Merck’s oral antiviral pill for COVID-19, molnupiravir — marketed under the name Lagevrio — is fueling the development of new and potentially deadly variants of COVID-19, according to the authors of a new preprint study.
The study, released Jan. 27 by a team of U.S. and U.K researchers, found, “It is possible that some patients treated with molnupiravir might not fully clear SARS-CoV-2 infections, with the potential for onward transmission of molnupiravir-mutated viruses.”
The study, which is pending peer review, followed the discovery by a middle school science and math teacher in Indiana who found numerous variants of COVID-19 emerged after molnupiravir began to be widely distributed.
“It’s not a surprise that molnupiravir could cause [the] escape of mutant virus strains or substrains into the population,” said Dr. Harvey Risch. “Its main function is to get the virus to mutate faster.”
Risch, professor emeritus and senior research scientist in epidemiology (chronic diseases) at the Yale School of Public Health, told The Defender:
“The idea is that it will mutate itself to death. But some live mutants could get out, and this paper gives evidence that they have.”
Brian Hooker, Ph.D., P.E., chief scientific officer for Children’s Health Defense, said the study’s authors scanned global SARS-CoV-2 sequence databases looking for mutations characteristic of those by molnupiravir (G-to-A and C-to-U) and found an uptick of those mutants starting in 2022 — after molnupiravir was put on the market and specifically in countries where molnupiravir was distributed.
La Directa uncovers a National Police agent who was infiltrated for three years in social movements in Catalonia, and.anarchist spaces in Madrid and the Basque Country.
He has now ‘ disappeared’.
On the left, agent D.H.P. during his time at the Ávila police school. In the image on the right you can see the tattoos he got between 2020 and 2021
“I met Dani one night in June 2020 in the Plaza de las Palmeres in the Sant Andreu neighborhood.
He was a very jokey, smiling and close person, with whom it was easy to connect, and he approached us girls with a funny flirtation.
I slept with him several times and on three occasions we had sexual relations”.
The speaker is Joana, one of the eight women with whom Daniel Hernàndez Pons, a National Police agent, had relations with the aim of infiltrating social movements in Catalonia, according to an extensive report by La Directa.
According to the report, Hernández Pons infiltrated the La Cinètika social center in June 2020.
A la izquierda, el agente D. H. P. durante su paso por la escuela de policia de Ávila. En la imagen de la derecha se pueden apreciar los tatuajes que se hizo entre 2020 y 2021. La Directa
He is not the first National Police agent infiltrated in social movements discovered by La Directa, which seven months ago published how another agent, Marc Hernández Pon, infiltrated in June 2020 the Catalan independence movement.
“After a long and meticulous investigation, La Directa has been able to confirm that we are facing an operation to introduce multiple spies into activism, under the hierarchical leadership of the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska,” La Directa points out in its report. .
Dani appeared for the first time in the gym of the squatted La Cinètika center, on Paseo Fabra i Puig in Barcelona, in June 2020.
ANTI SPYCOP DEMO
He was 31 years old at the time. “He said that he had found the address on the internet while looking for a cheap place to train,” explains one of the space activists.
It was the beginning of a rapid infiltration into the neighborhood’s social movements, facilitated by a mayhem star tattooed on his knee, T-shirts with anti-fascist symbols, earrings, and a mohawk suitable for his new anarchist context.
Even so, from time to time someone mentioned to him that, upon his arrival, someone had distrusted him because nothing was known about his past.
He “answered sportingly, with a smile. Dani has always been a joker”, Jaume explains to La Directa, a pseudonym used for the report by a person who until a week ago considered himself the best friend of the undercover police officer.
As confirmed by La Directa, the real identity of Daniel Hernàndez Pons responds to the same initials: D.H.P.
The newspaper points out that it has verified his real identity thanks to the mistakes made by the infiltrator, through which they have been able to access open data about his past and present, and through a physiognomic expert test that compares the photographs of his passage through the Ávila police school between 2018 and 2019 with images of him as an activist in Barcelona.
During his time as an infiltrator, Daniel participated in the demonstrations against the imprisonment of Pablo Hasél in February 2021, in several rallies to avoid evictions, in one of which he confronted a Desokupa worker, and was fined 600 euros. —which he did not pay— for another mobilization.
He has also visited self-managed spaces in Madrid y País Vasco Madrid and the Basque Country.
Specifically, La Directa details how this infiltrated police officer visited the squatted social center La Casika in Móstoles on several occasions and also attended the first libertarian meeting held in Vitoria in 2021, in Errekaleor.
La Directa explains that, to explain the absences due to his double life, the infiltrator claimed that he worked as an assistant to an air conditioning installer or that he was going away for a few days to visit his family in the Balearic Islands or a friend in Tarragona.
Sexual Relationships as an Infiltration Strategy
According to the La Directa report, the infiltrated policeman had relationships with several women participating in the city’s social movements, one of them for a year, and who served as a bridge to enter the neighborhood collectives.
“Through all of them he set foot in various projects and political spaces,” reads the La Directa report. Among them, he lists the film screenings at La Cinèteka, the work group of the same social center to prepare a guide to prevent and act in the face of patriarchal violence and joining the tour of the Zapatista movement in Catalonia.
He also joined the Antirepressive Coordination group of Sant Andreu. “A good opportunity to see everyone who was active in the neighborhood,” explains Iris, one of the eight women who were related to the infiltrated agent with whom La Directa has spoken.
Another sexual relationship with an activist from Ciutat Vella made it easier for him to enter other spaces, such as the Kasa de la Muntanya. And Rut, with whom he had a six-month relationship, made it easy for him to enter the CGT anarchist trade unión
Filed under: Catalonia ‧ Police ‧ Espionage
Dani, el segundo policía infiltrado en el activismo catalán destapado por La Directa
La Directa destapa a un agente de la Policía Nacional que estuvo infiltrado durante tres años en movimientos sociales de Catalunya, y que pasó por espacios libertarios en Madrid y País Vasco.
“Conocí a Dani una noche de junio de 2020 en la plaza de las Palmeres del barrio de Sant Andreu. Era una persona muy bromista, risueña y cercana, con quien era fácil conectar, y a las chicas se nos acercaba con un flirteo gracioso. Dormí con él varias veces y en tres ocasiones mantuvimos relaciones sexuales”.
Quien habla es Joana, una de las ocho mujeres con las que Daniel Hernàndez Pons, agente de la Policía Nacional, mantuvo relaciones con el objetivo de infiltrarse en los movimientos sociales de Catalunya, según destapa un extenso reportaje realizado por La Directa. Según detalla el reportaje, Hernández Pons se infiltró en el centro social La Cinètika en junio de 2020. No es el primer agente de la Policía Nacional infiltrado en los movimientos sociales descubierto por La Directa, que hace siete meses publicó cómo otro agente, Marc Hernández Pon, llegaba también en junio de 2020 al movimiento independentista catalán. “Después de una larga y minuciosa investigación, la Directa ha podido confirmar que estamos ante una operación de introducción de múltiples espías en el activismo, bajo la batuta jerárquica del ministro de Interior español, Fernando Grande-Marlaska”, señala La Directa en su reportaje.
Dani apareció por primera vez en el gimnasio del centro okupado La Cinètika, en el paseo Fabra i Puig de Barcelona, en junio de 2020. Por entonces tenía 31 años. “Decía que había encontrado la dirección por internet mientras buscaba un sitio económico donde entrenar”, explica una de las activistas del espacio. Fue el inicio de una rápida infiltración en los movimientos sociales del barrio, facilitada por una estrella del caos tatuada en su rodilla, camisetas con simbología antifascista, pendientes y un peinado en cresta adecuado para su nuevo contexto anarquista. Aun así, de vez en cuando alguna persona le mencionaba que, a su llegada, alguien había desconfiado de él porque no se sabía nada de su pasado. “Se lo tomaba deportivamente, con una sonrisa. Dani siempre ha sido muy bromista”, explica a la Directa Jaume, pseudónimo que usa para el reportaje una persona que hasta hace una semana se consideraba el mejor amigo del policía infiltrado.
Según ha confirmado La Directa, la identidad real de Daniel Hernàndez Pons responde a las mismas iniciales: D.H.P. El diario señala que ha comprobado su identidad real gracias a los errores cometidos por el infiltrado, por los que han podido acceder a datos en abierto sobre su pasado y presente, y a través de una prueba pericial fisionómica que compara las fotografías de su paso por la escuela de policía de Ávila entre los años 2018 y 2019 con imágenes suyas como activista en Barcelona.
La Directa detalla cómo este policía infiltrado visitó en varias ocasiones el centro social okupado La Casika de Móstoles y acudió también al primer encuentro libertario celebrado en Vitoria en 2021, en Errekaleor
Durante su tiempo como infiltrado, Daniel participó en las manifestaciones contra la entrada en prisión de Pablo Hasél en febrero de 2021, en varias concentraciones para evitar desahucios, en uno de los cuales se enfrenta a un trabajador de Desokupa, y fue multado por 600 euros —que no pagó— por otra movilización. También ha visitado espacios autogestionados en Madrid y País Vasco. En concreto, La Directa detalla cómo este policía infiltrado visitó en varias ocasiones el centro social okupado La Casika de Móstoles y acudió también al primer encuentro libertario celebrado en Vitoria en 2021, en Errekaleor.
La Directa explica que, para explicar las ausencias que conllevaba la doble vida que llevaba, el infiltrado afirmaba que trabajaba como ayudante de un instalador de aire acondicionado o que se iba por unos días a visitar a su familia en Baleares o a un amigo en Tarragona.
Relaciones sexoafectivas como estrategia de infiltración
“A través de todas ellas puso los pies en diversos proyectos y espacios políticos”, se lee en el reportaje de La Directa. Entre ellos enumera las proyecciones de cine en La Cinèteka, el grupo de trabajo del mismo centro social para elaborar una guía para prevenir y actuar ante violencias patriarcales, se sumó a la gira del movimiento zapatista por Catalunya y se metió en la Coordinadora Antirrepresiva de Sant Andreu.
“Una buena oportunidad para ver a todo el mundo que militaba en el barrio”, explica Iris, una de las ocho mujeres que se relacionaron con el agente infiltrado con las que ha hablado La Directa.
Otra relación sexoafectiva con una activista de Ciutat Vella le facilitó su entrada a otros espacios, como la Kasa de la Muntanya. Y Rut, con quien mantuvo seis meses de relación, le facilitó llegar a CGT.
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RT DE Productions – a German-based company that produces content for the RT DE TV channel and website in Moscow – has announced that it’s halting all its operations in the country. The company cited “the repressive state of media freedoms within the EU.”
The ninth sanctions package introduced in December 2022 amounted to “effectively cutting off oxygen for staff,” the firm said, adding that the EU had “betrayed the reliance on the fundamental rights and freedoms recognized in the Charter of Fundamental Rights” of the bloc itself.
“The EU, in permitting the imposition of sanctions on media freedoms, has shown that the very values claimed to define the core of its existence are without any substance,”
the statement read, adding that the freedom of the press “does not exist in Germany today.”
The latest round of sanctions adopted by Brussels has made any further activities of the company in Germany impossible, RT DE Productions said in a statement on Friday.
The production company also said it was “happy and proud” to be able to provide German-speaking audiences in multiple countries with “essential stories and opinions, often side-lined or overlooked by the mainstream media outlets.”
The sanctions package announced in December blacklisted RT’s parent company, TV-Novosti, as well as revoking the EU broadcasting licenses of Russian media outlets including NTV, NTV Mir, Rossiya 1, REN TV and Perviy Channel.
Following the introduction of these new restrictions, Paris froze the accounts of RT France, citing the need to comply with the new regulations. The move forced RT’s French subsidiary to cease broadcasting.
Even before the conflict in Ukraine, RT had faced multiple obstacles to launching a live TV channel for a German audience back in 2021. German banks abruptly refused to work with the broadcaster, and Luxembourg shot down its licensing bid.
When the channel was eventually launched in December 2021, its YouTube page was immediately banned and European satellite TV operator Eutelsat took it off air shortly after, giving in to pressure from the German media regulator, MAAB.
The regulator then demanded a broadcast ban on the RT DE channel, accusing RT DE Productions of broadcasting without a valid German license.
RT DE Productions is not a broadcaster, but a production company, while the RT DE channel was broadcast from Moscow under a valid EU-wide Serbian license.
However, a German court sided with the media regulator in March 2022.
“It is striking how resonant Le Guin’s work remains even as the future she describes recedes into our past.”
Originally, The Lathe of Heaven appeared in two installments in Amazing Stories, a pulp magazine started in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback. Ursula Le Guin, born in 1929, read Amazing Stories as a child and would go on to outlive almost all the science fiction pulp magazines.
You can read or copy the pdf of The Lathe of Heaven HERE and listen to a reading HERE
While many of the writers Gernsback introduced to the field have fallen out of fashion and been forgotten, Le Guin’s influence has expanded beyond all original bounds of genre, appropriately so, as her writing was profoundly slippery, generous, shape-shifting, and outreaching from the very start.
The Lathe of Heaven has the feel of a fable, part fairy tale, part philosophical and psychological exploration of questions central to much of Le Guin’s work: What are the consequences of working for change, even with the best of intentions? What is the cost of utopia? What is the use and meaning of dreams?
The protagonist, George Orr, changes the world in dreaming. He is frightened by this power, which he does not control consciously, but his therapist, Dr. Haber, seeks to harness his power to make a better world.
It’s a novel with very few characters, the sort of narrative I can’t help but imagine as a kind of black box theater performance, and The Lathe of Heaven was, in fact, twice made into a movie (Le Guin’s contemporary, the artist Ed Emshwiller, served as a visual consultant to the first adaptation, which is perhaps the only faithful adaptation of any of Le Guin’s work).
It is also, notably, Le Guin’s deliberate foray into Philip K. Dick’s territory, with its hallucinatory beginning, its drug-using protagonist, and its surreal, literally world-melting alternate realities. Dick and Le Guin were admirers of each other’s work and occasional correspondents.
They had attended the same high school at the same time, though in a detail once again straight out of a Dick novel, neither Le Guin nor any of her high school class could afterward recall him in any of their classes or circles.
I would argue that The Lathe of Heaven is also in conversation with the work of Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon was one of the first writers to introduce psychological realism into science fiction, exploring not only outer space but also the frontiers inside the human mind. Le Guin admired Sturgeon’s writing, and Sturgeon reviewed The Lathe of Heaven for the New York Times.
What are the consequences of working for change, even with the best of intentions? What is the cost of utopia? What is the use and meaning of dreams?
And now I have to digress for a moment, because I have so far only mentioned male writers, to put Le Guin’s work into context, when Le Guin was part of a cadre of women writers who were beginning to publish science fiction.
“..It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder…”.
The Berlin-Tiergarten District Court sentenced peace activist Heinrich Bücker in January for speaking out in public against Germany’s war policy in Ukraine. The verdict is a massive attack on the basic democratic rights of freedom of speech and assembly. It is reminiscent of the persecution of anti-militarists in the Weimar Republic who—like Carl von Ossietzky—opposed the rearmament of the Reichswehr (armed forces).
Bücker is a member of the Association of the Persecuted of the Nazi Regime–League of Anti-Fascists (VVN-BdA) and the Left Party.He runs the COOP Anti-War Café in Berlin, where anti-militarist events are held regularly.
On June 22, 2022, he gave a speech at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin’s Treptow Park on the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, in which he condemned the cooperation of German politicians with former Nazi collaborators in Ukraine and expressed understanding for the views of the Russian president.
Heinrich Bücker during his speech on the 81st anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union [Photo by Screenshot AntikriegTV]
As a result, the judge at the local court, Tobias Pollmann, sentenced Bücker to a fine of €2,000, or 40 days imprisonment.
çHis criminal offence under Section 140 of the Criminal Code had consisted of “publicly approving a crime of aggression (Section 13 of the International Criminal Code) in a manner likely to disturb the public peace at a meeting.”
The verdict was issued as a summary penalty order, which does not provide for an oral hearing of the defendant and examination of witnesses. The defendant can appeal within two weeks of the issuance of the penalty order, which Bücker reportedly did. If he had not done so, the penalty order is considered a final judgment, and appeals against it are then no longer possible.
The penalty order states that Bücker, in his speech, approved “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in violation of international law, the illegality of which you knew.” To prove this, a longer paragraph from the speech is quoted, the entire wording of which is documented here (in German).
In the quoted paragraph, Bücker opposes cooperation with far-right forces in Ukraine:
It is incomprehensible to me that German politicians are again supporting the same Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German [Nazi] Reich found willing helpers in 1941, with whom they closely cooperated and jointly carried out murder. All decent Germans should reject any cooperation with these forces in Ukraine against the background of German history, the history of millions of murdered Jews and millions and millions of murdered Soviet citizens in World War II. We must also vehemently reject the war rhetoric emanating from these forces in Ukraine. Never again must we as Germans be involved in any form of war against Russia. We must unite and oppose this madness together.
In this context, he called for understanding for the Russian point of view:
We must openly and honestly try to understand the Russian reasons for the special military operation in Ukraine and why the vast majority of people in Russia support their government and their president in it. Personally, I very much want to and can understand the view in Russia and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin. I have no distrust of Russia, because the renunciation of revenge against Germans and Germany determined Soviet and then also Russian policy since 1945.
How and why Bücker thus “agrees” to the invasion of Russia, the Berlin District Court did not elaborate with a single syllable. The request to understand and comprehend the reasons for something is quite different from consent.
Otherwise, the work of psychiatric evaluators would be as impossible as that of historians, sociologists, mediators or even police investigators. Any effort to understand the actions of others would be deemed complicity.
Because Section 140 of the Criminal Code severely impinges upon the fundamental right to freedom of expression under Article 5 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has set high standards in its case law.
Este domingo, 5 de febrero, está convocada una manifestación en Alcalá de Henares en apoyo a la activista por el derecho a vivienda Nani Martínez.
La manifestación saldrá a las 12:00h. de la Plaza 11 de marzo, junto a la estación de ferrocarril de Alcalá de Henares, y finalizará en la Plaza de la Paloma, frente a los juzgados.
Comunicado
Nani Martínez ha sido la cara más visible de la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca del Corredor del Henares durante 10 años, ha asesorado a cientos de familias afectadas, ha participado en gran cantidad de acciones reivindicativas por el derecho a vivienda y en la paralización de decenas de desahucios hipotecarios.
El próximo mes de febrero se enfrenta a la solicitud de una pena de dos años y medio de prisión por participar en 2017 en la paralización del desahucio de una familia con cuatro menores en Alcalá de Henares.
Convoca la Plataforma Nani Absolución, compuesta por diferentes movimientos sociales, asociaciones vecinales, sindicatos y partidos políticos. El manifiesto Nani Absolución ha sido firmado por la Federación Regional de Asociaciones de Vecinos, la Federación Comarcal de Asociaciones de Vecinos, CCOO, CGT, Izquierda Unida, Podemos, PCE, PCTE. Asociaciones como 13 Rosas, Agua de Mayo, Bienvenidos Refugiados, MAR, XR…
Tanto ella como otras nueve personas sufrieron lesiones por la intervención de los agentes de la Policía Nacional en este desahucio. El juicio contra Nani tiene fecha para el 14 de febrero de 2023, a consecuencia de las denuncias presentadas por los agentes.
Los agentes de Policía Nacional trataron de entrar en la vivienda de la familia desahuciada antes de la llegada de la Comisión Judicial, que es con la que los abogados de la PAH tratan de dialogar en estos casos para paralizarlo por motivos humanitarios y falta de alternativa habitacional. Los activistas se opusieron pasivamente a la entrada de la policía, pues ello hubiera significado la ejecución del desahucio sin haber tenido la opción de dialogar con la Comisión Judicial. Es en ese momento cuando la policía comenzó a cargar, causando 10 heridos. Finalmente, el desahucio no se realizó por decisión de la Comisión Judicial.
Nani no fue detenida en ese momento, ni hizo nada que lo hubiera justificado, pero días después recibió la denuncia, en la que la acusaban de un delito de atentado contra la autoridad en un relato cargado de contradicciones y falsedades.
Nani ya se vio obligada a pagar una fianza de 4.000€ que consiguió reunir gracias a la solidaridad del tejido asociativo. El próximo 14 de febrero se celebrará el juicio, en el que se pide para ella una pena de dos años y medio de prisión; un juicio contra la persona más visible del movimiento por el derecho a vivienda en la comarca.
Desde la Plataforma por la Absolución de Nani hacemos un llamamiento al apoyo y a la solidaridad con nuestra compañera y con todas las represaliadas por luchar por el derecho a la vivienda o por cualquier otro derecho.
Note: These interviews were mostly filmed in January 2020, before the COVID-19 outbreak. Be sure to turn on the subtitles (CC), as some parts are in Spanish.
These are dark days. As the COVID-19 crisis turns our world upside-down, the social isolation and atomization of capitalism has given way to full-blown social distancing.
At a time when we most need to come together, we’re told that human contact can kill us. Alarm bells are flashing everywhere as the dead pile up, the economy burns, and more and more people’s mental health deteriorates. This is the most severe and far-reaching global crisis that most of us who are alive today have ever experienced.
Its a terrifying, alienated, and stressful time. It’s also no time to give up. No time to turn on Netflix, bury our heads in the sand, and wait for things to pass. Certainly not for anarchists, or anyone who calls themselves a revolutionary.In the midst of the current pandemic, it’s easy to forget that 2019 was a year of global uprisings on a scale not seen since 1968.
The system is dying. Today we stand at the precipice of a massive restructuring of the global order. There will be no going back to the way things were. We can either fight for a future that we want to live in, or we can sit by and let the banks and the tech companies pick it for us.
It’s important that we take the necessary steps to keep each other safe during this crisis. Of course. But it’s also important that we take the necessary steps to keep each other safe from what comes after. And that means getting organized.
The Free 
