Pentagon announces it’ll continue ‘essential’ abortions for troops

President Joe Biden’s Department of Defense (DoD) announced on Tuesday that it will continue to perform “essential” abortions on troops, dependents and other beneficiaries. The announcement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, ruling that abortion is not a constitutional right.

According to a DoD memo obtained by ABC News reporter Matt Seyler, the department claimed that overturning of Roe v. Wade “does not prohibit” it from “continuing to perform” certain abortions “consistent with federal law.”

NEW: DOD releases memo to leaders on “ensuring access to essential women’s health care services” after the overturning of Roe. pic.twitter.com/ggkCNqx1PV

— Matt Seyler (@MattSeyler) June 28, 2022

“Federal law restricts the Department from performing abortions or paying to have them performed unless the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term, or unless the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest,” the memo stated. “There will be no interruption to this care.”

The memo stated that the DoD’s “longstanding position” generally bars states from imposing “criminal or civil liability on federal employees who perform their duties in a manner authorized by federal law.”

The DoD also claimed that the Supreme Court’s decision does not affect current policies that allows service members to travel for “abortion care.”

“As always, we will take every action within our authority to ensure the safety and health of each and every member of our team,” the memo concluded.

Immediately following the court’s decision last week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tweeted that he is “committed” to providing America’s troops with “reproductive health care” – a common euphemism for abortion.

“Nothing is more important to me or to this Department than the health and well-being of our Service members, the civilian workforce, and DOD families. I am committed to taking care of our people and ensuring the readiness and resilience of our Force,” he tweeted.

“The Department is examining this decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law.”

The Department is examining this decision closely and evaluating our policies to ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law.

— Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) June 24, 2022

Also on Friday, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland released a statement attacking the Supreme Court’s decision and vowing to protect access to the FDA-approved abortion pill, which currently provides a loophole to abortions.

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the Court’s decision. This decision deals a devastating blow to reproductive freedom in the United States. It will have an immediate and irreversible impact on the lives of people across the country. And it will be greatly disproportionate in its effect – with the greatest burdens felt by people of color and those of limited financial means,” Garland’s statement read.

https://americanmilitarynews.com/2022/06/pentagon-announces-itll-continue-essential-abortions-for-troops/

US Preparing to Buy Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System for Ukraine

Officials told the media the US will a send Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS)

US officials said Monday that the Biden administration is preparing to purchase a Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) for Ukraine as part of a new weapons package that will likely be announced this week.

The NASAMS is an advanced air defense system with a range of over 100 miles and is used to protect airspace around the White House and the Capitol Building in Washington. The NASAMS is a joint project between the Norway-based Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace and Raytheon, the US arms maker that previously employed Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as a board member.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that the administration plans to finalize a package this week that will give Ukraine “advanced” air defense capabilities and other weapons without specifying the type of system.

“We do intend to finalize a package that includes advanced medium and long-range air defense capabilities for the Ukrainians, along with some other items that are of urgent need, including ammunition for artillery and counterbattery radar systems,” Sullivan said.

The fact that the US is planning to purchase the NASAMS suggests the administration will use funds from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI), which gives the president the authority to purchase arms for Ukraine. The $40 billion Ukraine aid bill President Biden recently signed into law includes $6 billion for the USAI.

https://news.antiwar.com/2022/06/27/us-preparing-to-buy-advanced-surface-to-air-missile-system-for-ukraine/

Putin signs law banning issuance of licenses to foreign users of mineral resources

The law also stipulates that the Russian Railways company receives the right to use local subsoil plots to extract minerals for the construction of the Baikal-Amur and Trans-Siberian railways without auction

https://tass.com/economy/1472703

Ghislaine Maxwell sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking

Manhattan federal prosecutors urged a judge last week to sentence Maxwell to at least 30 years in prison

A judge on Monday sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other charges in connection to Jeffrey Epstein.

A jury found the British socialite guilty in December on five counts, including the trafficking of a minor.

She worked "as partners in crime" with her then-boyfriend Epstein, prosecutors said during the trial. They said that from 1994 to 2004, Maxwell groomed women as young as 14 to be abused sexually by Epstein, a convicted pedophile who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges.

Manhattan federal prosecutors urged a judge last week to sentence Maxwell, 60, to at least 30 years in prison.

Maxwell's attorneys asked for a lesser sentence and suggested that their client was prosecuted as a stand-in for Epstein. The lawyers also blamed her actions on Epstein and her father, late British media mogul Robert Maxwell.

The prosecution said her defense showed an "utter lack of remorse."

New York District Attorney Damian Williams said: "Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can."

A judge denied her request for a mistrial in April after finding out that one of the jurors was a victim of sexual abuse.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-years-prison-sex-trafficking

Ghislaine Maxwell Sentenced To 20 Years In Prison For Conspiring With Jeffrey Epstein To Sexually Abuse Minors

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/ghislaine-maxwell-sentenced-20-years-prison-conspiring-jeffrey-epstein-sexually-abuse

Michael Hoffman- What your priest or pastor doesn't know (and most would not tell you even if they did): The Babylonian Talmud has affirmed LGBTQ doctrine for millennia

Rabbi Yirmeya ben Elazar: "…when the Holy One created the first human, He created him as an androgynos (having both male and female sexual characteristics). "This is confirmed by Mishnah Bikkurim 4:1 (and numerous other authoritative texts).

For the rabbis of the Talmud Bavli, the androgynos was a recognized legal category. The term appears no less than 32 times in the Mishnah and 283 times in the Talmud. Most of these citations are not variations but rather discussions that consider how rabbinic law (halakhah) applies to one who has both male and female sexual characteristics.

https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-eight-genders-in-the-talmud/

Dr. Carrie Madej injured in small plane crash; stable with a broken leg and possible vertebrae damage

https://ussanews.com/2022/06/28/dr-carrie-madej-involved-in-a-plane-crash/

https://ussanews.com/2022/06/28/dr-carrie-madej-involved-in-a-plane-crash/

Brutal abuse suffered by teenage boys at a former Australian Navy base has "destroyed" the lives of men today, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide has been told.

Retired judge Len Roberts-Smith — the former chair of the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART) — has given evidence at the public inquiry in Townsville.

DART was established in 2012 to assist complainants who had suffered abuse, harassment and bullying in the Australian Defence Force prior to April 2011.

Mr Roberts-Smith said the taskforce received 238 complaints related to the former HMAS Leeuwin base in Western Australia's Fremantle, which operated between the 1960s and the 1980s.

"We were talking about men … in their 60s and 70s, and so on, whose lives had been destroyed by the abuse and, in many instances, if not most, had never told anybody about the abuse they had suffered or the impact in had on their lives," he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith said most of the abuse was inflicted by older recruits onto their junior counterparts, who were as young as 15 years of age.

"We are talking here about serious abuse, like running the gauntlet, bashing, being raped with broom handles and mop handles," he said.

"They also knew that, if they did say anything, they would be brutalised for doing so.

"And they did know that, if they did manage to say something to staff, the staff would either ignore it or would pass [the matter] back to the perpetrator."

In total, DART received more than 2,400 complaints.

Mr Roberts-Smith said it was clear the instances of abuse examined by the taskforce continued to have long-lasting impacts on victims.

"The mental and emotional and psychological consequences literally last a lifetime," he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith also spoke about the limited scope of the taskforce in probing abuse allegations.

"We had no investigative function, no legal determinative function, we couldn't make findings," he said.

"It was a rather challenging environment in which to operate."

The former DART chair said the taskforce faced a number of obstacles, including challenges in obtaining documents from Defence.

"Sometimes units had disposed of, or not kept records [that] ought to have been kept," he said.

Mr Roberts-Smith will continue giving evidence on Wednesday, before the royal commission wraps up its Townsville hearings on Thursday.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-28/qld-royal-commission-into-defence-and-veteran-suicide-townsville/101178548

Turkey reaches NATO deal with Finland and Sweden

Scandinavian countries will become NATO observers at the upcoming summit

Turkey will support inviting Finland and Sweden into NATO at the alliance’s upcoming summit in Spain, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto announced on Tuesday after a meeting with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

The three countries signed a memorandum of understanding at the meeting, organized with the support of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

“The concrete steps for our accession to NATO will be agreed among NATO allies over the next two days, but that decision is now imminent,” said Niinisto. “I am pleased that this stage on Finland's journey towards NATO membership has been completed.”

According to Turkey, Finland and Sweden pledged to “condemn terrorism in all its forms” and end their support for organizations Ankara has designated as terrorist – including the Kurdish groups PKK and YPG, as well as the movement led by the exiled cleric Fetullah Gulen, which the Turkish government refers to as “FETO.”

“Turkey got what it wanted,” Erdogan said in a statement after the deal was announced.

HERE IS THE JOINT DECLARATION • Sweden and Finland confirm that there are no arms embargoes against Turkey. pic.twitter.com/gMa0LgQHJO

— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) June 28, 2022

Speaking at a press conference after the meeting, Stoltenberg said that Finland and Sweden will become observers in NATO at the upcoming summit. He added that the memorandum includes provisions on fighting terrorism and arms exports, including adopting stricter national legislation.

Finland and Sweden imposed an arms embargo against Turkey in 2019, over Ankara’s intervention in Syria. Turkey also reportedly demanded that Stockholm and Helsinki shut down the offices and ban the publications belonging to FETO, freeze the assets related to groups it has designated as terrorists, and even ban them from demonstrating in public.

Ankara’s opposition threatened to derail NATO’s plan to invite Sweden and Finland at the summit in Madrid which began on Tuesday. The two traditionally neutral Scandinavian countries declared their desire to join the US-led alliance in April, citing the current conflict in Ukraine.

https://www.rt.com/news/558027-turkey-finland-sweden-nato-deal/

>>16547595

CHENEY: "How did the President react" to hearing AG Barr say the DOJ found no evidence of widespread voter fraud?

HUTCHINSON: “There was ketchup dripping down the wall and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor.”

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1541858584501358593

>>16547237 The Biden administration will make abortion pills more widely available

>>16547255 Pentagon announces it’ll continue ‘essential’ abortions for troops

>>16547267 US Preparing to Buy Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System for Ukraine

>>16547298 President Joe Biden left the G7 early on Tuesday to avoid approaching thunderstorms

>>16547299 US retailers including CVS, Rite Aid, Walmart limit sale of over-the-counter abortion pills

>>16547541 Brutal abuse suffered by teenage boys at a former Australian Navy base

>>16547566 Abortions can resume at some Texas clinics after court blocks pre-Roe ban

>>16547595 Turkey reaches NATO deal with Finland and Sweden

Stop Gatekeeping baker

Amazon, just say no: The looming horror of AI voice replication

If an AI like Alexa really can convert less than a minute of recorded voice into real-time speech, it opens the door to dystopian gaslighting at a whole new level. It's frightening, creepy, and disturbing.

Last week, we ran a news article entitled, "Amazon's Alexa reads a story in the voice of a child's deceased grandma." In it, ZDNet's Stephanie Condon discussed an Amazon presentation at its re:MARS conference (Amazon's annual confab on topics like machine learning, automation, robotics, and space).

In the presentation, Amazon's Alexa AI Senior VP Rohit Prasad showed a clip of a young boy asking an Echo device, "Alexa, can grandma finish reading me 'The Wizard of Oz'?" The video then showed the Echo reading the book using what Prasad said was the voice of the child's dead grandmother.

Hard stop. Did the hairs on the back of your neck just raise up? 'Cause that's not creepy at all. Not at all.

Prasad, though, characterized it as beneficial, saying "Human attributes of empathy and affect are key for building trust. They have become even more important in these times of the ongoing pandemic, when so many of us have lost someone we love. While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories last."

Hmm. Okay. So let's deconstruct this, shall we?

I hear dead people

There is a psychological sensory experience clinically described as SED, for "sensory and quasi-sensory experiences of the deceased." This is a more modern clinical term for what used to be described as hallucinations.

According to a November 2020 clinical study, Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review, SED experiences aren't necessarily a psychological disorder. Instead, somewhere between 47% and 82% of people who have experienced life events like the death of a loved one have experienced some sort of SED.

The study I'm citing is interesting in particular because it is both integrative and interdisciplinary, meaning it aggregates results of other studies across a variety of research areas. As such, it's a good summing up of the general clinical perception of SED.

According to the study, SED experiences cross boundaries and are experienced by all age groups, members of many religions, across all types of relationship loss, and even death circumstances.

But whether an SED experience is considered comforting or disturbing depends both on the individual and that individual's belief system. SED also manifests in all sorts of ways, from hearing footsteps, to experiences of presence, to sightings. It doesn't always have to be voice reproduction.

Overall, the report stops short of making a clinical value judgement about whether SED experiences are psychologically beneficial or detrimental, stating that further study is needed.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/just-say-no-the-potential-horrors-of-ai-voice-replication/

Major Gas Station Chain Announces Huge Sale on Gas 'Effective Immediately'

A major convenience store chain announced Monday that it will sell two gasoline blends below $4 a gallon through the Fourth of July weekend.

“Effective immediately, Sheetz, a major Mid-Atlantic restaurant and convenience chain, will help reduce pain at the pump for consumers by reducing the price of fuel to $3.99 a gallon for Unleaded 88 and $3.49 a gallon for E85,” the company said in a news release on its website.

“This is a limited-time offer that will be available through the July 4th holiday travel season,” the company said.

The company noted that drivers need to be sure their vehicles will run properly using the two blends.

“Unleaded 88 is approved by the EPA for use in vehicles for model years 2001 or newer as well as light-duty trucks, SUVs and Flex Fuel Vehicles,” the company noted, adding that E85 is less compatible with many vehicles.

“E85 contains more ethanol (51 percent – 83 percent) and is not compatible with all vehicles. It is designed specifically for ‘flexible fuel vehicles’ or FFVs. FFVs can use regular gasoline (E10), E15, or E85. When available, E85 is clearly designated as a different fuel type and should not be used in standard vehicles. Check your owner’s manual to see if your car is able to run with E85,” the company cautioned.

Sheetz has 640 store locations throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina.

The website GasBuddy noted that consumers have received a breather from the onslaught of rising prices earlier in June, despite prices that remain well above those of a year ago.

GasBuddy said the average cost of a gallon of unleaded gasoline is $4.88, which is down 8.8 cents from a week ago.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that “[t]he national average is up 28.3 cents from a month ago and $1.79 per gallon higher than a year ago,” Gas Buddy reported.

In the ups and downs of prices, drivers might see the respite from rising prices continue, according to Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.

“With Independence Day a week away, gas prices have continued to fall for the second straight week as the price of oil has faltered, ushering in the drop we’re seeing. The good news is we could also see a third straight week of decline,” he said.

“While prices will be at their highest July 4th level ever, they’ll have fallen close to 20 cents since our peak in early June. Motorists should be wary that while the decline could continue for the week ahead, any sudden jolts to supply could quickly cause a turnaround, and risk remains that when the peak of hurricane season arrives, we could see a super spike at the pump,” he said.

https://www.westernjournal.com/major-gas-station-chain-announces-huge-sale-gas-effective-immediately/