Today's News: December 18, 2020

World News

New England Journal of Medicine Calls To Eliminate Gender on Birth Certificates

Infowars – Sex designations on birth certificates should be removed because they may offend intersex and transgender people, advocates a new article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

In a piece titled “Failed Assignments: Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates,” NEJM scientists claim genders appearing on birth certificates “offer no clinical utility” and argue for them to be eliminated or moved to a less prominent place on the form.

“Sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people,” the article, published Dec. 17, states. “Moving such designations below the line of demarcation wouldn’t compromise the birth certificate’s public health function but could avoid harm.”

Evidently, the entire basis for the NEJM wanting to reform birth certificates stems from the notion there are more than two genders.

Assigning sex at birth also doesn’t capture the diversity of people’s experiences. About 6 in 1000 people identify as transgender, meaning that their gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. Others are nonbinary, meaning they don’t exclusively identify as a man or a woman, or gender nonconforming, meaning their behavior or appearance doesn’t align with social expectations for their assigned sex.

Elsewhere in the piece, the study’s authors advocate for the removal of gender from government documents, including state driver’s licenses and passports.

Passports and state identification cards relying on sex assigned at birth for identification pose another challenge. These documents are usually issued or renewed when the holder is an adolescent or an adult, however, so moving sex designations below the line of demarcation on birth certificates would permit applicants to identify their gender without medical verification. Governments could also remove gender designations from identification cards altogether and focus more on identifiable physical features and updated photographs. This change would accommodate nonbinary people and reduce the burdens associated with amending documents.

The highly-respected medical journal’s progressive recommendations dovetail with gender-bending steps being taken in other leftist nations like Canada, where the province of Ontario has moved to ban “mother” and “father” on government forms, and Sweden, where the government is undertaking steps to remove references to gender from federal legislation.

UK PM Boris Johnson doesn’t rule out 3rd national lockdown as Covid case increase continues

RT – As the UK prepares to relax Covid-19 restrictions for Christmas amid a significant rise in case numbers, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has refused to rule out a third national lockdown.

England could be set to join other parts of the UK in returning to strict coronavirus restrictions after the Christmas break, in order to prevent a severe spike in cases.

While the prime minister made it clear that his government is “hoping very much we’ll be able to avoid that,” he accepted that it can’t be ruled out, as the recent and rapid increase in Covid-19 cases across England is putting significant pressure on the nation’s health service.

Northern Ireland has announced a six-week lockdown will begin on December 26, Wales will take similar steps two days later, and Scotland has warned that “nothing” can be ruled out ahead of a review of measures there on Tuesday.

U.S. News, Politics & Government

Military coup or nothing to see here? Pentagon halts cooperation with Biden transition team – report

RT – The Pentagon has ordered a department-wide pause on briefings with the incoming Democratic administration, multiple Joe Biden officials told Axios, questioning whether it was an innocuous holiday closure or something more serious.

Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has allegedly ordered a total halt to all military briefings with the administration of President-elect Joe Biden, several “senior administration officials” told Axios on Friday. The recently appointed Pentagon head reportedly told officials on Thursday night to cancel all scheduled transition meetings.

The move has supposedly shocked administration officials, though one unnamed senior officer at the Department of Defense countered that it was “a simple delay of the last few scheduled meetings until after the new year,” arguing that staff were “overwhelmed” by the effort to fit nearly two dozen meetings into the few days remaining before 2021.

“These same senior leaders needed to do their day jobs and were being consumed by transition activities,” the official told Axios, explaining that “with the holidays we are taking a knee for two weeks.”

We are still committed to a productive transition.

The Biden team has been on alert for any signals that President Donald Trump might try to hold on to power after Inauguration Day, despite the Electoral College’s vote earlier this month to certify the Democrat’s win and Trump’s previous promise to go along with whatever the body decides. Democrats have predicted for months that Trump will refuse to leave office.

Covid: US Vice-President Mike Pence receives vaccine live on TV

BBC – US Vice-President Mike Pence has received the coronavirus vaccine live on TV, telling the audience and doctors: “I didn’t feel a thing.”

The White House said the aim of the move was to “promote the safety and efficacy of the vaccine and build confidence among the American people”.

Mr Pence’s wife and Surgeon General Jerome Adams also received the jab at the televised White House event.

On Monday the US began rolling out the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

The first three million doses are being distributed to locations across the 50 US states.

Healthcare Workers in the U.S. Suffer Serious Reactions from Illegal Pfizer Experimental Vaccine – Others Fake Vaccination on TV

Health Impact News – The first illegal Pfizer experimental vaccines were rolled out this week. I have seen no evidence so far of the military being involved in their distribution, as has been planned under Operation Warp Speed.

This is probably because the first Pfizer vaccines were reported to have been administered this week in medical institutions, where they can control the narrative and where the military is not needed.

Healthcare workers and people in nursing homes or assisted living centers were reportedly the first ones to receive the vaccine this week.

But reports of two healthcare workers suffering adverse reactions in Alaska did make its way into the media yesterday. One of them went into anaphylactic shock, something the FDA has warned about. The Epoch Times reports:

Two health care workers in Alaska suffered reactions, one of which was serious, after receiving the newly approved COVID-19 vaccine.

One Bartlett Regional Hospital worker, a middle-aged woman, had adverse reactions about 10 minutes after receiving the vaccine, the hospital said Wednesday.

The woman received the vaccine on Tuesday. Soon after, she started showing signs of an anaphylactic reaction, with “increased heartbeat, shortness of breath, and skin rash and redness,” the hospital said in a statement.

The woman was given epinephrine, a medication that can treat allergic reactions, and Benadryl, admitted to the hospital, and put on an intravenous epinephrine drip.

Officials said the woman, who was not identified, had no history of allergies or adverse reactions to vaccines.

Lindy Jones, the director of the hospital’s emergency department, said that the reaction was serious but not life threatening.

The second affected worker showed symptoms of eye puffiness, light-headedness, and scratchy throat after receiving the vaccine. He was given epinephrine, Pepcid, and Benadryl. He “felt completely back to normal within an hour” and was released from the hospital.

Both incidents were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System database.

“Our goal is to be transparent with Alaskans and the public,” Alaska’s Chief Medical Officer Anne Zink said in a statement. “We have no plans to change our vaccine schedule, dosing, or regimen.”

The hospital has administered 144 doses of the vaccine. (Source.)

Many hospitals filmed some of their staff being injected with the illegal Pfizer experimental COVID vaccine, to try and reassure the public.

However, some observers noticed that in some of these cases, it appeared they were not really being injected, suggesting it was being staged.

Supreme Court throws out challenge to Trump’s plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from census count

CNN – The Supreme Court on Friday threw out a challenge to President Donald Trump’s bid to exclude undocumented immigrants from being counted when seats in Congress are divvied up between the states next year.

The court said the challengers, a coalition of states led by New York and immigrant rights groups, did not have the legal injury necessary to bring the case because the government has not yet announced which individuals it seeks to exclude.

The three liberal justices dissented from the opinion, and the issue is likely to return at a later date.

Friday’s ruling is a narrow victory for Trump as it wipes away a lower court opinion that went against him, but he still has upcoming hurdles. Census officials have indicated that they are having difficulties processing census responses in time to produce the final count by an end of the year deadline.

If the numbers are produced after January 20, President-elect Joe Biden has already suggested he would work to reverse Trump’s order.

Threat of another government shutdown hangs over Washington as Covid relief talks drag on

CBS – Congressional leaders had set a Friday deadline to approve a $900 billion pandemic relief deal and tie that proposal to a $1.4 trillion funding package before the federal government run outs of money at midnight. But now they are set to blow right past that deadline.

With no quick resolution in sight, lawmakers are gearing up to work through the weekend. And a key question looms: Will they will be able to avert a government shutdown as the clock ticks down to midnight?

Most lawmakers believe the two sides will agree to extend government funding for a few more days while relief talks continue. But this is Congress, where even the easy things can be hard to do.

Senate GOP leaders have been openly talking about how it may be necessary to pass a stopgap bill — called a continuing resolution, or CR — to extend the shutdown deadline for a brief window of up to 48 hours, though Democratic leaders have so far been unwilling to embrace that call in an effort to pressure Republicans to finalize a relief deal.

To pull off passage of a short-term funding bill just hours before midnight, it would require bipartisan cooperation and all 100 senators to agree to schedule a vote. At the moment, that cooperation is lacking, top Republicans say.

Also there are many more issues to sort out before the two sides can secure an economic rescue package in the final days of the 116th Congress and after months of bitter stalemate.

“US Hit By Massive Cyber Attack Of ‘NIGHTMARE PROPORTIONS’ – US in Grave, Grave Danger!” — Cyber Expert Morgan Wright Reveals Frightening Extent of Latest Cyber Attack

Gateway Pundit – Former Senior State Department Advisor and Cybersecurity Expert Morgan Wright was on Lou Dobbs last night. He discussed the cyberattack that was recently perpetrated on the American people.

Wright insists this was like a prelude to war!

Cybersecurity expert Morgan Wright was on Lou Dobbs last night and discussed the recent cyber attack that hit the US which is likely the biggest attack in US history. Hackers inserted malware into SolarWinds software updates, which impact thousands of companies in the US. Many companies, including the industrial-military complex companies, were impacted when the culprits unleashed their attack.

Lou Dobbs said he doesn’t remember the cyber community ever saying an attack was of “grave, grave danger” and that the Department of Homeland Security has no capacity to stop it.

Here are portions of what Wright said in response:

Any time you call a meeting on Saturday in the National Security Counsel it’s serious. This is almost like a prelude to war! … Not only were the government agencies hit, we got Lockheed Martin, we’ve got Firerite…this very well could have started after the 2018 election…. this is Russia’s way of getting back in the game… they attacked… SolarWinds…the updates weren’t secure but they contained a malicious payload… it could be hundreds, it could be thousands of companies.

Mitch McConnell received donations from Dominion Voting Systems and shut down two election integrity bills in 2020

NaturalNews – The Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), is urging Senate Republicans to accept the Biden electors without objection when they are presented to Congress on January 6. On that day, one member of the House and one member of the Senate may object in writing to the electors presented. This year, there are numerous reasons for every single member to object, but they are being pressured to accept the fraud, no matter what.

McConnell wants Republicans to blindly go along with the process, even though the votes were illegally certified by states in the face of mounting, coordinated election fraud. The 2020 election was attacked like never before and now it is being contested in front of the state legislatures. Hopefully, these testimonies and hard evidence will be heard before the Supreme Court, including the cases where power-drunk Democrats circumvented the state legislatures and changed election rules and where the Democrats illegally blocked Republican poll watchers.

Is America still a Constitutional Republic or a communist dictatorship, void of the rule of law?

If America is truly a Constitutional Republic, as established by the founders, then the 2020 election requires that the rule of law be applied to every incidence of coordinated election fraud. There is more than enough evidence to withdraw the Biden electors, and the courts and the Congress should already be debating the merits of each contested state. If the courts continue to dismiss election fraud on procedural grounds, and refuse to rule on the merits of each case, then it is the patriotic duty of every member of Congress to contest the electorate where it was proven to be fraudulent. But Americans have no reason to put their faith in Congress, for many are bought off by the very people who helped steal the election.

A closer examination of Mitch McConnell finds he took donations from lobbyists who work for Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion lobbyists, David Cohen and Brian Wild both donated to the McConnell campaign funds in March of 2020. McConnell also received thousands of dollars from Emily Kirlin and Jen Olson, lobbyists for ES&S, another voting system company. Both Dominion and ES&S represent about 80 percent of all voting machines in the country. Both systems rely on a software developed by Microsoft called “Election Guard.”

Dominion machines have undergone forensic audits and have proven to be in violation of federal election laws, allowing for wide scale adjudication of votes. The machines have systematically rejected an astronomical percentage of ballots, allowing Democrat officials to switch Trump votes to Biden. This is why Biden over-performed on Dominion Voting machines, compared to all the others systems because Dominion was programmed to permit fraud. Mitch McConnell doesn’t want a debate about Dominion’s fraud in Congress because the lobbyists for Dominion paid him off. (Related: McConnell has family ties to Bank of China, top Chinese shipping firm.)

McConnell, paid off by Dominion, suppressed election integrity efforts throughout 2020

McConnell also helped suppress election integrity efforts earlier in 2020. In July, McConnell blocked two bills that would “bolster election security.” One of the bills would have required a physical paper trail of every single ballot cast in the country. The forensic audit of Dominion Voting Systems found that the security and log files were missing for the 2020 election — the trail of fraud concealed, erased. Every ballot that was adjudicated and potentially switched by Democrats could not be adequately traced. McConnell blocked the bill that would have required a physical trail, revealing his true intentions with the 2020 election.

He also opposed an election integrity bill that would mandate political candidates, their staff members, and their families to notify the FBI if any foreign government offered to assist them. Chris Krebs, the Dominion hack who oversaw cybersecurity and infrastructure security during the 2020 election, claimed there was no election fraud, that this was the safest election in the history of the US. This is laughable conjecture, because McConnell made sure there was no mandate on anyone to report election fraud to law enforcement as it was happening in real time. Instead, America is learning about election fraud through the brave actions of Americans who are risking their lives to report the fraud in front of the state legislatures!

In order to save the country from cyber-warfare, bribery and sedition, President Trump must invoke the Insurrection Act and demand that Congress and the courts uphold the rule of law.

Science & Technology

Jupiter and Saturn meet in closest ‘great conjunction’ since 1623

Guardian – Astronomers are gearing up for a heavenly spectacle when Jupiter and Saturn huddle closer together in the evening sky than they have for nearly 400 years.

The celestial event will play out on Monday when the solar system’s two largest planets appear side by side in a “great conjunction” above the horizon soon after sunset.

In the distant past, such alignments of the planets were seen as portents of things to come, from great fires and floods to the birth of Christ and the ultimate collapse of civilisation.

The conjunction will peak at 6.37pm UK time, but the event will be visible in Britain from about 4.30pm until 6pm at 15 degrees above the south-west horizon. Noting the danger of cloudy skies, astronomers point out that the pairing can be seen two days either side of the peak.

Good News

Free Speech Victory: Judges Rule Social Media Users Have Right to Offend

Breitbart – England’s High Court has struck a rare victory for free speech, overturning the conviction of a Twitter user who called a transgender person a man and ruling that people have a right to offend others online.

Mother of two Kate Scottow had been convicted under a section of the Communications Act which makes “persistently making use of a public electronic communications network to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another” a crime following an argument with lawyer and trans activist Stephanie Hayden, who is legally a woman according to a gender certificate obtained in 2017.

District judge Margaret Dodds decided that Mrs Scottow had broken the “rule’” to “be kind to each other and not call each other names”, but Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Warby at the Divisional Court of the High Court overturned her judgement as “deficient” and “flawed” on appeal.

“The Judge appears to have considered that a criminal conviction was merited for acts of unkindness and calling others names,” said Mr Justice Warby, but “A prosecution under section 127(2)c [of the Communications Act] for online speech is plainly an interference by the state with the defendant’s Convention right to freedom of expression.”

The senior judges said that if the case had “been approached by the [original] Judge in a legally correct manner, it should have been dismissed”.