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Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times,

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday rejected an emergency request by health care workers seeking a religious exemption to the state of Maine’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

The court’s decision not to grant the immediate relief for the health care workers until it decides to review the case, means the state’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate will take effect while litigation continues in lower courts.

The Supreme Court did not explain its action—typical in emergency appeals. But three conservative-leaning justices provided a dissenting opinion saying they would have granted the emergency request.

Maine is not offering a religious exemption to its COVID-19 mandate in hospital and nursing homes, which means if workers opt to not take the vaccine, they risk losing their jobs. The deadline for health care workers to be vaccinated in the state was by the start of October, but the state government said it would not enforce the mandate until Friday.

“This case presents an important constitutional question, a serious error, and an irreparable injury. Where many other States have adopted religious exemptions, Maine has charted a different course,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a dissenting opinion (pdf), joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito.

“There, health care workers who have served on the front line of a pandemic for the last 18 months are now being fired and their practices shuttered,” he added.

“All for adhering to their constitutionally protected religious beliefs. Their plight is worthy of our attention.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett in a concurring opinion said that the court has “discretionary judgment” about whether to take up an emergency appeal, adding that she believes the case at hand, which is the first of its kind, would benefit from a full briefing.

“Were the standard otherwise, applicants could use the emergency docket to force the Court to give a merits preview in cases that it would be unlikely to take—and to do so on a short fuse without benefit of full briefing and oral argument,” she wrote in an opinion joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

“In my view, this discretionary consideration counsels against a grant of extraordinary relief in this case, which is the first to address the questions presented.”

Since 1989, Maine had required health care workers be vaccinated against various diseases. But state removed all non-medical exemptions, including religious exemptions, from mandated vaccines in 2019 because of falling vaccination rates. A referendum challenging the law in 2020 was rejected.

Lawyers for the health care workers who challenged the vaccine mandate in Maine argued that having no religious exemption was a violation of their right to free exercise of religion under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

They said their objection was in part because the vaccine was developed with the involvement of “fetal cell lines that originated in elective abortions.” While published data of the composition of the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines show no fetal cells, the companies used fetal cell lines in either the testing stages for production stages of their vaccines.

The Liberty Counsel, which filed the lawsuit, says it is representing more than 2,000 Maine health care workers, some of whom were fired from their jobs Friday. There are nine unnamed plaintiffs in the suit.

A federal judge had earlier rejected the bid for an exemption, and later, a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in October let the ruling stand.

Apart from Maine, two other states—New York and Rhode Island—have vaccine mandates for healthcare workers that do not have religious exemptions.

Liberty Counsel, in a statement, noted that the states’ executive orders banned employers “from even considering the sincere religious beliefs of employees.” The group said that Maine Governor Janet Mills “threatened to revoke the business license of any employer that granted an employee a religious exemption.”

“Gov. Mills has ordered employers to disobey the federal law known as Title VII. However, states do not have the authority to order employers to disobey Title VII federal employment law that prohibits religious discrimination,” the group said Friday.

Mills, a Democrat, said in a statement in August when announcing the vaccine mandate, “Health care workers perform a critical role in protecting the health of Maine people, and it is imperative that they take every precaution against this dangerous virus, especially given the threat of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

“With this [COVID-19 vaccine] requirement, we are protecting health care workers, their patients, including our most vulnerable, and our health care capacity.”

Gorsuch, in his dissent, challenged the state’s mandate, writing, “No one questions that protecting patients and health care workers from contracting COVID–19 is a laudable objective. But Maine does not suggest a worker who is unvaccinated for medical reasons is less likely to spread or contract the virus than someone who is unvaccinated for religious reasons.

“Nor may any government blithely assume those claiming a medical exemption will be more willing to wear protective gear, submit to testing, or take other precautions than someone seeking a religious exemption.”

Amid persisting rumors that China is eyeing a future military presence at abandoned American bases inside Afghanistan, the neighboring country of Tajikistan has confirmed China has been approved to construct a special forces base on the Tajik-Afghan border.

The Chinese military outpost will reportedly be located in the eastern Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province in the Pamir mountains, coming at a moment of heightened border security as thousands of Afghans have in recent months sought to flee hardline Taliban rule.

However, while it’s Chinese funded, a Tajik parliament spokesman said the base will host a special forces unit of the national police, and rejected that Chinese troops would be directly deployed there. But the question of joint training operations wasn’t ruled out.

However, according to US media arm RFERL, China is being allowed to expand its military footprint elsewhere in the central Asian country: 

In a separate development, the Tajik government has offered to transfer full control of a preexisting Chinese military base in the country to Beijing and waive any future rent in exchange for military aid from China, according to a communique sent from the Chinese Embassy in Dushanbe to Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry and seen by RFE/RL’s Tajik Service.

Additionally the publication concludes, “The two developments paint a picture of a growing Chinese military footprint in the Central Asian country as Beijing and its neighbors in the region turn their attention toward an increasingly tenuous security situation in Afghanistan since the Taliban’s mid-August takeover.”

RFERL quotes a geopolitical analyst at London’s Royal United Services Institute, Raffaello Pantucci, to say of the new special forces base: “This decision to build such a facility is one of only a few known examples for China around the world.”

Underscoring that China is being greenlighted to build more outposts in Tajikistan after constructing the new base, an official of Tajik parliament’s lower house, Tolibkhon Azimzoda, confirmed the facility will be under direct command of Tajikistan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, which in turn will allow China to be exempt from all customs duties for machinery and equipment. 

Despite the Tajik government currently downplaying that Chinese forces would be deployed on the border at the new base, it’s highly likely that at the very least there will be training deployments there in support of local Tajik security forces. Interestingly, this comes at a time that central Asian countries are also allowing an increased Russian presence amid the ongoing security breakdown in nearby Afghanistan.

Authored by Jessica Corbett via CommonDreams.org,

As Facebook faces a firestorm for changing its corporate name to Meta amid heightened scrutiny over how the tech titan harms humanity, Greek economist and Progressive International co-founder Yanis Varoufakis on Friday called out the company for stealing the moniker of a global anti-capitalist think tank.

Varoufakis, in a tweet, took aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who announced the new name at a conference Thursday, as the social media company contends with widespread criticism of its practices thanks to revelations from former-employees-turned-whistleblowers.

“Hands off our mέta, Our Center for Postcapitalist Civilization, Mr. Zuckerberg,” tweeted the former Greek finance minister, who is on the think tank’s advisory board. “You, and your minions, wouldn’t recognize civilization even if it hit you with a bargepole.”

The mission page of mέta’s website explains that “we are already in the early stages of an era that can only be described by that which it succeeds: we live in postcapitalist times. They may turn out dystopic, utopic, or anything in between.”

“Through art and research, argument, and poetry,” the site says, “mέta (the abbreviation of our Our Center for Postcapitalist Civilization) works to break with a dystopic present to imagine the world anew—to grasp our present historical moment so as to help radical progressive movements find a path from the emergent dismal postcapitalism to one worth fighting, and living, for.”

Along with Varoufakis, other advisory board members include scholar Noam Chomsky, musician Brian Eno, filmmaker Ken Loach, economist James K. Galbraith, and philosopher Slavoj Žižek.

Hands off our mέta, our Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation https://t.co/t9aIR0ahSC, Mr Zuckerberg. You, and your minions wouldn’t recognise civilisation even if it hit you with a bargepole pic.twitter.com/aleOplqo12

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) October 28, 2021

In addition to the social network Facebook, Meta also owns the photo- and video-sharing platform Instagram as well as the messaging application WhatsApp.

Meta is such a low effort, first draft name that multiple consulting companies definitely got paid millions of dollars to come up with

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) October 28, 2021

As Common Dreams reported Thursday, while Zuckerberg celebrated the new corporate name for the company, tech ethicists and branding professionals warned the world not to be “fooled” by the move.

Things were set to get awkward at the G20 summit in Rome on Friday as President Joe Biden and France’s Emmanuel Macron held their first face-to-face meeting since last month’s AUKUS security pact between the US, Australia and the UK was unveiled – which effectively overnight cut Paris out of a multi-billion dollar submarine deal with Canberra.

Sitting alongside Macron at the French Embassy to the Vatican, Biden conceded that the US had acted in a “clumsy” manner and attempted to assure France of the administration’s loyalty as a key ally. Perhaps taking the easy way out and playing the part of the ‘forgetful old man’ (convenient for the White House at this moment) – Biden feigned ignorance, telling Macron after the prior fiery French denunciations that he was personally “under the impression that France had been informed long before that the [French-Australian sub] deal would not go through.”

“I, honest to God, did not know you had not been,” Biden insisted to the French leader. It’s not the first time the White House gave what essentially is a hands in the air “but we didn’t know” response – though crucially nothing of the AUKUS deal is set to change, including France being left out in the cold on the sub deal. Instead the United States will now provide nuclear sub technology to Australia’s military.

Also missing was a direct apology by Biden, which angry French officials have been seeking, according to a description of Biden and Macron’s initially greeting each other and the ensuing meeting: 

Biden and Macron greeted each other with handshakes and shoulder-grabs before their meeting. Biden did not formally apologize to Macron, but conceded the US should not have caught its oldest ally by surprise with the Australian deal.

“I think, what happened was to use an English phrase, what we did was clumsy,” Biden said, adding the submarine deal “was not done with a lot of grace”..

And more:

“I was under the impression that certain things had happened that hadn’t happened,” Biden claimed. “I was under the impression that France had been informed long before.”

“I honest to God did not know you had not been,” Biden insisted.

Biden meets with French President Macron for the first time since the AUKUS submarine deal sparked a rift between the 2 countries https://t.co/KFwbf4ny6H pic.twitter.com/JOstXueQ0D

— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) October 29, 2021

Biden later emphasized that “there is no place in the world where we can’t work together,” and described optimistically that “we have no older, more loyal and decent ally than France.” 

“I want to make it clear, France is an extremely, extremely valued partner — extremely. It is a power in and of itself,” Biden said.

Macron it seems was content to accept the perhaps ‘half apology’ – later telling reporters of the Biden meeting that “we clarified together what we had to clarify” and “now what’s important is to be sure that such a situation will not be possible for our future … This is an extremely important clarification.” Or rather it seems France – in the end holding no cards – has little choice but to take whatever explanation the US gives, while trying to save face as it quietly licks its wounds in humiliation.

Authored by Finian Cunningha, via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

As far as Ukraine goes, Ankara seems to be setting the pace for NATO’s deepening involvement in the country’s war…

Russia is investigating reports of Turkish attack drones being deployed for the first time in Ukraine’s eight-year civil war. The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) under the command of the Kiev regime claimed that the drones were used earlier this week in combat against ethnic Russian rebels.

This is a potentially dramatic escalation in the smoldering war. For it marks the direct involvement of NATO member Turkey in the conflict. Up to now, the United States and other NATO states have been supplying lethal weaponry to the Kiev regime to prosecute its war against the breakaway self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

American, British and Canadian military advisors are also known to have carried out training missions with UAF combat units. Britain is in negotiations to sell Brimstone missiles to the Ukrainian navy.

But the apparent deployment of Turkish attack drones is a potential game-changer. Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov hinted at the graveness when he announced Wednesday that Moscow was carrying out urgent investigations about the purported participation of Turk-made Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.

Previously, Lavrov rebuked Turkey to stay out of the conflict and to not feed Ukrainian hostilities.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that NATO’s support to the Kiev regime was posing a direct threat to Russia’s national security. The Kremlin’s assessment can only be more alarmed on the back of NATO member Turkey being now implicated as one of the war’s protagonists. In all likelihood, Turkish military personnel would be required to assist in operating the drone flights.

The war in the Eastern Ukraine region known as Donbass has persisted for nearly eight years. It was triggered after a NATO-backed coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 against an elected government that had been aligned with Russia. The new regime was characterized by anti-Russian politics and Neo-Nazi ideology. The ethnic Russian population of Donbass rejected the Western-backed regime, leading to a war. The ethnic Russian people of Crimea likewise voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation with which it has centuries of shared history. Kiev’s forces are accused of aggression and potential war crimes from shelling civilian homes and infrastructure. This week an oil depot in Donetsk was bombed by a drone. It is not clear if the drone was one of the Turkish weapons.

Western governments and NATO accuse Russia of invading Eastern Ukraine and of annexing Crimea. Moscow rejects that as an absurd distortion of reality. Such vilification is no doubt partly why Russia cut off diplomatic links last week with NATO.

Russia says it is not a direct party to the Ukraine conflict. It points to the Minsk Accord negotiated in 2015 with France and Germany which clearly states that Russian is not a party to the conflict. The accord obliges Kiev to grant autonomy to the Donbass region. However, the Kiev regime has stubbornly refused to implement the Minsk deal, even though the incumbent President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on election promises to pursue a political settlement.

The emerging Kiev-Ankara axis is not out of the blue. Turkey has been voicing increasing support for Ukraine. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently made provocative declarations about not recognizing Crimea as Russian territory and returning the peninsula to Ukraine.

Last week too saw the visit to Kiev by US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin during which the Pentagon chief lambasted Russia as the “aggressor” in the Ukraine conflict. Austin also truculently told Moscow that the latter’s red line about Ukraine joining NATO was null and void. As if to underline the Pentagon’s determination, two nuclear-capable B-1B bombers flew from Texas to the Black Sea where they were warded off by Russian fighter jets.

Then there was also the NATO defense ministers’ summit in Brussels last week out of which a new “master plan to contain Russia” was unveiled. German defense minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer went on to say nuclear weapons were needed in Europe to contain Russia. Her comments provoked a furious response from Moscow which summoned the German military chargé d’affaires in protest.

Moreover, it is highly pertinent that France and Germany – the two other guarantors of the Minsk Accord along with Russia – have remained silent despite the continual violations of the ceasefire in Donbass by the Kiev regime’s forces. Every week, there are offensive shelling and mortar attacks across the Contact Line hitting civilian sites in Donetsk. Yet Paris and Berlin keep a stony silence. This is but a silent complicity in condoning aggression.

All in all, the signals amount to a bright green light from Washington and its NATO allies to the Kiev regime to step up hostilities against the Donbass. That ultimately means Russia.

Now with reports of Turkish drones augmenting the firepower of the Ukrainian Armed Forces that evinces NATO effectively at war on Russia’s doorstep.

Turkey’s drones have been deployed in several recent conflicts: in Libya in support of the Tripoli-based government against the Russian-backed forces of Khalifa Haftar; in Syria against the Russian-backed Syrian government forces; in Nagorno-Karabakh in support of Azerbaijan against Armenia. In the latter war, Ankara’s drones were believed to have played a decisive role in giving Azerbaijan the upper hand.

Ironically, when Russian leader Vladimir Putin hosted Erdogan last month in Sochi the two appeared to engage in an amicable exchange. The Turkish president has also recently chafed at relations with NATO over alleged interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. There has been chatter of Ankara moving towards Moscow in geopolitical alignment. That seems way off the mark.

For as far as Ukraine goes, Ankara seems to be setting the pace for NATO’s deepening involvement in the country’s war. Given NATO’s collective defense pact and already fraught relations with Moscow, mercurial Erdogan is tempting a very dangerous fate.