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Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Over 200 Service Members, Veterans Pledge To Hold Military Leaders Accountable For Vaccine Mandate

 by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

More than 200 active service members and veterans have signed an open letter seeking accountability over the alleged harm caused by the Department of Defense’s (DOD) implementation of the now-rescinded COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The open letter, published on Jan. 1, is directed to the American people, but names specific senior military leaders who the signers claim enabled lawlessness and betrayed the Constitution.

Some of the leaders specifically named in the letter include former and current joint chiefs of staff, service academy commandants, service inspectors general, and service surgeon generals.

The signatories state, “In the coming years, thousands within our network will run for Congress and seek appointments to executive branch offices, while those of us still serving on active duty will continue to put fulfilling our oaths ahead of striving for rank or position.

“For those who achieve the lawful authority to do so, we pledge to recall from retirement the military leaders who broke the law and will convene courts-martial for the crimes they committed.”

A number of the signatories are veterans who are now running for Congress and state-level political offices. These veterans also pledged to introduce legislation to seek accountability by reducing the alleged perpetrators’ retirement income to zero.

Many of the 231 signers of the letter are still on active duty. Several said they are taking on significant personal risk to stand up for what they believe in and to defend their unalienable rights that they feel have been trampled.

The Epoch Times spoke to Robert A. Green, Jr., an active duty Navy Commander and author of “Defending the Constitution Behind Enemy Lines.” As the author of the open letter, he employed the framework and phrasing of Thomas Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence to address what he described as the current crisis of trust in the country’s military.

He and the other signatories hope to “rebuild trust through accountability” and signed the open letter as a way to emulate the founding fathers when they mutually pledged to each other their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor in the Declaration of Independence.

“Where our situation departs from the signers of the Declaration of Independence is that we do not seek separation,” Cmdr. Green said. “We do not want to be separated from the Constitution nor from what was handed down to us at so great a cost. Instead of separation, we want restoration through accountability.”

As a result, he said, the letter may be more appropriately called a “Declaration of Military Accountability.”

Bradley Miller, a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who previously served as a battalion commander in the 101st Airborne Division, said the allusions to the Declaration of Independence in the letter are “deliberate and meaningful.” According to him, the signatories of the letter “believe that we have suffered a long train of abuses that has come to a head with the unlawful COVID-19 shot mandate.”

“We would be negligent in our duty to uphold our oaths to the Constitution as well as negligible in our loyalty to our countrymen if we permitted the continued demise of one of our most hallowed institutions,” Mr. Miller said.

“For the senior leaders named, and for the thousands who were not named but who are equally complicit, I hope this [letter] is a wake-up call,” Cmdr. Green said. He went on to note that at the highest levels of military leadership, the decision-making processes are largely comprised of risk analysis and risk mitigations.

“Due to the Feres Doctrine [which prohibits service members from suing the federal government for wrongful injury or death], and the inappropriate deference paid to the Department of Defense by the legislative and judicial branches of our government, our senior leaders have rarely felt any personal risk for their decisions,” he said.

Cmdr. Green hopes the letter solidifies that “personal financial and legal risk is now part of the analysis our senior military leaders must take before deciding on policies that have implications for service members’ constitutional rights.”

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Pledging to Seek Restoration

For Mr. Miller, the letter represents “a pledge that we, the signatories, have made with one another and also to the American people, that we will not stand idly by as our military self-destructs.”

Because of their faith in God, love of country, and oath to the Constitution, he said, “We consider it our duty to lawfully resist the concerted efforts of current military leadership to destroy the institution that has been entrusted to their charge.”

Mr. Miller said the country is witnessing “the wholesale destruction, from within, of one of our oldest and most important national institutions.” For him, “It’s not that our armed forces have decided to stand by neutral as our nation faces an onslaught of threats, but has instead become one of the greatest perpetrators in attacking the cultural fabric that has kept our republic together for two and a half centuries.”

According to Mr. Miller, the U.S. military has “a unique mission: the American people expect the people to carry out violence on its behalf.” In a series of questions, he said: “How can the people trust an institution to ethically carry out its mission if it wantonly violates the law? How can the American people trust a military that has harmed its own members, and rather than acknowledge that harm, doubles down by insisting that its course was lawful, productive, and necessary?”

The signatories are demanding “unequivocal acknowledgment of the unlawful nature of the COVID-19 shot mandate” and the harm it has caused, he said. “We demand full accountability for those responsible for perpetrating this deliberate disaster on our service members, their families, and by extension the nation, [and] we demand, inasmuch as possible, complete restitution for those harmed by this criminal activity.” Without this “complete reckoning,” he said, “our military will not recover from this ongoing nightmare.”

Mr. Miller emphasized he and the others are not advocating violence. Rather, he said, “We emphatically decry the physical and moral violence that has been inflicted on service members and their families through the unlawful mandate of these harmful injections.

“We brook no interest in circumventing the law, [but] demand strict adherence to the law,” he said. “To this very end, we will tirelessly pursue the restoration of justice to our wayward armed forces.”

Fighting for Hope

Lt. Col. Carolyn Rocco has served over 20 years in the Air Force. For her, the letter serves two purposes. First, she said it is “a promise to the American people that there are service members who understand the significance of their oath to ‘support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’”

Having encountered people who have expressed “feelings of hopelessness for our country’s survival,” she hopes the letter will encourage Americans to “have faith that all hope has not been lost at a time when many see the steady collapse of morals, character, and justice among politicians and military leaders alike.” According to her, “courage is contagious,” and she hopes the letter motivates the people of America.

Second, Lt. Col. Rocco said, the letter is “a way to inform the military leaders that the elephant in the room—the negative effects of the COVID-19 vaccine mandate—is not going away until accountability is had.”

“While many want to sweep it under the rug and press on as if the last two years did not happen,” she said, “that is not how it’s going to go, unfortunately.” She cited the lowest recruiting numbers since the 1970s as “evidence of the disaster the DOD is in.”

Senior leaders of the military, she said, were warned about “the grave dangers a vax mandate would have on the force,” but these warnings were ignored. “Making a public proclamation might make them realize this is a serious issue that will not be ignored.”

Trust has been broken, and moral, emotional, and physical damage has been done,” Lt. Col. Rocco said. “The tens of thousands of us who were directly impacted, as well as our communities who witnessed the atrocity known as the DOD COVID-19 vaccine mandate, are the ones who are encouraging those we love to not join the military until it returns to an institution of honor and morals and becomes apolitical once again.”

“That will not happen until a formal and public apology is made, acknowledging what was done to thousands of service members was immoral, unethical, and unlawful,” she said.

“Those of us who signed this memo have made a promise to each other, as well as to the airmen, guardians, soldiers, sailors, marines, coasties, and American people, that we will not stop fighting for truth, justice, and most of all, accountability,” she said.

Cmdr. Green and Lt. Col. Rocco emphasized that their views don’t reflect those of the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, or the Department of the Air Force. Officials at the Pentagon didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/over-200-service-members-veterans-pledge-hold-military-leaders-accountable-vaccine-mandate

Why the ACLU is working with the NRA to protect Americans' free speech rights

 Each year at the U.S. Supreme Court, an array of marquee cases tends to draw all of the attention. However, there are also sleepers among the pending cases that have significant importance. One such case involves a rare alliance between the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

NRA v. Vullo deals with the growing effort by government agencies to target the advertisers of conservative and dissenting websites to kill the funding for opposing views. While the case deals with this effort on the state level, it could produce a ruling on indirect efforts by government, including the Biden administration, to censor viewpoints.

In the case before the court, New York's Department of Financial Services is accused of using increased regulatory scrutiny and possible penalties to coerce financial institutions into ending their support for certain black-listed groups. The NRA documented how former DFS Superintendent Maria Vullo appears to have pressured financial institutions to drop any association with the organization.

Specifically, the NRA contends that Vullo's office pressured insurance companies not to cover the NRA or risk retaliation from the state. As the ACLU noted in its amicus brief opposing the defendants' motion to dismiss the case, the NRA might not be able to prove these allegations, but it should be given the opportunity to do so.

It's chilling that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to allow the NRA to prove its case. It rejected any First Amendment claim, despite evidence that New York tried to silence opposing political views.

The Second Circuit declared that even if Vullo had “engaged in unconstitutionally threatening or coercive conduct,” she would be protected by qualified immunity. The decision is a virtual green light for a type of soft censorship that uses surrogates and regulatory pressure.

Biden administration tries to censor free speech

Under the Biden administration, there has been a consistent attack on free speech through the censorship and blacklisting of opposing groups. Even facts are now deemed dangerous "malinformation," if used in a way that the administration deems misleading or harmful. 

For example, according to an investigation by the Washington Examiner, the federal government helped to fund the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), which discourages advertisers from supporting sites accused of promoting disinformation.

All 10 of the sites that GDI claimed were the riskiest are popular with conservatives, libertarians and independents. GDI warned advertisers that they were accepting “reputational and brand risk” by “financially supporting disinformation online.”

The "risky" sites included Reason, a libertarian-oriented source of news and commentary about the government. Conversely, HuffPost, a far left media outlet, was included among the 10 sites at lowest risk of spreading disinformation. (GDI included USA TODAY in this group.)

A triumvirate of government, corporate and academic institutions are involved in efforts to control free speech by throttling the funding for its exercise. If you want to be heard in a large context, you either stay within the lines set by these groups or face pariah status. 

Efforts to control the funding of free speech are consistent with a larger campaign by this triumvirate. The Biden administration has relied heavily on what I have described as "censorship by surrogate" in using social media companies to silence opposing viewpoints. As I testified in Congress, the use of corporate agents still violates the First Amendment.

Indeed, a federal judge found that the Biden administration had operated a censorship system that was truly "Orwellian."

NRA v. Vullo is critical free speech case

That is why NRA v. Vullo could prove to be one of the most important free speech cases of the decade. New York (and the Second Circuit) would allow the government to deny free speech by cutting off its financial oxygen.

As shown by the alliance of the ACLU and the NRA in this instance, this is a fight that most citizens should be able to embrace, regardless of our differences. For every Vullo on the Democratic side, there could be a dozen Vullos on the conservative side who use the same type of coercion against pro-abortion or environmental groups. 

The Supreme Court could prevent this race to the bottom by imposing a bright-line rule against content-based discrimination by government agencies. The soft censorship in NRA v. Vullo will have hard consequences for free speech if New York prevails.

Jonathan Turley

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2024/01/02/aclu-nra-supreme-court-free-speech-case/72047487007/

Who Are the Real Insurrectionaries? Part One

 Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows just ordered Trump’s name removed from the primary ballot in May. She claimed he is guilty in her view of “insurrection”—a crime Trump has never been charged with, much less convicted of.

Her evidence, mostly gleaned from popular news accounts and video reports, would not stand up in a court of law. Bellows has no law degree. She was appointed by a majority vote of the Democratic-controlled Maine legislature, not through a popular ballot. Her legal expertise seems to be derived from years of political activism with the ACLU. We can see where the ultimate trajectory of this usurpation is going—once a single official decides to remove the leading primary and general election candidate of the opposition from the ballot by fiat. Tit-for-tat will likely follow and would unwind the republic. Take Bellows’ action and then apply it to any future candidacy of Hillary Clinton. And by these new rules she surely would fail to qualify to have her name on a state ballot. Remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton illegally hired a foreign national (by law forbidden to work in presidential campaigns), Christopher Steele, to create a “dossier” of smears and fake-news accounts, aimed at destroying her presidential opponent Donald Trump by extra-legal means. Clinton hid her illicit payments to Steele behind the paywalls of the DNC, the Perkins-Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS. Her leftwing associates and partisans in the waning Obama administration, the DOJ, State Department, FBI, and CIA worked hard to brand the slurs as credible, as they variously passed them off and leaked to the media on the eve of the election. They and Democrats in congress later engineered the appointment of a special counsel, whose investigations consumed two years of the Trump administration’s term, before finding no “collusion”. Even three years after the election in 2019 and the special counsel’s findings, Clinton could still persist that Trump was an “illegitimate” president: “He knows he’s an illegitimate president”. She also declared that year that the 2016 election had been “stolen”: “I think it’s also critical to understand that, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you”—de facto asserting the balloting was fraudulent. She was prepping the battlefield for 2020. So Clinton continued her denialism right up to the eve of the 2020 election, further claiming the 2016 election was rigged, “There was a widespread understanding that this election [in 2016] was not on the level.” To be continued…

atai: Positive Topline Results from Single Ascending Dose Phase 1 Study with EMP-01 (R-MDMA)

 EMP-01 was well-tolerated, and treatment-related adverse events (AEs) were all expected and generally dose dependent. There were no study discontinuations, and no serious or severe AEs were observed in the study. Non-clinically significant increases in blood pressure and heart rate were observed, though such changes showed limited dose dependency. Further, the peak body temperatures observed fell within the normal range. Finally, bruxism was observed in only 1 of 24 subjects that received EMP-01.

The PK profile of EMP-01 was dose-proportional. The PD measures included both subjective reports and blood-based biomarkers. Significant, consistent and dose-dependent changes were seen on several of these exploratory PD measures. EMP-01 administration resulted in a differentiated subjective experience compared to racemic MDMA on standard psychedelic experience questionnaires. Further, dose dependent changes on measures of emotional breakthrough, a phenomenon thought to be a key mediator of the long-term psychological changes associated with psychedelics, were noted in this healthy volunteer population.

Detailed clinical data from the Phase 1 study of EMP-01 are expected to be presented at a future medical meeting.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2024/01/02/2802639/0/en/atai-Life-Sciences-Announces-Positive-Topline-Results-from-Single-Ascending-Dose-Phase-1-Study-with-EMP-01-R-MDMA.html

Moderna surges after CEO says sales growth expected in 2025

 Moderna shares rose more than 11% on Tuesday after the vaccine maker's CEO Stéphane Bancel said in a shareholder letter that the company expects its sales to grow in 2025.

"With the expected launch of our RSV vaccine candidate in 2024, and potential launch of our flu/COVID combination vaccine as early as 2025, we believe Moderna will experience sales growth in 2025," said Bancel.

Moderna had said in November it would only hit the low end of its sales forecast of $6 billion to $8 billion for 2023, reflecting weaker demand for COVID-19 vaccines.

The stock, which fell nearly 45% in 2023, rose as much as 12.2% to $111.60 in early trading.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/MODERNA-INC-47437573/news/Moderna-surges-after-CEO-says-sales-growth-expected-in-2025-45659820/

2 NY men accused of faking armed robberies in convoluted visa fraud scheme

 Two New York men were arrested in December and accused of staging fake armed robberies to make their targets eligible for a special visa for victims of violent crime.

The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts charged the two men, Rambhai Patel, 36, and Balwinder Singh, 39, each with one count of visa fraud for the scheme, which allegedly took place in at least eight locations throughout the United States.

Authorities said Patel carried out the staged robberies at liquor stores, convenience stores and fast food establishments, sometimes with the help of Singh.

The clerks or store owners who played the victims in the scheme paid Patel, and some store owners charged him to allow the fake robbery to take place, according to the allegations.

Foreign nationals who are victims of violent crime and collaborate with the police may be eligible for a U visa, which confers substantial immigration benefits.

In addition to erasing a foreign national’s past immigration violation, the U visa comes with a four-year work permit, protection from deportation, and the possibility for the visa holder to apply for permanent residency, also known as a green card. A U visa also allows the petitioner to include certain family members in the application.

The U visa is intended to help police solve crimes and for foreign nationals to more readily report crimes to the police without fear of deportation.

The federal government can grant up to 10,000 U visas per year, though many more such visas are approved every year because of existing backlogs, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC), a nonprofit organization.

According to United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency received 53,142 U visa applications in fiscal 2023, of which it granted 17,889 and denied 6,993, and there is a pending backlog of 344,600 applications.

Those backlogs mean the visas have long wait times. 

According to ILRC, a person can expect to wait about five years for work authorization connected to their U visa application, and 10 years to actually get the visa.

Patel’s alleged fake victims could have faced those wait times, but as U visa applicants they would not be targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

That protection is liable to change from administration to administration, however.

“The long wait for the U visa means that you might file your application while Biden is president, for example, but the application might be decided when someone else is president, who might have a very different immigration agenda,” reads a ILRC explainer for potential U visa applicants. 

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/4385439-new-york-fake-armed-robberies-visa-fraud-immigration/

1/3 in new poll say Biden’s election was illegitimate

 About one-third of U.S. adults say they believe President Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020, according a poll released this week.

The Washington Post/University of Maryland (Post-UMD) survey examines evolving views of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — as the third anniversary of the insurrection is coming up Saturday. A similar poll was conducted in December 2021.

As of last month, 62 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Biden was legitimately elected, down from 69 percent overall in the 2021 poll.

The biggest drop in those who said the 2020 election results were legitimate came from Republicans — 31 percent in 2023, down from 39 percent two years earlier.

Among Democrats, 91 percent say Biden was legitimately elected, a slight dip from 94 percent two years ago, and 66 percent of independents say the incumbent was legitimately elected, down from 72 percent in December 2021.

The Post noted that, among those who primarily get their information from Fox News, only about 3 in 10 people say the president’s election was legitimate.

Trump remains the GOP front-runner in his bid to return to the White House in 2024, despite facing four criminal indictments with a total of 91 criminal charges. Two of those cases relate to his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to Biden.

Trump has maintained he was the rightful winner of the presidency, despite numerous election audits and more than 60 lawsuits that lost in court after failing to prove claims that the election was unfairly decided.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Bill Barr, Trump’s then-attorney general, said in the month following the 2020 presidential election, rejecting the former president’s repeated claims of election fraud.  

The Post-UMD poll was conducted Dec. 14-18 among 1,024 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, with error margins larger for subgroups.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4384619-one-third-of-americans-say-biden-election-illegitimate/