By Rhoda Wilson

What does life look like in 15-minute cities that have already been realised in the Netherlands? How can we recognise the transformation of our cities into smart cities and, in particular, how can we prevent it? Dutch activist Maartje van den Berg discusses this in a recent interview with KLA.

Last week alternative news channel KLA interviewed Maartje van den Berg to discuss “smart cities” and 15-minute cities in Holland.

“These so-called ‘smart cities’ and ‘15-minute cities’ of ours [in The Netherlands] are being sold to us as being ‘green’ and ‘healthy’.  And at the same time, people should live in their own neighbourhoods and be happy being in them where everything is in their own surroundings and you don’t need to go out.  And if you need a car, because they are made car-free zones, and if you need to go out [of your neighbourhood] you’d better share a car with somebody else.  They’ve made hubs outside cities where you can share a car or share bicycles,” she said.

This is not only being planned, she explained, it is already being implemented in small towns and municipalities all over Holland.  And in 2025, in three months, Amsterdam is going to be introducing “zero carbon emissions” zones. Where “diesel trucks and vans are not allowed to enter our cities,” van den Berg said.  At the same time, they are building hubs where shared cars will be stored and accessed.

Last year a vehicle-free zone was trialled in Amsterdam. For six weeks, the major road in Amsterdam was blocked with physical barriers to stop vehicles from entering or leaving Amsterdam.  “A lot of people got really annoyed but also really alarmed because ambulances were not able to pass through and a lot of accidents happened,” she explained.

The municipality of Amsterdam had to concede that their pilot project using physical barriers to “make Amsterdam more ‘green’ and ‘healthy’” had failed.  So instead, the municipality decided to introduce “intelligent entrance” into Amsterdam.  “Intelligent entrance” means installing “licence plate recognition cameras,” van den Berg said.

“On 1 January 2025, 14 municipalities will introduce the ‘zero carbon emissions’ zones and [people will] get fined if they enter [these zones] with a diesel truck.”

Licence Plate Recognition (“LPR”), also known as Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), is an image-processing technology used to identify vehicles by their licence plates.  Over the years we have seen councils and local governments in several countries introducing ANPRs.

As van den Berg said, “the same thing is going in Germany with the cities. They [are] also introducing zero emission zones.  And they [are] doing the same in Belgium and France, and in Portugal and Spain … The financing is coming from the European Union for all these programmes called Horizon 2020. … and the Green Deal.  All the [EU] governments signed the Green Deal … so they’re all applying these policies.”

This year we have also seen Oxford City Council forge ahead with what they refer to as “bus gates.”   As in Amsterdam, Oxford also previously piloted physical barriers to create low-traffic neighbourhoods (“LTNs”)which were met with protests from residents.  London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan has for years been attempting to implement his version of LTNs called Ultra Low Emission Zone (“ULEZ”) which has also been met with resistance.  And the Isle of Man is planning to install ANPR at its entry and exit points.

At the same time that municipalities or local governments are installing cameras in Holland, they are removing parking spaces, van den Berg said.  It is already difficult to find parking spaces but “by the end of 2025, 10,000 [parking] places [will be] removed … and new parking permits are no longer being issued.”

It’s not only driving privately owned vehicles that they are trying to control, if not abolish. Smart meters, for example, are being installed in people’s homes, she said.

While rolling out tolls of surveillance, in preparation for switching from gas to electricity, the Dutch government is also building “transformer houses.”  “In the coming years, there are going to be 50,000 ‘transformer houses’ being installed in residential areas,” van den Berg said.  “People don’t like it.”  The electricity transformers are noisy and emit electromagnetic fields.

Previously all homes were powered by gas and the Netherlands was significantly impacted by the destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline and, as with Germany, it affected the country’s energy supply. Additionally, van den Berg said, “We had big gas fields in the north of Holland and they said they were going to close them.  And they have been closed.”

Why would they do this when the gas supply was so obviously disrupted? “They want to make this transition, energy transition, towards electricity,” she said, even though there is not enough electricity to supply the country’s needs.

“That’s why we have … areas without electricity supply.  [ ] These wind turbines only give electricity when the wind is blowing.  And there is not always sun, very much so in the winter times.  So, [“renewable” energy sources such as wind and solar] is not working out and people are realising more and more that it is not a steady electricity grid.”

Because Holland is a relatively small land area, the wind turbines and large solar farms are close to people’s homes.  “A lot of people are warning about the health risks,” she added.

Because Holland is a relatively small area of land, the wind turbines and solar farms are close to where people’s homes are.  “A lot of people are warning about the health risks,” she added.

All over Holland data centres are being built, she said.  “There’s a big one being built, a mega data centre [for] Google, in the north of Holland.  Google bought land to build their data centre.”

Not only is the “transition” to electric, digital and state surveillance an excellent control grid, we have to wonder if economies are deliberately being destroyed. Van den Berg agrees. “It is about wrecking the economy,” she said.  “That’s what Agenda 2030 is about.  It’s about wrecking our economy.”

“Because these ‘transitions’ like the digital transition, the energy transition, the smart cities, they’re not working out.  And it is meant to wreck because this is Agenda 2030 and The Great Reset.”

There is a Dutch Government plan or roadmap called the ‘National Strategy on Spatial Planning and the Environment’.  Currently, it is a draft report. “It was written in 2021 during [the covid] lockdown,” van den Berg said.

“The report says that “Holland is going to meet urgent social challenges such as climate warming and climate change, and we need to go to digital connectivity and accessibility for all and housing, which is a really big problem for Holland. And you see that our government [and] our municipalities are applying this new strategy plan,” she said.

“And this is where one of our hopes lies,” she said.

She explained, “Each local government or municipality had to write their own strategy for spatial planning and the environment.  All these transitions and Agenda 2030 are in these new strategies.  And so, people can go to their Town Hall, together with local parties who serve our interests, and they can speak in the Town Hall and say, ‘Listen, we don’t want it [ ] solar panels on our streets, we don’t want transformer houses’ and people are actually really doing it.  They’re going to their Town Halls.”

There is also a significant citizen movement to use cash.  Van den Berg explained, “We always say, ‘Don’t buy your food and drink at a supermarket, only pay cash and if you cannot pay cash – leave’.  And say to the people, ‘Please cash is also a valuable way of paying and you should allow it and we won’t come back’.”

“And it’s really working out because a lot of places are letting people pay with cash more and more.”

As well as reading their local government’s strategy on special planning and the environment, van den Berg recommends people read Jacob Nordangård’s book ‘Rockefeller: Controlling the game’ and Kees Van Der Pijl’s book ‘Pandemie van de angst: Opstap naar een totalitaire maatschappij?’ (‘Pandemic of Fear: A Step Towards a Totalitarian Society?’), which has been translated into English. Unfortunately, we were not able to find where the English translation can be purchased online.

[…]

Via https://expose-news.com/2024/10/28/15-minute-cages-being-built-in-holland/

The People’s Voice

At least thirty US school children whose parents were told the COVID mRNA shots were “safe and effective” died suddenly and unexpectedly in the US this week as the death toll continues surging among the vaccinated and boosted.

Many of the children died of medical emergencies including cardiac arrest and strokes as doctors warn they are now regularly witnessing “once-in-a-lifetime” disorders in children.

“This is the new normal… turbo cancers, died suddenly. My friend lost three friends in one week! Turbo cancers like this were virtually non-existent before the COVID shots,” explained MIT scientist and vaccine researcher, Steve Kirsch.

How long before we as a society can have an open and honest discussion about what is happening to the Covid-vaccinated before our eyes?

Lillian Costello

13-year-old Lillian Costello of Norton, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday at the Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro.

According to a GoFundMe fundraiser, Lilly was a seventh-grade student at the Norton Middle School and a proud member of the Student Council. She also enjoyed being a member of the Photography Club and participated in cheerleading.

Finley Kruchten

Finley Kruchten suffered a “massive pulmonary embolism” while in class at Denmark High School in early October, according to his family’s GoFundMe page.

Finley was taken to Northside Forsyth Hospital and then to Northside Gwinnett Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Lucy Nash

Kentucky fourth grader Lucy Nash died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a cardiac arrest.

“On the first day of school Lucy collapsed and had a cardiac event,” a GoFundMe page for the family reads. “Her little brain went many minutes without oxygen while they were trying to save her life.”

Ovet Gomez-Regalado

Ovet Gomez-Regalado, a 15-year-old Kansas high school student, died two days after suffering a medical emergency. The football player collapsed suddenly on the field at practice.

The 15-year-old collapsed and died after performing 40 minutes of light drills, according to the school district in Hopewell, Virginia.

Leslie Noble

Meanwhile, staff at Franklin High School, Baltimore are mourning the sudden loss of 16-year-old Leslie Noble, a member of the school’s football team.

The teen died while participating in light drills during the first practice of the season on Wednesday in Reisterstown and experiencing a medical emergency.

“I saw a bunch of firetrucks, ambulances, and all I knew was they said that a child had collapsed on the field,” said Sharon Johnson, a staff member at Franklin High School.

Unfortunately, the long list of deaths continues, including unnamed victims whose families have requested their identities remain anonymous due to their age.

For example, a 14-year-old girl whose family requested anonymity suffered a medical emergency during a PE class in Houston. According to Marshall Middle School:

“Today was a very difficult day for the Marshall MS community. A student at Marshall Middle School suffered a medical emergency on campus today. EMS responded to the school quickly and the student was transported to the hospital. The student’s parents were quickly notified and responded to the school.”

However, in an email to parents, provided to us by a Marshall Middle School parent, the principal said, “One of our eighth-grade students died. This loss is sure to raise many emotions, concerns, and questions for our entire school, especially our students.”

[…]

Via https://thepeoplesvoice.tv/over-30-u-s-schoolchildren-died-suddenly-this-week-as-deaths-surge-among-covid-vaxxed/

By Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke

A judge in North Carolina has rejected a Freedom of Information (FOIA) claim for documents that almost certainly contain crucial evidence about the origin of COVID-19.

The case was brought by the transparency group U.S. Right to Know. The target of the request was the world’s most renowned expert on coronaviruses and godfather of gain-of-function experiments, Ralph Baric, Ph.D., who runs the Baric Lab at the University of North Carolina (UNC).

Baric is the brains behind the 2018 DEFUSE blueprint for making COVID-19-like viruses in the lab. The blueprint was designed in collaboration with Shi Zhengli, the Director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, at whose lab some of the work was to have been done.

DEFUSE was not the first project on which Shi and Baric worked together. In 2015, they created SARS viruses in a lab that could infect humans. At the time, Rutgers biologist Richard Ebright warned that the Shi-Baric experiments would cause a worldwide pandemic. He was sadly proven right.

While Shi and her laboratory have garnered significant attention, Baric has largely remained under the radar. This may be understandable, given that Shi’s lab is situated in the city where the pandemic originated; however, it is somewhat counterintuitive when one considers the availability of evidence.

On Sept. 12, 2019, shortly before the outbreak began in Wuhan, Shi’s lab deleted its entire virus database. Although this action is incriminating, the likelihood of obtaining any data from China has always been virtually nonexistent.

In contrast, for Baric, who falls under U.S. jurisdiction, the prospects of acquiring information should have been nearly certain — unless he was being shielded from scrutiny.

What makes the lack of interest in Baric — whether from the media, Congress, or any other oversight body — even more curious is that, as we report here for the first time, he has received at least a quarter of a billion dollars in U.S. taxpayer funding over the past two decades.

A further curiosity is that when Dr. Anthony Fauci learned of the likely lab origin of COVID-19 in January 2020 and convened his now infamous secret conference among supposed experts, Baric was notably missing.

It never made any sense why the world’s most prominent expert on coronaviruses was excluded from a crucial meeting at the highest levels of the U.S. government, whose reported intention was to learn more about the new virus.

When Fauci was asked about Baric, he claimed, under oath, that he had heard of the name but had never met the man.

It was later revealed, when Fauci’s schedules were released pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit against Fauci’s organization, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that not only did Fauci know Baric well, but that the two men had a long meeting in Fauci’s office shortly after the pandemic started. All these facts were hidden from the public.

When U.S. Right to Know started making FOIA requests for Baric’s data related to his collaboration with Shi, and with respect to the DEFUSE blueprint, they ran into a brick wall.

The transparency organization then sued for the data but was once again stymied by UNC at every step of the way. Eventually, the matter came before Alyson Grine, a judge for Orange and Chatham Counties in North Carolina, last week.

Shockingly, Grine sided with Baric and ruled that, but for a handful of useless documents, he would not have to hand over anything. U.S. Right to Know is now considering its legal options.

By analyzing the grants awarded to Baric over the past two decades, we can confirm that he has received taxpayer funding exceeding $262 million. This figure is based solely on grants awarded to Baric.

When considering other indirect funding sources, the actual amount may be significantly higher. Notably, Baric’s first multi-million dollar grant, awarded in 2005, was for the development of “Vaccine Candidates for the SARS Coronavirus.”

How is it possible for a government-funded scientist, who has received over a quarter of a billion dollars from taxpayers, to conceal the data obtained with those funds?

President Joe Biden’s hand-picked NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, has just announced that her organization prioritizes “integrity and transparency.” However, the continued funding of Baric, coupled with the lack of any effort to obtain the missing data, suggests that what she truly values is dishonesty and the concealment of facts.

However, there is another culprit. We already knew that the NIH, and the federal government more widely, is completely corrupt. This should not surprise anyone. It is the role of the judiciary to rein in the government and provide at least a semblance of checks and balances, and this is where Judge Alyson Grine from North Carolina comes into the picture.

As most legal practitioners will tell you, state judges are often worse than federal judges, and that is saying something. Regrettably, among an already disastrous pool of state judges, U.S. Right to Know somehow was unlucky enough to have drawn the worst possible individual to decide whether Baric could conceal his documents.

According to testimonials posted by Grine on her own website, she appears to be a social justice warrior focused on racial and equity issues. In other words, she is the least suitable individual to preside over a case that challenges the Deep State. Far from representing checks and balances against the Deep State, she is, in fact, a product of it.

Unsurprisingly, she was appointed by North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a democrat who advocates for so-called diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). But even if Grine were not a DEI judge, the mere fact that she both studied and later worked at UNC should have meant her recusal from the case.

There is simply no justification for government-funded scientists to conceal their data — data that the public has financed. An honest scientist would not only be eager but also proud to share their data.

Baric’s lawyers assert that he holds intellectual property rights over his data; however, even setting aside the question of how someone can claim proprietary rights based on taxpayer-funded projects, the fact that COVID-19 caused the deaths of 20 million people and damages of at least $30 trillion should have taken precedence over any intellectual property claims.

The irony that we are expected to believe COVID-19 originated in nature while simultaneously accepting that intellectual property rights are involved does not escape us.

One aspect we have not yet discussed is the role of the intelligence community and the U.S. Department of Defense in this matter. It is known that Shi and the Wuhan Institute of Virology worked for the Chinese Communist Party’s Thousand Talents Program, which aims to steal Western technological secrets for use by the Chinese government and military.

It is also known that a Chinese military scientist died when he mysteriously fell from the roof of Shi’s lab shortly after the pandemic began.

That scientist happened to be the first person in the world to register a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine on a timeline that would not have been possible unless COVID-19 had started earlier than the “official” timeline of December 2019.

Baric’s extensive cooperation with a known asset of the Chinese Communist Party is deeply concerning, and one cannot help but wonder whether this is part of the reason why his data remains concealed.

While it is now up to U.S. Right to Know to determine whether they can afford to take this matter to an appeals court, where hopefully more competent and less conflicted judges than Alyson Grine preside, it should be noted that U.S. Right to Know is a small organization with very limited resources.

At this juncture, it appears that our only hope lies in a potential new Trump Administration addressing this task. In the meantime, it should be evident to anyone with a modicum of common sense that Baric should not receive any further public funding as long as he continues to conceal data.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/taxpayers-paid-262-million-virologist-ralph-baric-wuhan-lab-court-rules-can-hide-data/

By Brandon Smith

Globalists as an organized entity have a habit of shifting their efforts between various false-front institutions in order to avoid significant scrutiny. For example, in 2020 they ramped up the fear machine on the covid pandemic and the World Economic Forum took a lead role in that effort. Klaus Schwab was all over the media using covid as an excuse to promote every authoritarian measure imaginable.

When that agenda failed (lockdowns blocked, mask mandates ignored, vaccine passports defeated and the CDC caught inflating vaccination numbers), the WEF and Klaus Schwab conveniently disappeared from the media radar.

When globalists tried to permanently establish ESG as a way of life for corporations, they introduced the Council For Inclusive Capitalism, run by Lynn de Rothschild and partnered with the Vatican. When ESG was exposed for what it really is (a bridge to full bore communism in which corporations enforce far left social engineering), the CIC vanished from the limelight as quickly as they appeared.

That said, there is one globalist group that has consistently been in the background during most of these operations – The Atlantic Council. Whenever there’s a propaganda push in play to misdirect the western public, whenever there’s a policy initiative to take away your freedoms, whenever there’s a regional war that might explode into a world war, I always end up finding the fingerprints of the Atlantic Council.

The council was deeply involved in covid propaganda from 2020 onward and they also have their hands in climate change propaganda, but their bread and butter is regional proxy wars.

In my recent article ‘Globalists Are Trying To Escalate The Ukraine War Into WWIII Before The US Election’, I outlined how the council is deeply interwoven into the escalation of the Ukraine war through their Eurasia Center and their Scowcroft Center. They have been stoking conflict in the region for at least a decade with the intention of drawing NATO forces into a direct confrontation with Russia.

In a report published by the Atlantic Council in 2014 titled ‘A Roadmap for Ukraine: Delivering on the Promise of the Maidan’, the group notes:

“Last fall, as Ukrainians massed on the Maidan to demand a better government and closer ties to Europe, the Atlantic Council began to mobilize on Ukraine. An Atlantic Council delegation visited Warsaw and Kyiv in March to map out our strategy, and during the visit of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to the Council that same month, we launched a one hundred- day campaign to galvanize the transatlantic community behind Ukraine’s democratic future in Europe.

As the crisis worsened, we convened at the highest levels, making vital connections between Ukrainian, American, and European policymakers and thought leaders. We deployed our substantial expertise to launch “red team” exercises that anticipated Russia’s actions and outlined strategies to respond to likely scenarios. Our rapid response working groups (“tiger teams”) made recommendations on issues fundamental to Ukraine’s success. An Atlantic Council delegation delivered this report, which brings all of these findings together, to Prime Minister Yatsenyuk and other leaders in Kyiv the first week of July. The findings are also being shared with American and European policymakers…”

On Ukraine’s security policy, the Council advised both NATO and Ukraine officials.  The document goes on to outline how NATO could covertly and overtly engage with Ukraine to strengthen their chances of joining with the EU over time; a move which Vladimir Putin claims was one of the very reasons for his invasion of the Donbas.  Finally, the paper described how NATO could foster a proxy war against Russia through Ukraine without directly declaring war on Russia.  As the Council states:

“Russia’s aggression provides an opportunity of strategic clarity and urgency that should be used to expedite building a robust, modern, and capable Ukrainian defense and security establishment…”

I believe the Atlantic Council is a root instigator behind every globalist scheme to trigger a larger war between the East and the West. Their ideal scenario seems to be the creation of a proxy conflict that acts as a first domino in a chain that leads to world war, a bit like DARPA’s “Linchpin Theory” which I have written about in the past.

To be clear, the council is not only interested in Ukraine and Russia. They’re happy to embroil Americans in a larger war wherever they can.

This past week, the Atlantic Council has published another war scenario report dealing with Iran titled ‘The Future of US Strategy Toward Iran: A Bipartisan Roadmap For The Next Administration’. The goal of the report is to influence a new defense doctrine with a mission to insert the US directly in the middle of the burgeoning war between Iran and Israel.

As the report states:

“In simple terms, the goal was to develop a US policy toward Iran, not a Democratic or Republican one. We termed the effort the Iran Strategy Project (ISP). And when we began recruiting experts to join our advisory committee and working group, we did so with two overriding principles in mind. First, ideological diversity and bipartisanship could not just be talking points—they were requirements. The wild swings of US policy toward Iran over the last decade created significant policy gaps that Iran exploited to more rapidly advance its regional malign influence and nuclear program…”

The assumption in the notion of a “bipartisan” posture on Iran is that there is common ground to be harvested between conservatives and leftists when it comes to war in the region. To be sure, the Democrats and the Neo-Cons are in full agreement on most things.  But Neo-Cons are not conservatives and the political base on both sides of the aisle has little interest in another war in the Middle East.

The wild card here is Trump. The establishment media reports that Iran hacked the Trump campaign’s election strategies and gave them to the Harris camp. There are also rumors spread by US intelligence agencies that Iran was working to have Trump assassinated.  Are these claims true? There’s little public evidence available to prove it.

Maybe Iran really wants to take Trump down. Or, maybe this is part of a plot to ensure that Trump backs a full blown war with Iran should he win the election.  Trump has said repeatedly that he intends to end the war in Ukraine upon his return to the White House. This would ruin over a decade of planning by the Atlantic Council. But what if they can sink the US into a different conflict with the same potential for a world war? That’s what Iran is – Another linchpin.

The council asserts that they will seek to tie the US inexorably to the fate of Israel by positioning a permanent American military force in the region:

“Deterring the threat posed by Iran and its proxies requires a multifaceted approach that includes maintaining an adequate military presence in the region and a willingness to respond with appropriate force to attacks on US interests and those of US allies; working with allies to enhance cooperation on regional security; collaborating with partners on ways to reduce conflicts and instability that create openings for Iran to exploit; and expanding security cooperation beyond traditional realms.”

They also want the US to create its own red line declaration; if Iran obtains nukes, then Iran must be destroyed (keep in mind, it is confirmed that Israel already has its own nuclear arsenal).

“The United States needs to maintain a declaratory policy, explicitly enunciated by the president, that it will not tolerate Iran getting a nuclear weapon and will use military force to prevent this development if all other measures fail. To support this policy, the United States should refrain from stressing that it does not seek conflict with Iran; announce that it will conduct yearly joint exercises with Israel, such as Juniper Oak.”

Juniper Oak was a joint live fire war exercise organized by US and Israeli defense forces in 2023 which is viewed as a theoretical trial run for an attack on Iran. War between Iran and the US has been a sought after outcome for globalists for a long time, but it seems to me that they are particularly interested in roping Trump into the agenda.  The following statement from the Atlantic Council report is highly suspicious:

“Because assassination plots against current or former US officials are a direct threat to US sovereignty, and in order to enhance deterrence, the United States needs to consider a standing policy of a kinetic military response against Iran in retaliation for a successful—or even close to successful—plot…”

This seems to be a direct reference or message to Trump concerning the rumors of Iran contracting his death. Given there have been at least two assassination attempts on Trump so far, I would not be surprised if after he wins the election new information is suddenly released linking Iran to at least one attack.  I would also expect a major terror attack in the US within the next year (real or false flag).

This is not to say that Trump wants war; I can’t make that claim one way or the other yet.  To his credit he was one of the few presidents that avoided the expansion of US conflicts during his first term. But as I warned back in 2016, he had a LOT of ghouls in his cabinet whispering in his ear. Keeping the Atlantic Council (among others) away from the Oval Office and Trump should be a priority in 2025.

The council appears to be positioning for a war under either administration – A war with Russia under Harris or a war with Iran under Trump.  I’m not a fan of Islamic fundamentalism, but a conflict between the US and Iran is exactly what the globalists want because it can easily metastasize like a cancer.

The council notes that there are already 40,000 US troops spread across the Middle East, and that this force could be reorganized into a contingent for rapid response to Iran, along with new troops added over time. Of course, they acknowledge that Iran’s situation has changed over the years, with far closer strategic associations with China and Rusia:

“This requires recognition that Iran’s relationship with Russia and China has evolved in a manner that makes it difficult to convince either country to support new economic or military restrictions against Iran…”

In other words, the council understands that a war with Iran could escalate into a larger conflict with Russia and perhaps China.

The fight between Israel and multiple nations in the Middle East does not concern me. I have no stake in the success of either side. I’m an American and I care about America, but there are powerful people out there that WANT us to become invested in foreign wars. They want us to pick a side and they want us to cheer for American troops being sent to fight and die over these foreign conflagrations.

The greater concern here is that one day these proxy wars and regional wars will explode into something that lands on our doorstep. In the past Americans have been lured into apathy when it comes to foreign entanglements because we never have to deal with them in our daily lives. They’ve always been out of sight and out of mind. In the next war, we may not have that luxury.

[…]

Via https://alt-market.us/the-atlantic-council-has-big-plans-for-a-war-between-the-us-and-iran/

Edward Jenner

Introduction

This series hopes to explore the history of British Antivaccinationism and Vaccine Scepticism.  It is divided into 7 main eras: the period of Inoculation, 1721-1798; the introduction of vaccination, 1798-1853; the imposition of mandates, 1853-1902; the remaining history of the National Antivaccination League, 1902-1972; DTP Vaccine Scepticism 1972-1998; Andrew Wakefield and vaccines cause autism, 1998-2019, and Covid 19, 2020 to present. This section forms part 2 looking at Jenner and his critics.

The ‘Discovery’ of Edward Jenner

In 1796, Edward Jenner performed his first vaccination. This was on an 8 year old boy called James Phipps. In this experiment, Jenner inserted into the arm of the boy matter from the teat of a cow with cowpox using a lancet. Cowpox was a disease of the cow’s udder, which caused pustules to appear on that area. It was transmitted to humans via the action of milking a diseased udder.

Jenner’s justification for doing this was that cowpox allegedly prevented smallpox. There had long been a rumour among dairy maids that they could not contract smallpox, if they had contracted cowpox. In fact, the official story or mythology of Edward Jenner states that he overheard this idea from a dairy maid when he was a teenager and was taken with testing it (this is narrated by Jenner’s sycophantic biographer, John Baron).

Jenner became a country doctor in Berkeley, Gloucestershire. He became a member of the Royal Society after writing a paper about cuckoos that was accepted. In 1796, when Jenner performed his first inoculation with vaccine virus (later known as vaccination)  he wrote a paper outlining his theory of the origins of cowpox (he believed that it originally came from the horse, and was transferred to the cow via those who dressed diseased horse heels). He then outlined the theory that the cowpox infection prevented the smallpox infection. He used some examples of those he met in his practice who had had a cowpox infection, on whom inoculation (deliberate infection with smallpox) would not ‘take’. The failure of inoculation to take was interpreted as immunity to smallpox. He also outlined his test on James Phipps, first inserting cowpox matter and several weeks later performing inoculation on the boy. As the inoculation did not take Jenner interpreted this as proof of immunity.

The Royal Society rejected Jenner’s paper. They believed it did not have enough evidence to support it and that it might tarnish Jenner’s reputation. Jenner was still determined to publish, so he added more evidence – increasing the number of cases of vaccination. (A detailed discussion of the differences between Jenner’s first and second versions of the paper can be found in Crookshank’s book). He published it in 1798.

Pearson and Woodville

Two important figures took up Jenner’s vaccination idea, George Pearson and William Woodville. Both these doctors were vital in spreading the practise of vaccination and backing it ideologically.

William Woodville was the lead doctor at the Smallpox Hospital in London, so it can be imagined that he had significant influence over the treatment and prevention of smallpox. He took to the idea of vaccination and ran a significant number of tests. Woodville’s tests had many flaws, in particular that he sometimes attempted cowpox and smallpox inoculation very close together. However his testing was more extensive and better documented than Jenner’s.

Pearson sought to set up an institute for vaccination. This annoyed Jenner, as he was not consulted in advance regarding the project. Pearson also distributed vaccine lymph early on in the process to allow other doctors to perform vaccination, which was important as Jenner did not have vaccine lymph to give out on many occasions.

Jenner had a significant number of supporters in the medical profession. When he was put forward for a government reward in 1802, a large number of doctors spoke in his favour. The profession adopted Jenner’s theory very quickly, and it spread widely. This included across Europe, the United States, as well as many colonised countries.

Jenner’s Critics

Jenner had three main critics of his theory when it was first published. These three men were Benjamin Moseley, John Birch, and William Rowley. None of these men were antivaccination in the sense that we would understand this term today, i.e. they were not opposed to all artificial inculcating of disease. They were supporters of the old method of inoculation and sceptical of Jenner’s attempt to replace it. At this time, there were no high profile critics of both inoculation and vaccination (this tendency would only develop post vaccination mandate, from 1853).

These three men opposed the award to Jenner by the British government during the hearing on this issue in 1802.

Benjamin Moseley

Moseley was a doctor who was well known for other writings prior to his involvement in the vaccination controversy,  in particular writings relating to the Caribbean.

He opposed Jenner’s method early on, and published more than one book relating to the issue. He considered that a ‘cowpox mania’ had taken over the medical profession. In his book, A Treatise on the Luis Bovilla, Or Cow Pox, he made several arguments. He stated there was no affinity between cowpox and smallpox, so there was no specific property of cowpox which meant it could prevent smallpox. He also argued that cowpox was not necessarily a mild disease. He pointed to the ulceration that often accompanied the practise.

John Birch

John Birch was a surgeon who was opposed to vaccination. In his text, Serious Reasons for objecting to the Practice of Vaccination he discusses the Royal Commitee on Vaccination. He argued that there was a large number of vaccine failures but that most of these were not admitted, and that the Committee tried to soften the language by stating that these cases only apparently had cowpox.

William Rowley

William Rowley was an active practitioner of inoculation. As such it could be said that he had a degree of vested interest in defending the practise against the new threat of vaccination. He considered inoculation to be a very safe practise that rarely led to death when performed competently. Vaccination, on the other hand, he considered both dangerous and ineffective.

Rowley authored a work called ‘Cow Pox No Security Against Smallpox Infection‘. This book has been considered a target of mockery by vaccinationists due to a couple of the images included in the book. These images claimed to show vaccination injuries, but as Rowley had titled one of them ‘The Ox Faced Boy’ he was mocked for making a linkage between vaccination and people becoming bovine.

Rowley actually collected a large number of cases, including with address details so at the time they could be checked, of vaccination injury, death, and cases of smallpox after vaccination.

He also provides an extensive list of excuses used by vaccinationists to defend their theory. These included the theory of ‘spurious cowpox’, which was outlined by Jenner in his second essay on cowpox. The idea of a ‘real’ and a ‘spurious’ cowpox allowed any cases of failure to be assigned to a spurious vaccination. He also accused vaccinationists of misdiagnosis of cases of smallpox in vaccinated people. He also states that vaccinationists formulated the excuse that even if cowpox failed to prevent the disease, it made it milder.

Conclusion

Vaccination had some significant opposition. However, it is fair to say that it had very little ideological opposition at this time. Its opponents thought it was unsafe and ineffective but advocated the earlier practise of inoculation instead rather than rejecting both. Well founded ideological opposition to vaccination would have to wait until after 1853 – the year of the UK’s smallpox vaccine mandate.

[…]

Via https://cassandrasbox.com/2024/10/27/a-brief-history-of-british-antivaccinationism-and-vaccine-scepticism-part-2-jenners-critics/

Ron Clutz

Commentary from Anthony Watts and Friends:

Our second climate news item is from a wonderfully titled media outlet called motor biscuit: Electric truck fire burns down brand new German fire station. The fire station in Stadtallendorf is really new, in fact they opened its bay doors less than one year ago to accommodate 10 fire engines and many firefighters. However a tragic fire destroyed the the fire station despite its fire firefighting purposes. According to Euro News the fire originated with quote an emergency vehicle belonging to the fire department which contained lithium ion batteries and an external power connection. Unfortunately the electric emergencies vehicle blaze destroyed at least 10 fire truck models and caused around 25 million euros in damage.

Now firefighters’ woes and electric vehicles aren’t a new phenomenon. Departments in the United States have different tactics for battling EV battery fires. Ideally First Responders can suppress EV fires with mass quantities of water. However some firefighters claim that depending on the circumstances it’s  best to cordon off the area and allow the EV to burn and eventually burn itself out.

Well, allowing a fire to burn itself out in this case took out 10 useful life-saving fire trucks and caused 25 million Euros in damage. Where where to start really with the idiocy of this particular story? For one thing, with all we know about fires from these things, having an EV fire truck and having it plugged into your station. And then I guess firefighters just think, well we’re firefighters so we’re immune, so no fire alarms, no fire suppression system. We don’t need fire alarms, we have fire experts right there exactly with badges. So the first truck goes up in flames. Are the other trucks all just sort of compacted around it? Were none of them far enough away to go over and drive them out of the garage as a as a brave firefighter? Was nobody in the firehouse despite the fact that all the trucks were there?

So you’ve got the error with no smoke alarms evidently no fire suppression system or at least not one geared to fight electric vehicle fires, which should tell you something right there. You have plugged an EV vehicle indoors in closed space next to vehicles that I presume have diesel in them. It’s a Murphy’s disaster waiting to happen. As I’m fond of saying, and it’s very apt in this case: the stupid it really burns.

I would like to think that the first time someone dies because of an elect vehicle fire and it happens multiple times again, the consumer product safety commission gets involved and says: you know what these aren’t safe on the roads these aren’t safe in your house. It’s time to withdraw them until we fix this problem.

But I I would be wrong about that. Either people are that stupid or they’re just into the climate scare narrative and the need to do something even if it kills your neighbors or yourself. You know in the 1980s, the consumer product safety commission banned lawn darts pretty quickly because throwing lawn darts had killed a few people. But ebikes for example have killed a lot more, just in New York City alone killed a bunch and they’re still on the market.

[…]

Via https://rclutz.com/2024/10/27/german-fire-station-razed-by-ev-fire-truck-fire/

Feature photo | Israeli troops attend the funeral of Sgt. First Class Nazar Itkin, killed during Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon in Kiryat Ata, Israel, Oct. 6, 2024. Baz Ratner | AP

Robert Inlakesh

Episode 2 The First Family Discovered: Indo-European

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

The family of Indo-European languages, the first to undergo extensive classification, comprises most of the world’s written languages. In 1647, Dutch scholar Marcus van Boxhurn, was the first to note linguistic similarities between the different languages spoken in Europe and Northern India.

The 10 definitely confirmed sub-families of Indo-European languages spoken are Romance, Anatolian, Tokharian, Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Germanic and Celtic

English is an extremely  atypical member of the Germanic sub-family, in that their nouns and verbs have lost the case endings (which depend on their grammatical role in the sentence) found in Latin, Slavic and Germanic languages.*

Linguists have been able to reconstruct what the original Proto-Indo-European language most likely looked like by tracing words and grammatical constructions that are similar in modern Indo-European languages.

It’s believed that Yamnaya tribes in southern Ukraine were the first to speak Proto-Indo-European around 5000 BC because all modern Indo-European languages use a similar word for “wheel’ and “horse,” which were both prominent in that culture. For example “wheel” is

• kuklos – in Greek
• kolo  – in Slavic languages
• cakram – in Sanskrit
• kugullas – in Hittite

While Latin uses an unrelated word for wheel, they use the word “colus” for the circular shaped colon (large intestine).

The pattern of gradual linguistic changes found in different Indo-European languages suggest that Yamnaya men began migrating eastward and westward around 3500 BC and marrying local women in the new regions they settled. This is confirmed by DNA findings.

At present 3 billion people speak Indo-European languages.

Of the 20 most spoken languages in the world, 10 are Indo-European:

• English
• French
• Spanish
• Portuguese,
• German
• Hindi
• Punjabi
• Bengali
• Marathi
• Russian

*Old English had case endings like German does.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120004