan Supreme Court gave the government the green light to use warrantless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.

While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.

Consequently, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

Indeed, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the baton off to a fully-fledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

The key word here, however, is control.
In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you

don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”

As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and light bulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.

The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.

Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface.

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT

EPA allows continued “emergency” use of bee-killing insecticide on Florida citrus

The delicate balance of our local and world ecosystems has never been more threatened than in the last 50 years. We, as a society, continue to allow highly toxic substances to be used in just about every facet of life. And, the current (unhealthy) food production model used to feed so many people with insecticides is among the worst offenders.

For example, neonicotinoid products are exceptionally effective at controlling pests but are also the most damaging to almost all pollinators, particularly bees. Although the European Union (EU) has completely outlawed neonicotinoid insecticides and banned the import of nonacid-sprayed produce, the EPA continues to allow emergency use of one in particular: clothianidin.

The emergency use protocol exists because the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA) has banned neonicotinoid nationwide. However, due to the prevalence of a particular insect that causes greening in citrus plants in Florida, the EPA has repeatedly allowed emergency use of clothianidin. Let’s look at why that’s bad, why the product itself is harmful, and what we can do to finally ban this toxin in the U.S. 100% of the time.

Insecticides are almost universally harmful

Our massive interconnected food production system allows us to reduce famine better than at any other time in human history, which is a plus. However, the widespread use of herbicides and pesticides, largely unchecked until the 1990s, has had severe consequences. Measuring the extent of species extinction and human health issues caused by these largely untested chemicals is challenging.

Unfortunately, herbicides and pesticides once hailed as saviors of agriculture, have proven to be quite dangerous. They have been linked to cancer, harming wildlife, and contaminating water sources downstream.

Scientists have recognized the dangers, and regulators around the world have banned many classes of these chemicals, as they are known to cause cancer in mammals, harm birds, and small animals, and devastate insect populations, even those not targeted.

FOOD, GARDENING, FARMING & HOMESTEADING

CDC asks states to provide livestock workers with protective gear amid bird flu concerns!

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Monday advised state health officials to make personal protective equipment (PPE) available for farm workers in efforts to stem the spread of bird flu.

“CDC asked that jurisdictions make PPE available to workers on dairy farms, poultry farms, and in slaughterhouses,” it stated following CDC Principal Deputy Director Nirav Shah’s meeting with health officials.

“Specifically, CDC asked state health departments to work with their state agriculture department counterparts and partners in communities, such as farmworker organizations, that can help coordinate and facilitate PPE distributions,” the agency added.

According to the CDC’s readout, Mr. Shah has recommended that states prioritize the distribution of PPE from their stockpile to workers on farms where dairy herds have been confirmed to be infected with bird flu.

Mr. Shah said that while CDC’s assessment indicates a low immediate risk of avian influenza to the public, safeguarding livestock workers remains important as they may be at higher risk of infection.

“CDC offers real-time support for state and local public health officials, as well as staff who are ready to deploy within 24 hours, if requested,” the agency stated.

The FDA reported last month that a bird flu outbreak in U.S. dairy cows affected over two dozen herds in eight states, but it said that the risk to the public was low. Then why the overreaction?

Best bins for composting? This article pretty much covers it all!

As more people are trying to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle, many are trying to figure out what would be the best compost bin for them. Composting is an excellent way to keep food waste, yard clippings, and paper products out of landfills, with the added bonus of producing an excellent soil amendment. The main start-up cost is the composting bin itself.

The purpose of a compost bin is to contain your pile. There is nothing magical about the plastic, metal, or wood bins themselves that will suddenly turn your green and brown materials into compost.

By keeping all the materials confined, the bin allows the naturally occurring bacteria and fungi decomposers to more easily do their job of breaking down organic materials.

2ND AMENDMENT

ATF defies Congressional demands regarding the Malinowski raid! House Judiciary Committee sets May 23rd hearing; will summon ATF Director!

The Arkansas Monitor is reporting that the ATF has formally ignored a Monday deadline to provide information about the pre-dawn raid and killing of Bryan Malinowski in front of his wife, who thought they were victims of a home invasion and attempted to defend themselves.

A spokesperson for the House Judiciary Committee said yesterday that “The Director (Steven Dettelbach) will have to answer for this.” The Committee has said they will issue whatever summons it takes to get Dettelbach to show up at a May 23rd hearing.

“As you might imagine, the Malinowski family is gratified that public officials are not going to allow ATF to sweep this preposterous incident under the rug,” Mr. Cummins said Wednesday afternoon. “I have been contacted countless times by people from all over the country. They all ask the same question: ‘Why?’.” said Bud Cummins, a former U.S. attorney now representing the Malinowski family.

Malinowski’s younger sister, Lee Ann Macuijec, said the ATF appears to hope that the issue will disappear; however, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) is not going to let this go. In a letter Jordan sent to the ATF, he accused its agents of intentionally disabling the home’s doorbell camera in order to execute a warrant without a digital record. Agents did not wear body cameras, as DOJ policy requires.

COVID RELATED NEWS

Doctors revealed 2 teens died after COVID-19 jabs; then the CDC hit back!

Two teenagers died shortly after COVID-19 vaccination, experts reported in a study published Feb. 14, 2022. Within hours, federal officials scrambled to respond, worried the paper would harm their efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccines, internal emails show.

The CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have repeatedly promoted widespread COVID-19 vaccination and downplayed confirmed and possible side effects of the vaccines.

Another CDC official claimed that not including CDC scientists as co- authors of the paper called into question the ethics of the experts who wrote it. The agency rapidly submitted a rebuttal to the journal that published the study.

The internal emails were obtained by The Epoch Times through Freedom of Information Act requests. Some are being reported in this article for the first time.

Combined with comments from two of the authors of the study, the emails shed fresh light on the paper—the first to detail examinations of American children who died with heart inflammation after COVID- 19 vaccination—and its aftermath. The paper set off a firestorm within the CDC that led to attempts by agency officials to overrule the medical examiners who examined the boys.

The myocarditis manifested unusually in the teenage boys, Dr. James Gill, the chief medical examiner for the state of Connecticut, and two other experts wrote in the study. They said the injuries were similar to cardiomyopathy, which is often caused by extreme stressors.

The boys were both found dead in their beds—one in Michigan and one in Connecticut—just days after receiving Pfizer-BioNTech shots. Each tested negative for COVID-19, the disease caused by the SARS- CoV-2 virus.

In one case, the heart injury may have started with an initial vaccine dose before healing and restarting with a second dose, although it was possibly from a genetic heart muscle disorder, according to the paper. The boy’s cause of death was listed on his autopsy as “myocarditis of uncertain etiology,” according to records reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The other boy was said to have possibly suffered inflammation after the heart muscle became enlarged. His cause of death was also determined to be myocarditis. The COVID-19 vaccination was also listed as a cause of death on his death certificate, according to Dr. Gill.

The clinical histories of the boys suggested that acute heart injuries were the primary factor in the deaths, the authors said.

The CDC became involved in the investigations into the boys’ deaths at the request of the medical examiners.

CDC officials detected the presence of Clostridium bacteria in multiple organs in the Michigan boy, and concluded that sepsis from the bacteria likely caused the boy’s death.

They also found parvovirus B19 in the heart of the other boy and concluded it was an alternative explanation for his myocarditis.

Those findings were not mentioned in the paper. The paper only mentioned the results from the CDC’s testing for COVID-19.

The paper was quickly circulated across the CDC and FDA, including to two of the CDC’s top vaccine safety officials. Fifty-five government employees received copies of the paper or links to it within three days of publication, according to messages obtained by The Epoch Times.

Officials held meetings and discussed the paper in lengthy email chains. They drafted a formal response and figured out how to respond to media queries.

Officials said they didn’t know about the paper before it was published, and expressed concern that the paper neglected to mention most of the CDC’s testing results.

“All I can say is that they were not ‘open’ to discuss anything with me when I contacted them,” Dr. Gill told The Epoch Times. “Their published letter was more damaging to the reputation of their lab than anything written in the case report.”

Dr. Shimabukuro, who has given false information about COVID-19 vaccine side effects and safety signals that have yet to be corrected, did not respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Gill and the other authors addressed the CDC’s response in a formal reply, saying that the CDC “unfortunately overstepped its role” by claiming to have ascertained the cause of death for one of the boys.

The CDC “misinterpreted common postmortem findings, including bacterial overgrowth,” they said, adding later that clinical history and cardiac findings do not support the sepsis attribution.

The authors acknowledged they should have mentioned the other boy tested positive for parvovirus but said other findings did not suggest his myocarditis had a viral cause, nor would the heart injury he suffered be explained by parvovirus infection. The detection of the virus, they said, “is an incidental finding.”

CANCEL CULTURE

Atheist group forces Florida elementary school to disband Fellowship of Christian Athletes club!

The sole elementary school in a rural Florida county has disbanded its Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) club because an atheist group complained that it was “unconstitutional” to “indoctrinate” kids into religion.

Hamilton County Elementary School, located in the small town of Jasper, was stiff-armed into shutting down its chapter of the North Central Florida FCA after the Wisconsin-based Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) accused the school of violating the First Amendment in March.

“Students have the First Amendment right to be free from religious indoctrination in their public schools,” wrote FFRF legal fellow Samantha F. Lawrence in a letter addressed to Hamilton County School District Superintendent Dorothy Lee Wetherington-Zamora.

The atheist group argued that the Equal Access Act protects students’ right to form religious clubs in secondary schools, not elementary schools.

“Elementary students are too young to truly run a club entirely on their own initiative with no input from school staff or outside adults,” Lawrence said.

“Any claims that the Hamilton Elementary FCA club is ‘student led’ are at best naive and at worst dishonest,” she continued. “Young children cannot practically initiate, organize, and run an FCA club on their own, meaning adults are the ones truly behind the club.”

Denver Democrats are pushing migrants toward private homes!

As officials in Denver continue rolling evictions of illegal aliens from city-supported migrant shelters due to a lack of funding, many have ended up in illegal tent encampments. But hundreds more have been placed in the homes of private citizens who volunteered to take migrants in, for a stipend.

With more than 40,000 of President Joe Biden’s illegal border crossers flooding into Denver in the last year, city officials have struggled to come up with the funding to arrange housing for them all. In February, officials began warning migrants that the money was gone and many will be evicted from shelters if they stay past the 42-day mark.

Many of these illegals say the chief problem is they are not legally allowed to work without a federally supplied work permit and without a job they cannot pay their own way. The lack of jobs and shelter evictions has left hundreds to set up illegal tent encampments on public lands. But even that, as NPR recently reported, has its limits as police departments occasionally sweep them away from their camping spots.

In fact, some illegals have been bold enough to raise a tent encampment as a protest over the city’s faltering shelter program.

Pursuant to that, a left-wing group calling itself Hope Has No Borders has begun working to convince homeowners to take in migrant families and they say that about 500 illegals have found a spot in private homes so far, according to KDVR-TV.

The activist group has worked with city officials to sponsor a special hotline for homeowners who want to join the program.

Homeowners can dial 211 on their phones to be immediately connected with representatives of Hope Has No Borders. They will be asked a series of questions and if the organization finds them suitable, they will be sent a group of migrants to house.