CORONA Defense Secretary considering making COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military personnel

[Old Gray Mare]

"Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is considering making it mandatory for military personnel to get the COVID-19 vaccine once the FDA approves it on a non-emergency basis."

There is a podcast at link but I don't know how to embed it.

Skip down to red highlighted paragraph for CV info.
Fair use.

FEDERAL NEWSCAST
Defense Secretary considering making COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military personnel
Eric White@FEDERALNEWSCAST
June 16, 2021 10:57 am

To listen to the Federal Newscast on your phone or mobile device, subscribe in PodcastOne or Apple Podcasts. The best listening experience on desktop can be found using Chrome, Firefox or Safari.

• The intelligence community said it’s ready to embrace the hybrid work environment for its employees. Many IC agencies are notoriously inflexible when it comes to when and where their employees work. But things are changing now. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has a new telework policy. It allows employees to spend some time working at home on unclassified materials, and a few days a week in the office on classified work. Employees have the option of working on weekends or evenings when they do have to visit the office. (Federal News Network)
• The Defense Department has finally pulled the plug on the online collaboration tools it put in place to help employees telework during the pandemic. The service, called Commercial Virtual Remote, officially went dark last night. It was DoD’s version of Microsoft Teams — officials managed to get the cloud service up and running within just a few weeks at the start of the pandemic, and extended the stopgap solution several times amidst wild popularity — at its height, it had 2.3 million users. The military services and Defense agencies are now all transitioning to more permanent platforms that offer a fuller menu of Office 365 tools. That cloud transition is already mostly complete for the Air Force. The Navy doesn’t expect to wrap up until later this year.
• Marines in the intelligence community are eligible for a big payday if they decide to reenlist. The Marine Corps is offering reenlistment bonuses because the demand for qualified troops in the intelligence realm remains high for the foreseeable future. A sergeant who reenlists for six years may get an $87,500 bonus. Marine intelligence officers may be assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Fleet Marine Force, combatant commands or other billets.
• Four nominees for the Department of Veterans Affairs are stalled in the Senate. Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) has a hold on the nominees. One is the president’s pick to be deputy VA secretary. Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee. “We sit here and play these games of holding up nominees to fill critical agency departments. We can play them and play them and play them again, and we can say we’re doing it on behalf of the veterans; that is bull… you got it. Total bull.”
• The Army said it’s open to regularly reporting to Congress about missing firearms. Senate budget committee lawmakers pressed Secretary Christine Wormuth after a recent Associated Press report highlighted the disappearance of 19 hundred pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles that belonged to the military. Some of the weapons were used in street crimes across the country.
• Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is considering making it mandatory for military personnel to get the COVID-19 vaccine once the FDA approves it on a non-emergency basis. Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker said Austin is weighing such a decision as vaccine rates lag among some members of the armed forces. For instance, seventy-five percent of the Navy is fully vaccinated, but only one in two Marines has received a full dose. President Joe Biden previously said he would leave it to military leaders to decide whether to make the vaccine mandatory for troops.
• Military families should expect delays this moving season. After a tumultuous year for transitioning to new orders, the military is expecting a large demand on companies as service members start moving to new areas during peak season. The moving industry lost 20 to 30 percent of its labor during COVID-19. Civilians are relocating to new homes at high rates and many third-party freighters are out of business. It’s a perfect storm for those trying to get their household goods across the country. The Pentagon is working to ease business rules and build in more flexibility to orders to mitigate the issues. (Federal News Network)
• The Office of Personnel Management is studying whether to update the job applications for sensitive government positions to root out domestic terror threats. The changes are being considered as part of the White House’s new National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. The departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security are similarly working to improve screening and vetting processes for military and law enforcement personnel. The White House said training and resources will be provided to state and local governments, as well as some private companies, so they can also screen their employees.
• Attorney General Merrick Garland’s whole-of-society approach to domestic terrorism also includes lots of government. The Department of Homeland Security said its joining the effort. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that for the first time, DHS designates domestic violent extremism as a national grant priority. The department makes $77 million available to state and local governments for domestic terrorism prevention and response. The grants and partnership development come through DHS’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships.
• The Chief Data Officers Council is working on a playbook that’ll tie up lessons learned from members. The CDO playbook will give an overview of all the compliance activities that chief data officers must do. It’ll also look at best practices for CDOs to engage in the ongoing Federal Data Strategy. CDO Council Chairman Ted Kaouk said agencies are standing up CDO offices at different levels of maturity. “It’ll be different at different agencies. Each agency has different needs, obviously. But we think that there are a couple of trends that are emerging about the roles that CDOs can play.”
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency is standing up a data exchange, as part of a larger enterprise data analysis and modernization initiative. The data exchange is in its prototype phase, but looks to provide a scalable platform for data analysis that would help the agency meet its mission. FEMA’s chief information officer said the data exchange will allow the agency to integrate data from multiple IT systems.
• Updating the nearly seven year old law governing agency cybersecurity reporting is a top priority for the new federal CISO. Chris DeRusha has been the federal chief information security officer since late January and already knows that updating the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) is a top priority. DeRusha told Federal News Network cybersecurity is much different today than in 2014, which is when Congress passed the FISMA Modernization Act. He said assessing performance to drive real progress needs to be based on the ever changing threats agencies face. Lawmakers also seem open to updating FISMA as the topic came up during several recent cyber-focused hearings.

Link to source:

Defense Secretary considering making COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for military personnel | Federal News Network

In today's Federal Newscast, with vaccine rates lagging among some members of the armed forces, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is reportedly weighing whether or not to make it mandatory.

federalnewsnetwork.com

 

[Dozdoats]

Betraying America | Frontpagemag

Betraying America
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the New Democrat Order.

Mon Jun 14, 2021

No institution in America – from government offices to schoolrooms to corporate boardrooms and beyond – is safe today from the poisonous racism of Critical Race Theory and the “1619 Project” which posit that United States history is rooted in slavery and white supremacy, and that “whiteness” is an incurable disease. The institution whose subversion poses the greatest threat to our national security is the military, now overseen by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a determined advocate of these repulsive anti-American views.

Austin has required both Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project as core elements of the Pentagon’s military training programs – concealing their sinister agendas under the innocuous-sounding “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” label. He has ordered a purging of the military ranks of what he calls “extremists,” defined as opponents of these noxious views and supporters of Donald Trump and the Capitol protest of January 6th. This transformational focus of our military forces is the Biden administration’s answer to the growing threat of a heavily-militarized China - a purging of “whiteness” and patriotic pride from the ranks of our frontline defenders.

Lloyd Austin III, nominated in late 2012 for CENTCOM commander by President Barack Obama, who openly sought the “fundamental transformation” of America, spent his eight-year tenure politicizing the military command. When Austin retired from active duty with the U.S. military in 2016, he was a four-star general. He spent the next few years in the private sector as a founder and/or board member of various corporations until last December, when President Biden nominated him for the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Senate subsequently confirmed Austin on January 22 by a vote of 93-2, making him the first black Defense Secretary in American history, and also the most radical – even though most black Americans are patriots and not radical.

Austin was a natural choice for an administration that seems to value the skin color, gender and politics of its appointees over all other characteristics, and – like the President, the Vice President, and the Democratic Party generally – views America as a nation so scarred by its racist history that nothing short of a radical transformation would make it worthy of celebrating and defending. Like Obama, Austin is intent on transforming the American military with dangerous consequences for the 330 million Americans whose mission it is to defend.

During Austin’s Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, he vowed to rid the U.S. military of the many “racists and extremists” that allegedly have infiltrated it. “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies,” he said. “But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Or, if they preside over those ranks. When the military command divides its soldiers along racial and gender lines, demonizing some and making permanent victims out of others, the divisive effects of such guidelines can have a devastating impact on unit cohesion and troop morale. When this training includes videos lionizing Democrat presidents like Obama and Clinton as civil rights heroes but omits the gains made by black, Asian and Hispanic Americans under Trump, further seeds of division are sewn in the ranks. And when a maliciously false history of America as a nation born in slavery in 1619 is presented as truth, and the true American founding in 1776 as an avatar of equality and freedom is erased, the consequences for morale are destructive and dangerous.

If your military commanders tell you that your country was a racist nightmare from its inception, how does that affect your calculation as a 19-year-old when you are considering risking your life to defend it?

On April 9, 2021, Secretary Austin issued a memorandum announcing the establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group (CEWG) to spearhead the military’s witch-hunt to locate and stamp out “extremism” in its ranks.

To lead the CEWG, Austin appointed as his senior adviser on Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a black American named Bishop Garrison, who has made no secret of his profound contempt for former President Trump and the scores of millions of people who voted for him. In July 2019, for example, Garrison said in a tweet: “Support for him [Trump], a racist, is support for ALL his beliefs. He’s dragging a lot of bad actors (misogynist, extremists, other racists) out into the light, normalizing their actions. If you support the President, you support that.” “There is no room for nuance with this,” Garrison added. “There is no more ‘but I’m not like that’ talk.” This is the man in charge of purifying our military.

Austin's decision to appoint Garrison to head the CEWG is even more significant in light of the fact that Garrison is a vocal supporter of the 1619 Project. Garrison put forth a passionate defense of the 1619 Project in an August 2019 essay in which he wrote that America's “hatred of communities of color and other vulnerable groups” is “deeply rooted in slavery, the treatment of African slaves, and the continued struggle of the black American community for equal treatment.” No acknowledgement, of course, of the tremendous contributions to racial equality for blacks in the founders’ declaration of equality for all, the ultimate sacrifices made by President Lincoln and 350,000 Union soldiers to free the slaves, or the white majorities in Congress who passed the Civil Rights Acts. Instead: “Now, arguably more than at any time in recent history, we need to recognize that extremism, racist policies, and white supremacy stand as existential threats not only to American life but to the future of our country and others around the globe,” added Garrison. No evidence needed of racist policies of white supremacy or the “existential threats” they are alleged to pose to America and the globe.

Of course, Austin claims preposterously that the CEWG “is not about politics or political views.” Yet, nearly all of the panel's 18 members supported Joe Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 elections. “And that,” observes author Daniel Greenfield, “makes this look even more like a political purge of the military by a radical administration.” Greenfield further points out that no fewer than 6 of the CEWG's 18 members are radical Islamists, including a Pakistani national, who also view the United States as a racist cesspool. Training films shown to the troops under Austin’s leadership feature an anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter leader who conducted a pogrom in Los Angeles’s Jewish quarter, attacking synagogues and voicing support for the terrorist organization Hamas.

By no means is the CEWG the only vehicle by which Lloyd Austin has set out to purge America's military of members who would dare to hold political opinions that differ from his. In his early days as Secretary of Defense, he ordered hundreds of former President Trump’s appointees from at least 31 Pentagon advisory boards and panels, to resign.

Central to the worldview of the race-obsessed new Defense Secretary is a belief that racism is America's most salient and enduring feature. That belief animates Austin's passionate crusade to impose racial “diversity” – by force – upon the military that he oversees. As Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last month about Austin, he “believes there’s a sense of urgency here. The time is now to start to grow that [nonwhite] talent and develop that talent and provide opportunities for that talent to continue to advance of the ranks.” A worthy objective if “diversity” is not a cover for recruiting non-whites who share Austin’s racist views. Of course, there are no racial barriers for non-whites who wish to enter the armed services.

A more pressing question is whether “diversity,” which already has no barriers, should be the primary goal for an institution whose main purpose is to defend a nation rather than to serve as a social laboratory for leftwing dogmas. If “whiteness” and “white supremacy” are perceived as the chief national security threats – as President Biden has recently said, into what category does that put our real global adversaries, Communist China and Islamist Iran?

Biden, Austin, and members of the administration generally, have already made it clear that the scary catch-all term “extremist” refers not to Islamic fundamentalists or Antifa anarchists, or pro-Chinese infiltrators (none of whom the current administration regards as a national security problem) but to the 75+ million supporters of former President Trump, Republicans, and anyone who resists the anti-white racism currently rampant in our political discourse.

Austin’s remarks about extremists in our midst were a clear reference to the January 6 protest at the Capitol, which Democrats denounced as an “armed insurrection” even though there were no arms found, and therefore no insurrection. Under pressure from Black Lives Matter radicals, the incident was also denounced absurdly as a “white supremacist coup.” The incident itself was, in fact, far more “peaceful” than the more than 600 riots conducted by Democrat supporters and encouraged by Democrat mayors over the summer of 2020.

snip for length - see the whole thing at the link if you can stand it. Betraying America | Frontpagemag

 

[Jubilee on Earth]

Well, I suppose that’s one way of getting rid of all the Trump supporters and conservatives in the military.

 

[155 arty]

Betraying America | Frontpagemag

Betraying America
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the New Democrat Order.

Mon Jun 14, 2021

No institution in America – from government offices to schoolrooms to corporate boardrooms and beyond – is safe today from the poisonous racism of Critical Race Theory and the “1619 Project” which posit that United States history is rooted in slavery and white supremacy, and that “whiteness” is an incurable disease. The institution whose subversion poses the greatest threat to our national security is the military, now overseen by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a determined advocate of these repulsive anti-American views.

Austin has required both Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project as core elements of the Pentagon’s military training programs – concealing their sinister agendas under the innocuous-sounding “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” label. He has ordered a purging of the military ranks of what he calls “extremists,” defined as opponents of these noxious views and supporters of Donald Trump and the Capitol protest of January 6th. This transformational focus of our military forces is the Biden administration’s answer to the growing threat of a heavily-militarized China - a purging of “whiteness” and patriotic pride from the ranks of our frontline defenders.

Lloyd Austin III, nominated in late 2012 for CENTCOM commander by President Barack Obama, who openly sought the “fundamental transformation” of America, spent his eight-year tenure politicizing the military command. When Austin retired from active duty with the U.S. military in 2016, he was a four-star general. He spent the next few years in the private sector as a founder and/or board member of various corporations until last December, when President Biden nominated him for the position of U.S. Secretary of Defense. The Senate subsequently confirmed Austin on January 22 by a vote of 93-2, making him the first black Defense Secretary in American history, and also the most radical – even though most black Americans are patriots and not radical.

Austin was a natural choice for an administration that seems to value the skin color, gender and politics of its appointees over all other characteristics, and – like the President, the Vice President, and the Democratic Party generally – views America as a nation so scarred by its racist history that nothing short of a radical transformation would make it worthy of celebrating and defending. Like Obama, Austin is intent on transforming the American military with dangerous consequences for the 330 million Americans whose mission it is to defend.

During Austin’s Senate confirmation hearing on January 19, he vowed to rid the U.S. military of the many “racists and extremists” that allegedly have infiltrated it. “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies,” he said. “But we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Or, if they preside over those ranks. When the military command divides its soldiers along racial and gender lines, demonizing some and making permanent victims out of others, the divisive effects of such guidelines can have a devastating impact on unit cohesion and troop morale. When this training includes videos lionizing Democrat presidents like Obama and Clinton as civil rights heroes but omits the gains made by black, Asian and Hispanic Americans under Trump, further seeds of division are sewn in the ranks. And when a maliciously false history of America as a nation born in slavery in 1619 is presented as truth, and the true American founding in 1776 as an avatar of equality and freedom is erased, the consequences for morale are destructive and dangerous.

If your military commanders tell you that your country was a racist nightmare from its inception, how does that affect your calculation as a 19-year-old when you are considering risking your life to defend it?

On April 9, 2021, Secretary Austin issued a memorandum announcing the establishment of the Countering Extremism Working Group (CEWG) to spearhead the military’s witch-hunt to locate and stamp out “extremism” in its ranks.

To lead the CEWG, Austin appointed as his senior adviser on Human Capital and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a black American named Bishop Garrison, who has made no secret of his profound contempt for former President Trump and the scores of millions of people who voted for him. In July 2019, for example, Garrison said in a tweet: “Support for him [Trump], a racist, is support for ALL his beliefs. He’s dragging a lot of bad actors (misogynist, extremists, other racists) out into the light, normalizing their actions. If you support the President, you support that.” “There is no room for nuance with this,” Garrison added. “There is no more ‘but I’m not like that’ talk.” This is the man in charge of purifying our military.

Austin's decision to appoint Garrison to head the CEWG is even more significant in light of the fact that Garrison is a vocal supporter of the 1619 Project. Garrison put forth a passionate defense of the 1619 Project in an August 2019 essay in which he wrote that America's “hatred of communities of color and other vulnerable groups” is “deeply rooted in slavery, the treatment of African slaves, and the continued struggle of the black American community for equal treatment.” No acknowledgement, of course, of the tremendous contributions to racial equality for blacks in the founders’ declaration of equality for all, the ultimate sacrifices made by President Lincoln and 350,000 Union soldiers to free the slaves, or the white majorities in Congress who passed the Civil Rights Acts. Instead: “Now, arguably more than at any time in recent history, we need to recognize that extremism, racist policies, and white supremacy stand as existential threats not only to American life but to the future of our country and others around the globe,” added Garrison. No evidence needed of racist policies of white supremacy or the “existential threats” they are alleged to pose to America and the globe.

Of course, Austin claims preposterously that the CEWG “is not about politics or political views.” Yet, nearly all of the panel's 18 members supported Joe Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 elections. “And that,” observes author Daniel Greenfield, “makes this look even more like a political purge of the military by a radical administration.” Greenfield further points out that no fewer than 6 of the CEWG's 18 members are radical Islamists, including a Pakistani national, who also view the United States as a racist cesspool. Training films shown to the troops under Austin’s leadership feature an anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter leader who conducted a pogrom in Los Angeles’s Jewish quarter, attacking synagogues and voicing support for the terrorist organization Hamas.

By no means is the CEWG the only vehicle by which Lloyd Austin has set out to purge America's military of members who would dare to hold political opinions that differ from his. In his early days as Secretary of Defense, he ordered hundreds of former President Trump’s appointees from at least 31 Pentagon advisory boards and panels, to resign.

Central to the worldview of the race-obsessed new Defense Secretary is a belief that racism is America's most salient and enduring feature. That belief animates Austin's passionate crusade to impose racial “diversity” – by force – upon the military that he oversees. As Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said last month about Austin, he “believes there’s a sense of urgency here. The time is now to start to grow that [nonwhite] talent and develop that talent and provide opportunities for that talent to continue to advance of the ranks.” A worthy objective if “diversity” is not a cover for recruiting non-whites who share Austin’s racist views. Of course, there are no racial barriers for non-whites who wish to enter the armed services.

A more pressing question is whether “diversity,” which already has no barriers, should be the primary goal for an institution whose main purpose is to defend a nation rather than to serve as a social laboratory for leftwing dogmas. If “whiteness” and “white supremacy” are perceived as the chief national security threats – as President Biden has recently said, into what category does that put our real global adversaries, Communist China and Islamist Iran?

Biden, Austin, and members of the administration generally, have already made it clear that the scary catch-all term “extremist” refers not to Islamic fundamentalists or Antifa anarchists, or pro-Chinese infiltrators (none of whom the current administration regards as a national security problem) but to the 75+ million supporters of former President Trump, Republicans, and anyone who resists the anti-white racism currently rampant in our political discourse.

Austin’s remarks about extremists in our midst were a clear reference to the January 6 protest at the Capitol, which Democrats denounced as an “armed insurrection” even though there were no arms found, and therefore no insurrection. Under pressure from Black Lives Matter radicals, the incident was also denounced absurdly as a “white supremacist coup.” The incident itself was, in fact, far more “peaceful” than the more than 600 riots conducted by Democrat supporters and encouraged by Democrat mayors over the summer of 2020.

snip for length - see the whole thing at the link if you can stand it. Betraying America | Frontpagemag

Just say no !!!!

 

[NoDandy]

Our nation is in so much trouble !

 

[rob0126]

If there are any active duty military reading this thread:

You know what the vaccines are for, because you know what it has done to multitudes of people.

Are you next?

Think about that.

 

[jed turtle]

Got to infect the military before China invades...

 

[TFergeson]

If there are any active duty military reading this thread:

You know what the vaccines are for, because you know what it has done to multitudes of people.

Are you next?

Think about that.

There are. Iv'e had the inkling that one way or the other this would be coming down the pipe. I have 2 alternatives to fall back on, the medical exemption and if that fails, the religious exemption. Last ditch is to ignore the order. The third option will be the end of my career and result in my separation, but if it wasnt this it was probably going to be the fact that I am a racist white supremacist trump voter conservative alt right Christian nazi. Or whatever the term is today.

This eventuality is why we are scrambling to put something in place to fall back on should/when I get purged from the .mil.

 

[Cardinal]

There are. Iv'e had the inkling that one way or the other this would be coming down the pipe. I have 2 alternatives to fall back on, the medical exemption and if that fails, the religious exemption. Last ditch is to ignore the order. The third option will be the end of my career and result in my separation, but if it wasnt this it was probably going to be the fact that I am a racist white supremacist trump voter conservative alt right Christian nazi. Or whatever the term is today.

This eventuality is why we are scrambling to put something in place to fall back on should/when I get purged from the .mil.

You might be altogether safer gettin out.

 

[vestige]

Our nation is in so much trouble !

Yes it is.

And we (you and I) are right in the midst of the mess.

 

[NoDandy]

Yes it is.

And we (you and I) are right in the midst of the mess.

Well brother, I am not sure what part of the Commonwealth you reside in. As for me, I feel safer where we are, than most other parts of the state.

Stay well brother ! Watch your 6 !