APTOPIX Congress Tax Cuts © Mark Schiefelbein

Story by MATT BROWN and MATT O’BRIEN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A proposal to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade was soundly defeated in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, thwarting attempts to insert the measure into President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts.

The Senate voted 99-1 to strike the AI provision from the legislation after weeks of criticism from both Republican and Democratic governors and state officials.

Originally proposed as a 10-year ban on states doing anything to regulate AI, lawmakers later tied it to federal funding so that only states that backed off on AI regulations would be able to get subsidies for broadband internet or AI infrastructure.

A last-ditch Republican effort to save the provision would have reduced the time frame to five years and sought to exempt some favored AI laws, such as those protecting children or country music performers from harmful AI tools.

But that effort was abandoned when Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, teamed up with Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington on Monday night to introduce an amendment to strike the entire proposal.

Blackburn said on the floor that “it is frustrating” that Congress has been unable to legislate on emerging technology, including online privacy and AI-generated “deepfakes” that impersonate an artist’s voice or visual likeness. “But you know who has passed it? It is our states,” Blackburn said. “They’re the ones that are protecting children in the virtual space. They’re the ones that are out there protecting our entertainers — name, image, likeness — broadcasters, podcasters, authors.”

Voting on the amendment happened after 4 a.m. Tuesday as part of an overnight session as Republican leaders sought to secure support for the tax cut bill while fending off other proposed amendments, mostly from Democrats trying to defeat the package.

Proponents of an AI moratorium had argued that a patchwork of state and local AI laws is hindering progress in the AI industry and the ability of U.S. firms to compete with China.

Some prominent tech leaders welcomed the idea after Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who leads the Senate Commerce committee, floated it at a hearing in May. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Cruz that “it is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulation.”

But state and local lawmakers and AI safety advocates argued that the rule is a gift to an industry that wants to avoid accountability for its products. Led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a majority of GOP governors sent a letter to Congress opposing it.

Sanders, who was White House press secretary in Trump’s first term, credited Blackburn for “leading the charge” to defend states’ rights to regulate AI.

“This is a monumental win for Republican Governors, President Trump’s one, big beautiful bill, and the American people,” Sanders wrote on X on Tuesday.

Also appealing to lawmakers to strike the provision was a group of parents of children who have died as a result of online harms.

“In the absence of federal action, the moratorium gives AI companies exactly what they want: a license to develop and market dangerous products with impunity — with no rules and no accountability,” Florida mother Megan Garcia wrote in a letter last week. Garcia has sued the maker of an AI chatbot she says pushed her 14-year-old son to kill himself. “A moratorium gives companies free rein to create and launch products that sexually groom children and encourage suicide, as in the case of my dear boy.”

Cruz over the weekend tried to broker a last-ditch compromise with Blackburn to save the provision. Changes included language designed to protect child safety as well as Tennessee’s so-called ELVIS Act, championed by Nashville’s country music industry to restrict AI tools from replicating an artist’s voice without their consent. Cruz said it could have “passed easily” had Blackburn not backed out.

“When I spoke to President Trump last night, he said it was a terrific agreement,” Cruz said. “The agreement protected kids and protected the rights of creative artists. But outside interests opposed that deal.”

Blackburn said Tuesday there were “problems with the language” of the amendment.

Cruz withdrew the compromise amendment and blamed a number of people and entities he said “hated the moratorium,” including China, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a teachers union leader and “transgender groups and radical left-wing groups who want to use blue state regulations to mandate woke AI.”

He didn’t mention the broad group of Republican state legislators, attorneys general and governors who also opposed it. Critics say Cruz’s proposal, while carving out some exemptions, would have affected states’ enforcement of any AI rules if they were found to create an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI systems.

Even Cruz ultimately joined the early Tuesday vote to strip the proposal. Only Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who opposed Trump’s broader budget bill, voted against eliminating the AI provision.

“The proposed ban that has now been removed would have stopped states from protecting their residents while offering nothing in return at the federal level,” Jim Steyer, founder and CEO of children’s advocacy group Common Sense Media, wrote in a statement. “In the end, 99 senators voted to strip the language out when just hours earlier it looked like the moratorium might have survived.”

[…]

Via https://apnews.com/article/congress-ai-provision-moratorium-states-20beeeb6967057be5fe64678f72f6ab0

by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

Amazon announced yesterday that they had added their “1 millionth robot” to their fulfillment centers. This announcement has led to another news frenzy about how robots are replacing humans.

And yet, there was nothing in Amazon’s announcement that predicted this. It was the Wall Street Journal’s (WSJ) coverage of the announcement that has been repeated and spread like wildfire through both the corporate and alternative media today.

This was the opening statement of the WSJ article:

The automation of Amazon.com facilities is approaching a new milestone: There will soon be as many robots as humans. (Source.)

While this statement was repeated far and wide to predict that robots were now taking over the labor market and replacing humans, other facts from this announcement by Amazon were completely ignored.

Tech Radar, a technology publication, had a much more balanced coverage of this announcement:

Amazon Robotics VP Scott Dresser boasted that more than 700,000 employees have been upskilled since 2019 through training in robotics, engineering and maintenance, suggesting that human roles at Amazon could be evolving rather than disappearing.

Dresser also noted that new fulfillment centers, including Shreveport, LA, require 30% more technical roles to look after the tech.

Even the WSJ mentioned this later in their article, and gave one example:

For some Amazon workers, the increasing automation has meant replacing menial, repetitive work lifting, pulling and sorting with more skilled assignments managing the machines.

“I thought I was going to be doing heavy lifting, I thought I was going to be walking like crazy,” said Neisha Cruz, who spent five years picking items at an Amazon warehouse in Windsor, Conn., before she was trained to oversee robotic systems.

Today she sits in front of a computer screen in a Tempe, Ariz., office making sure mobile robots inside Amazon facilities across the U.S. are working properly. She earns about 2.5 times more pay than she did when she started at Amazon.

“You have completely new jobs being created,” such as robot technicians, said Yesh Dattatreya, senior applied scientist at Amazon Robotics. […]

So if 1 million robots have now been added to Amazon warehouses worldwide, and over 700,000 hourly workers have retrained to operate this technology, what about the technology professionals who were hired from outside Amazon, such as engineers, tech managers, tech producers who develop and maintain the equipment, etc.?

That could easily make up a workforce of 1 million that offsets the 1 million robots, as Amazon admits that their fully automated warehouses require 30% MORE employees.

The other thing the people predicting the end of the human labor force in favor of robots are failing to leave out of their fear mongering reports, is a picture of what these robots in Amazon warehouses look like, which is similar to the “robots” that many consumers already have in their homes: vacuum cleaner “robots”.

These apocalyptic articles make it sound that the robots in commercial use in Amazon warehouses are all humanoid robots with arms, legs, hands and feet.

Of course one can look up “amazon robots” online and see humanoid examples, but they are still prototypes not in production yet, and may never be.

[…]

Other than the Roomba-like warehouse robots, there are a few other types of robots Amazon uses that are like glorified forklifts with extensions like “arms” that can more efficiently move things through the warehouse, or grab and move something from point A to point B, and these are larger machines which would only have a few per warehouse.

[…]

The Problems and Limitations of Warehouse Automation that Nobody is Talking About

Warehouse automation with robotics has been around for almost 2 decades now, so let’s talk about some of the limitations and dangers of relying too much on the technology.

First, they need electricity to operate, and when the grid goes down, humans can still work with backup battery-operated lights.

And while all of these warehouses for sure have back-up generators, have these warehouses been fully tested to see if those back-up generators will have enough power to do more than just turn the lights back on and get the Internet back up and running?

Those robots need a ton of power to operate, I would imagine. And especially with AI, new power centers are being built as rapidly as possible to meet the demand of new data centers.

It was reported earlier this week in Texas that a new law gives grid operators the power to disconnect these data centers during a crisis. See:

Texas law gives grid operator power to disconnect data centers during crisis

Another big concern to being so dependent on the technology is the SOFTWARE that is needed to run all of these robots.

As a former Certified Microsoft Systems Engineer, I can tell you that this is a much BIGGER danger to being dependent upon all of these robots.

Amazon calls its software “DeepFleet.”

[…]

How does one deploy this software and updates across the Amazon warehouses around the world running this software?

Through the Internet.

So first, the Internet has to be available at these warehouses, and secondly, that software can be hacked or have some bad code that could bring down everything.

And we saw how that worked last year when a single Microsoft Windows update was deployed to millions of MS Windows computers around the world, which caused worldwide chaos when it failed, even bringing down airports’ ability to show flight information. See:

One Single Computer Glitch Could Cost Tens of $Billions of Losses, Showing How Frail Technology Has Become

The other statistic I could not find, probably because Amazon.com will not reveal it publicly, is how accurate are these robots in terms of sending the right products that were ordered to the customer?

When I started my online ecommerce business back in 2002 and we experienced rapid growth, one problem we found was that the error rate in what is called “pick and pack” has to be very low when you are shipping a lot of products, or you will lose customers and revenue to those mistakes.

The industry standard for error rates back then was .5%, or 99.5% success rate and shipping out the correct order to the customer, which is one mistake for every 200 packages shipped.

We still maintain that standard today, with NO robots.

Amazon.com ships billions of orders a day, with some of them their own branded products, mostly made in China, and the others are products of third party vendors.

I don’t know what Amazon.com’s error rate is for shipping their own products with all of these robots, but for the orders they ship for other vendors, the rate is required to be below 1% to maintain their Amazon store, which is twice as high as the older standards, and the standard that my company still maintains, without robots.

We know that automation with robots in warehouses does not automatically mean that their pick and pack services increase in quality, because there are websites out there instructing companies how to setup their automation to make sure it works properly.

Here is one called “sortingrobotics.com”:

10 Common Mistakes in Pick and Pack Automation

Is this Technology even Profitable and Sustainable?

The last, and perhaps the most important question we should ask, would be: Is this technology even profitable?

No, it is not. The hope is that some day they can “scale” this to mass production and make it profitable.

I grew up with Amazon.com, and started my own ecommerce company just a few years later. Jeff Bezos has rich and powerful friends that allowed him to keep building up Amazon.com to become the most popular ecommerce site in the world, for over a decade without earning a profit.

He was gathering so many customers into his database that investors just assumed he would one day learn how to make it profitable, so they kept throwing $millions into the company to make it happen. It would be years later when Amazon Web Services began with their Cloud computing division when they finally started earning a profit.

We can be sure that the same thing is happening today with Amazon’s robotics division.

As an example, we can look at Google’s Waymo robotaxis, which have been in development for about two decades now, and started with funding from the U.S. Government through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

There have been talks for a couple of years now that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is going to spin off Waymo as a separate company and do an IPO.

But based on reported financial reports for Waymo, it is believed that it is still losing almost $1 billion every single quarter. And yet, they are the “gold standard” for robotaxis, having the most cars on the road. They do a couple of hundred thousand ride shares a week, while Uber, which is run by human drivers, does 15 million ride shares a day.

Tesla just released their own robotaxis in Austin, Texas, but it is only a few cars on a closed course, with a human driver in the passenger seat. And yet, they are considered the main competitor to Waymo.

While many of these driverless taxi companies are no longer revealing how many humans it takes to operate one “driverless” automobile, it has been previously published that in some of these companies it takes about 1.5 humans behind the scenes to keep these “driverless” cars operating.

With Google’s Waymo, considered the gold standard with the most cars deployed, they still can NOT go to the airport or on freeways, as it is too difficult for them. And they have been working on this technology for almost two decades.

It was also just announced a few days ago that Waymo “quietly” just shut down its Detroit plant.

Self-driving car company Waymo quietly closed its Detroit plant.

Google-affiliated autonomous vehicle company Waymo shuttered its plant in Detroit earlier this year after shifting resources and production down south.

The developer of self-driving shuttle technology, along with its automotive supplier partner Magna, ceased operations at a factory leased from American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. in the first quarter, Waymo spokesman Chris Bonelli confirmed to Automotive News affiliate Crain’s Detroit Business.

The closure marks a quiet ending to a ballyhooed project announced in 2019 as the “world’s first 100% dedicated Level 4 autonomous vehicle factory.” The 200,000-square-foot plant, expected to create as many as 400 engineering jobs, was seen as a major victory in Michigan’s quest to be a next-generation mobility hub.

The project never met those ambitious goals. At its peak, there were 60 employees who were on Magna’s payroll doing contract work for Waymo, Magna spokesman Dave Niemiec said. (Full article.)

The fact is that Silicon Valley still has too much money to throw away on science fiction, and they can continue to develop it whether consumers want it or not.

Robots can NOT replace humans. They can make humans more efficient, but humans are still needed to run them.

America’s over-reliance on the technology will be her downfall, and perhaps we are already watching it happen.

The Pentagon’s budget has increased significantly the past few years to invest in Big Tech and AI. The Biden/Harris administration’s FY 2025 defense budget asked for close to $100 billion invested in technology like AI (source), and the new Trump administration is asking for even more (source.)

Did we just observe in real time how this worked out in the REAL world during the 12-day war against Iran? The U.S. and Israel were forced to end the war after only 12 days, as they ran out of bombs.

Iran, on the other hand, stated that they only used 5% of their missiles.

So what does Iran have that the U.S. doesn’t? Human labor, factories, and the ability to make LOTS OF BOMBS.

The U.S. and Israel thought they could rely on their technology to use espionage and terrorism to kill Iran’s top military leaders, hoping to cripple its military.

It didn’t, as Iran recovered quickly, and showed superior hardware made by human labor in factories that probably had ZERO robots working in them.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2025/is-amazon-really-eliminating-human-jobs-with-robots/

By Kit Klarenberg

Jul 02, 2025

A notorious British MI6 agent infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on London’s behalf, according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone. The agent, Nicholas Langman, is a veteran intelligence operative who claims credit for helping engineer the West’s economic war on Iran.

Langman’s identity first surfaced in journalistic accounts of his role in deflecting accusations that British intelligence played a role in the death of Princess Diana. He was later accused by Greek authorities of overseeing the abduction and torture of Pakistani migrants in Athens.

In both cases, UK authorities issued censorship orders forbidding the press from publishing his name. But Greek media, which was under no such obligation, confirmed that Langman was one of the MI6 assets withdrawn from Britain’s embassy in Athens.

The Grayzone discovered the résumé of the journeyman British operative in a trove of leaked papers detailing the activities of Torchlight, a prolific British intelligence cutout. The bio of the longtime MI6 officer reveals he “led large, inter-agency teams to identify and defeat the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons technology, including by innovative technical means and sanctions.”

In particular, the MI6 agent says he provided “support for the [IAEA] and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons [OPCW] and through high level international partnerships.”

Langman’s CV credits him with playing a major role in organizing the sanctions regime on Iran by “[building] highly effective and mutually supportive relations across government and with senior US, European, Middle and Far Eastern colleagues for strategy” between 2010 and 2012. He boasts in his bio that this achievement “enabled [the] major diplomatic success of [the] Iranian nuclear and sanctions agreement.”

The influence Langman claimed to have exerted on the IAEA adds weight to Iranian allegations that the international nuclear regulation body colluded with the West and Israel to undermine its sovereignty. The Iranian government has alleged that the IAEA supplied the identities of its top nuclear scientists to Israeli intelligence, enabling their assassinations, and provided critical intelligence to the US and Israel on the nuclear facilities they bombed during their military assault this June.

This June 12, under the direction of its Secretary General Rafael Grossi, the IAEA issued a clearly politicized report recycling questionable past allegations to accuse Iran of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Three days later, Israel attacked the country, assassinating nine nuclear scientists as well as numerous top military officials and hundreds of civilians.

Iranian former Vice President for Strategic Affairs Javad Zarif has since called for the IAEA’s Grossi to be sacked, accusing him of having “abetted the slaughter of innocents in the country.” This June 28, the Iranian government broke ties with the IAEA, refusing to allow its inspectors into the country.

While Iranian officials may have had no idea about the involvement of a shadowy figure like Langman in IAEA business, it would likely come as little surprise to Tehran that the supposedly multilateral agency had been compromised by a Western intelligence agency.

Langman’s name placed under official UK censorship order

In 2016, Langman was named a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, the same title bestowed on fictional British spy James Bond. By that point, the supposed secret agent held the dubious distinction of being publicly ‘burned’ as an MI6 operative on two separate occasions.

First, in 2001, journalist Stephen Dorril revealed that Langman had arrived in Paris weeks prior to Princess Diana’s fatal car crash in the city on August 31 1997, and was subsequently charged with conducting “information operations” to deflect widespread public speculation British intelligence was responsible for her death.

Then, in 2005, he was formally accused by Greek authorities of complicity in the abduction and torture of 28 Pakistanis in Athens. The Pakistanis, all migrant workers, were suspected of having had contact with individuals accused of perpetrating the 7/7 bombings in London, July 2005.

Brutally beaten and threatened with guns in their mouths, the victims “were convinced their interrogators were British.” When Greek media named Langman as the MI6 operative who oversaw the migrants’ torture, British news outlets universally complied with a government D-notice – an official censorship order – and kept his identity under wraps when reporting on the scandal.

London vehemently denied any British involvement in torturing the migrants, with then-Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissing the charge as “utter nonsense.” In January 2006 though, London admitted MI6 officers were indeed present during the Pakistanis’ torture, although officials insisted the operatives played no active part in their arrests, questioning or abuse.

Following his withdrawal from Athens, Langman returned to London to head the UK Foreign Office’s Iran Department, a shift which highlights his importance to MI6 and suggests the British government had no qualms about his allegedly brutal evidence gathering methods.

Britain’s Foreign Office collaborates closely with MI6, whose agents use it as cover just as the CIA does with State Department diplomatic postings.

MI6’s man on Iran takes credit for “maximum pressure” strategy

While leading the Foreign Office’s Iran Department from 2006 – 2008, Langman oversaw a team seeking to “develop understanding” of the Iranian government’s “nuclear program.”

It’s unclear exactly what that “understanding” entailed. But the document makes clear that Langman then “generated confidence” in that assessment among “European, US and Middle Eastern agencies” in order to “delay programme [sic] and pressurise Iran to negotiate.” The reference to “Middle Eastern agencies” strongly implied MI6 cooperation with Israel’s Mossad intelligence services.

In April 2006, Tehran announced it had successfully enriched uranium for the first time, although officials denied any intention to do so for military purposes. This development may have triggered Langman’s intervention.

The Islamic Republic has rejected any suggestion it harbors ambitions to possess nuclear weapons. Its denials were corroborated by a November 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate expressing “high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted” any and all research into nuclear weapons. This assessment remained unchanged for several years, and was reportedly shared by the Mossad, despite Benjamin Netanyhau’s constant declarations that Iran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon.

Langman’s IAEA support work overlaps with Iran sanctions blitz

International governmental attitudes towards Iran changed abruptly between 2010 and ‘12. During this period, Western states and intergovernmental institutions initiated an array of harshly punitive measures against the country, while Israel ramped up its deadly covert operations against Iran’s nuclear scientists.

This period precisely overlapped with Langman’s tenure at the Counter-Proliferation Centre of the UK Foreign Office. His bio implies he used this position to influence the IAEA and other UN-affiliated organizations to foment a campaign of global hostility towards Iran.

In June 2010, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1929, which froze the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ assets, and banned overseas financial institutions from opening offices in Tehran. A month later, the Obama administration adopted the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act. This set off a global chain of copycat sanctions by Washington’s vassals, who often imposed even more stringent measures than those levied by the UN and US.

In March 2012, the EU voted unanimously to cut Iranian banks out of the SWIFT international banking network. That October, the bloc imposed the harshest sanctions to date, restricting trade, financial services, energy and technology, along with bans on the provision of insurance to Iranian companies by European firms.

BBC reporting on the sanctions acknowledged European officials merely suspected Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, but lacked concrete proof. And behind the scenes, the MI6 operative Langman was claiming credit for helping legitimize the allegations against Iran.

Nuclear agreement lays foundations for war

Following the Western-led campaign isolation of Iran from 2010 – 2012, over its purported nuclear weapon program, the Obama administration negotiated a July 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Under the JCPOA’s terms, the Islamic Republic agreed to limit its nuclear research activities in return for sanctions relief. In the years that followed, the IAEA was granted virtually unlimited access to Tehran’s nuclear complexes, ostensibly to ensure the facilities were not used to develop nuclear weapons.

Along the way, IAEA inspectors collected vast amounts of information on the sites, including surveillance camera photos, measurement data, and documents. The Iranian government has since accused the Agency of furnishing the top secret profiles of its nuclear scientists to Israel. These include the godfather of Iran’s nuclear program, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, who was first publicly named in a menacing 2019 powerpoint presentation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The following year, the Mossad assassinated Fakrizadeh in broad daylight with a remote-controlled machine gun.

Internal IAEA documents leaked this June indicated that IAEA Secretary General Rafael Grossi has enjoyed a much closer relationship with Israeli officials than was previously known, and suggested he leveraged his cozy ties with Tel Aviv to secure his current position.

[…]

Via https://thegrayzone.substack.com/p/spying-on-iran-how-mi6-infiltrated

By James Lyons-Weiler

July 1, 2025

An apparent leaked minutes document suggests that a trade association held a meeting in April to undo the confirmation of Kennedy by the duly elected US Senate. It is embedded below.

Caveat and Clarification

All references to individuals, statements, or actions attributed in the leaked minutes of the BIO Vaccine Policy Steering Committee meeting held on April 3, 2025, should be understood as excerpts from an internal document that has not been publicly authenticated by the named parties. These statements represent the content of the document as obtained and published, and do not constitute confirmed factual claims about the intent, conduct, or positions of any individual mentioned. The document reflects the internal framing and strategy of BIO and is presented here for the public to assess, interpret, and investigate. Readers are encouraged to seek independent confirmation, request public statements from the individuals involved, and draw conclusions based on full context and corroborating evidence. The document was received anonymously by whistleblowers and provided to Popular Rationalism for public analysis. Its provenance is under review.

On the eve before the US Senate reconvenes, a detailed secret trade-association memo plotting the removal of US Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has leaked. It reads like a coup attempt against regulatory reform—and they are spending millions to make sure Kennedy is out of office by September.

It seems that the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), whose membership includes Pfizer, Merck, Novavax, Vaxcyte, and hundreds of biotech firms that profit from regulatory insulation, has a mole. This article critiques the documented lobbying behavior of the trade group BIO, not the internal operations or clinical data of its member corporations.

When the nation’s leading pharmaceutical trade group convenes a closed-door strategy meeting and openly discusses the need to “go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr. to go,” the issue is no longer health policy—it is democratic integrity.

According to the apparent leaked minutes, verified by the name of the creator of the file, on April 3, 2025, BIO held a “Vaccine Policy Steering Committee” (VPSC) meeting whose internal summary, soon to be publicly available thanks to whistleblowers, reveals a campaign of strategic deception, institutional capture, and psychological warfare and exposes a campaign of institutional deception, investor protection, and coordinated sabotage of the MAHA reform platform.

According to the leaked document, titled “BIO Vaccine Policy Steering Committee – April 3, 2025”, BIO has committed $2 million—half of its cash reserve—to counter what it calls the “threat” posed by Kennedy’s rise. But this is no ordinary PR push. It is a multi-pronged campaign designed to deceive the public, silence dissent, and preserve industry dominance through influence operations masquerading as science.

The Plot Exposed

The document opens with a blunt political calculation: Kennedy’s candidacy threatens investor confidence, regulatory predictability, and the long-term viability of the vaccine business. BIO leadership in the apparent leaked document states plainly: “It is time to go to The Hill and lobby that it is time for RFK Jr to go.”

To achieve this, according to the document, BIO intends to deploy surrogates across the political spectrum, co-opt conservative influencers, and bypass direct engagement with the Kennedy campaign altogether. Among the figures named as potential allies in this covert effort: Dr. Mehmet Oz, former Senator Richard Burr (former Senator NC; Advisor DLA Piper Health Policy Steering Committee), Senator Bill Cassidy (in a section of the document focused on strategic influencer engagement and legislative positioning), and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). These individuals and institutions, the memo suggests, can provide a veneer of bipartisan legitimacy to BIO’s core aim: neutralize Kennedy without ever addressing the substance of his critique.

Follow the Money

The most revealing detail is that $2 million—precisely half of BIO’s entire $4 million reserve—has been allocated to vaccine communications, specifically a D.C.-area pilot campaign called “Why We Vaccinate.” The purpose is not education, but behavioral influence: to combine “inspire and frighten” tactics in order to manipulate public sentiment and legislative behavior.

Internal documents state clearly that the campaign’s goal is to appeal to the “movable middle” using emotionally charged messaging, capitalizing on fear messaging tied to national security, workforce resilience, and economic productivity.

Why such an aggressive push? Because, as Vaxcyte COO Jim Wassil apparently warned, “investors have stated they are leaving until the next data readout,” citing Kennedy’s “unpredictability” as a systemic disruption to the vaccine capital pipeline.

Given Kennedy’s demand for restored liability, long-term data, and placebo-controlled trials, BIO appears to view Kennedy’s proposals as a threat to the entire shortcut pipeline BIO built under EUA conditions.

BIO’s fear is not scientific opposition—it’s that Kennedy’s regulatory scrutiny may render their current profit model obsolete. “According to the document’s summary, one participant expressed concern that “Investors are sitting on the sidelines for the next 6–9 months.“ Capital has fled the vaccine sector, and Kennedy’s reform agenda is making it difficult for pharma executives to assure investors that the regulatory terrain remains exploitable.

As a reminder, these statements are drawn from the contents of an internal memo that has not been publicly confirmed by the named individuals. Interpretations remain provisional.

Hijacking Language

The VPSC meeting wasn’t just about funding. It was also about redefining language. BIO officials emphasized a shift in framing—from “protect,” “defend,” and “maintain” to “streamline,” “optimize,” and “enhance.”

But these are not reforms. They read as an attempt at narrative laundering operations. When BIO says “efficiency,” it means fewer safety requirements. When it says “resilience,” it means consumer obedience, not protection from harms from vaccines held to the Kennedy Bar. And when it says “transparency,” it means secretive PR-managed theater, not data disclosure.

This is rhetorical mimicry—a deliberate tactic to adopt the aesthetic of reform while preserving the machinery of capture. This differs from standard PR in that it aims to overwrite language itself: ‘transparency’ is redefined as brand polish; ‘efficiency’ as exemption from oversight—a deliberate attempt to steal the language of biomedical reform while ensuring that no structural reform ever occurs—and no one notices the difference.

Divide and Conquer

BIO’s strategic calculus is unmistakable: avoid confronting RFK, Jr. head-on and instead flood the surrounding narrative space with surrogate voices engineered to appear neutral, authoritative, and scientifically grounded.

The April 3 memo explicitly recommends targeting “Makary and Trump Insiders vs RFK, Jr.,” signaling an intention to bypass public debate in favor of internal triangulation. Within this framework, Dr. Mehmet Oz is floated as a potential “public health voice of reason within WH,” praised for his healthcare credentials and presumed credibility with conservative audiences.

While no specific action is proposed, the implication is clear—the document suggests BIO may aim to elevate Oz as a counterweight to Kennedy’s reform agenda by leveraging his media fluency and perceived scientific legitimacy to repackage industry talking points under the guise of responsible governance. This is not policy—it’s psychological misdirection through proxy, as the document implies.

The document also names AEI as a “trusted” conduit for pro-vaccine messaging, with Scott Gottlieb calling the MAHA movement a “cover for an anti-vaccine campaign.” It floats Dr. Oz as a possible public face of White House-aligned medical messaging. It outlines plans to use conservative constituents and influencers not to question BIO’s agenda, but to normalize it among skeptics.

Nowhere in the document is there any serious discussion of scientific debate. Nowhere is there a plan to confront Kennedy’s actual policy proposals—such as the Kennedy Bar, which calls for preclinical safety testing, raw data publication, long-term health tracking, and restoration of manufacturer liability. Instead, BIO’s plan is to erase Kennedy’s credibility through managed optics and surrogate deployment.

Fear of the Public

BIO’s own admissions reveal the true motive behind this campaign: fear. Not of disease, but of regulatory disruption. With RFK, Jr. and Commissioner Makary and team tightening standards, BIO executives are alarmed that predictable, post-market surveillance standards are expected to be enforced—and with them, the rapid market influence leverage built during Operation Warp Speed. Behind this campaign: fear. Not of disease, but of accountability.

Novavax, Merck, and Vaxcyte executives appear to express concern over ACIP’s new caution, the FDA’s slow-walking of approvals, and the crumbling of once-reliable regulatory shortcuts. With Kennedy and Commissioner Makary tightening the reins, BIO fears it can no longer exploit the revolving door between industry and agency.

One quote in particular encapsulates the panic: “They keep moving the goalposts on vaccines.”

This is simply not true. The goalposts aren’t moving. For the first time in decades, they are being reinstalled on the actual playing field of science, safety, and consent.

Why September Matters

Though the leaked memo from BIO’s Vaccine Policy Steering Committee never names September outright, its entire architecture reveals a timeline racing toward it. September marks a convergence point—political, narrative, and financial—where BIO knows it must have reshaped the battlefield or risk losing control of it entirely.

By then, Congress will be back in full session after its summer recess, and the fiscal year will near its end, placing vaccine policy, public health budgets, and FDA funding under the spotlight. Appropriations negotiations are not neutral in this climate—they are leverage points. If RFK, Jr. maintains or grows his influence through the summer, BIO faces the real possibility that reformist voices could restrict their easy funding pipelines, delay regulatory approvals, or demand hearings that expose industry-government entanglements.

September is also the reopening of the American schools – and the media mind. Fall marks the relaunch of political programming, the release of think tank policy reports, and the return of the elite opinion economy. BIO’s $2 million “Why We Vaccinate” campaign isn’t just a marketing push—it’s a narrative strike, timed to reassert emotional control over an audience emerging from summer’s distractions. They want to preempt Kennedy’s messaging before he dominates the fall discourse with facts, reform principles, and the moral clarity of a movement demanding consent.

Finally, September sets the tone for the next political cycle. Though national elections won’t be held until later, two House special elections will serve as bellwethers. Candidate filings, local endorsements, and policy positions will crystallize as donors and power brokers assess momentum. BIO knows it has a narrow window to discredit Kennedy before he becomes not just a candidate—but a coalition. That’s why the clock in the memo isn’t ticking toward November. It’s ticking toward September.

Global Implications

BIO’s apparent plot is not isolated. If the leak is genuine, and it appears so far to be, it aligns with other suppression architectures: ESG-based financial pressure on corporations to support mandates, WHO treaty harmonization that threatens sovereign health policy, and social media and AI systems that algorithmically suppress dissent.

• ESG-driven pharma score systems that reward coercive health mandates
• WHO treaty harmonization that threatens national sovereignty
• AI-based censorship systems that erase dissenting medical viewpoints

The April 3 memo must be read not just as a domestic political act, but as a nodal maneuver in a transnational agenda to control the terms of health, science, and consent.

One AEI-aligned strategist even claimed that MAHA was a ‘cover for an anti-vaccine campaign’—a telling attempt to delegitimize not arguments, but their right to exist. Pro-science is now anti-vaccine, and it has been for some time.

This isn’t a war against misinformation. It’s a war against public transparency in science. BIO fears Kennedy not because he is wrong, but because he has exposed the scaffolding of a regime that substitutes marketing for medicine. He has publicly pledged reforms that, if enacted, could disrupt the financial and regulatory relationships this memo appears to protect by requiring the firms actually follow the rules.

The $2 million smear campaign is not a show of strength. It is a confession of institutional fragility—a desperate gambit to buy time before the public finally demands the truth.

This is not a referendum on Kennedy. It is a referendum on whether regulatory science will serve the people or the shareholders.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/the-plot-to-get-rfk/

https://investigatemidwest.org/2024/05/08/early-morning-calls-barren-chicken-barns-millions-in-debt/

… The company’s plans came at a human cost. Tyson closed eight meatpacking plants in 2023, six of them chicken processing and two beef processing. It laid off more than 4,200 workers across all of its plants last year.

The company has a lot to gain from its contract growers. In 2023, Tyson Foods had nearly $53 billion in sales — a third of which was from chicken. The company operates 183 chicken facilities across the country, which include processing plants, hatcheries, feed mills and grain elevators. The company’s website states it contracts with more than 3,600 poultry farmers nationwide.

The vertical consolidation (the same company owning hatcheries, feed mills, grain elevators and processing plants) and horizontal consolidation (contracts with over 3600 farmers growing eggs, broiler, chicks, etc.) give Tyson extraordinary power to control all aspects of the chicken business and squeeze the biggest profits from everyone it deals with. It also has extraordinary power in other meat industries.

It did make chickens cheap—but now this monopoly power is also directed at the consumer, who is paying a lot more for less quality. Food in nearly all of Europe and the rest of the world is now cheaper than in the US. But the quality in the US is one of the worst, due to the immense consolidation and use of the cheapest inputs to feed poultry and livestock, and lack of care by agribusinesses to give back to the soil what is taken out using compost and manure, instead pushing chemicals that fail to provide the nutrition we seek.

From the pivotal early morning phone calls to the millions in debt, former Tyson contract growers who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they have had to take out upwards of $2 million loans to become Tyson contract growers. Their contracts canceled, they’re now saddled with massive debt. They said the company pushed them to go into more debt to upgrade their barns to meet company demands. Growers also said the company told them that they would be given chickens to raise for as long as they had loans on their barns.

Now that their contracts have abruptly ended, Tyson contract growers said they aren’t able to pay off the debt. Growers are staring down bankruptcy and foreclosures. Some have sold off land or other property to pay off debt while others have retired or looked for work off the farm….

Here is another story. Why is this happening? Because in large part, the mega-food companies have been able to get away with it. Now farmers are banding together and filing antitrust lawsuits, while the federal government should have stopped these practices already.

https://investigatemidwest.org/2024/12/17/tyson-foods-cut-contracts-with-poultry-farmers-now-the-company-is-working-to-silence-their-legal-fight/#:~:text=Missouri%20growers%2C%20including%20Arnold%2C%20file,collusion%20to%20prevent%20meatpacking%20competitors

DEXTER, Missouri – On an early August morning in 2023, Shawn Hinkle received a call from one of his technicians at Tyson Foods who, through tears, told him the company’s plant in Dexter was shutting down.

Hundreds of jobs at the poultry slaughterhouse would be lost and farmers like Hinkle, who contracted with Tyson to raise egg-laying hens, would be out of business.

A decade earlier, Hinkle borrowed $2.3 million to build two chicken houses on his land. After struggling to keep up with Tyson’s standards and investing in his farm, Hinkle now owed $2.8 million and faced the prospect of losing it all in bankruptcy.

Tyson said the Dexter plant closure was part of a national effort to streamline production and boost profits — the company also closed three other poultry plants and two beef packing plants.

But Tyson’s explanation didn’t make sense to Hinkle and several other farmers who, in December 2023, sued the giant meat company for breaking its contracts.

As the lawsuit moves forward, a Watchdog Writers Group analysis of documents filed in the case, in partnership with Investigate Midwest, reveals Tyson coordinated closely with Cal-Maine Foods, the company that ended up buying the Dexter plant. That coordination prevented farmers from continuing their same operations with another Tyson competitor.

Documents also show Tyson tried to prevent its former contract farmers from seeking legal remedies over the broken contracts, and has possibly attempted to discourage farmers from speaking with federal officials and journalists.

Tyson Foods declined to answer detailed questions about the allegations of the lawsuit.

After purchasing the Dexter plant, Cal-Maine offered contracts to local farmers if they retrofitted their farms to raise table egg-laying hens rather than chickens for meat. [Putting them even more into debt—Nass]. Unlike many area farmers, Hinke raised egg-laying hens to produce more chicks, which were sent to other farmers. Raising hens for Cal-Maine would have required a significant operational overall for Hinkle and other farmers.

But Cal-Maine’s offer came with a catch: The farmers would have to agree not to sue Tyson Foods for any losses because of the plant closure, according to court filings…

[…]

Via https://merylnass.substack.com/p/how-farmers-become-serfs-or-bankrupted

Who We Are: America’s Fight for Universal Progress, From Franklin to Kennedy Volume II 1830s-1890s

By Anton Chaitkin (2025)

Book Review

(Part 2)

Volume II of Who We Are covers the post-Civil War Reconstruction in far more detail than most schools and universities

Following Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, former slave owner Vice President Andrew Johnson became president. The latter was a Southern Democrat who ran with Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket in the 1864 election. One of his first acts was to issue a blanket pardon to all lower Confederate officers, to allow them to resume their seats in the Republican-controlled Congress. In response, House Republican leader Thaddeus Stevens sponsored a successful bill to call a joint Senate-House committee, which required the former Confederate states to call biracial conventions to choose new representatives to the House and Senate. It was a slow process, and it wasn’t until 1870 that the final four states (Virginia, Mississippi, Texas and Georgia) were readmitted to the Union.

Concerned about Southern black codes and Jim Crow laws being used to jail freed slaves, Stevens also introduced the 14th Amendment (in 1866). It explicitly grants citizenship to all persons born in the US.

After a New Orleans police-sanctioned mob broke up a Louisiana voting convention and burned the homes of Black participants, Stevens also introduced the 1867 Military Reconstruction Act. The new law deployed Union troops to keep the peace in the South.

Determined to resist Southern industrialization (which Republicans viewed as essential to provide jobs for freed slaves with no property or educations), New York and Boston bankers and entrepreneurs colluded with British interests to establish the “free trade” branch of the Republican party. Determined to retain the Southern plantations, using freed Blacks as cheap labor, they also deliberately created an economic crisis by drastically reducing the money supply. .

Running as a Republican, General Ulysses Grant easily won the 1968 election, as federal troops still protected Black voting right several former Confederate states were still excluded from voting.

In 1869, the Grant administration filed The Alabama Claims, demanding damages from the United Kingdom for the naval vessels Britain provided the Confederacy. After international arbitration (in Geneva) endorsed the claim in 1872, Britain settled by paying the United States government $15.5 million.

Neglected under Johnson, Philadelphia railroad expansion flourished under the pro-industrialist Grant. In 1869, the transcontinental railroad begun by Lincoln was completed. In 1870 a Philadelphia-based company built a rail network joining the North and South, hoping to stimulate Southern industrialization.* For similar reasons The Texas-Pacific Railroad completed a railroad line to Texas and San Diego. The Northern Pacific Railroad extended the railroad to Seattle the same year.

In 1876, Neither D Samuel Tilden nor Rutherfood Hayes received a majority of votes, so the presidential election was decided in the House. Southern Democrats who were pre-war Whigs (and supported industrialization) agreed to vote for Hayes provided the Republican leadership agreed to withdraw troops from the South and subsidize the extension of the Texas-Pacific Railroad into their districts.

The withdrawal of federal troops effectively ended Reconstruction.

*James A Roosevelt, the father of Franklin, was president of the Southern Railway Security Company.

GAZA CITY—Influential clans, tribes, and community leaders in Gaza have joined forces to launch an independent effort to protect aid convoys and to prevent chaos and looting. The endeavor comes one month after the U.S. and Israel launched a so-called “aid distribution” project that has enabled Israeli forces to kill starving Palestinians every day as they desperately try to get food to feed their families. Since the beginning of the “aid distribution” charade, Israeli forces have killed at least 549 people.

On Tuesday, the National Gathering of Palestinians Tribes, Clans, and Families convened a meeting in Gaza City to launch the initiative. “These trucks arriving in besieged Gaza—which has been starved for 90 days by our enemy—must reach their rightful recipients, the needy,” said Abu Salman al-Mughni, a tribal leader. “They must not go to a corrupt group of thieves and rogue merchants to be sold in the markets at exorbitant prices that no one can afford. For this reason, the tribes, from all factions, have united to secure these trucks, ensuring they reach the warehouses and are then distributed fairly to all our people.”

The effort succeeded in securing a rare shipment of dozens of UN aid trucks that entered through the Zikim crossing on Wednesday; passed through Rashid street, a coastal road, without incident; and arrived at UN warehouses where people lined up to receive the aid. The tribes and community leaders prevented crowds from approaching the area the trucks passed through by erecting a series of barricades and forming human chains. Men associated with the tribes climbed atop the trucks—some armed with rods and others with guns—to escort the trucks to the warehouses.

The process stood in stark contrast to previous scenes where, absent any distribution system, thousands of desperate people overwhelmed aid convoys, with Israeli soldiers opening fire indiscriminately, killing dozens of Palestinians on a daily basis.

“We advise everyone to take a firm stand with their sons and youth to prevent them from heading to the death traps,” Abu Samed Abu Rawaa, another tribal leader involved in the effort, told Drop Site. “We are the protective shield. Everyone must understand that it is the occupier who seeks to spread chaos—they are the ones who want our people to appear this way…to portray our people as barbaric.”

The most prominent figure in Gaza accused of looting aid trucks is Yasser Abu Shabab, a 32-year-old who was previously jailed in Gaza for drug trafficking. Abu Shabab is now the head of a powerful group called the “Anti-Terror Service” that is armed by the Israeli military and has been widely accused of looting aid convoys.

In their remarks, tribal and clan leaders singled Abu Shabab out by name, warning that anyone associated with him would be dealt with harshly. “[Israel] propped up that disgraced and condemned Abu Shabab in order to spread corruption in the land,” Dr. Alaa El-Din Al-Aklouk, a leading member of the National Gathering of Palestinian Tribes, Clans and Families, said. “Some of our sons and family members join Abu Shabab and run around in order to recruit people. You men must advise your sons and youth to stay away from this filthy germ created by the occupation.” Echoing comments by Israeli officials, Shabab has blamed Hamas for looting aid trucks without providing any evidence—a claim that both the UN and international organizations have also denied.

Hours after the tribal and community-led initiative to secure the aid convoys was launched on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement accusing Hamas of stealing the aid and ordered the Israeli military to prevent it.

In response, the Government Media Office in Gaza said the Israeli government was “promoting lies” in order to “legitimize the continued blockade, starvation, and the prevention of humanitarian aid.”

“This tragedy is for whom?”

Israel imposed a full-spectrum siege on Gaza on March 2, with no food, medical supplies, fuel, or other humanitarian goods allowed to enter for nearly three months—the longest total blockade since Israel’s genocidal assault began. The Israeli siege brought the entire population of Gaza to the brink of famine, with malnourished children dying of hunger.

On May 27, the U.S.- and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) began distributing a trickle of aid through four militarized distribution hubs, three in remote parts of southern Gaza and one near Wadi Gaza. The project was condemned by the U.N. and international organizations—which previously led aid distribution in Gaza—as a weaponization of aid. The scheme forced thousands of desperate Palestinians to walk for hours over long distances through Israeli military zones to reach the hubs. Separate from the GHF system, a small number of U.N. aid trucks, mostly carrying flour, has also sporadically been allowed in. The total amount of aid being distributed is not nearly enough to stave off mass starvation, according to the U.N.

Israeli troops have shot at, shelled, and attacked the crowds with tanks and quadcopters on a daily basis both at, or near, the GHF hubs, and as they gathered near the UN aid trucks. Over the past four weeks, at least 549 Palestinians have been killed and over 4,066 injured, according to the Gaza health ministry, in what are now commonly called “aid massacres.”

Meanwhile, the humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) labeled the GHF aid distribution scheme “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid” and called for it to be “immediately dismantled.” The group said in a statement on Friday that the GHF “is degrading Palestinians by design, forcing them to choose between starvation or risking their lives for minimal supplies.”

Last week, the White House and State Department authorized a $30 million USAID grant to the GHF, with possible additional grants of $30 million that could be dispersed on a monthly basis.

The executive chairman of the GHF, Johnnie Moore—an evangelical Christian and a former Trump adviser—has rejected all criticism of the GHF and echoed Israeli talking points that deny the mass killing of civilians by Israeli troops at, or near, GHF hubs. “The US endorsement of the effort is Exhibit A that it is actually working, despite a disinformation campaign that is very deliberate and meant to shut down our efforts,” Moore said in a televised interview on Sky News on Friday. “The IDF is a professionalized military. Hamas is intentionally harming people for the purpose of defaming what we’re doing.”

His comments came despite revelations published by Haaretz on Friday that confirmed what Palestinians in Gaza have been saying for the past four weeks—that Israeli soldiers are opening fire on unarmed Palestinians gathering near food distribution sites, even when they posed no threat. In the report, soldiers said Israeli commanders instructed troops to shoot at civilians approaching aid sites before they opened or after they closed—using machine guns, mortars, and grenades. Soldiers described systematic live fire, including from tanks and said the killings weren’t isolated mistakes but part of a pattern dubbed “Operation Salted Fish”—the Israeli version of Red Light, Green Light. “We shoot, they run, we shoot again,” one soldier said. “This is our communication.”

The association of tribal and community leaders have said they will continue their efforts to protect and organize the limited amount of aid that is being allowed into Gaza. “We pledge to stand by our people during this unjust siege,” al-Mughni said. “Every day, we are losing 40 or 50 martyrs. This tragedy is for whom? And at what cost? We must put an end to this destructive phenomenon.”

[…]

Via https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-tribal-clans-protect-aid-convoys-massacres