Left-wing billionaire George Soros is throwing at least a million dollars behind an effort to stop the hiring of hundreds of new police officers in Austin, Texas, according to campaign finance documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Hungarian-born political activist gave $500,000 through the Soros-backed Open Society Policy Center to a political action committee in opposition to a ballot initiative that forces the city to employ two police officers per 1,000 residents.
Soros’s donation, made on Oct. 12, is his second of the month and comes as Austin experiences a decades-high spike in violent crime. The city has seen at least 67 homicides this year, the highest since at least 1981. Aggravated assaults are also up at least 10 percent, following a 26 percent spike in 2020.
On Oct. 1, the Open Society Policy Center cut its first $500,000 check to Equity PAC, a Texas-based political organization that backs left-wing causes. The donation is the latest example of Soros’s involvement in various left-wing causes at the local level. In 2020, Soros donated over $600,000 to a Texas-based left-wing group that backed the election of José Garza, who now serves as district attorney for Travis County, where Austin sits.
Since 2015, Soros has spent more than $17 million on various local races, including donations to left-wing prosecutors and state legislators. Virtually every candidate backed by Soros and the Open Society Foundations has supported a dramatic reduction in or elimination of cash bail and other policies critics say lead to higher crime.
Other large donors to Equity Pac include the Texas American Federation of Teachers, which gave $10,000, and Movement Voter PAC, a left-wing organization based in Maryland. The Washington, D.C.-based Fairness Project also contributed $200,000.
Voters will decide on the ballot initiative at the polls on Nov. 2 or via early voting from Oct. 18 through Oct. 29. Estimates for the cost of hiring new officers range from $54 million to $120 million a year, per the city’s chief financial officer.
A left-leaning government watchdog has filed an ethics complaint against White House press secretary Jen Psaki alleging she violated federal law when she seemingly endorsed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe.
What did Psaki say?
During Thursday’s White House press briefing, Psaki appeared to say the White House was actively working to help McAuliffe’s campaign, and said Biden wants McAuliffe to win the Virginia gubernatorial election.
“[W]e’re going to do everything we can to help former Gov. McAuliffe, and we believe in the agenda he’s representing,” Psaki said.
Earlier in the briefing, Psaki admitted, “Look, I think the president, of course, wants former Gov. McAuliffe to be the future governor of Virginia.”
What did the ethics complaint say?
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a left-leaning government watchdog, filed an ethics complaint with the Office of Special Counsel alleging that Psaki violated the Hatch Act.
“By mixing official government business with support of a candidate for partisan political office in the weeks before the election and engaging in political activity while on duty, Ms. Psaki appears to have used her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election, political activity that is prohibited by law,” the ethics complaint reads.
The Hatch Act is a federal law that, according to the OSC, prohibits, in part, federal executive branch employees from “using their official titles or positions while engaged in political activity” and engaging in political activities, such as “activity directed at the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.”
CREW president Noah Bookbinder commented Psaki’s apparent violation of the Hatch Act by slamming former President Donald Trump.
The last administration systematically co-opted the government for the president’s reelection. While this conduct does not come close to rising to the level of the outrageous offenses of the Trump administration, that does not mean we should be casual about compliance with an important ethics law. The Biden administration should not follow the Trump administration down that path.
How did Psaki respond?
Speaking with CNN host Jake Tapper, Psaki dismissed her apparent violation of federal law, only saying she would strive to do better “next time.”
“I take ethics seriously. So does this president, of course,” Psaki said. “And I’ll be more careful with my words next time. Words certainly matter.”
President Joe Biden’s job approval continues to crash with a new low of 36.4 percent during the first nine months of his presidency, according to a Zogby poll, after facing a botched Afghanistan withdrawal, and more recently, a supply chain crisis.
Additionally, 61.3 percent of the respondents gave Biden a negative rating when asked about the president’s job performance, and 2.3 percent were unsure of how they felt.
Biden was viewed negatively among all age groups, particularly the younger generation of voters between 18 and 29 years old, who viewed him 63 percent negatively and only 34 percent positively.
The poll revealed that Biden has also lost the support from the majority of Hispanic voters (41 percent positive/59 percent negative) and an overwhelming majority of independent voters (24 percent positive/71 percent negative).
The Zogby poll asked 896 likely voters between October 8 and 10 with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percent.
In August, Biden botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, resulting in backlash from Republicans in Congress after the death of 13 U.S servicemembers and hundreds of U.S. citizens, Afghan allies, and vulnerable Afghans left in the county controlled by Taliban terrorists.
Biden, along with his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, once touted the “completion” of the operation to evacuate civilians and servicemembers from the Taliban-controlled country but refused to say the exact number of Americans they left behind when asked.
However, the U.S. is also in the middle of a months-long cargo ship crisis, contributing to empty store shelves. Data from the Labor Department revealed that the soaring price of moving goods around the country has been adding to inflation, setting consumer prices skyrocketing.
Meanwhile, Biden’s U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been MIA for nearly two months. It was recently exposed that Buttigieg has been “lying low” while being on “paid leave since mid-August to spend time with his husband, Chasten, and their two newborn babies.”
Beth Barts had sparred with many parents over critical race theory, transgenderism, and other left-wing tenets during board meetings.
A top left-wing Loudoun County School Board member stepped down as the school district drew national attention over its handling of two sexual assault cases and critical race theory indoctrination.
Beth Barts announced her resignation through Facebook on Friday shortly after it came out that the Loudoun County School District essentially covered up two sexual assaults.
“This was not an easy decision or a decision made in haste. After much thought and careful consideration, it is the right decision for me and my family,” Barts wrote.
She added that she’s “grateful to have had a role in empowering students” and is “especially proud to have participated in helping steer the Loudoun County School System through the uncharted waters of educating students throughout a global pandemic.”
A Virginia man was arrested in June when protesting a Loudoun County school board meeting, and later accused school officials of concealing the fact that his ninth-grade daughter was allegedly sexually assaulted by a gender-fluid male student in a campus bathroom.
Superintendent Scott Ziegler issued an apology for lying about the assault.
“We acknowledge and share in your pain and we will continue to offer support to help you and your families through this trauma,” he said in a statement to parents.
The battle between parents and the Loudoun County School Board over critical race theory and other left-wing proposals has become such a focus of national attention that Attorney General Merrick Garland has declared the FBI will monitor the board meetings for potential “domestic terrorism.”
There is a massive propaganda push against those choosing not to vaccinate against COVID-19 with the experimental mRNA vaccines. Mainstream media, the big tech corporations, and our government have combined efforts to reward compliance and to shame and marginalize non-compliance. Their mantra says that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Persons who choose not to vaccinate are characterized as unintelligent, selfish, paranoid people who don’t read much and live in a trailer park in Florida (or Alabama, or Texas, or name your state). Never has there been such an effort to cajole, manipulate through fear, and penalize people to take an experimental medical treatment.
However, as time has passed with this pandemic and more data accumulates about the virus and the vaccine, the unvaccinated are looking smarter and smarter with each passing week. It has been shown now that the vaccinated equallycatch and spread the virus. Vaccine side effect data continues to accumulate that make the risk of taking the vaccine prohibitive as the pandemic wanes. Oral and IV medications (flccc.net) that work early in the treatment of COVID-19 are much more attractive to take now as the vaccine risks are becoming known, especially because the vaccinated will need endless boosters every six months.
First, let’s address the intelligence of the unvaccinated. Vaccine hesitancy is multi-factorial and has little to do with level of education or intelligence. Carnegie Mellon University did a study assessing vaccine hesitancy across educational levels. According to the study, what’s the educational level with the most vaccine hesitancy? Ph.D. level! Those can’t all have been awarded to liberal arts majors. Clearly, scientists who can read the data and assess risk are among the least likely to take the mRNA vaccines.
The claim that there’s a pandemic of the unvaccinated is, therefore, patently untrue. As a retired nurse from California recently asked, “Why do the protected need to be protected from the unprotected by forcing the unprotected to use the protection that did not protect the protected in the first place?” If the vaccine works to prevent infection, then the vaccinated have nothing to worry about. If the vaccine does not prevent infection, then the vaccinated remain at some risk, and the unvaccinated would be less likely to choose a vaccine that does not work well.
The mRNA vaccine efficacy is very narrow and focused on the original alpha strain of COVID-19. By targeting one antigen group on the spike protein, it does help for the original alpha strain, but it is clear now it does not protect against Delta strain and is likely not protective against any future strains that might circulate. It also appears that the efficacy wanes in 4-6 months, leading to discussions about boosters.
Several authors have pointed out that vaccinating with a “leaky” vaccine during a pandemic is driving the virus to escape by creating variants. If the booster is just another iteration of the same vaccine, it likely won’t help against the new strain but will, instead, produce evolutionary pressure on the virus to produce even more variants and expose us to more side effects. Why, then, is this booster strategy for everyone being pursued?
This vast Phase 3 clinical trial of mRNA vaccines in which Americans are participating mostly out of fear is not going well. It is abundantly clear for anyone advocating for public health that the vaccination program should be stopped. Iceland has just stopped giving the Moderna vaccine to anyone which is a good step in the right direction. Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have banned the Moderna vaccine for anyone under the age of 30.
VAERS, our vaccine adverse effect reporting system, showed at the beginning of this week 16,000 deaths, 23,000 disabilities, 10,000 MI/myocarditis, 87,000 urgent care visits, 75,000 hospital stays, and 775,000 total adverse events. The VAERS system is widely known to under-report events, with an estimated 90 to 99% of events going unreported there.
Eudravigilance, the European reporting system now associates 26,000 deaths in close proximity to administration of the vaccine. Whistleblower data from the CMS system (Medicare charts) showed close to 50,000 deaths in the Medicare group shortly after the vaccine.
An AI-powered tracking program called Project Salus also follows the Medicare population and shows vaccinated Medicare recipients are having worse outcomes week by week of the type consistent with Antibody Dependent Enhancement. This occurs when the vaccine antibodies actually accelerate the infection leading to worsening COVID-19 infection outcomes. Antibody Dependent Enhancement has occurred previously with trials of other coronavirus vaccines in animals. The CDC and the FDA are suppressing this data and no one who receives the vaccine has true informed consent.
The Rome declaration has 6,700 medical signatories attesting that the handling of the pandemic amounts to crimes against humanity for denying the best medical treatment and continuing to advocate for harmful vaccines. The evidence is right in front of Americans to end the propaganda and mass mask psychosis.
The media narrative of perpetual fear is falling apart. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark have ended all COVID restrictions and are doing much better than the US, UK, and Israel, three countries that continue to vaccinate into the pandemic. Mexico, Guatemala, Indonesia, almost all of Africa, and parts of India have low vaccination rates and are doing much better than the US, something attributed to their managing the pandemic by using Ivermectin.
Over 500,000 people attended the Sturgis motorcycle rally in August and there was no super spread of COVID-19. Football season started in August and stadiums around the country are packed with 80,000 fans yelling and screaming with no masks. There have been no superspreader events, yet the students are forced to go back to masking in class. This makes no sense.
If the vaccine is so important why do our government leaders and illegal aliens not have to take it? Currently, 13 states that are Democratic with high vaccination rates have the highest “case” rates (using a faulty PCR test), while Republican states are all doing better. How does this happen?
It should be clear that the government has manipulated COVID to create perpetual fear, so we’ll hand it our liberty. In this giant battle between our government and the unvaccinated, I hope enough people will refuse to comply so that we can unite to stop this madness.
I know this decision is very difficult for many people when it comes to losing their job. To the vaccinated, please don’t take any boosters for you’ll just be perpetuating the risk of side effects and new variants.
If we allow the government to decide this medical decision for us, it is a short step for the government to say it can decide other medical decisions for you, e.g., all persons over 75 never be resuscitated; people may have only three children (or two or one) with mandatory sterilization for women; or refusing the government’s demands will see you denied health care.
Is this the totalitarian state you want to live in? If you are proudly vaccinated now and on the government side, what about the next government mandate, when you’re on the other side, coerced into a decision you don’t want, how will you feel then?
It is obvious that the government (with the Fauci subset), the media, and big tech, are trying to divide us and take away the freedoms we have enjoyed as Americans. I am praying that all who call themselves Americans can unite to end this medical tyranny and regain a free America before it is too late. Peacefully resist and do not comply.
VAERS data released Friday by the CDC included a total of 798,636 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 16,766 deaths and 117,399 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020 and Oct. 8, 2021.
Data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and Oct. 8, 2021, a total of 798,636 adverse events following COVID vaccines were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The data included a total of 16,766 reports of deaths — an increase of 456 over the previous week, and two more reports of teens who died after being vaccinated.
Of the 7,674 U.S. deaths reported as of Oct. 8, 11% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 16% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 28% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 400.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Oct. 8. This includes: 232 million doses of Pfizer, 153 million doses of Moderna and 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
The data come directly from reports submitted to VAERS, the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date, usually about a week prior to the release date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
The most recent death involves a 15-year-old male who died six days after receiving his first dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. According to his VAERS report (VAERS I.D. 1764974), the previously healthy teen complained of brief unilateral shoulder pain five days after receiving his COVID vaccine. The next day he played with two friends at a community pond, swung on a rope swing, flipped into the air, and landed in the water feet first. He surfaced, laughed and told his friends “Wow, that hurt!” He then swam toward shore underwater, as was his usual routine, but did not re-emerge.
An autopsy showed no external indication of a head injury, but there was a small subgaleal hemorrhage — a rare, but lethal bleeding disorder — over the left occiput. In addition, the boy had a mildly elevated cardiac mass, increased left ventricular wall thickness and small foci of myocardial inflammation of the lateral wall of the left ventricle with myocyte necrosis consistent with myocardial infarction.
Another recent death includes a 16-year-old female (VAERS I.D. 1757635) who complained of fatigue and died one day after receiving Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.
57 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
529 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation) with 508 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
117 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
This week’s U.S. VAERS data, from Dec. 14, 2020 to Oct. 8, 2021, for all age groups combined, show:
19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
54% of those who died were male, 42% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
FDA panel unanimously backs Moderna, J&J booster shots for older and high-risk people
According to CNBC, an advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today unanimously voted to recommend J&J’s single-dose COVID vaccine to the more than 15 million Americans who have already received the first dose.
The panel recommended boosters for everyone 18 and over, at least two months after they received the first dose.
Many committee members said it should be considered a two-dose vaccine, much like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
On Thursday, the FDA’s advisory panel unanimously recommended booster doses of Moderna’s COVID vaccine for Americans 65 and older and those at high risk of severe illness or occupational exposure to the virus, Reuters reported.
“The data itself is not strong, but it is certainly going in the direction that is supportable of this vote,” said Dr. Patrick Moore of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Moore said he voted in favor of Moderna boosters based largely on a “gut feeling rather than truly serious data.”
Moderna shares were up nearly 3% at $330.71 after the vote.
If the FDA signs off on the panel’s recommendation for booster doses of J&J and Moderna’s COVID vaccines, the CDC will make specific recommendations on who should get the shots. The CDC’s vaccine advisers are scheduled to meet next week.
White House tells governors to get ready to vaccinate young kids, even though FDA hasn’t approved it
In a private phone call Tuesday with the nation’s governors, the White House told states to prepare to vaccinate children as young as 5 by early November, even though the FDA has not yet granted Emergency Use Authorization for COVID vaccines for the 5 to 11 age group.
According to NBC News, the Biden administration purchased 65 million pediatric doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine — enough to vaccinate an estimated 28 million children who would be eligible should the FDA approve Pfizer’s request to vaccinate the younger age group.
The administration told providers last week the vaccine for children will be delivered to thousands of sites, including states, pharmacies, schools and medical groups within one week of FDA authorization. The pediatric Pfizer vaccine will be one-third of what is given to adults.
Indiana parents say children are suffering adverse reactions after mistakenly given adult dose of COVID vaccine
Joshua and Alexandra Price took their four-year-old son and five-year-old daughter to a Walgreens in Indiana for the flu shot a week ago, but the children and parents were all mistakenly given the Pfizer COVID vaccine, The Hill reported.
The parents say their children, Sophia and Lukas, are experiencing side effects from the vaccine — which is only approved for ages 12 and older — including fever, body aches, cough, headache and nausea. The children received a dose three times higher than is being tested for children in clinical trials.
“The 4- and 5-year-old are also under treatment of a pediatric cardiologist for tachycardia and elevated blood pressure, respectively,” the Prices’ attorney, Dan Tuley, said in a statement.
For the parents, Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, told CNN, the COVID shot would essentially be a booster shot since the parents were already vaccinated back in April.
New data links Parsonage-Turner syndrome to mRNA COVID vaccines
According to an article published in Medscape Oct. 14, Parsonage-Turner syndrome (PTS) has been highlighted as a potential adverse effect of mRNA COVID vaccines in a recent pharmacovigilance monitoring report from the French National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM).
PTS is a rare condition characterized by the sudden onset of severe shoulder pain, followed by arm paralysis. The reaction appears to be more common in men than in women.
Six serious cases of the syndrome related to the Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine were reported since the start of the monitoring program, with four cases occurring from Sept. 3 and 16.
All six cases associated with Pfizer’s vaccine involved patients 19 to 69 years old two women and four men — who developed symptoms within 50 days after vaccination. Half of the cases occurred after the first dose and half after the second. Four patients are currently recovering, and the outcomes of the other two are unknown.
In the case of Moderna’s COVID vaccine, two cases of PTS were reported. Two cases occurred in men — one in his early 30s and one in his early 60s — within 18 days after vaccination. One case occurred after the first dose and one after the second dose.
This timing indicates a possible link between the syndrome and the vaccine, the report stated. A third case occurred more than 50 days after vaccination.
This signal of mRNA vaccines is now “officially recognized,” according to the report. It is also considered a “potential signal” of the AstraZeneca vaccine, according to a pharmacovigilance report, released Oct. 8, which describes eight cases of PTS after vaccination.
Data show COVID risk for kids ‘not extraordinary threat’
As The Defender reported Oct. 12, new data from King County, Washington — which contains some of the country’s most detailed COVID data — showed risks for unvaccinated children look similar to the risks for vaccinated people in their 50s.
According to The New York Times, nationwide statistics from the UK showed an even larger age gap. Unvaccinated children under 12 appeared to be at a lower risk of COVID infection than vaccinated people in their 40s, if not 30s.
For children without a serious medical condition, the danger of severe COVID was so low as to be difficult to quantify. For children with such a condition, the danger is higher but still lower than many people believe, the Times reported.
Ed Bastian says he favors ‘trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs.’
Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian declared on Saturday that his company won’t adhere to Joe Biden’s draconian vaccine mandates.
In an interview on Fox Business, Bastian explained that since Delta’s workforce was “90% vaccinated,” Biden’s vaccine mandate is not necessary.
“By the time we’re done, we’ll be pretty close to fully vaccinated as a company without going through all the divisiveness of a mandate,” Bastian said.
“We’re proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs.”
Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian ditches Biden’s divisive mandate:
"We’re proving that you can work collaboratively with your people, trusting your people to make the right decisions, respecting their decisions and not forcing them over the loss of their jobs." pic.twitter.com/nTPOJmSYVE
Delta had been the last airline to hold out on vaccine mandates, after all the other major airlines caved in recent weeks.
Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said in a recent interview that he never supported Biden’s vaccine mandate, and that although he feels his company is compelled to follow it, no employee will be fired as a result of refusing the injection.
“I’ve never been in favor of corporations imposing that kind of a mandate. I’m not in favor of that. Never have been,” Kelly said Tuesday.
“But the executive order from President Biden mandates that all federal employees and then all federal contractors, which covers all the major airlines, have to have a [vaccine] mandate…in place by Dec. 8, so we’re working through that.”
Chinese officials have denounced a former Uyghur internment camp detainee who was forcibly sterilized about three years ago and has spoken publicly about her ordeal, as part of an ongoing smear campaign to discredit those who have exposed abuses against the mostly Muslim minority group.
Zumrat Dawut, who came to the U.S. with her family via Pakistan in 2019, had testified about her experience in the camps, where she was subjected to forced sterilization, providing news outlets and human rights organizations with strong evidence of the Chinese government’s alleged genocidal policies.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced her in April along with other former residents of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) who had testified about abuses in the region while living abroad as liars, criminals, terrorists, and persons of “bad morality.”
At a press conference Monday in Beijing, XUAR government officials defended their policies concerning Uyghur women and responded to recent reports that they had sold the assets of detained Uyghur businesspeople online.
Chinese officials hold periodic press conferences to counter condemnation of a litany of documented abuses against predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang, including confinement in mass internment camps, sexual assaults, forced abortions and birth control measures, and forced labor.
China has held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-education” camps since 2017, while dismissing widely documented evidence that it has mistreated Muslims living inside and outside the camps, including testimony from former detainees and guards describing widespread abuses in interviews with RFA and other media outlets.
Chinese officials say the camps are vocational training facilities where Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are taught skills in an effort to prevent religious extremism and terrorism in the region, where about 12 million Uyghurs live.
At the press conference, Xinjiang government spokesman Xu Guixiang discussed what he called the “protection of women’s rights and interests” in Xinjiang.
“Some anti-China forces falsely claim that Xinjiang has severely violated the rights and interests of ethnic minority women, and spread lies about the so-called forced birth control and forced labor by ethnic minority women,” he said.
“Facts have proved that with the continuous enhancement of the protection of women’s rights and interests in Xinjiang, the development environment of women of all ethnic groups has been continuously improved, the level of education has been significantly improved, the awareness of rights protection of marriage, family and property has increased significantly, and people’s livelihoods and welfare have been steadily improved,” Xu said.
‘They wanted to attack me psychologically’
When discussing policies on Uyghur women, Xu attacked Zumrat, who was forced to undergo sterilization surgery three years ago.
He rejected statements that Zumrat previously made that she had been held in a “training center,” that she and other detained Uyghur women were forced to take contraceptives, and that she had been forced to undergo sterilization surgery. He also denied that her “relatives”— Han Chinese assigned to monitor the homes of Uyghurs — had forced her to eat pork.
Xu also said that Zumrat’s father had never been questioned by police and did not die in custody.
Additionally, Xu told the audience that the woman’s older brother said that her Han “relative” was actually a relative of Zumrat’s brother, Abduhelil Dawut, and that his “relative” never once spent the night in the house.
Xu went on to say that in January 2018, Zumrat’s brother’s “relative” invited Zumrat, along with her brother and sister-in-law, to come to his house, and that the relative’s mother was an ethnic Hui Muslim, which meant that that it was impossible that she would have served pork to the guests.
The Xinjiang regional government has smeared other former Uyghur female detainees, including Tursunay Ziyawudun, Qelbinur Sidiq, and Sayragul Sauytbay, who have testified about the abuse they endured or witnessed.
Zumrat told RFA on Monday that she was surprised that Xu had discredited her at the press conference.
“They took advantage of a time when I was ill and weak,” she said. “It was as though they wanted to attack me psychologically. … On top of that, today is exactly two years since the day my father died. The time of my surgery occurred at the same time as the two-year anniversary of his death.”
Zumrat also said that she has ample evidence that she was in an internment camp, underwent forced sterilization surgery, and had Han Chinese “relatives” inside her home.
“Even now, compared to other survivors, whether we’re talking about the ‘relatives’ program or other things, I witnessed it all and have photographs I took with me when I left,” she said. “They cannot deny this.”
“There wasn’t only one [‘relative’] in my house. My daughter was five years old at the time, and even she had a Han Chinese ‘relative,’” Zumrat said. “I can’t remember their names right now, but I have photos of all of them. I even have photos when they were lying down and sleeping on the quilts in my home.”
Zumrat pointed out that Xu was correct in stating that the mother of her older brother’s “relative,” who is surnamed Zhao, was an ethnic Hui, but that the official failed to mention that Zhao’s father was Han Chinese.
Zhao renounced her own family and married a Han Chinese man, saying that she had become Han herself and started eating pork, Zumrat said.
“She gave us [pork],” she said. “She told us that it was necessary to slowly, gradually change Muslim [halal] rules. She said things like that, like it was nothing. And she was actually a police officer, this woman, Zhao.”
Hospital recovery
The press conference coincided with Zumrat’s recovery from a hysterectomy at a hospital in northern Virginia on Oct. 7. She had to undergo the operation because the forced sterilization surgery had damaged her uterus and endangered her life.
A written statement Zumrat submitted to her gynecologist said she had become infertile approximately three years ago after undergoing forced surgery in China.
Her physician, Dr. Devin Miller, said in a letter obtained by RFA that the forced sterilization left Zumrat unable to have children.
Uyghur human rights activist Rahima Mahmut said Uyghur women have been the greatest source of firsthand information about the internment camps in Xinjiang and that China is attacking those who have been released because they have exposed the government’s wrongdoings.
“It is primarily these brave women of ours who have spoken about the terrifying things inside [the camps],” she told RFA. “They have spurred discussion in the world by speaking in detail about intensely private things, things that people are normally too afraid to speak about. There has been a great power in this. This is why China is attacking them.”
Mahmut also said that China is using all means to cover up its crimes, including denouncing all former camp detainees as liars.
“Why are they attacking Uyghur women to this degree nonstop?” she asked “It’s because they have exposed China’s real motives. These women have done the best job in raising awareness of China’s crimes against humanity.”
The U.S. and other Western states have determined that the treatment of Uyghurs constitutes genocide and crimes against humanity. They also have imposed unilateral sanctions on relevant individuals and entities in Xinjiang.
XUAR government officials at the press conference also defended the seizure and online auction of property confiscated from detained Uyghur businesspeople.
The government has sold assets totaling more than U.S. $80 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report based on information compiled by the Uyghur Human Rights Project (UHRP) and published in September.
XUAR government spokesman Elijan Inayet defended the sales of the assets, telling attendees at the press conference that the individuals who owned them had been arrested and imprisoned on charges such as terrorism, extremism, inciting ethnic hatred, and disturbing the social order.
But the UHRP report said that the individuals detained for such charges had been jailed “in a highly secretive process of arrest and trial that appears to fall outside judicial due process, in violation of China’s own laws.”
Democracy Integrity Project founder Dan Jones testifies about extensive contacts with Clinton campaign-tied figures, including Michael Sussmann and Glenn Simpson.
A group funded by George Soros and other donors to continue investigating the Russia collusion allegations after the 2016 election met with the FBI, offering its assistance to agents and alerting them it was working with one of their terminated confidential sources in the case, Christopher Steele, according to court testimony made public Friday.
Former FBI analyst Daniel Jones’ testimony, released in a D.C. Superior Court civil case, recounts in painstaking detail how he formed the group The Democracy Integrity Project in early 2017, raised money for it and continued a private investigation into alleged Russian and other interference in the 2016 election.
But in one of his biggest revelations, Sussmann testified he hired the author of the now-infamous and discredited Steele dossier to assist his work and felt obligated to alert the FBI when he met with Russia collusion investigators in March 2017. “I proactively reached out to the FBI,” Jones testified.
“The purpose of that meeting was to alert the FBI, a place that I had worked with and who I had maintained contacts with who are still there, that the Democracy Integrity Project as an organization existed and that we were collecting information on foreign government interference in elections and that we had the information on foreign government interference in elections, as well as the fact that I had engaged the services of Christopher Steele for the Democracy Integrity Project and alerting them to that, given the public nature of what had transpired from the Bureau on this.”
By the time of Jones’ meeting with the FBI in March 2017, the bureau had terminated the former British MI6 agent Steele as a confidential informant in the Russia case for leaking to the news media. Counterintelligence agents had also debunked some of the Steele dossier’s allegations as Russian disinformation, inaccurate or unprovable and learned his research had been paid for by the Clinton campaign through its law firm Perkins Coie, where Sussmann worked.
But Steele wasn’t the only figure tied to the Clinton campaign’s earlier Russia collusion operation that engaged with TDIP.
Jones testified that Simpson helped him raise money for his non-profit TDIP and Jones then hired Simpson’s Fusion GPS firm to investigate election issues starting in early 2017. Records introduced during the testimony showed the donor-funded TDIP paid Simpson’s firm about $3.3 million for its work.
Simpson’s firm had previously done similar work for the Clinton campaign.
While TDIP’s list of donors is not public, a spokesman for Soros previously confirmed in 2019 that the liberal megadonor was one of the group’s funders.
Jones also described how he worked with Sussmann, a lawyer for Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to obtain evidence from one of his clients, computer executive Rodney Joffe, about alleged computer communications between a Trump server and the Alfa Bank in Russia.
Sussmann and other Clinton-connected figures suggested the data was evidence of a secret communications channel between Trump and the Kremlin to hijack the 2016 election. But that theory was repeatedly investigated, dismissed and discredited by the FBI, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Special Counsel John Durham.
Durham recently secured an indictment alleging Sussmann lied to the FBI when he first brought the Alfa Bank allegations to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker in September 2016, failing to disclose he was working on the matter in part for the Clinton campaign. Sussmann has pleaded innocent.
Joffe’s lawyer has confirmed his client is the figure referred to as computer executive one in the indictment. Joffe has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
Jones testified he was asked by a Democratic investigator on the Senate Armed Services Committee to investigate the Alfa Bank allegations in early 2017 and to meet with Sussmann, who had represented both the Clinton campaign/DNC and Joffe.
Jones testified he received computer data from Sussmann containing 37 million DNS lookups to review for any connections of Trump-Russia collusion, and later learned the data came from a computer executive that Sussmann identified only by the pseudonym “Max.” Jones said he quickly determined that executive to be Joffe.
“I understood the 37 million DNS lookups related to the Alfa Bank, Trump server allegations, to come either from Rodney Joffe or an organization associated with Mr Joffe,” he testified.
In his testimony, Jones revealed the Democratic staffer who tasked him with the work indicated Democrats in Congress did not believe the FBI and others in U.S. intelligence had aggressively enough investigated the Alfa Bank allegations before dismissing them.
“That was my perception, that the Senate Armed Services committee, other senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the House Intelligence Committee believed that the government wasn’t doing enough to look into these allegations and refute them or confirm them or make any assessment of them,” Jones testified.
Reacting to the Just the News report earlier this month, a whistleblower group known as Empower Oversight filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee asking that it investigate whether senators violated the chamber’s gift ban by tasking and accepting a detailed report from Jones’ group without paying for it.
Jones said he built a firewall between Simpson’s and Steele’s research work for TDIP and the Senate Armed Services project because of their past ties to the Clinton campaign.
But he conceded under questioning that a 200-page appendix in the Senate report about Alfa Bank was derived mostly from research Simpson’s firm collected.
Jones’ testimony was given in a John Doe lawsuit filed by Alfa Bank seeking to determine who spread the allegations about the Russian bank to the news media and U.S. authorities.
While most federal agencies have strongly dismissed the Alfa Bank server theory, Jones said he still believes the information he provided the Senate in his final report in October 2018 is true and accurate.
“I have not changed my assessment,” he said of his final report. “… I haven’t changed my opinion.”
Apple has reportedly bent over backwards to cater to the anti-religious Chinese Communist Party in order to keep a firm hold on the lucrative Chinese consumer market. The tech giant has made it loud and clear that it will betray the American principles of religious liberty and personal choice if the price is high enough.
“US tech giant Apple has removed two popular religious apps from its Chinese App Store – ‘Bible App by Olive Tree’ and ‘Quran Majeed – القران,’” Reclaim The Net reported Oct 14. “Both apps have hundreds of thousands of ratings in the US App Store and are collectively downloaded by over 100,000 users each month, according to datafrom Sensor Tower.”
An online database claimed that apps had indeed been removed from the Chinese market.
Reclaim The Net cited Apple Censorship, which it described as “a database that tracks Apple’s App Store removals in different countries.” On Apple Censorship’s website the Bible App by Olive Tree has a single entry that shows the app is reportedly “unavailable” in China and was “previously available.” The Quran Majeed app is also “unavailable” and was “previously available in China.
Reclaim The Net observed the reasons that Apple may be complying with Chinese restrictions on religious freedom:
Apple is one of the few US tech giants that’s allowed to operate in China and access its vast market. As a result of this market access, Apple now has an estimated 14% share of the 970 million user smartphone market in China which translates to an estimated 136 million Chinese iPhone users.
It’s not just Christians and Muslims that appear to be getting targeted by censorship from Apple, however. “[O]ver the last couple of years, Apple has removed thousands of apps from the Chinese App Store including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) apps, games, and political apps,” reported Reclaim The Net. “Not only has Apple mass censored apps in China but it has also been accused of compromising iCloud security, giving Chinese apps a pass when they flout its notoriously strict App Store rules, and punishing an employee for approving an app critical of the Chinese government.”
Apple’s willingness to cater to a foreign communist regime has earned some well-deserved criticism.
Entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel had raked Big Tech companies over the coals at an April 6 seminar for ignoring the U.S. interests while appearing friendly to an authoritarian foreign power like China. “[T]here’s something about the woke politics inside these [tech] companies, the way, the way they think of themselves as not really American companies,” Thiel commented, chiding them for lacking any “sharp anti-China edge of any sort whatsoever.”
