The government take over of thoughts and what material people can read is happening with the assistance of the tech community. The limiting what people can see or read started with the idea of restricting any media that positively presented the LGBTQ+ community so to protect the children they claimed. See how quickly it has progressed in less than a year to simply the government telling / demanding the right to tell people what they can read or view so that the government is never disfavored or contradicted. Totally as China and Russia work. How do you like living in such a society. Remember the people who had these books on their device had paid for them and Amazon did not return their money, they just reached in and deleted the material they did not want you to read. Once the precedent is set it will be used by any new government who wish to control the population and how they feel about the society they live in. Hugs
A commuter using an Amazon Kindle while riding the subway in New York.Credit…Lucas Jackson/Reuters
In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”
On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole by Amazon.com.
In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.
An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
Amazon effectively acknowledged that the deletions were a bad idea. “We are changing our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances,” Mr. Herdener said.
Customers whose books were deleted indicated that MobileReference, a digital publisher, had sold them. An e-mail message to SoundTells, the company that owns MobileReference, was not immediately returned.
Digital books bought for the Kindle are sent to it over a wireless network. Amazon can also use that network to synchronize electronic books between devices and apparently to make them vanish.
An authorized digital edition of “1984” from its American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, was still available on the Kindle store Friday night, but there was no such version of “Animal Farm.”
People who bought the rescinded editions of the books reacted with indignation, while acknowledging the literary ironies involved. “Of all the books to recall,” said Charles Slater, an executive with a sheet-music retailer in Philadelphia, who bought the digital edition of “1984” for 99 cents last month. “I never imagined that Amazon actually had the right, the authority or even the ability to delete something that I had already purchased.”
Antoine Bruguier, an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he had noticed that his digital copy of “1984” appeared to be a scan of a paper edition of the book. “If this Kindle breaks, I won’t buy a new one, that’s for sure,” he said.
Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.
Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”
Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.
“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”
Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.
On the Internet, of course, there is no such thing as a memory hole. While the copyright on “1984” will not expire until 2044 in the United States, it has already expired in other countries, including Canada, Australia and Russia. Web sites in those countries offer digital copies of the book free to all comers.
As the flu and covid are on the rise again vaccines are on the decline due to the tRump admin claiming that the best science we have is wrong based on feelings and in the case of the people like JFK Jr it is greed. People don’t realize he makes his money suing drug manufacturers that produce vaccines. Every time he thinks he has some wacked out idea he sues and nothing they can show him will matter to him, all he wants is money and to stop vaccines for other people, as his families kids are protected. Think on it, he is vaccinated, their family has the money to get the vaccines without medical insurance, all he is doing is making it harder and more costly for your kids to get them because you need the medical insurance to help pay for it. Hugs
Under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC no longer recommends routine vaccination to protect against meningococcal disease.
Jan. 11, 2026, 7:00 AM EST
By Kaitlin Sullivan
Deaths from a rare and dangerous bacterial infection could rise if fewer teens are vaccinated, doctors warn.
After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all adolescents get vaccinated against meningococcal disease in 2005, cases of the potentially deadly illness plummeted in the United States by 90%.
However, cases have sharply risen since 2021, likely due to a combination of mutating bacteria and declining rates of vaccination overall, especially among teens getting a booster dose for bacterial meningitis, doctors suggest.
Dr. Luis Ostrosky, an infectious disease doctor at UT Health in Houston, is concerned that as cases of bacterial meningitis climb in the United States, the CDC’s recent overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule could lead to more deaths.
Under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s guidance, the CDC is no longer recommending a meningitis vaccine for all adolescents. The vaccine and booster protect against the most common types of the infection in the U.S., serogroups A, C, Y, W.
“We see quite a few cases of meningitis per year,” Ostrosky said.
Under the new guidance, the vaccines will be recommended for “high-risk groups,” although parents can still ask doctors to vaccinate their children through a process called “shared clinical decision making.”
Teenagers and college-age adults, who often spend a lot of time in groups or communal living spaces such as dorms, and people with HIV are considered at highest risk for the infection, caused by a group of bacteria called Neisseria meningitidis.
Vaccination is important not because the disease is common — around 3,000 people are diagnosed with bacterial meningitis in the U.S. each year — but because the infection is both extremely serious and fast-moving.
Bacterial meningitis can progress quickly, causing the brain to swell and limbs to develop gangrene and sepsis, and can kill within 24 hours.
Symptoms such as headache, stiff neck, vomiting and fever come on suddenly, and may be mistaken for other minor illnesses. It can be treated with antibiotics, but even with rapid diagnosis, about 15% of patients die.
Fast-acting and life-threatening
Why some people are susceptible isn’t well understood. The infection develops when usually harmless bacteria travel through the respiratory tract and infiltrate the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord, causing severe inflammation. These bacteria, which commonly live in the back of the throat, can spread from person to person through close contact.
It can lead to a life-threatening infection in someone whose immune system is compromised — sometimes by a simple cold or flu virus — or who doesn’t have immunity to those bacteria. Viruses and fungi can also cause meningitis, but bacterial meningitis is the most serious.
Among patients who survive, as many as 20% have lifelong disability or complications, including amputated limbs, hearing impairment and neurological problems.
“You can die from a brain hernia, or from sepsis,” Messacar said. “And if you survive a brain hernia, you will most likely have severe complications.”
In 2024, the CDC issued an alert about a rise in cases of a type of invasive meningococcal disease. More than 500 cases were reported, the highest since 2013. Most of the infections were due to a specific strain of the Y serogroup of bacteria, which is included in the previously recommended vaccine. The cases were more common in adults ages 30 to 60, in Black people and in people with HIV.
“It’s even more important now that we get meningococcal vaccines out to people given that we are seeing a spike in this Y strain,” Messacar said.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved three types of meningitis vaccines. In 2005, the CDC began recommending that 11- and 12-year-olds get vaccinated against the most common meningococcal serotypes, A, C, Y and W. Because of waning immunity, the CDC in 2011 added a booster recommendation for 16-year-olds to protect them through young adulthood. A vaccine for meningitis B and a combined shot are available for children or babies who are considered at high risk.
In a statement Monday, Kennedy said that the CDC’s new childhood vaccine schedule was “aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus.”
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease doctor at the UCSF School of Medicine in San Francisco, said the new approach to meningitis vaccination in the U.S., which is based on Denmark’s, is flawed.
“You can’t just look at another country’s vaccine approach and photocopy it. You really have to look at what is happening in your own country,” Chin-Hong said. Given the safety of meningitis vaccines, “it makes sense to vaccinate.”
Alicia Stillman, who serves on a World Health Organization task force for eliminating meningitis, worries that by moving the vaccine into shared decision making, the CDC is creating hurdles for parents who want to protect their children.
Stillman’s daughter, Emily, died from meningitis B in 2013. Emily had been vaccinated against meningitis A, C, W and Y, but the FDA didn’t approve a vaccine for meningitis B until 2014.
Emily Stillman, pictured with her mother, Alicia, was 19 when she died from meningitis B. Courtesy Alicia Stillman
Because many types of bacteria can cause bacterial meningitis, different vaccines are needed. The meningitis B vaccine hasn’t been recommended for all children but is available for people at high risk through the shared decision making process.
“I have watched medical professionals not bring [meningitis B vaccination] up,” said Stillman, who is the co-executive director of the American Society for Meningitis Prevention. “I have watched parents who are maybe a little less educated and not know how to ask about it, or they go to a public clinic instead of a private clinic where they have less time with a provider.”
She believes that could happen more broadly with the changed guidance.
What the research says
A CDC statement said the changes to the recommendation reflect the need for more data on certain vaccines, “including placebo-controlled randomized trials and long-term observational studies to better characterize vaccine benefits, risks, and outcomes.”
While there haven’t been placebo-controlled trials for meningitis vaccines — which would test how well a vaccine works either by deliberately infecting people with bacteria or by seeing how well they fare if they are infected in the real world — there have been many randomized clinical trials and other studies that use decades of data collected from both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals in the real world.
Chin-Hong said placebo-controlled trials aren’t realistic or ethical for every drug, especially for life-threatening and rare diseases.
“A well-designed observational study, especially using decades of experience, can be just as informative as a randomized controlled trial,” Chin-Hong said.
A 2020 CDC report analyzed 20 clinical trials on meningococcal disease vaccines, including data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VS). The most common reported side effects were “mild to moderate,” and included swelling, fever and headache.
In 2005, Katie Thompson, now 39, was infected with an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacterial meningitis when she was a college freshman, the same month the FDA approved the first MenACWY vaccine.
“I don’t know how to describe it besides it’s pure hell,” she said.
After five weeks in the hospital and nearly dying, she went home, but not without lifelong complications. Thompson, who lives outside of Charleston, South Carolina, still struggles with migraines and vestibular disorders that cause vertigo and nausea. The infection was hard on her organs and she uses a bladder stimulator that helps regulate both her bladder and nerves in the base of her spine.
“It’s just not a disease that you want to take a risk on,” she said. “It’s not one that you want to gamble with your child’s life.”
Two vaccines that remain universally recommended by the CDC — the Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, vaccine and the pneumococcal vaccine — protect against some causes of bacterial meningitis. However, these vaccines don’t protect against meningitis A, C, W, Y or B.
Kaitlin Sullivan
Kaitlin Sullivan is a contributor for NBCNews.com who has worked with NBC News Investigations. She reports on health, science and the environment and is a graduate of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University of New York.
Belle talks about the right wing propaganda being generated to discredit the woman shot by ICE in Minnesota, Renee Good. It was not even a good fake hit piece as Belle describes it. I posted a few weeks ago about Russian and other enemy off the US countries posting stuff that is not true so that once it is circulated it discredits the real news in peoples minds. Ron fell for that himself.
Ron watches YouTube clips in the morning with his coffee. Yesterday he was listening to what he thought was a financial newsgroup called Buffet Unfiltered. That site reported that Deutsche Bank had called in tRump’s loans and seized tRump Towers. I questioned it because no other news source reported anything and I felt with news that important they would have. Today they reported how underwater on loans and to creditors tRump was, again that is believable but not the way Ron was telling me was being reported. So I again warned him about misleading propaganda. He asked me who to check the stuff out. I showed him how to both search out the group, which on their YouTube about page said they were fictional dramatizations, then I showed him how to search new groups like ground news for the story reported. Now he is upset these groups do this. But it was a good lesson for both of us. I post a lot of what I think is real news. However I have made mistakes and posted stuff not true or quite accurate. Thankfully the people who come here are smart and have pointed these out to me and I can correct or take the posts down. Thank you for helping keep this site as honest and correct as it is important to me. Hugs
The lawless tRump and criminal gang Gestapo thugs in ICE do not want to be held accountable. They are demanding they have the right to lie and you must believe it. They think they would be allowed to get away with everything and anything to harm and terrorize people if no can see what they do. So they try to convince you it is a crime to record them. It is not a crime. But remember how racist cops tried to do the same thing after the George Floyd murder? We must not let them take our rights away from us and we must fight against the tyrannical dictatorship of a lawless government ruling a powerless public. Hugs
The Trump Administration Says It’s Illegal To Record Videos of ICE. Here’s What the Law Says.
The Trump administration believes you don’t have the right to record Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in public. This stance is both factually wrong and an attempt to chill free speech by conflating it with violence.
At a July 2025 press conference in Tampa, Florida, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said, “Violence is anything that threatens them and their safety, so it is doxing them, it’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles.”
In September 2025, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin called “videotaping ICE law enforcement and posting photos and videos of them online” a form of doxing. She added, “We will prosecute those who illegally harass ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
These aren’t idle threats. The Trump administration strong-armed Apple into removing an app from its mobile store that tracked ICE activity and threatened criminal investigations into its creators.
The most aggressive application of this policy has come in Chicago under “Operation Midway Blitz,” where ICE officers have relentlessly targeted protesters, reporters, and clergy engaged in protected First Amendment activity.
In October, a group of journalists and protesters filed a lawsuit alleging “a pattern of extreme brutality in a concerted and ongoing effort to silence the press and civilians.”
In court filings, the plaintiffs stated that federal officials’ own testimony illustrated their point. For example, when ICE field director Russell Hott was asked if he agreed “that it’s unconstitutional to arrest people for being opposed to Midway Blitz,” he answered “No.”
“Similarly, [U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Greg] Bovino testified that he has instructed his officers to arrest protesters who make hyperbolic comments in the heat of political demonstrations, even though such statements—which do not constitute true threats—are protected speech,” the motion argued. (Hott and Bovino’s depositions were filed under seal, and those comments were later redacted in a corrected filing by the lawsuit plaintiffs, but not before others took screenshots of them.)
Based on voluminous evidence that feds in Chicago ignored her previous orders to curb their use of force, U.S. District Court Judge Sara Ellis issued a preliminary injunction against DHS in early November 2025, saying the government’s conduct “shocked the conscience.”
Ellis found much of the officials’ testimony not credible. Bovino, for instance, testified that he never used force against a protester he was filmed tackling, and in another instance, Ellis said, he lied about being hit with a rock before firing tear gas at demonstrators. Nor did evidence support the government’s claims that federal officers issued warnings before firing less-than-lethal projectiles at those protesters.
“Describing rapid response networks and neighborhood moms as professional agitators shows just how out of touch these agents are, and how extreme their views are,” said Ellis.
The Trump administration responded by calling Ellis an “activist judge,” but it is squarely wrong when it comes to recording and protesting the police. Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson points out that, “While the Supreme Court itself hasn’t yet faced the issue squarely, the sevenfederalcircuitsthathavedoneso…all agree that the First Amendment protects the right to record police performing their duties in public.”
Likewise, federal circuits have upheld the right to use vulgar language to oppose police without fear of retaliation, and to warn others of nearby police checkpoints or speed traps.
As Olson writes, the administration’s “attempt to alter reality by establishing new legal facts on the ground” ultimately serves as a green light for informal repression. “If the agents come to believe that they have blanket immunity [for] whatever they do, or that citizens have no right to record them, they are more likely to take aggressive informal action, such as grabbing phones or taking news reporters into custody on charges of obstruction (perhaps later quietly dropped).”
It’s not hard to find examples of this rotten agency culture in practice. In late October 2025, ICE officers broke out the window of a U.S. citizen’s car and detained her for seven hours after she followed and photographed their unmarked vehicles. DHS accused her of reckless driving, attempting to block in officers with her car, and resisting arrest—all claims that she and her lawyer deny. Prosecutors did not charge the woman with a crime.
Recording government agents is one of the few tools citizens have to hold state power accountable. Any attempt to redefine observation as “violence” is not only unconstitutional—it’s authoritarian gaslighting. When a government fears cameras more than crimes, it isn’t protecting the rule of law. It’s protecting itself.
An aerial view shows a fjord in western Greenland, September 16, 2025. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Summary
U.S. purchase of Greenland also an option being discussed
Invasion would send shock waves through NATO
Trump’s drive to acquire Greenland ‘not going away’, official says
Some U.S. Republicans and Democrats push back against Greenland comments
WASHINGTON, Jan 6 (Reuters) – The White House said on Tuesday that President Donald Trump is discussing options for acquiring Greenland, including potential use of the U.S. military, in a revival of his ambition to control the strategic island despite European objections.
Trump sees acquiring Greenland as a U.S. national security priority necessary to “deter our adversaries in the Arctic region,” the White House said in a statement.
“The president and his team are discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal,” the White House said.
Greenland has repeatedly said it does not want to be part of the United States. Leaders from major European powers and Canada rallied behind the Arctic territory on Tuesday, saying it belongs to its people.
A U.S. military seizure of Greenland from a longtime ally, Denmark, would send shock waves through the NATO alliance and deepen the divide between Trump and European leaders.
The strong opposition has not deterred Trump from reviewing how to make Greenland a U.S. hub in an area where there is growing interest from Russia and China. Trump’s interest, initially voiced in 2019 during his first term in office, has been rekindled in recent days in the wake of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Emboldened by Maduro’s capture last weekend, Trump has voiced his belief that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,” and has put pressure on both Colombia and Cuba.
He has also started talking about Greenland again after putting it on the back burner for months.
A senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Trump and his advisers are discussing a variety of ways to acquire Greenland.
IS GREENLAND FOR SALE?
Those options include the outright U.S. purchase of Greenland or forming a Compact of Free Association with the territory, the official said. A COFA agreement would stop short of Trump’s ambition to make the island of 57,000 people a part of the United States.
The official did not provide a potential purchase price.
“Diplomacy is always the president’s first option with anything, and deal making. He loves deals. So if a good deal can be struck to acquire Greenland, that would definitely be his first instinct,” the official said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that recent administration threats against Greenland did not signal an imminent invasion and that the goal is to buy the island from Denmark during a classified briefing late on Monday for congressional leaders, two sources familiar with the briefing said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported Rubio’s comment.
Members of Congress, including some of Trump’s fellow Republicans, pushed back against the administration’s comments on Greenland, noting that NATO member Denmark has been a loyal U.S. ally.
“When Denmark and Greenland make it clear that Greenland is not for sale, the United States must honor its treaty obligations and respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the co-chairs of the Senate NATO Observer Group, said in a statement.
Administration officials say the island is crucial to the U.S. due to its deposits of minerals important for high-tech and military applications. These resources remain untapped due to labor shortages, scarce infrastructure and other challenges.
“It’s not going away,” the official said about the president’s drive to acquire Greenland during his remaining three years in office.
Reporting by Steve Holland, Jeff Mason and Bo Erickson; Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Lisa Shumaker
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