Watch: US Drops Experimental ‘Parachuted’ Missile In Arctic As Warning To Russia
A US special forces unit has stepped up its operations inside the Arctic Circle in Norway while admitting it is trying to get Russia’s attention by testing an experimental new weapons delivery system there.
“It puts this thing within range of Russia,” Special Operations Command Europe’s Lt. Col. Lawrence Melnicoff was quoted as saying of the new parachute dropped long-range missile which was tested. “We are intentionally trying to be provocative without being escalatory.”
“We’re trying to deter Russian aggression, expansionist behavior, by showing enhanced capabilities of the allies,” he added in the comments given to military magazine Stripes.
The experimental weapon system and program is called Rapid Dragon, and on Wednesday it was successfully test-fired at Norway’s Andoya Space Range, which is the country’s premiere far-northern weapons testing site.
Rapid Dragon is a new cruise missile delivery method which begins by parachuting a long-range missile from the back of a C-130 plane. A guided missile then shoots out during the descent of the large crate containing the projectile, as video of this week’s successful deployment shows…
#BREAKING video from 352nd Special Operations Wing successful test fire of a palletized Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM). Successful extraction of deployment box, release of JASSM with wing extension, and motor engagement during exercise #ATREUS22#SOFinEuropepic.twitter.com/3hLcXDJ3bl
According to a brief explanation of how the unusual delivery system works:
The Red Dragon system uses a steel cage and can be loaded with Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missiles, which have a range of up to 1,200 miles depending on the variant.
“The way it works is it drops out of cargo aircraft like a heavy equipment air drop, so it’s completely a roll-on, roll-off package,” Melnicoff said.
After rolling out, the cage stabilizes under parachutes. Then a sling gate opens and the missiles drop out.
Other weapons like swarming drones can be deployed utilizing this method as well, the US military says. The unusual delivery is in part designed to disguise a long-range missile launch as but a typical battlefield airdrop from a cargo plane, thus catching the enemy off-guard until the missile is already well on its way to target.
Melnicoff described further of the unconventional delivery method: “It complicates Russian decision-making because we know that they’re targeting very, very large specific aggregations of allied power… Ramstein Air Base, RAF Lakenheath, things like that.” He added: “We’re survivable. If worse comes to worst and somebody takes out these power hubs, we can forward-project precision artillery fire across the alliance with our partners.”
Germany’s government blocked on Nov. 9 the sale of two domestic semiconductor factories to Chinese-owned companies, citing security concerns.
“We have prohibited a non-Union investor from entering into business ventures in Germany,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters in front of the German chancellor’s office on Nov. 9.
Habeck noted that the decision came because the “security of order in Germany must be protected and critical production areas require special protection.”
Elmos Semiconductor, which makes chips for the automotive industry, was barred from selling its factory in Dortmund, Germany, to Silex, a Swedish subsidiary of China’s Sai Microelectronics.
In a Nov. 7 statement, Elmos stated that it had been warned by the German Economy Ministry that the sale to Silex would likely be prohibited, noting that this was a “recent development.”
The company said it would examine the details after receiving the decision and decide on what further steps to take.
Silex announced in December 2021 that it had signed a sale and purchase agreement with Elmos to buy the factory for 85 million euros ($85.4 million), with the transaction expected to close in the second half of 2022, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.
Rising Security Concerns
The decision by Germany’s government comes amid rising concerns over European countries’ dependence on Beijing and concerns that Chinese investment in its critical infrastructure could leave it exposed to national and economic security issues, as well as to political pressure from the Chinese communist regime.
Semiconductors are an essential component in everything from electronic devices such as mobile phones to electric vehicles.
Earlier this year, the European Union unveiled a multibillion-euro “Chips Act” aimed at bolstering Europe’s competitiveness and resilience in semiconductor technologies and applications and reducing its dependence on supplies from Asia.
“We must look very closely at company takeovers when it relates to important infrastructure or when there is a danger that the technology would flow to buyers from non-EU countries,” Habeck said, according to local reports.
He also noted that the sale of a second company had been turned down by the government, but he didn’t name the companies involved, citing “trade secrets.”
However, Germany’s minister for research, Bettina Stark-Watzinger, revealed the company to be Bavaria-based ERS Electronic, according to local reports. According to its official website, ERS Electronic supplies thermal wafer test technology to the semiconductor industry.
It’s unclear which Chinese company was interested in buying the German firm.
ERS Electronic hasn’t publicly commented on the matter. Company officials didn’t respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment by press time.
Germany’s decision to halt the sale of the semiconductor factories comes as the country is facing a recession that has been further exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis.
Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a meeting that focused on business ties between the two nations as Germany’s relationship with Russia continues to deteriorate.
Hungary Explains “Huge” Impact Of “Total Failure” Anti-Russia Sanctions On Europeans
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto went off on “failed” and backfired US and European sanctions on Russia in an English language interview published this week.
“The sanctions which have been introduced by the European Union [against] Russia have failed. It’s a total failure,” Szijjarto told Jordan’s Roya News in a televised appearance. He decried that the biggest impact was felt negatively by EU member states and further that the sanctions have not achieved any of their stated goals.
In his most blistering criticism aimed at EU decision-makers, the top Hungarian diplomat described, “It was said by the European Commission that the sanctions will help us to conclude this war as soon as possible and that it will bring Russia’s economy to its knees. What’s the outcome? It’s totally the opposite.”
Instead, he warned the economic war still being waged against Moscow is only resulting in escalation on the battlefield, as well as escalating inflation at home. “The war is becoming more and more brutal … And, in the meantime, the European economy is suffering very badly,” he said, observing too that Europe is now enduring a “tremendous energy crisis” and rising food prices.
Hungary has been a thorn in the side of European policy which seeks to punish Russia for its Ukraine invasion. Most recently, Budapest has refused to assist NATO allies in the training of Ukrainian troops. It has also been widely accused of undermining Western efforts to bolster Ukraine’s defense, for example with the ban on allowing weapons transit directly from Hungary to neighboring Ukraine.
FM Szijjarto rejected these charges in the interview, saying, “Basically, we are the only ones in Europe who are arguing in favor of peace.” Budapest has also resisted at every turn EU efforts to impose Russian energy bans or an oil price cap, underscoring it must think of its economy and the well-being of the Hungarian people first.
Additionally he cited as “the outcome of a failed sanctions policy” that Hungary was forced to pay €19 billion for energy imports this year, which is more than double €7 billion it paid in 2021 – a “huge” consequence of EU short-sighted actions, he said.
A 72-year-old man has been sentenced to six months in prison for the crime of serving mince pies with wine at his shooting club in 2020 while the area was under a lockdown.
The BBC reports that “Maurice Snelling broke tier three restrictions at Cloudside Shooting Grounds in 2020,” by allowing people to sit in at his premises rather than take away.
Utter madness:
Cloudside man who served mince pies in lockdown jailed – BBC News https://t.co/EzPZjbPC4F
Mr Snelling pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice, but argued that his club was in an area where restrictions stated visitors could sit inside and consume drinks if they were accompanied by food.
The judge presiding over the case was not convinced, however, and said “I find it hard to believe that Mr Snelling didn’t know which lockdown tier he was in.”
Police disrupted the gatherings at the time after residents in the area reported Snelling.
He reportedly refused to provide police CCTV from the club and allegedly attempted to have the footage destroyed, prompting the contractor company hosting it on a hard drive to hand it over to authorities.
The lawyer representing Snelling told the BBC that he has suffered ill health since the case began and “This has tarnished his reputation. He believed he was targeted by neighbours and this built up resentment of a man with good character.”
The report also notes that the Judge believed Snelling to be “anti-establishment, especially to the police. He doesn’t like being told what to do. He treated police with resentment.”
During the lockdown periods in the UK there were scores of reports of people refusing to go along with the restrictions and being reported to the police by neighbours. Many incidences were clearly innocuous and involved people sitting alone in their cars or out walking alone. Other people trying to get to work or shop in supermarkets were routinely harassed by police.
Boris Johnson had several parties during lockdown and got away with it. This guy served mince pies during lockdown and has been literally sent to prison. England is a complete embarrassment. https://t.co/eLeRDPlQLI
Partygate gets a £50 fine this guy goes to jail. One rule for them, one rule for us. #draintheswamp Cloudside man who served mince pies in lockdown jailed – BBC News https://t.co/3xtLN88smw
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The U.S. government is still waging war on America’s military veterans.
Especially veterans who exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against government wrongdoing.
Consider: we raise our young people on a steady diet of militarism and war, sell them on the idea that defending freedom abroad by serving in the military is their patriotic duty, then when they return home, bruised and battle-scarred and committed to defending their freedoms at home, we often treat them like criminals merely for exercising those rights they risked their lives to defend.
As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, the government even has a name for its war on America’s veterans: Operation Vigilant Eagle.
This Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program tracks military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and characterizes them as extremists and potential domestic terrorist threats because they may be “disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war.”
Coupled with the DHS’ dual reports on Rightwing and Leftwing “Extremism,” which broadly define extremists as individuals, military veterans and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” these tactics bode ill for anyone seen as opposing the government.
Yet the government is not merely targeting individuals who are voicing their discontent so much as it is taking aim at individuals trained in military warfare.
Don’t be fooled by the fact that the DHS has gone extremely quiet about Operation Vigilant Eagle.
Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.
And the government’s efforts to target military veterans whose views may be perceived as “anti-government” make clear that something is afoot.
In recent years, military servicemen and women have found themselves increasingly targeted for surveillance, censorship, threatened with incarceration or involuntary commitment, labeled as extremists and/or mentally ill, and stripped of their Second Amendment rights.
In light of the government’s efforts to lay the groundwork to weaponize the public’s biomedical data and predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (a convenient means by which to penalize certain “unacceptable” social behaviors), encounters with the police could get even more deadly, especially if those involved have a mental illness or disability coupled with a military background.
Incredibly, as part of a proposal introduced under the Trump Administration, a new government agency HARPA (a healthcare counterpart to the Pentagon’s research and development arm DARPA) will take the lead in identifying and targeting “signs” of mental illness or violent inclinations among the populace by using artificial intelligence to collect data from Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home.
These tactics are not really new.
Many times throughout history in totalitarian regimes, such governments have declared dissidents mentally ill and unfit for society as a means of rendering them disempowering them.
For example, government officials in the Cold War-era Soviet Union often used psychiatric hospitals as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally through the use of electric shocks, drugs and various medical procedures.
This age-old practice by which despotic regimes eliminate their critics or potential adversaries by declaring them mentally ill and locking them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time is a common practice in present-day China.
What is particularly unnerving, however, is how this practice of eliminating or undermining potential critics, including military veterans, is happening with increasing frequency in the United States.
Remember, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) opened the door for the government to detain as a threat to national security anyone viewed as a troublemaker. According to government guidelines for identifying domestic extremists—a word used interchangeably with terrorists—technically, anyone exercising their First Amendment rights in order to criticize the government qualifies.
It doesn’t take much anymore to be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the government’s dictates.
In fact, as the Washington Post reports, communities are being mapped and residents assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about a person’s potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether they’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.
The case of Brandon Raub is a prime example of Operation Vigilant Eagle in action.
Raub, a 26-year-old decorated Marine, actually found himself interrogated by government agents about his views on government corruption, arrested with no warning, labeled mentally ill for subscribing to so-called “conspiratorial” views about the government, detained against his will in a psych ward for standing by his views, and isolated from his family, friends and attorneys. Within days of Raub being seized and forcibly held in a VA psych ward, news reports started surfacing of other veterans having similar experiences.
“Oppositional defiance disorder” (ODD) is another diagnosis being used against veterans who challenge the status quo. As journalist Anthony Martin explains, an ODD diagnosis
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize (and disarm) these veterans is diabolical. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these veterans are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their constitutional rights.
If it were just being classified as “anti-government,” that would be one thing.
Unfortunately, anyone with a military background and training is also now being viewed as a heightened security threat by police who are trained to shoot first and ask questions later.
Police encounters with military veterans often escalate very quickly into an explosive and deadly situation, especially when SWAT teams are involved.
For example, Jose Guerena, a Marine who served in two tours in Iraq, was killed after an Arizona SWAT team kicked open the door of his home during a mistaken drug raid and opened fire. Thinking his home was being invaded by criminals, Guerena told his wife and child to hide in a closet, grabbed a gun and waited in the hallway to confront the intruders. He never fired his weapon. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. The SWAT officers, however, not as restrained, fired 70 rounds of ammunition at Guerena—23 of those bullets made contact. Apart from his military background, Guerena had had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.
John Edward Chesney, a 62-year-old Vietnam veteran, was killed by a SWAT team allegedly responding to a call that the Army veteran was standing in his San Diego apartment window waving what looked like a semi-automatic rifle. SWAT officers locked down Chesney’s street, took up positions around his home, and fired 12 rounds into Chesney’s apartment window. It turned out that the gun Chesney reportedly pointed at police from three stories up was a “realistic-looking mock assault rifle.”
Ramon Hooks’ encounter with a Houston SWAT team did not end as tragically, but it very easily could have. Hooks, a 25-year-old Iraq war veteran, was using an air rifle gun for target practice outside when a Homeland Security Agent, allegedly house shopping in the area, reported him as an active shooter. It wasn’t long before the quiet neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, with dozens of cop cars, an armored vehicle and heavily armed police. Hooks was arrested, his air rifle pellets and toy gun confiscated, and charges filed against him for “criminal mischief.”
It stands to reason that if the government can’t be bothered to abide by its constitutional mandate to respect the citizenry’s rights—whether it’s the right to be free from government surveillance and censorship, the right to due process and fair hearings, the right to be free from roadside strip searches and militarized police, or the right to peacefully assemble and protest and exercise our right to free speech—then why should anyone expect the government to treat our nation’s veterans with respect and dignity?
Certainly, veterans have enough physical and psychological war wounds to overcome without adding the government to the mix. Although the U.S. boasts more than 20 million veterans who have served in World War II through the present day, large numbers of veterans are impoverished, unemployed, traumatized mentally and physically, struggling with depression, suicide, and marital stress, homeless, subjected to sub-par treatment at clinics and hospitals, and left to molder while their paperwork piles up within Veterans Administration offices.
On average, 6,000 veterans kill themselves every year. However, a recent study suggests that the rate of suicide among veterans may be more than double what federal officials report annually.
The plight of veterans today—and their treatment at the hands of the U.S. government—remains America’s badge of shame.
OR Gun Control Referendum Nears Goal Line; Iowans Approve Gun Rights Amendment
Gun rights and gun control advocates were both eyeing two major state gun referendums this week. There may be something for both crowds to cheer about — as Iowans firmly embraced gun rights, while Oregonians may have approved a strict gun control regime in a vote that’s still being tallied.
In addition to criminalizing possession of a magazine that can hold more than 10 rounds, Oregon’s “Measure 114” would require a permit to purchase any firearm. To obtain the permit, Oregonians would have to:
Pay a fee that’s expected to be $65
Be fingerprinted
Pass a criminal background check
Complete a safety training course
Gun owners’ privacy would be violated:
“State police would be required to maintain an electronically searchable, publicly available databaseof all permit applications,” reported The Epoch Times.
With 72% of the vote counted as this article is written, “Yes” is leading 50.8% to 49.2%. Though most outlets have not indicated a final result, The Oregonian raced to declare the measure’s adoption on Election Night, on the basis that most of the votes left to be counted are from areas favoring the referendum.
“Sadly, this blatant assault on the Second Amendment rights of honest citizens narrowly passed — restrictions that include mandatory training, background checks, fingerprinting, and permitting. All of these infringements are completely contrary to the Supreme Court’s Bruen precedent, and ultimately, will be overturned.” Erich Pratt Senior VP, GOA.
In social media posts on Wednesday, at least two Oregon sheriffs said they’ll defy the measure, either in whole or part:
“This is an infringement on our constitutional rights and will not be enforced by my office!” said Union County Sheriff Cody Bowen in a Facebook post. “Hear this! When it comes to our constitutional rights I’ll fight to the death to defend them. No matter what crazy law comes out of Salem!”
“I want to send a clear message to Linn County residents that the Linn County Sheriff’s Office is NOT going to be enforcing magazine capacity limits,” said Sheriff Michelle Duncan.
Beyond its imposition of barriers to the exercise of a fundamental human right, the referendum has a Catch-22 built into it, according to Oregon trial attorney Leonard Williamson.
“In order to obtain the permit, an applicant would have to show up with a firearm to demonstrate the ability to load, fire, unload, and store the firearm,” Williamson told The Epoch Times. “But you can’t get a firearm without the permit. And under Oregon’s highly restrictive gun storage laws, no one can legally loan a firearm to another. That creates an impassable barrier.”
There’s another built-in problem:
“Firearms dealers will not be able to sell a firearm to anyone without a permit; since the permit system does not exist, all legal firearms sales in the State of Oregon will stop until a permit system is established,” says Klamath County Sheriff Chris Kaber, who opposed the measure.
He anticipates that, upon a challenge, a federal judge will stay the measure’s enforcement until a permitting process is put in place.
On the plus side, the magazine size-restriction has an exception for “current owners/inheritors,” which would seem to shoot a big hole in its enforceability. Sheriff Kaber nonetheless recommends documenting current possession of such magazines, such as with a dated photo.
The Firearms Policy Coalition, a frequent litigator against gun control measures, has already promised to challenge Oregon’s scheme:
OREGON! If 114 passes, we’re coming and the lawsuit printer is ready to go! Stay tuned for more info.
The news from the Hawkeye State is much cheerier. Until now, Iowa has been one of only six of states without a constitutional provision safeguarding gun rights. That’s changing, as Iowans approved a constitutional amendment by a lopsided 65% to 35% vote.
Iowans for Responsible Gun Laws said“the potential consequences of this amendment’s passage…will be far reaching and dire.”
Judge for yourself — here’s the text of the amendment:
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The sovereign state of Iowa affirms and recognizes this right to be a fundamental individual right. Any and all restrictions of this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.”
The text initially echoes the operative part of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. With the second sentence, it pointedly counters the flawed notion that gun rights are necessarily limited to current militia service.
The third sentence explicitly selects the legal standard by which Iowa courts should evaluate challenges to gun control measures. “Strict scrutiny” is the highest standard of review, requiring that a given law be narrowly tailored to further “a compelling governmental interest.”
“This is a very high standard,” Iowa Sen. Brad Zaun said when the amendment was advanced by the legislature in 2018. “What this bill is about – let’s put the cards on the table – is judicial activism.”
Thanks to this summer’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Iowa’s strict scrutiny provision may be a little redundant. However, like a gun, it’s better to have one and not need it than need one and not have it.
As a social worker known for her expertise when handling high-stress conflict management cases, Angela Loerzel Swafford figured she’d navigate her own concerns when it came to addressing her employers’ vaccination mandate last fall.
Like many hospitals and health systems across the nation during that time, the hospital where the 46-year-old was and is still employed required their health workers to get the jab. But Swafford suffers from a venous malformation, a condition where veins in the body develop in an unusual way. Because the abnormality can increase the risk of developing blood clots and deep vein thrombosis, she was hesitant about getting the COVID jab.
Still, worried about the possibility of losing the job she loved, the licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) practicing in both Oregon and Washington, was willing to do what was needed to protect her patients from COVID-19.
“I love that job,” said Swafford who had always gotten the flu vaccine every year to protect the vulnerable patients she visits in hospice care. “I have this concern about my own safety but I also understand what I need to do to protect the community.”
“It stops with you,” she added, or so she had always been told.
No Space for Questions
Swafford reached out to a few of her health providers, asking which vaccine would be best for her situation. However, she claimed that she didn’t feel supported during her inquiry and decision-making process.
“I think there should be space that we can be curious and pause and ask questions,” she said, noting she did express her health concerns but that her employer and health providers didn’t really allow any questions. “I feel that the physicians had a script and I was not heard and was kind of pushed through.”
Seizure-like Symptoms, Blurred Vision
After being one of the last of her cohort of colleagues to receive the first Pfizer shot, what transpired next for Swafford was nothing short of horrifying.
Four hours later she started noticing pain in her upper body and difficulty charting her patients. Driving home that night, she lost orientation as to where she was.
“Taking the exit to my house, I remember it felt like my face was exploding in pinpricks–like I had all of these sharp needle feelings all over my face,” she recalled. “My tongue, lips, and face felt swollen, my vision was blurred and I wasn’t processing information.”
Once home, the strange sensations were followed by a repeated jerking of her whole body, what she said resembled Tonic-Clonic seizures. She also experienced blurred vision and terrible headaches.
“The biggest thing was my vision, confusion in my thinking, trying to walk with coordination and dizziness,” she went on. “I couldn’t figure things out.”
During some neurology psychiatry testing,Swafford said she fell under the two percentile of the people in her peer group when it came to her “processing speed” and “impaired ability to learn new information.”
“They found I’m not encoding new information–that my processing is really slow,” she explained.
Ultimately, Swafford was diagnosed with a severe adverse reaction to the mRNA vaccine.
Now, more than a year later after undergoing numerous lab tests, MRIs, CT scans, and a plethora of visits to healthcare professionals (including neurologists, an epidemiologist, an occupational medicine specialist, a speech therapist, and others), Swafford continues to suffer cognitively, from an abrupt change in her vision and sleep abnormalities. She doesn’t drive because of double vision and a loss of peripheral vision and hasn’t returned to work.
Doctors: Neurological Side Effects Have Been More Unusual
Meanwhile, despite cases of myocarditis having made the headlines in terms of adverse reactions to the vaccines, neurological side effects like the ones experienced by Swafford, haven’t gotten the same attention.
That, along with what she described as her health providers’ lack of acknowledgment, has been frustrating for both her and her husband.
“We kept running into providers in every system saying, ‘We’re not permitted to make the connection’ or ‘It doesn’t mean anything until studies support it’ or ‘It doesn’t exist until the scientific community writes about it,” recounted Swafford.
“One of the saddest things I see is the diagnosis of functional neurologic disorder (FND) lumped together for these patients,” said Dr. Diane Counce, medical director of neurology and neurodiagnostics in Alabama, noting that such a diagnosis makes patients feel like “it’s all in their head.”
Counce describes Swafford’s symptoms as neurological.
Data from the Center for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) calculated through Oct. 28, 2022, has shown a total of over 37,000 reported neurological symptoms.
In terms of neurological symptoms similar to Swafford’s, there have been 4,659 cases of balance disorder, 10,190 cases of migraines, 5,192 seizures, and 573 seizure-like phenomena on VAERS. Also documented among many other neurological incidents were 4,737 cases of visual impairment.
“When you have a patient like Swafford who within four hours is having symptoms that she’s never experienced before, clearly this is not just a migraine,” added Counce, noting the number of physicians that aren’t willing to take on patients like her or don’t know how to treat such patients. “She’s one of the more severe cases I’ve heard of experiencing multiple things including confusion, headaches, visual, hearing, mood, and behavioral changes.”
After reviewing Swafford’s case, epidemiologist, professor, and author Daniel Halperin also concluded that as a young, healthy person who experienced these symptoms soon after receiving the shot, the most likely explanation for the health ailments must be vaccine-related.
Like many experts, Halperin, who has written myriad peer review education articles and the book, “Facing COVID Without Panic: 12 Common Myths and 12 Lesser Known Facts about the Pandemic: Clearly Explained by an Epidemiologist,” acknowledges that no vaccine is 100 percent safe.
“Early on, we thought vaccination was important not only to help people be protected from death or severe illness, but also because it could greatly cut down on the transmission of COVID,” Halperin said, noting the common sense approach and the belief that health professionals should get the vaccine not just for themselves but for their patients and others they might be exposed to.
“Now that we know they don’t actually do very much to prevent transmission, I’m not sure how convincing that argument is anymore,” he added.
Prescribing a Vaccine Injury Regimen
For her part, Counce is working with Swafford and has prescribed a regimen for her that includes intermittent fasting—known to have a strong effect on promoting immune system homeostasis, taking probiotics and certain supplements including vitamin D, resveratrol, melatonin, and omega-3 fatty acids.
“It’s frustrating we don’t have specific labs to check these things,” Counce added, noting that when she started seeing patients developing negative symptoms from the vaccinations, injuries seemed to be all over the place.
But, she said when she sees a vaccine-injured patient, she has ruled it down to about five different things that could be going on with their body. These include decreased immunity, autoimmune response, inflammatory/histamine response (similar to Mast Cell Syndrome), fibrin activation causing micro clotting, and amyloidosis (a disease that occurs when a protein called amyloid builds up in organs).
Counce said it’s been shown by an electron microscope that damage has been done to the cells’ mitochondria, which likely contributes to brain fog and fatigue that patients experience.
As a neurologist, she reported seeing an increasing number of vaccine-injured patients with personality changes, sleep issues, and nerve and muscle issues, among others.
“It’s hard to say,” said Counce, who has been treating Swafford for the last month, as to what her prognosis is and if she will ultimately improve or not.
“All vaccine injuries respond so differently,” said Counce. “This is a brave new world for us.”
‘I’m Really Out’
Meanwhile, Angela Loerzel Swafford and her family wish she could get a “do-over” when it comes to getting that jab.
“I did the shot to keep everything and more so to protect the community I work in because that’s what they were telling me, but in the end, I lost everything,” she said. “I am not the same.”
“Angela would like people to understand that there are folks out there that have actually suffered a vaccine injury and it’s totally okay to say ‘Yep, that happened,’” said her husband. “Too many doctors are willing to say ‘There are no studies to support that,’ instead of gathering the evidence.”
“I think it was either you’re vaccinated and you’re with us or you’re not,” recalled Swafford, regarding the mood at the time. Now, she said, most of her friends don’t know how to be with her because she’s so different from who she once was.
“It became you’re in or you’re out and I’m really out,” she said.
Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday issued a surprising statement claiming that it has developed a hypersonic missile “capable of penetrating all defense systems,”according to the words of the commander of the IRGC aerospace unit overseeing the project.
General Amirali Hajizadeh claimed in the statement cited in state-run Fars news agency, “This hypersonic ballistic missile was developed to counter air defense shields.” Hypersonic missiles can reach more than five times the speed of sound, and very few countries in the world possess the capability. Iran is now for the first time claiming to be among them.
“It will be able to breach all the systems of anti-missile defense,” said the general, stressing that no anti-air system has yet been developed by any foreign nation which is capable of intercepting them. “This missile, which targets enemy anti-missile systems, represents a great generational leap in the field of missiles,” the IRGC commander added.
Israel, the US, and the West more broadly is sure to take this as a shocking and dangerous development if confirmed, given already there’s been years of scrutiny placed on Tehran’s nuclear and ballistic missiles programs, amid ongoing threats to Israel especially.
The only three countries in the world believed to possess hypersonics include the United States, Russia, and China. It remains Russia that is likely most out front in testing its hypersonic arsenal, having touted multiple successful launches and even limited deployment on the Ukrainian battlefield.
North Korea last year also claimed to have tested a hypersonic missile, though there was little in the way of verification as to how far along its program really is. Some Western analysts think Pyongyang was bluffing, and this could be the current case with Iran as well.
While there remains cause for skepticism over the new hypersonics claim, in recent years Western defense officials have consistently underestimated Iran’s defense technology sector and capabilities…
The commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force has announced
Iran has developed hypersonic ballistic missiles that can’t be countered by any missile defense system.
Remember how in the past western media & elites would sneer and claim Iranian military achievements were photoshopped? pic.twitter.com/MOuFHVpsJr
Iran has within the last year launched ballistic missiles on neighboring Iraq, targeting what it called terrorist militia groups seeking to undermine the state, which had camps hosted in Kurdish areas. Washington has also accused Iran of launching attacks via proxies on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, specifically out of Yemen. “These attacks are a reminder that Iran’s development and proliferation of ballistic missiles pose a serious threat to regional and international security,” the US government said at the time.
More recently there have been rumors that Iran is supplying ballistic missiles to Russia alongside drones for use in Ukraine. Tehran has vehemently denied it is giving missiles to Moscow, but has just this month belatedly admitted to supplying drones.
As for this new claim to possess hypersonic projectiles, if Israel sees any validity in it, Israeli forces could potentially see reason enough to launch preemptive strikes on the Islamic Republic’s missile manufacturing facilities. However, Iran has long tried to conceal aspects of its long-range missile program in deep underground bunkers.
China Develops ‘Back To The Future-Style Hoverboard’ Able To Climb 10,000 Feet
A Chinese defense contractor is preparing for the first human test flight of a jet-propelled skateboard next year, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported.
The vertical take-off device, in the shape of Back to the Future II’s Marty McFly’s Mattel Hoverboard, can lift a person weighing up to 220 pounds to an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet. The operator of the skateboard, dubbed “SF-FB-30,” can fly for as long as ten minutes at speeds up to 93 mph.
SF-FB-30’s flight control system is powered by artificial intelligence, allowing the operator to maneuver the flying board just like a “skateboard,” the Beijing Institute of Power Machinery, a contractor for China’s space program and hypersonic weapons, wrote in a poster at the International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition in Zhuhai, Guangdong, this week.
“We are making the fastest progress in China. Our machine is simpler and easier to use than similar projects in other countries,” a Beijing Institute of Power Machinery representative told SCMP.
The representative said the board’s artificial intelligence could fly itself and haul cargo or even transport a passenger.
The institute said the board has defense applications, such as using it to board a hijacked container ship. Besides military use, the board could be used in the civilian world for search and rescue operations, building evacuation, and urban transport.
Meanwhile, in the Western world, British soldiers fly around in ‘Iron Man-style’ jetpacks to practice boarding enemy or hijacked vessels.
Gravity Industries, a human flight start-up based out of the UK, recently released footage of these jetpacks flying around New York City’s harbor.
So besides hypersonic weapons, AI drones, and fifth and soon sixth-generation planes, global superpowers are seeking jet-propelled skateboards and jetpacks for new mobility capabilities on the modern battlefield.
Conservative Candidates Take Note – DeSantis Dominated In Florida For These Reasons
Many Republicans are experiencing a bittersweet election week with some impressive wins, but not the “red wave” that they were hoping for. With a Congressional majority looking like a certainty and the Senate up in the air, it’s an overall victory for conservatives but not a slam dunk defense against leftists and Joe Biden. What we do know is that while there was no red wave, there was certainly no blue wave either.
This tells us a few things: For one, Americans are more entrenched in their political views than ever and they aren’t likely to budge. When governors like Gretchen Whitmer or Kathy Hochul can win reelection after attempting to impose hardcore authoritarian measures on their constituency during the covid scare, it becomes clear that Democrat voters are too mentally challenged to recognize they are harming themselves. Maybe those people deserve what they get.
By extension, conservative voters are far more nuanced. They aren’t interested in voting for a candidate just because they identify as GOP, they want that candidate to share their values and concerns and take action. If a candidate doesn’t show courage and stand immovable against establishment agendas, conservatives may just stay home rather than vote for them.
For example, in Pennsylvania, John Fetterman managed to defeat Dr. Mehmet Oz despite Fetterman’s brain being scrambled by a stroke during the campaign. Democrats will vote for ANYONE that will keep their state blue, they even reelected a dead Democrat House candidate in PA (Tony DeLuca). Meanwhile, Oz avidly promoted the covid mRNA vaccines after pretending to be skeptical of them, and tried to sell his followers on them despite there being many questions of safety and efficacy. A lot of conservatives fought hard and took considerable risks in defying the mandates, and some felt betrayed by Oz’s apparent truce with Big Pharma. This may have contributed to his election loss.
One Republican that fully dominated during his campaign was Ron DeSantis. There is no denying that there was a red wave in Florida, which was considered a swing state only a few years ago. Now, Democrats see the state as a lost cause for the 2024 presidential race with zero chance of retrieval. DeSantis carried nearly 60% of the vote, with Charlie Crist left with 40%. DeSantis’ success also helped the majority of other GOP candidates in Florida gain a voter majority, with Republicans winning 20 congressional seats.
Why did DeSantis crush leftists in his state while many other Republicans barely squeezed a win or lost by slim margins? What did he do that they did not do? Yes, he’s an incumbent, which helps by allowing the candidate to show what he has already accomplished, but that can be a double edged sword. What measures did DeSantis accomplish that won over Florida voters en masse and also prevented potential vote count “uncertainty”? Let’s examine a list:
Hard Stand Against Woke Politics
DeSantis never wavered on his stance against woke politics, social justice agendas and far-left ideology. He never tried to make a deal with leftists or appease them. In fact, he instituted several measures and supported multiple bills in Florida that prevent woke politics from being taught in public schools.
He stopped Critical Race Theory from being implanted into school textbooks. He prevented sexually driven lessons from being taught and is punishing activist teachers for sexualizing (grooming) children. He has ended the injection of LGBT and Trans indoctrination for young students. He also took on one of the largest media corporations in the world, Disney, and punished them for trying to control state politics and impose woke ideology through the company’s massive monetary influence.
Leftists hate DeSantis for a reason – He has been effective against their tactics and they fear that other red states will follow his lead. In his victory speech DeSantis proclaimed: “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
Hard Stand On Illegal Immigration
A lot of people including many Democrats said that the strategy of busing illegal migrants from red states to far left cities like New York and Washington DC would fail. Instead, it has been a resounding success, with Democrats scrambling just to keep their city budgets from imploding under the weight of a mere 10,000 to 15,000 illegals.
While Texas gets most of the credit for this action, DeSantis and Florida did one better and sent the migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, the pristine island vacation home of many leftist elitists. The fact that the people of Matha’s Vineyard put on a fraudulent show by feeding the migrants some cheap lunches and then bused them straight out of town the next day to a camp on a military base was a huge embarrassment for Democrats. It proved that they can’t live up to their own standards and take care of a handful of migrants while expecting border states to deal with millions per year. It was a major coup for DeSantis.
Hard Stand Against Covid Mandates And Vaccine Passports
The population of Florida is the third largest in the nation, with a high percentage of retirees and seniors citizens. The amount of pressure on DeSantis by the Federal Government and Biden along with the CDC and Anthony Fauci over the pandemic was immense. If Florida folded to the mandates, then many red states may have followed suit. This did not happen.
One of the most important characteristics of a great leader is the ability to stand by one’s principles even when the majority of the public or your peers seem to be against you. When you know you are right based on reason, logic, facts and evidence, never submit or give in. DeSantis showed this kind of fortitude over the past two years and this most of all is what likely won him another term as governor.
Passing Bills For Election Integrity
DeSantis supported measures which secured Florida’s election integrity and prevented any potential chicanery in the 2022 midterms. He signed a law strengthening voter identification at the polls. Mass mailings of ballots, drop boxes and ballot harvesting are now illegal in Florida. Private financiers are not allowed to administer elections. He also established the Office of Election Crimes and Security, which monitors election integrity and enforces stiff penalties for anyone caught trying to cheat.
If these rules were enforced in every state in the country, one might wonder how differently elections might turn out. Future conservative candidates should take note of DeSantis and his overwhelming victory; it pays to actually defend the values you claim to represent, because conservative voters are not Democrats, they have standards.
