Abortion rights activists want men to get involved in the debate by getting vasectomies

With the Supreme Court expected to issue a landmark ruling next year that will determine the fate of abortion in America, some pro-choice activists are advocating vasectomies as a way for men to support abortion rights.

These activists say that men should be more involved in family planning and that going to the doctor to have the tubes that carry sperm to their semen snipped and sealed is an act of reproductive freedom that can relieve pressure on women to kill unwanted children before they're born.

Doctors who perform the male sterilization procedure told the Washington Post they've seen an increase in male patients seeking vasectomies in response to pro-life laws passed by Republican-majority legislatures in several states. In Texas, a fetal heartbeat law seeks to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy but has been blocked in court. A ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy in Mississippi is at the center of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the Supreme Court case challenging Roe v. Wade's precedent.

Koushik Shaw, a urologist at the Austin Urology Institute in Texas, said his practice saw about a 15% increase in scheduled vasectomies after Dec. 1, when oral arguments for Dobbs took place.

http://www.tathasta.com/2021/12/abortion-rights-activists-want-men-to.html

Oracle Supercomputer: COVID-19 ‘Highly Adapted’ for Human (Not Bat or Pangolin) Infection.

The stunning revelations from a new book shed more light on the man-made origins of COVID-19.

Simulations conducted by Oracle supercomputing revealed COVID-19 to be “highly adapted” for human infection, discrediting the claim of the virus counting natural origins through a spillover event from wildlife to humans.

As revealed in Sharri Markson’s What Really Happened In Wuhan, Flinders University Professor and Research Director at Vaxine Dr. Nikolai Petrovsky used an Oracle supercomputer’s “in silico modeling” approach to identify COVID-19’s original host.

Proponents of the “natural origins” theory – including many Chinese Communist Party-compromised scientists – have attached significance to the virus’s host being a bat, arguing the animal transferred COVID-19 to a person at a wet market.

Petrovsky’s findings, which appear to identify humans as the original host of COVID-19, undercut the theory that the virus was transferred from animal to human but rather originated in humans independent of an animal.

To do so, Petrovsky’s team analyzed different ACE2 receptors, which allow coronaviruses to enter cells and reproduce, and spike proteins, which allow the virus to actually latch onto a human’s airway cells with the supercomputer.

“We were trying to find which species of lock the Covid-19 key was best designed to unlock. You can try and fit the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein structure shape into all of the ACE2 structures from different animals to see which one fits best, just like solving a jigsaw,” Petrovsky explained.

The group uploaded ACE2 genetic sequences from a variety of potential animal hosts including bats, mice, and civets and was able to run simulations by March 2020. As What Really Happened In Wuhan notes:

Very quickly, he had a result – and it was a result that caused him a great deal of angst. “Strangely, humans came out at the very top of the list.” Petrovsky pauses. “That was not what we were expecting, as the animal host from which the virus had been transmitted should have been at the top of the list. This presented a puzzle as the data suggested the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein had uniquely evolved to bind and infect cells expressing human ACE2. Normally with a new pandemic virus, whatever species that virus originally came from would be the best fit and the virus would initially only half fit the human lock but then mutate over time to try and become a better fit. A virus should not be able to evolve to be a perfect fit for a lock it has never seen, and yet this is what the data was telling us. The virus spike protein looked like it couldn’t have been better designed to fit the human ACE2. Go figure.”

https://thenationalpulse.com/2021/12/27/oracle-supercomputer-supported-lab-leak/

https://twitter.com/anneluty/status/1475645338035929100

Syrian air defences respond to ‘Israeli aggression’ targeting port city – state media

Damascus says it is repelling an alleged Israeli attack targeting a major port on the Mediterranean sea

Syrian air defences were activated after the country's principal port city of Latakia came under a missile attack, which sparked a major fire resulting in significant damage to the port, Syria’s state media reported.

The attack took place around 3:21 a.m local time [01:21 GMT] on Tuesday, with rockets being launched from the “depth of the Mediterranean”, SANA’s news agency reported.

Footage posted online shows a series of blasts rocking what appears to be the port.

The port has reportedly sustained "great" material damage in the strike. “A number of containers” were burned down as the result of the attack, SANA reported.

There have been no reports of casualties.

The airstrike comes exactly three weeks after the port was subject to a similar attack, which Damascus also blamed on Tel Aviv. At that time, several missiles hit the port in an overnight raid, igniting fire in the container area.

The Latakia Governorate is also home to a major Russian military facility, the Khmeimim Air Base, located some 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) southeast of the provincial capital.

The raid comes as tensions flare up between Damascus and Tel Aviv. Earlier on Monday, the Syrian government accused Israel of “unprecedented escalation” after the Israeli government gave the green light to the $317 million settlement plan in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Under the plan, the number of Jewish settlers in the area is set to double over the next five years. Damascus, which condemned the planned expansion as a “blatant violation" of international law, sees the Golan Heights as part of its sovereign territory under the UN Security Council resolutions.

https://www.rt.com/news/544554-syria-latakia-israeli-agression/