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Best of the Web: Days after president assassinated, US govt sends Haiti its 'first half million doses' of Covid vaccines


Voice of America
Thu, 15 Jul 2021 07:30 UTC
covid vaccines haiti
'Fear not! We come bearing gifts!'
Haiti, reeling from the assassination of its president and the coronavirus pandemic, has received its first half-million doses of COVID-19 vaccines, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund said Thursday.

UNICEF said in a statement the doses were donated by the U.S. and delivered Wednesday through COVAX, an initiative for the equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines.

"Until yesterday, Haiti was the only country in the Americas without a single dose of a COVID-19 vaccine," UNICEF said in a statement Thursday.

"Thanks to this donation, hundreds of thousands of Haitians will receive their shots against COVID-19," UNICEF said. "Yet, despite the collective efforts to kickstart the vaccination campaign soon, most of the Haitian population is at risk of remaining unvaccinated due to the limited availability of doses currently in the country."

In an exclusive interview with VOA, U.S. National Security Council member Juan Gonzalez said the decision to speed up vaccine delivery came after a U.S. delegation visited Port-au-Prince on Sunday.


Comment: Just 2 or 3 days after the president of Haiti was whacked, riddled with bullets as he slept in his bed...


Comment: This is not generating the optics they think it is. It's a really bad look to ship American mRNA 'vaccines' to a country whose leader was taken out days earlier by a hit-team based in Florida after he refused earlier 'gifts' of 750,000 AstraZeneca 'vaccines' because he was apparently holding out for a less evil batch of vials.

The last time a Haitian president was assassinated, in 1915, US president Woodrow Wilson sent in US Marines to 'restore order'. That invasion and occupation of Haiti by the US lasted 16 years.

Now, thanks to the wonders of biotechnology, they just need to send in 'vaccines'?...

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MIB

Best of the Web: Remember the plot to kidnap MI Gov. Whitmer that the FBI foiled? Yeah, the FBI apparently helped hatch it

Harris Rigby
Not The Bee
Wed, 21 Jul 2021 18:30 UTC
Gretchen Whitmer
Remember a while back when it hit the news that the FBI busted up a ring of people who were looking to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown insanity? Buzzfeed News has just published a lengthy story examining the plot and what led up to the bust.

The piece is framed as this big exposé on right-wing domestic terrorism culminating in the plot to kidnap the Governor of Michigan.

The only problem? Yeah, it looks like it might have been a setup from the start.

no big surprise
Now, remember, this is from left-wing Buzzfeed. Not some conservative news outlet or Alex Jones conspiracist network.

Here is the important conclusion from the Buzzfeed story that, for some reason, they don't see as a very important issue.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Best of the Web: This is fascism: White House and Facebook merge to censor 'problematic posts'

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Fri, 16 Jul 2021 00:00 UTC
Biden Facebk
© TheFreeThoughtProject.comUS President Joe Biden: One thumb up for fascism!
If we look back throughout history, all societies whose government attempted to, or actually succeeded in, controlling the speech of their citizens, have been totalitarian nightmares. It is for this reason that the founders crafted the first and most important Amendment to the Constitution, barring government from doing exactly that.

Aside from a few constitutionally illiterate politicians over the past couple of decades and the horrid atrocities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, recently Americans have had the ability to express their protected speech in any manner they see fit. Over the last several years, however, tech giants and social media companies have brought down the hammer in the name of protecting society from "disinformation."

Many have argued — although incorrectly — that companies like Facebook and Twitter are private entities and therefore can censor whatever speech they want to on their own platforms. As TFTP has been reporting for years, however, this censorship was anything but private.

While there has been a grey area as to the relationship between social media and government, on Thursday, the White House made sure to clear up any doubt. During a press briefing, Jen Psaki removed any uncertainty that Facebook is a wholly private entity by claiming that the United States government will now dictate to the social media behemoth, exactly what is and isn't allowed on their platform.

"We are in regular touch with the social media platforms," said Psaki, adding, "we're flagging problematic posts for Facebook."
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Bacon

Best of the Web: UK food supply chains 'on the edge of failing', meat industry warns

James Davey, Kanishka Singh
Reuters
Wed, 21 Jul 2021 04:06 UTC

Comment: And those supply chains were brought to this 'edge' by our governments' actions. There is no shortage of food in the UK...


empty shelves
© Reuters/Henry NichollsEmpty shelves as meat supplies dwindle in London
Britain's food supply chains are "right on the edge of failing" as absence related to COVID-19 has aggravated a critical shortage of labour, a meat industry body said on Wednesday.

The British Meat Processors' Association (BMPA) said the shortage of skills was so critical, some plants had reported vacancies of 10% to 16% of permanent positions, discounting the impact of the pandemic. BMPA CEO Nick Allen said:
"On top of the underlying worker shortage, we're also hearing from some members that between 5% and 10% of their workforce have been 'pinged' by the (health service) app and asked to self-isolate."
The shortage of workers affected the meat products that require more labour to produce, he said, meaning those lines would be the first to be cut.

On Monday, England's car plants, railways, supermarkets and pubs warned the government that the COVID-19 tracing app, which has told hundreds of thousands of workers to isolate, was wrecking the recovery and pushing supply chains to the brink of collapse.

Alerts, or "pings", from the official app telling anyone identified as a contact of someone with the disease to self-isolate for 10 days have also disrupted schools and the healthcare system.

Comment: Shortages are the next control mechanism. It won't matter how healthy we are. So, is this down to sheer incompetence, or is there intention behind this?

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Sherlock

Best of the Web: China rejects WHO's second phase investigation into leak of coronavirus from Chinese lab, suggests looking at US military labs

Ken Moritsugu
Associated Press
Thu, 22 Jul 2021 17:16 UTC
Zeng Yixin
© AP Photo/Mark SchiefelbeinZeng Yixin, Vice Minister of China's National Health Commission, speaks at a press conference at the State Council Information Office in Beijing, Thursday, July 22, 2021. Zeng said Thursday he was taken aback by the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a COVID-19 origins study.
China cannot accept the World Health Organization's plan for the second phase of a study into the origins of COVID-19, a senior Chinese health official said Thursday.

Zeng Yixin, the vice minister of the National Health Commission, said he was "rather taken aback" that the plan includes further investigation of the theory that the virus might have leaked from a Chinese lab.

He dismissed the lab leak idea as a rumor that runs counter to common sense and science.

"It is impossible for us to accept such an origin-tracing plan," he said at a news conference called to address the COVID-19 origins issue.

Comment: See also: Inquiry into Covid-19 lab leak won't bring out the truth, it will deepen the deception

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Beaker

Best of the Web: 'You don't know what you're talking about!' Fauci loses it with Sen. Rand Paul over Wuhan lab-funding accusations


RT
Tue, 20 Jul 2021 17:28 UTC
Fauci/Paul
© Reuters/J. Scott ApplewhiteDr. Anthony Fauci • Senator Rand Paul
White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has told Kentucky Senator Rand Paul "You don't know what you're talking about," after Paul accused him of lying about his alleged role in controversial virus research in China.

Questioning Fauci during a Senate Health Committee hearing on Tuesday about the government's coronavirus response, Sen. Paul (R) implied that Fauci lied to Congress in May when he said that the National Institute of Health (NIH) did not fund so-called 'gain-of-function' research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, believed by many to be the source of the coronavirus pandemic.

"I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement," Fauci replied.

Paul presented a 2015 academic paper that asserts such research did take place at the Wuhan lab, and was partly funded by the NIH. One US scientist has reviewed the paper and concluded that the research within "seemed to meet the definition of gain-of-function," — but that it did not lead to the creation of the novel coronavirus. The term 'gain-of-function' refers to modifying and increasing the transmissibility of animal viruses to better study their effect on humans.


Comment: Gain of function...it is or it isn't. Fauci did not qualify his retort. He shot verbal bullets knowing this would be the dominant press clip, regardless if Paul was right or not.

See also:
Rand Paul: I will be seeking a criminal referral against Fauci for lying to Congress

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Magnify

Best of the Web: Beijing renews its call for Fort Detrick biolab probe as 4.7 million Chinese petition WHO to search for Covid origins in US


RT
Wed, 21 Jul 2021 19:17 UTC
swab test
© cnsphoto via REUTERS
The Chinese foreign ministry has backed calls for an investigation into the Fort Detrick biolab as an origin of the Covid-19 pandemic after 4.7 million Chinese petitioned the WHO to send experts to the Maryland facility.

Speaking on Wednesday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said that the Chinese people had delivered a clear message in signing a petition, created by state-run news agency The Global Times, calling for a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation into the Fort Detrick biolab.

"In less than five days, about five million people participated. The rising numbers represent the aspirations of the Chinese people and show their anger at some people in the US for political manipulation through the issue of traceability," he stated.
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Bullseye

Best of the Web: The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness

James Lindsay
New Discourses
Wed, 21 Jul 2021 18:43 UTC
cult member woke
© Nafis Abman/Pexals
You must understand racism and admit that you cannot understand racism. You must admit to your complicity in racism and pledge to do better knowing that it is impossible to do better. You must be an ally but accept that you will always do your allyship wrong.

Before I got involved in studying Critical Social Justice like I do now, I mostly studied the psychology of religion. I took particular interest in the more authoritarian and cultish elements that can spring up within otherwise more reasonable faith traditions. Cult indoctrinations, in particular, tend to follow very predictable stages. First, there is initiation; then there is indoctrination; and then there is reprogramming. These three phases are distinct and must be understood on their own terms.

I. Cult Initiation

One thing I learned through all that study is that most fundamentalist religious (in the colloquial, not technical sense) and cult conversions, especially in adults, occur by using doctrine to resolve some core emotional vulnerability. That is, cult doctrine, and I include extreme fundamentalist interpretations of religious doctrines as cultish, exists to resolve a particularly powerful emotional vulnerability in an unhealthy way (this adds another layer of defense for responsible faith, which does so in a healthy way to the degree that it does the same things).
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Boat

Best of the Web: At least 25 dead in Chinese province's heaviest rains in 1,000 years

Ryan Woo and Stella Qiu
Financial Post
Wed, 21 Jul 2021 11:13 UTC
A woman has been pulled out of floodwaters in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, which has been battered by heavy rain and flooding.
A woman has been pulled out of floodwaters in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, which has been battered by heavy rain and flooding.
At least 25 people have died in China's flood-stricken central province of Henan, a dozen of them in a subway line in its capital that was drenched by what weather officials called the heaviest rains for 1,000 years.

About 100,000 people have been evacuated in Zhengzhou, the capital, where rail and road transport have been disrupted, while dams and reservoirs have swelled to warning levels while thousands of troops launched a rescue effort in the province.

City authorities said more than 500 people were pulled to safety from the flooded subway, as social media images showed train commuters immersed in chest-deep waters in the dark and one station reduced to a large brown pool.


Comment: See also: Chinese subway passengers trapped by rising floodwaters as torrential rain pounds Henan province - 8 inches of rainfall in an hour

Interested readers in these types of events might also like to see the increasing number of such reports globally in recent times at our dedicated floods section.

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Eye 1

Best of the Web: Shocking leaked files once again expose BBC as insidious UK foreign policy tool

Kit Klarenberg
RT
Tue, 20 Jul 2021 09:00 UTC
BBC sign logo
© ReutersBBC Broadcasting House offices and recording studios seen in London
A newly released raft of government papers has revealed the British Broadcasting Corporation's extensive involvement in spreading pro-London, pro-EU, and pro-NATO messaging across the Balkans.

In February, classified documents revealed that BBC Media Action (BBCMA), the 'charitable arm' of the British state broadcaster, was embroiled in a number of clandestine operations to "weaken the Russian state's influence," funded by the UK Foreign Office.

The exposure raised serious questions about the BBC's international reputation as a 'neutral', 'objective' purveyor of news, and what implications its murky relationship with Whitehall has for its output more widely. A further tranche of leaked files, related to covert UK actions in the Balkans, amply reinforces that the organization serves as a cloak-and-dagger device for achieving London's foreign policy goals.


Comment: It's only really nations in the West that wrongly believe the BBC is 'objective', but, increasingly, even British citizens are denouncing it as the propaganda arm of the government.


Comment: See also:

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