Lost Kingdoms of Africa – Nubia

BBC (2013)

Film Review

For thousands of years Nubia, the traditional name for northern Sudan, dominated the region now known as the eastern Sahara (at the time the Sahara desert was still lush grass lands fed by Nile tributaries). A source of slaves, dancing girls and wrestlers for both the Egyptian and the Roman empire, Nubia built more pyramids than Egypt.

With no written language, Nubian culture dates back to 5,000 BC. The earliest Nubian rock gong (archeologists have found hundreds)* dates back 7,000 years, and archeologists have found hundreds of them. Nubia also has the earliest pottery in Africa, which predates the appearance of agriculture.

Nubian rock drawings of cattle from 5,000-6,000 BC were discovered in 2012. The region is also home to the oldest mud brick building in Africa, dating from 2,000 BC. Built of solid mud, it forms the base of a temple and is surrounded by palaces for royalty or priests. Archeologists have also discovered a giant funeral mound 100 meters across containing 300 victims of human sacrifice. It’s believed they were intended as retainers for a Nubian king in the afterlife. Five thousand cattle skulls are found on the edge of the mound, also intended to accompany the king in the afterlife. The adjacent cemetery is 10,000 years old and contains 30,000 graves.

The first Egyptian conquest of Nubia (which the Egyptians called Kush) occurred in 1500 BC. Following their defeat, the Nubians were required to pay tribute in the form of gold, cattle, ivory, monkeys and skins. The Egyptians also forcibly imported** Nubian wrestlers for entertainment. The Egyptians eventually claimed an enormous rock outcrop in northern Nubia  as an Egyptian holy site. Taking the shape of a cobra with a crown (a sign of Egyptian royalty), it’s called Jebel Barkel.

Nubia’s colonial status continued until 754 BC, when a Nubian pharaoh seized the Egyptian throne. Nubians (referred to as the “Black Pharaohs”) ruled Egypt as the 25th Dynasty until 656 BC.

The Nubians established the first iron industry in Africa around 800 BC (around the same time it appeared in Britain). Writing had appeared by the 2nd century BC, although the Nubian language has yet to be deciphered.

*A rock gong is a natural rock formation opportunistically adapted to produce musical tones. Archeologists believe it performed the same function as drum language.

**In the Nubian language “nuba” means slave.

***By 700 BC, there’s clear evidence in the archeological record that the Sahara Desert was encroaching on Nubian pastoral land.

Walt Zlotow

Donald Trump will inherit Joe Biden’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine on January 20.

Biden has made clear he’ll never negotiate an end to his failed war that includes any concession whatsoever to Russian security interests. Biden is furnishing Ukraine with billions more in weaponry to prevent a Ukraine collapse on his watch. He’ll be damned if he allows a US defeat in Ukraine in his last year to bookend his accepting a US defeat in Afghanistan in his first year.

That presents a huge dilemma for Trump whose who routinely called for a quick end to this senseless war during his successful campaign.

 But just like in his first term, Trump may be trumped on negotiating peace and disengagement by the US war party. Trump achieved nothing in terms of détente with North Korea, China, Iran, Russia or cutting America’s bloated 34,000 troop presence in NATO Germany. He may also fall victim to the same dread Biden has of being president when Ukraine does sue for peace, losing four provinces, committing to neutrality between East and West, including no NATO membership as the basis for a ceasefire.

Trump’s situation recalls the dilemma both JFK and LBJ faced over US involvement in America’s lost war in Vietnam 611 years ago.

JFK inherited his predecessor Ike’s 700 ‘advisors’ and Vietnam and ironclad US commitment to keep South Vietnam free from communism. By the end of 1962 Kennedy hiked the advisors to 11,000, incurring over 50 deaths in their non-combat role.

But by spring of 1963 JFK, more a realist than fanatical Cold Warrior, understood that no US presence could save South Vietnam from defeat. He began to secretly plan for a full US withdrawal. In May, 1963 he had Defense Secretary Bob McNamara draw up a withdrawal plan. Kennedy made this plan official policy with his National Security Action Memorandum 263, dated October 11, 1963. It called for withdrawal of 1,000 advisors by December and rest of the now 16,000 personnel out by the end of 1965. The 2 year gap to complete the US pullout was due to waiting till after his reelection to avoid political pushback from Republicans that could jeopardize his reelection.

This was US policy on the day JFK died. Had Kennedy lived there is no basis for believing he would not follow through on his pledge to end US military involvement in Vietnam.

When Lyndon Johnson became president, he immediately cancelled National Security Action Memorandum 263. His administration, Congress, the military and compliant national media all rallied around the fiction of complete continuity between JFK and LBJ on Vietnam. Johnson began pouring in more advisors before pivoting to direct US warfare after he hyped the August, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident to militarize US action against North Vietnam. LBJ famously remarked ‘I’m not going to be the first US president to lose war’.

In so doing Johnson destroyed his presidency and his legacy, along with over 58,000 soldiers killed, 150,000 inured, of which 21,000 were permanently disabled.

That is the dilemma Trump most likely is grappling with today. Will he follow thru with his campaign pledge to end America’s proxy war with Russia without total victory for our Ukraine proxies? Or will Trump succumb to the tragic Lyndon Johnson syndrome of continuing to pour hundreds of billions in US treasure, if not US lives, into a lost cause America should never have provoked.

Based upon Trump’s sorrowful record of caving to the war party in his first term, the latter course is the safer bet. But we should all work to push President Trump on Ukraine to channel JFK, not LBJ.

[…]

Via https://nuclear-news.net/2024/12/19/1-b1-on-ukraine-war-will-trump-channel-jfk-or-lbj/

Kit Klarenberg

In the immediate wake of the Syrian government’s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state or will splinter into smaller states as did Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, a move that ultimately led to a bloody NATO intervention. Moreover, who or what may take power in Damascus remains an open question. For the time being at least, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.

As Reuters reported on December 12, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister.”

However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last.

Multiple reports show that HTS has informed local and international business leaders that when in office, it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control.”

As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells MintPress News, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt it wasn’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country is that economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides when “securing key economic assets will be vital to societal reconstruction, and therefore a matter of priority”:

We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with U.S. imperialism, and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence [that] other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”

‘Reconstruction Project’

Syria’s economic independence and strength under Assad’s rule and the benefits reaped by average citizens, as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the decade-long proxy war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”

Per a 2018 U.N. investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class, and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.

A U.N. Human Rights Council report two years later noted pre-war Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.

At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors and, even then, was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, the U.S. military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation would only worsen with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020.

Under its auspices, a vast volume of goods and services in every conceivable field were and today remain banned from being sold to or traded with any Syrian citizen or entity. The legislation’s terms explicitly state preventing attempts to rebuild Syria was its chief objective. One passage openly outlines “a strategy to deter foreign persons from entering into contracts related to reconstruction.”

Immediately after coming into effect, the Syrian pound’s value collapsed further, sending living costs skyrocketing. In a blink, almost the entire country’s population was left barely able to afford even the bare essentials. Even mainstream sources typically approving of belligerence towards Damascus cautioned of an inevitably impending humanitarian crisis. However, Washington was neither concerned nor deterred by such warnings. James Jeffrey, State Department chief of Syria policy, actively cheered these developments.

Simultaneously, as Jeffrey subsequently admitted to PBS, the U.S. was engaged in frequent, secret communication with HTS and actively assisting the group – albeit “indirectly” due to the faction’s designation as a terrorist entity by the State Department. This followed direct approaches to Washington by its leaders, including Abu Mohammed Jolani, former leader of Al Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra. “We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad,” HTS reportedly said.

Given this contact, it may be no coincidence that in July 2022, Jolani issued a series of communications about HTS’ plans for future Syria, containing multiple passages in which finance and industry loomed large. Directly foreshadowing the group’s recent pledge to “adopt a free-market model,” the extremist mass murderer discussed his desire to “open up local markets to the global economy.” Many passages read as if they were authored by representatives of the International Monetary Fund.

Coincidentally, Syria, since 1984, has refused IMF loans, a key tool by which the U.S. Empire maintains the global capitalist system and dominates the Global South, ensuring ‘poor’ countries remain under its heel. The World Trade Organization, of which Damascus isn’t a member either, plays a similar role. Accession to both would go some way to cementing the “free-market model” advocated by HTS. After over a decade of deliberate, systematic economic ruin, geopolitical risk analyst Firas Modad tells MintPress News:

They have no choice. They need Turkish and Qatari backing, so [they] will need to liberalize. They have no capital whatsoever. The country is in ruins and they desperately need investment. Plus, they hope liberalizing may attract some Saudi, Emirati or Egyptian interest. It’s impossible for Syria to rebuild using its own resources. The civil war might resume. They are acting out of necessity.”

‘Shock Therapy’

In Syria’s protracted political and economic dismantling, there are eerie echoes of the U.S. Empire’s destruction of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. During that decade, the multiethnic socialist federation’s breakup produced bitter wars of independence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia – encouraged, financed, armed, and prolonged every step by Western powers. Belgrade’s perceived centrality to these brutal conflicts and purported complicity in and sponsorship of horrendous war crimes led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against what remained of the country in May 1992.

The measures were the harshest ever levied in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed, while shortages of goods – including water – were perpetual. Yugoslavia’s once thriving independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed that the average citizen had “become accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.”

Surveying the wreckage years later, Foreign Affairs noted that sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how “in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated,” and such measures can serve as uniquely lethal “weapons of mass destruction” against civilian populations of target countries. Yet, despite such desolation and misery, throughout this period, Belgrade remained resistant to privatization and foreign ownership of its industry or to the pillaging of its vast resources. The overwhelming majority of Yugoslavia’s economy was state- or worker-owned.

Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country’s socialist system.

[…]

From March – June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade’s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.

NATO’s bombing laid the foundations for Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s removal via a C.I.A.- and National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored color revolution in October of the following year. In his place, a doggedly pro-Western government advised by a collective of U.S.-sponsored economists took power. Their explicit mission was to “make an economic environment favorable for private and other investments” in Belgrade. Ravaging “shock therapy” measures were deployed the moment they assumed office, to the further detriment of an already immiserated and impoverished population.

In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms” to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.

‘Internal Repression’

Does such a fate await Damascus? For Pawel Wargan, Political Coordinator at the Progressive International, the answer is a resounding “yes.” He believes the country’s story is familiar “to those who study the mechanisms of imperialist expansion.” Once its defenses are fully neutralized, he foresees the country’s industries being “bought-up at bargain sale prices as part of market ‘reforms,’ which transfer yet another chunk of humanity’s wealth to Western corporations”:

We’ve witnessed the well-rehearsed choreography of imperialist regime change: a ‘tyrant’ is overthrown; backers of national sovereignty are systematically and viciously repressed; with tremendous, but hidden, violence, the country’s assets are chopped and diced and sold to the lowest bidder; labor protections are discarded; human lives are cut short. The most predatory forms of capitalism take root in every crevice and pore that emerges in the collapse of the state. This is the agenda of structural adjustment policies enforced by the World Bank and IMF.”

Alexander McKay echoes Wargan’s analysis. Now “free,” Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line but “also severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts have been undertaken throughout the post-1989 era of U.S. unipolarity. It was well underway in Russia during the 1990s “until the slow turn around in policy started in the early 2000s under Putin”:

The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The U.S. and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.”

[…]

Via https://www.mintpressnews.com/privatizing-syria-us-plans-to-sell-off-a-nations-wealth-after-assad/288843/

H P Lovingcraft

Bank accounts in Vietnam will have their online transactions halted and the transfer and withdraw of cash at ATMs blocked beginning January 1, 2025 if the account holder fails to register their biometrics (fingerprints and facial recognition) under regulations from the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and Vietnamese law. A similar move in Kuwait will de-bank those who fail to get fingerprinted by the start of the new year as well.

“From January 1, 2025, bank accounts that have not been reconciled or updated with biometrics will have their online transactions stopped. This is the reason why banks are simultaneously implementing programs to encourage customers to update their biometrics,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Updating biometric information and identification documents is now mandatory for customers based on important regulations of the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and current laws. According to Decision 2345/QD-NHNN, SBV has required that from July 1, 2024, some types of online transactions of individual customers must be authenticated by biometric identification.”

The smartphone application is being expanded into what is described as a ‘super app’, a one-stop-shop for digital biometric identification, internet ID, medical ID and perhaps, in the future, a social credit score control grid.

“VNeID, short for Vietnam Electronic Identification, integrates various features across multiple sectors and is expected to become a national super application for digital transformation,” Tuoitre News said Saturday.

Importantly and perhaps alarmingly, the app was developed on the foundation of a vaccine passport during the Covid pandemic.

“Developed by the Ministry of Public Security’s National Center for Population Database in September 2019, VNeID, a mobile application, was built to check health and travel declarations amid the COVID-19 outbreaks,” Tuoitre News said Saturday.

There’s a carrot and stick approach to the move as well. While those who do not submit to biometric scans of their fingers and faces will be financially shut down, those who submitted their scans may earn financial rewards and prizes.

“…some banks have ‘rewarded’ customers who successfully update their biometrics. Specifically, MSB gives a 50.000 e-voucher to customers’ accounts after successfully updating from 4/12. This program applies to the list of customers who have not updated their biometrics as of 30/11. In total, there are 10.000 e-vouchers with a total value of up to 500 million VND for customers who do,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Techcombank also applies a program to give 50.000 Techcombank Rewards points to the first 6.000 customers who update their biometrics each week, until the end of December 31, 2024.”

Getting one’s biometrics scanned by certain dates even allows one the possibility of winning an iPhone, a device which, not surprisingly, can run the digital ID app the biometrics are linked to.

“VPBank also launched a gift program for customers who complete the biometric data update before January 23, 2025, with a total gift value of up to nearly 7 billion VND. Accordingly, each customer who successfully authenticates biometric data and updates new identification documents on both the VPBank app or at the VPBank transaction counter will receive a code to participate in the weekly lucky draw, the special gift is an iPhone 1 Promax worth 16 million VND/unit. The bank also gives a cashback e-voucher code worth 35 VND to all customers who successfully update biometrics and identification documents,” Vietnam Law Newspaper said Thursday. “Agribank also implements a similar program when customers collect biometrics on the Agribank app will have the opportunity to receive iPhone 16 and many other gifts. BIDV decided to give away 130.000 VND (including 30.000 VND in transfer money and 100.000 VND in discount vouchers for movie watching, taxi calling, and shopping services on the BIDV app) if customers register and complete authentication. BIDV said that this program will be continuously deployed to December 29, 2024, applicable to the 10.000 customers who install biometrics the earliest each week.”

[…]

Via https://hellboundanddown.com/2024/12/17/following-kuwait-vietnam-to-de-bank-people-who-do-not-get-their-biometrics-scanned-for-digital-id-app/

Dr Eddy Betterman

The only way to prevent a “climate disaster” from unfolding is for the governments of the world to impose lockdowns and other restrictions on humanity that dwarf those unleashed during the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) “pandemic.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) claims that economy-crushing measures resulting in energy and food shortages, job losses and a total collapse of Western civilization are necessary to stop climate change.

What happened during COVID was just a test run for much worse “climate lockdowns” to come, according to the IMF. Scheduled disruptions that stop ordinary people, but not the elite, from living their lives are necessary to keep planetary temperatures stable, we are told.

“Under a ‘climate lockdown,’ governments would limit private vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling,” explained Mariana Mazzucato, an “agenda contributor” at the World Economic Forum (WEF), back in 2020.

“To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.”

A new normal forever

When the talking-heads at the IMF and the WEF started talking this way at the height of COVID, the general public started to get a bit concerned that the lockdowns and mask mandates for COVID would be extended beyond the “pandemic” into everyday life as part of a “new normal.”

We got that new normal, but the restrictions are still in limbo. It appears that one side, the globalist establishment, is pushing for full-scale global climate tyranny while the other, led by President-elect Donald Trump, appears to be dismantling the new normal.

Regardless, the IMF in a recent message issued a “call for global climate action” that far surpasses even the worst horrors of the “pandemic.” Tyrannizing the global population in this manner is how the IMF plans to maintain control amid a changing political and financial climate, which is what they are worried about losing.

Here is the propaganda video the IMF released earlier this month:

The global elite have about five years to achieve their drastic “net zero” ambitions. If they fail, the political climate will certainly shift away from them being in charge, which is what they are desperately trying to prevent from happening.

“To be clear, there is no evidence whatsoever to support the idea of the ‘climate cliff,’ primarily because there is no evidence of a causation relationship between carbon emissions and global warming,” reports explain. “In fact, there is no evidence that human industry has a warming effect on the climate whatsoever.”

“The real reason for climate controls and carbon taxes seems to have far more to do with wealth redistribution from developed nations over to developing nations. The agenda is about centralising the control of national wealth as well as individual liberties and private property. And the IMF, of course, would like to be one of the institutions at the helm of that wealth management empire.”

The climate tyranny agenda is centered on Western countries alone, just to be clear. Eastern countries will be conveniently exempt because what this is really all about is tearing down Western civilization and replacing it with something far worse.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/12/18/imf-severe-restrictions-needed-avoid-climate-disaster/

Luke Andrews

DailyMail.com heard from another New Jersey resident who said they had developed a stuffy nose and swollen runny eyes after the drones flew over their home.

But doctors told DailyMail.com after reviewing the symptoms that it was ‘extremely unlikely’ these sicknesses were linked to the drones.

They pointed out it was now the start of flu season and other illnesses like Covid, RSV and norovirus become more common around this time.

Dr Thomas Moore, an infectious diseases expert, said: ‘It is entertaining to try to blame sickness on the condensation trails of planes or drones, but the actual explanation is much more mundane.

‘It is respiratory virus season, and just being around humans at this time of year can cause you to get ill.’

Dr Bill Schaffner, also an infectious diseases expert, added: ‘This is not being beamed down from above but spread among ourselves, and it is not too late to get vaccinated.

‘I don’t think we have to worry about a relationship between the drones and symptoms of people down below.

‘We are at the beginning of respiratory virus season, and a lot of people will start to develop coughing, sneezing and not feeling well just by co-incidence.’

People’s reports come as unexplained drone sightings have mounted throughout the Northeast, which have been spotted over military bases and airports in recent weeks.

The FBI, White House and officials from other agencies have said there is no evidence the drones pose a threat to public safety.

An official from the FBI added: ‘I think there has been a slight over-reaction.’

Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas added: ‘If there is any reason for concern, if we identify any foreign involvement or criminal activity, we will communicate with the American public accordingly.’

In one case, a woman in the tri-state area posted about her illness on TikTok with the caption: ‘I’m not saying it has anything to do with the drones, but I’m also not NOT saying it has anything to do with the drones.’

In the video, she said: ‘Do you live in the tri-state area and are you sick like me?

‘My sickness started out as pains like everywhere, my entire body hurt, my hair hurt… and then it just kept morphing into different stages.

‘I had the water works dripping from my nose where I went through two boxes of tissues in as many days, where all I could do was kinda go from the couch to the bed and back again… and then we moved on to the stuffed up sinuses.’

In another video posted yesterday, Andrea — an artist in New York City’s Lower East Side — also linked her illness to the drones.

‘I’m sick with this sinus congestion because of the drones over New Jersey and Staten Island, it’s pretty close to here. I think that’s what it is.

‘Every night I am feeling worse and worse, and last night was like the worst night of them all, and it turns out the drones were shooting, they were shooting, I think that’s what caused my sinus infection.’

And in a third video that New Jersey resident Shawna posted, she said: ‘Anyone else really f****** sick and coughing up a lung right before Christmas and it didn’t start happening until the drones showed up?’

Illnesses tend to surge around this time of year because of a mixture of people staying indoors more to beat the cold and mixing more over the Christmas and New Year periods.

Latest surveillance suggests about 5.4 percent of Covid tests were detecting the virus in the week to December 7, up from the 3.9 percent a month ago.

Hospitalizations for flu-like illness are also rising, up 14 percent to 3.3 percent of patient admissions in the week to December 7 compared to 2.9 percent two weeks beforehand according to data.

And there are also similar upticks being detected in cases of RSV and norovirus.

New Jersey is also one of the eight states in the US that are now recording ‘moderate’ levels of flu-like illness, a sign the state’s flu season is starting to take off.

Dr Moore added: ‘Just breathing can actually cause someone to exhale invisible droplets that can travel at least 18 inches from someone’s face, while speaking can cause the droplets to travel three feet.

‘These droplets can carry respiratory pathogens like viruses, and can then be breathed in by others causing an infection.

‘At the same time, the cold weather causes people to spend more time crowded together indoors, raising the likelihood that they will breathe in the droplets and get an infection.’

He said the symptoms people were describing sounded similar to the flu or another respiratory infection.

The drones first appeared over New Jersey’s skies more than a month ago, and are now spotted every night — occasionally more than 50 at any one time.

Biden has tasked the federal Government with establishing the cause of the apparent ‘swarms’, and has struggled to offer an explanation.

The aircraft have been spotted in coastal areas, around the Picatinny Arsenal and over Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14198585/new-jersey-drones-resident-mystery-health-symptoms.html