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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Venezuelan Coup Attempt

Via https://politicalfilm.wordpress.com/2024/07/30/venezuela-coup-attempt-ned-cia/

EVs and Carbon Credits: Milking the Drying Up Cow

By Eric

How do you make money when half of the profit you make depends on government? You make EVS, is how.

But first, you get the government to require that other companies either reduce what’s called their “carbon footprint” – or buy credits from you for making EVs. The credits are viewed by the government – by the regulatory apparat – as equivalent to the company that buys them reducing the amount of “carbon” its operations produce, thereby satisfying the regs without actually reducing the amount of “carbon” produced by that company’s operations.

It works like a supermarket coupon for 10 percent off.

Just without the free exchange. A more accurate description would be supermarket “a” having to buy credits from supermarket “b” in order be allowed to sell anything at all.

This, in a nutshell, is the business model that built Tesla – and which now keeps it afloat. That – plus artificially inflated stock valuation based on government (via the regulatory apparat) essentially requiring that more EVs be manufactured – and eventually, only EVs –  leaving people no alternative to buying them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that half of Tesla’s second quarter profits – which by the way are down by about 45 percent – were “earned” (to misuse a word) via “selling” carbon credits to other companies that are effectively forced to purchase them in order to be allowed to sell anything at all.

Hence the air fingers quote marks bracketing the latter word. A “sale” that involves coercion is like a “date” that involves rape, in other words.

And rape can be financial as well as sexual.

Tesla used financial rape to finance the development of its first batch of EVs – chiefly by making other car companies (which at the time made no “zero emissions” EVs of their own) pay to offset the costs of designing and manufacturing them – by using the government to coerce them into buying credits from Tesla to satisfy government requirements that they also make “zero emissions” devices, irrespective of the absence of any market for them.

This costs them, of course.

But it was easier to just cut Tesla a check than it was to design and manufacture EVs of their own that they knew they would probably not be able to sell. Lots of hassle avoided by just paying up.

And so they did, bankrolling their own “competition,” which of course it isn’t, really – because absent government, there would be no Tesla. Except, perhaps as a very low volume manufacturer of extremely expensive toys for those with the money to spend on them.

Other companies that don’t make vehicles also “buy” credits from Tesla, which is the only manufacturer of “zero emissions” EVs exclusively. Tesla gets a lot of credit – and extorted cash – for that.

The other car companies now build EVs, too – but only enough to satisfy the “zero emissions” regulations and sales quotas that have been imposed in states such as CA. Not enough to “sell” carbon credits of their own – much as some of them would probably love to get into that “business.”

As recently as last year – the final year you could still buy cars like the Charger and Challenger as well as a V8 in a Ram truck – Stellantis was “buying” credits from Tesla worth millions annually (and billions, overall; you can read more about that here).

It no longer has to buy them – because it no longer sells the Charger and Challenger or the Hemi V8. Of course, it no longer sells those vehicles – or that engine – which used to provide the earnings needed to pay the credits and kept Dodge and Ram in the business of selling vehicles.

Dodge and Ram may not have to pay Tesla, going forward. But that’s like a person declaring bankruptcy so as to avoid having to pay creditors.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s “earnings” – all this italicizing can be tedious but it’s necessary in the interests of etymological honesty – are down by 45 percent, not counting the half of that that’s due to government taking (and redistributing). If that taking were taken into account, Tesla’s latest “earnings” would be half what Tesla just reported. Put another way, Tesla’s losses would be unsustainable – a word the Left loves to use to deride businesses that don’t require government to remain in business.

[…]

Via https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024/07/29/milking-the-drying-up-cow/

 

 

Satan Wept – Paris 2024 Olympics

Dmitry Orlov

An odd set of events has recently taken place in the world of diplomacy: the governments of various Islamic countries have summoned French ambassadors in order to express to them utter outrage at the profanation of the great Islamic prophet Issa (a.k.a. Jesus) at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris. There, the organizers saw it fit to present a ghastly tableau in imitation of Leonardo da Vinci’s classic The Last Supper featuring a fat lesbian in place of Jesus and a motley crew of transvestites in place of the apostles, all disporting themselves in a maximally perverse fashion. The leaders of Orthodox Christian nations did not follow suit, perhaps adhering to Issa’s dictum “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” (Matthew 7:6)

We can be sure that the organizers of the Olympics did not set out to maximally disgust everyone; they wanted to impress and to inspire. The Olympiads originated in festivals held to please and impress the gods of Mount Olympus — a quest for the divine. But it is a sign of extreme incompetence when an artist’s attempted renderings of angels end up looking like poorly drawn demons. More than that, in order to draw angels convincingly, one must be able to sense them (not necessarily to see them or, more likely, to hallucinate them); that is, there must be a spark of divine inspiration (as was clearly the case with da Vinci, or his masterpiece would not have been revered for five and a quarter centuries). Lacking any trace of divine inspiration, an artist would be well advised to stick to drawing demons.

Do I believe in divine inspiration? Belief is a vexed question for people who fancy themselves thoroughly modern and therefore thoroughly scientific. The Christian credo reads like a work of mythology laden with miracles — immaculate conception, resurrection, ascent unto heaven, etc. — and skeptics want proof before they will believe any of it. Such skepticism is important in many pursuits — forensic medicine, for instance — but not in others. What is love, for instance? Let’s be skeptical and consider it a hormonally mediated emotional state. Congratulations, skeptics, you are now self-identified as animals stuck in a perpetual mating season!

It is never a good idea to confuse knowledge with belief. Knowledge rests in proof; belief rests in suspension of disbelief and in a certain sense of trust — including trust in the inexplicable and the supernatural. Treated as separate, knowledge and belief can quite happily coexist inside any given mind. Moreover, belief is hardly ever a question of choice. More frequently, it is a matter of direct experience: you either can sense something that causes you to believe, or you can’t. Of course, if a child grows up surrounded by adults who claim that a child’s spontaneously developing spiritual sense is a fantasy or, worse, a hallucination, then it can be stifled quite effectively.

Those lucky enough to have been endowed with an innate spiritual sense that has not been stifled can perceive a certain difference between humans and animals — or, rather, human and animal souls. Lab mice have souls so puny and insignificant that they can be regarded as little biological machines. They are innocent creatures, incapable of good or evil, for their simple souls do not offer them that choice.

Humans, however, typically do confront that choice. In turn, those whose spiritual sense has not been stifled can perceive certain differences between human souls — by looking into a person’s eyes. Although some people have eyes so unexpressive that they might as well be bellybuttons, that is a rarity. What the eyes express most readily is vices: selfishness, viciousness, pride, avarice, envy, hatred, malice, lust, etc. In demonology made simple, those vices are demons that infest the soul; theoretically, they can be expelled. The more demons, the less the possibility of doing good and the greater the possibility of doing evil.

Can demons infest a body in absence of a soul, or in case of a soul as insignificant and puny as that of a lab mouse? It would seem that they can: animals can be conditioned to be arbitrarily nasty. For instance, pit bulls can be trained to attack and kill children. This does not make them evil: the evil is entirely in their human trainers. What, then, of humans whose spiritual sense has been stifled in childhood by being surrounded by scientifically minded skeptics that have never been taught to distinguish knowledge from belief, whose souls never developed beyond those of a lab mouse? Surely enough, with no spiritual sense to guide them, they can readily develop into characters that are nothing more than a combination of vices — an unsupervised playground for demons. Looking into their eyes causes buzzers and warning lights to go off in your head. In this way, your spiritual sense can keep you safe in everyday life and to help you avoid wasting your time when interviewing job applicants.

Why do demons exist? Here is Christianity made simple: they exist to tempt us. Without temptation there can be no sin, without sin there can be no repentance and without repentance there can be no salvation. Life is a trial in which our task is to fight off demons and to attract angels. When we fail, our souls are claimed by Satan; when we succeed, our souls enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Satan came to Paris hoping to claim some Christian souls at the Paris Olympiad, and what did he find? He found people working hard to impersonate demons: “Come, Satan, and claim our souls!” “What souls?” thought Satan, “You hardly have any! You are just some lab animals who have been trained to act out perversions. The efforts of my demons have been wasted on you. This is soooo frustrating!” And at that Satan wept.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/b22bce7f-07e4-4330-bbd6-3b8dd040aa4c

 

 

When Bin Laden Set Up a Base in London

Osama Bin Laden. (Photo: Everett Collection / Alamy)

Thirty years on, questions remain as to why the UK authorities allowed the Al-Qaeda terrorist leader to run an office in the British capital for four years.

Thirty years ago this month, Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden established an office in a house in Kilburn, west London.

Seven years before 9/11, Bin Laden’s so-called Advice and Reformation Committee (ARC) was equipped with a bank of fax machines and computers which churned out dozens of pamphlets and communiqués.

The ARC lambasted the lavishness of the ruling family in Bin Laden’s native Saudi Arabia and its waywardness in promoting sharia law in the country, as well as calling for a break-up of the Saudi state.

But the purpose of the ARC went further.

US court documents noted it was “designed both to publicise Bin Laden’s statements and to provide cover for activity in support for Al Qaeda’s ‘military’ activities, including the recruitment of trainees, the disbursement of funds and the procurement of equipment and services.”

The London office also served as a communication centre for reports on military and security matters from various Al-Qaeda cells to its leadership.

A US Congressional research service report, released just after the September 11th attacks in 2001, asserted that Bin Laden even visited London in 1994 and stayed for a few months in Wembley to form the ARC, although this was never proven.

Whatever the truth of that claim, Bin Laden’s telephone billing records from 1996–8 show that nearly a fifth of his calls, 238 out of 1,100 – the largest single number – were made to London, showing the importance of this base.

It was the ARC that arranged a meeting between Bin Laden and a number of CNN journalists in March 1997.

Embassy bombings

The ARC’s staff included two members of the terrorist organisation Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) whose leader was Ayman al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s right-hand man.

One of the two EIJ figures was Adel Abdel Bary who, before arriving in Britain, was alleged by the US authorities to have managed Al-Qaeda training camps and guest houses. He was, however, granted asylum in the UK in 1993.

After working for Bin Laden in London, Abdel Bary was in 1998 arrested in Britain for his involvement in Al-Qaeda’s bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. The simultaneous blasts killed over 200 people.

He was eventually extradited to the US and jailed for 25 years.

Also arrested for his role in the bombings was the second EIJ figure in Bin Laden’s London office. This was Ibrahim Eidarous, who is alleged to have organised the EIJ’s cell in Azerbaijan in 1995 before coming to London in 1997. While in Britain, he was also granted political asylum.

On the day of the East Africa bombings, both men disseminated the claims of responsibility through faxes to the media.

Lawyers for the two men denied they had advance knowledge of the bombings but an MI5 officer, later giving evidence to an immigration appeal, stated that the faxes were actually sent before the bombings took place.

Source of intelligence

The head of Bin Laden’s ARC was the Saudi dissident Khaled Al-Fawwaz, who was also arrested by British police in September 1998 for his involvement in the East Africa bombings the previous month.

Until this point the British authorities had allowed Al-Fawwaz and the ARC to operate openly for four years.

The US indictment against Al-Fawwaz alleged that he provided Bin Laden with “various means of communications” including a satellite telephone to speak to Al-Qaeda cells, and that he visited Nairobi in 1993 and established a residence there for Abu Ubaidah, one of Al-Qaeda’s military commanders.

The evidence suggests that the ARC’s activities were initially tolerated by the British, who may have seen them as a useful source of intelligence.

Al-Fawwaz’s lawyers said he was in regular contact with MI5 from the time he came to Britain in 1994 until his arrest four years later. His meetings often lasted for three or more hours while his phone was probably tapped and his correspondence intercepted.

The BBC’s Frank Gardner wrote: “MI5 appeared to be hoping that Mr al-Fawwaz would provide them with an insight into Islamist extremists living in Britain. Mr al-Fawwaz was under the impression that his contacts with the Security Service would keep him out of trouble.”

Yet Al-Fawwaz was eventually extradited from the UK to the US in 2012 and convicted in 2015 of involvement in the embassy bombings.

Alternative leaders

What may throw further light on the British authorities’ strategy at the time is the case of another Saudi dissident in London, who was not connected to the ARC.

Saad Al-Faqih was a former professor of surgery in Saudi Arabia who had lent his medical expertise to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

He fled Saudi Arabia in 1994 and set up another opposition group to the regime, the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), in London in 1996 and was given political asylum.

Al-Faqih said he maintained “high-level contacts” with the British intelligence services and gave them advice about Saudi Arabia.

But the British secret services may have seen the ARC and other groups as providing more than just intelligence.

Asked in an interview in 2003 about living in the UK, Al-Faqih replied that the British “have discovered that betting on strategic relations with the [Saudi] regime is dangerous. It is better to have relations with the people and I assume they know how much public support we have.”

Al-Faqih also said that “the British are shrewd enough to know that the Saudi regime is doomed and they want to be in a position to deal with alternative leaders.”

It is credible that Britain may have been attempting to cultivate relations with future policy-makers in the country by tolerating these opposition groups.

While Britain has long shored up the feudal rulers of Saudi Arabia, the long-term stability of the regime has equally long been questioned. Opposition groups could act as a kind of proxy force for Whitehall in the event of upheaval in the Saudi kingdom.

Faxing Jihad

The London base allowed Bin Laden to motivate his supporters around the world. The perpetrators of the 1995 bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia, for example, had read Bin Laden’s writings after they were faxed from London.

It was also from London that various of Bin Laden’s key fatwas were sent around the world.

The ARC, for example, disseminated the English translation of Bin Laden’s August 1996 declaration of jihad against the Americans “occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places”. This called for the US to be driven from Saudi Arabia, the overthrow of the House of Saud and Islamic revolution all over the world.

Two years later, in February 1998, the ARC publicised Bin Laden’s creation of an “International Front for Jihad against the Crusaders and the Jews”, joining together a variety of terrorist groups.

However, “this caused little stir in Whitehall”, Times journalists Sean O’Neill and Daniel McGrory noted.

Interviewing Bin Laden

Also instructive is that the British and US intelligence services repeatedly turned down the chance to acquire information on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the 1990s.

In early 1995, for example, the Sudanese government, then hosting Bin Laden, offered to extradite or interview him and other key operatives who had been arrested on charges of planning terrorist atrocities.

The Sudanese proffered photographs and details on various militants, including Saudis, Yemenis and Egyptians who had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets.

“We know them in detail,” said one Sudanese source. “We know their leaders, how they implement their policies, how they plan for the future. We have tried to feed this information to American and British intelligence so they can learn how things can be tackled.”

This Sudanese offer was rejected, reportedly due to the “irrational hatred” the US felt for the Sudanese regime, as was a similar subsequent offer made specifically to MI6.

Three years later, Britain was also to ignore an arrest warrant for Bin Laden issued by Libya.

Safe in London

So safe did Bin Laden’s supporters feel in London that, in 1995, they sent overtures to the Home Office enquiring whether their leader could claim political asylum.

The then home secretary in John Major’s Conservative government, Michael Howard, later said that an investigation by his staff into Bin Laden resulted in a banning order being placed on him.

In January 1996, the Home Office sent a letter to Bin Laden stating that he be “excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here would not be conducive to the public good.”

Presumably, giving asylum to Bin Laden would have been a step too far in view of Whitehall’s need to placate its Saudi ally.

But the 1998 embassy bombings were not the only terrorist outrages being planned by Bin Laden, or those close to him, during the period when his London base was in operation during 1994–98.

By late 1994, the CIA was designating Bin Laden as a terrorist threat. In June 1995, an Al-Qaeda team attacked Egyptian President Mubarak’s presidential motorcade during a visit to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

The following year a secret CIA analysis showed the US was aware of Bin Laden’s financing of Islamic extremists responsible for attempted bombings against 100 US servicemen in Aden in 1992. He had funneled money to Egyptian extremists to buy weapons and bankrolled terrorist training camps in northern Sudan.

After moving to Afghanistan in May 1996, Bin Laden also set up terrorist training camps there under the protection of the Taliban government.

It beggars belief that British intelligence was also not aware of Bin Laden’s activities during the period when it tolerated his London base.

[…]

Via https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/07/29/when-bin-laden-set-up-a-base-in-london/

Engineering a Crisis: How Political Theater Helps the Deep State Stay in Power

John and Nisha Whitehead

A failed assassination attempt on a presidential candidate. An incumbent president withdrawing his re-election bid at the 11th hour. A politicized judiciary that fails to hold the powers-that-be accountable to the rule of law. A world at war. A nation in turmoil.

This is what controlled chaos looks like.

This year’s election-year referendum on which corporate puppet should occupy the White House has quickly become a lesson in how the Deep State engineers a crisis to keep itself in power.

Don’t get so caught up in the performance that you lose sight of what’s real.

This endless series of diversions, distractions and political drama is the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst.

It’s the Reichstag Fire all over again.

It was February 1933, a month before national elections in Germany, and the Nazis weren’t expected to win. So they engineered a way to win: they began by infiltrating the police and granting police powers to their allies; then Hitler brought in stormtroopers to act as auxiliary police; by the time an arsonist (who claimed to be working for the Communists in the hopes of starting an armed revolt) set fire to the Reichstag, the German parliamentary building, the people were eager for a return to law and order.

That was all it took: Hitler used the attempted “coup” as an excuse to declare martial law and seize absolute power in Germany, establishing himself as a dictator with the support of the German people.

Fast forward to the present day, and what do we have? A discontented citizenry, a disconnected government, and a Deep State that wants to stay in power at all costs.

So what happens? Trump has a near miss, Biden bows out, and politics becomes exciting to the masses again.

It works the same in every age.

This is how the police state will win, no matter which candidate gets elected to the White House.

You know who will lose? Every last one of us.

After all, politics today is not about Republicans and Democrats.

Nor is it about abortion, healthcare, higher taxes, immigration, or any of the other buzzwords that have become campaign slogans for individuals who have mastered the art of telling Americans exactly what they want to hear.

Politics today is about one thing and one thing only: maintaining the status quo between the Controllers (the politicians, the bureaucrats, and the corporate elite) and the Controlled (the taxpayers).

Indeed, it really doesn’t matter what you call them—the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that no matter which party occupies the White House in 2025, the unelected bureaucracy that actually calls the shots will continue to do so.

In other words, no matter who wins this next presidential election, you can rest assured that the new boss will be the same as the old boss, and we—the permanent underclass in America—will continue to be forced to march in lockstep with the police state in all matters, public and private.

Consider the following a much-needed reality check, an antidote if you will, against an overdose of overhyped campaign announcements, lofty electoral promises and meaningless patriotic sentiments that land us right back in the same prison cell.

FACT: According to a scientific study by Princeton researchers, the United States of America is not the democracy that it purports to be, but rather an oligarchy, in which “economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy.”

FACT: Despite the fact that the number of violent crimes in the country is down substantially, the lowest rate in sixty years, the number of Americans being jailed for nonviolent crimes such as driving with a suspended license continues to skyrocket.

FACT: Thanks to an overabundance of 4,500-plus federal crimes and 400,000-plus rules and regulations, it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. That is not an exaggeration.”

FACT: Despite the fact that we have 38 million Americans living at or below the poverty line13 million children living in households without adequate access to food, and 1.2 million veterans relying on food stamps, enormous sums of taxpayer money continue to be doled out on wasteful programs that do little to improve the plight of those in need.

FACT: Since 2001 Americans have spent $93 million every hour for the total cost of the nation’s so-called war on terror.

FACT: It is estimated that 5 million children in the United States have had at least one parent in prison, whether it be a local jail or a state or federal penitentiary, due to a wide range of factors ranging from overcriminalization and surprise raids at family homes to roadside traffic stops.

FACT: According to a Gallup poll, Americans place greater faith in the military and the police than in any of the three branches of government.

FACT: At least 400 to 500 innocent people are killed by police officers every year. Indeed, Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist. Americans are 110 times more likely to die of foodborne illness than in a terrorist attack. Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be made financially liable for their wrongdoing.

FACT: On an average day in America, over 100 Americans have their homes raided by SWAT teams. Most of those SWAT team raids are for a mere warrant service. There has been a notable buildup in recent years of heavily armed SWAT teams within non-security-related federal agencies such as the Department of Agriculture, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Office of Personnel Management, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Education Department.

FACT: For all intents and purposes, we now have a fourth branch of government: the surveillance state. This fourth branch came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum, and yet it possesses superpowers, above and beyond those of any other government agency save the military. It is all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful. It operates beyond the reach of the president, Congress and the courts, and it marches in lockstep with the corporate elite who really call the shots in Washington, DC. The government’s “technotyranny” surveillance apparatus has become so entrenched and entangled with its police state apparatus that it’s hard to know anymore where law enforcement ends and surveillance begins. They have become one and the same entity. The police state has passed the baton to the surveillance state.

FACT: Everything we do will eventually be connected to the Internet. By 2030 it is estimated there will be 100 trillion sensor devices connecting human electronic devices (cell phones, laptops, etc.) to the Internet. Much, if not all, of our electronic devices will be connected to Google, which openly works with government intelligence agencies. Virtually everything we do now—no matter how innocent—is being collected by the spying American police state.

FACT: Americans know virtually nothing about their history or how their government works. In fact, according to a study by the National Constitution Center, 41 percent of Americans “are not aware that there are three branches of government, and 62 percent couldn’t name them; 33 percent couldn’t even name one.”

FACT: Only six out of every one hundred Americans know that they actually have a constitutional right to hold the government accountable for wrongdoing, as guaranteed by the right to petition clause of the First Amendment.

[…]

Via https://off-guardian.org/2024/07/29/engineering-a-crisis-how-political-theater-helps-the-deep-state-stay-in-power/

No Long-Term Placebo-Controlled Long-Term Trials of Childhood Vaccines

Aaron Siri

Not a single routine childhood vaccine was licensed based on a long-term placebo-controlled trial. Not one. See the carefully created and fully referenced chart at https://icandecide.org/no-placebo which was compiled by our firm with funding from the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN).

I will also be holding a Spaces event on Twitter this Tuesday at noon Eastern time to discuss this chart: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1ynJODQVbDXxR. See you there!

[…]

Via https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/clinical-trials-of-childhood-vaccines

No, Kids DON’T Have Strokes

Alice Springs to Mind

An organisation called Achieving Beyond Brain Injury appears to have popped up in 2021 with funding to advertise on public transport that “kids have strokes too”. This is highly abnormal. The risk factors for stroke are almost always age related, eg high blood pressure, build up of plaques on vessel walls over time, age-related weakness in vessel walls. Strokes are NOT normal in children.

Why is there an electric fence around this subject? Because the criminals who foisted this upon humanity own legacy media. Nevertheless, the increase in disability and death amongst young populations is becoming known despite the global information control grid. This is Mike Rowe, who hosts Discovery Channel’s popular show “Dirty Jobs”, asking why are young people dying young suddenly.

The mechanism for strokes occurring in relation to mRNA injectable products, along with the massive range of other harms, can be found at a book by Doctors 4 Covid Ethics, made available online in an effort to raise awareness: mRNA Toxicity.

[…]

Via https://alicespringstomind.com/2024/07/30/actually-kids-dont-have-strokes/

Chinggis Khan’s Early Conquests

Episode 5  Chinggis Khan’s Early Conquests

The Mongol Empire

Dr Craig Benjamin (2020)

Film Review

In 1206, when Temujen was appointed Great Khan (Chinggis Khan), Mongolia’s southern neighbor China was divided into three regions: Xi Xia in the northwest (ruled by the Tenguts*), the Jin Dynasty in the northeast (ruled by the Jurchens**), and the Song Dynasty (ruled by Han Chinese elites driven south by the Jurchen takeover of northern China). Initially Chinggis Khan’s war on China was mainly driven by his desire to prevent the dissolution of his massive military alliance into quarreling factions.

His first assault on Xi Xia occurred in 1205, in pursuit of a rebel Karaite leader who had fled there. According to the Secret History of the Mongols (see The Rise of Chinggis Khan), his next major assault (in 1207) was against the Merkits and other nomadic forest people in southern Siberia. In 1209, he launched his first major attack on Xi Xia. When Tangut warriors retreated into the western Xi Xia capitol Yinchuan, Chinggis Kahan built a dyke to redirect the Yellow River and drawn many of them. Suing for peace, the Tangut agreed to pay tribute and offer up a princess as a new wife for Chinggis Khan.

With their first attack on China’s Jin dynasty, Chinggis Khan was more interested in booty rather than political control. It would be 1234 before his descendants consolidated their victory and put a Mongol on the throne of northern China. Using siege machines designed by Chinese engineers who defected from the Jin administration, the Mongols eventually conquered the Jin capitol Zhongdu in 1215. They were supported by a popular uprising driven driven by famine conditions precipitated by the war. The Jin emperor fled south to a new capital he established in Kaiphong.

In 1216 Chinggis Khan left General Bucoli in charge the war against the Jin Empire while he sent General Subedue to subdue a Merkit upprising in western Mongolia.

By 1218 the Mongol empire extended west to the Syr Darya River (the eastern boundary of modern day Uzbekistan), the  western border of the former Khwarazmian Empire.*** After Chinggis Khan sent a caravan of merchants to the Khwarazmian city of Garganj, their leader Mohammed Shah killed all but one of them. In response to the Mongol leader’s demand for compensation, Mohammed Shah killed one envoy and singed the beards (a profound insult) of the rest.

This led to the Mongol’s declaration of war against the Khwarazmian Empire.


*The Tanguts were a Sino-Tibetan people originating from the Tibetan Plateau.

**The Jurchen consisted of hunter-gatherers, pastoralist semi-nomads and sedentary agriculturists originating from Manchuria.

***The Kwarazmian Empire was the last remnant of the Persian empire before its conquest by Islamic Arabs in the 7th century.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/12373094/12373104

Thousands Evicted in Paris Ahead of Olympics

Vanished Into The Night 2024 Olympics - Rani Felicity

At a time when most of the discussion is about who will win most medals, on the margins of the Paris Olympic Games several social groups have intensified efforts to prevent the further eviction of any more people.  RDLM, a collective of over 80 different organizations, has alleged that thousands of the most vulnerable people including homeless and migrant people have already been evicted in a number of different actions. The number is likely to be around 12,500. In June this collective released a 78 page report titled ‘One year of Social Cleansing’. These social organizations are also making efforts to ensure that essential services and needs of the most vulnerable people are not neglected in the middle of the big games.

The government has contested the numbers and stated that not all recent evictions should be linked to the Olympics. This in turn is not accepted by several of the activists opposing evictions who say that having made promises of the most inclusive and socially responsive Olympics the authorities should live up to these.   

Earlier there were protests by environmental groups against the proposed felling of trees in Paris as part of efforts to speed up of redevelopment for Olympic Games.

These recent debated have revived several earlier controversies regarding previous Olympic Games relating to adverse impacts on the green cover, settlements of weaker sections and overall development priorities of host cities. People raised questions like why should spaces meant for housing for the weaker sections and greenery be used up for constructing excessive number of sports stadiums and facilities for which there may be little use after the big games are over within a few days.

The celebrations relating to this biggest sports event cover up increasing problems relating to them due to which a significant number of initial host candidates have been withdrawing voluntarily following local protests. Before the 2024 event was awarded to Paris, for example, there were withdrawals by Boston, Rome, Hamburg and Budapest. In the case of 1976 Games, Denver withdrew even after the city had been officially selected, paving the way for Montreal to emerge as hosts.

One reason for this relates to high costs. The last three summer Olympics, the main Olympic Games, have cost between 13 to 16 billion dollars each, although some of these estimates are considered to be underestimates by others if all costs are included. There have seen cost escalations ranging from 75% to 360%.

While the Olympic spectacle rolls on, an issue that is increasingly becoming important is that of increasing pressures on host cities with many people complaining about the big events messing up priorities. The host city may end up giving up more essential projects and priorities in favor of huge stadiums and other sports complexes which are likely to remain underutilized later.

There have been protest movements in several cities hosting Olympics and other big sports events (like the Asian Games and the Commonwealth Games). Such voices of protest and opposition were very much there in Tokyo (2020) and what is more, we can already hear these in the context of the Los Angeles Olympics (2028).

According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, Geneva, nearly 1.5 million people were displaced for Beijing Olympics (2008), preceded by nearly half this number in Seoul. The Asian Games and Commonwealth Games have also led to complaints of big evictions and corruption. The London Olympics in 2012 led to cancelling an important low income housing project.

Excessive punishment was inflicted on Beijing protestors. In the case of Mexico Olympics, student protestors faced police firing. 30 died.

The cost of Tokyo Olympics ultimately more than doubled from the original estimate of 7 billion. The Montreal Olympics in 1976 had cost 1.5 billion, which was considered excessive at that time and the debts incurred at that time could be fully paid back only 3 decades later, leading to its big stadiums being renamed ‘the big owes’ instead of the big ones.

Another concern is that the concentration of too many sports and sports events within a very short span of about two weeks makes it difficult for sports enthusiasts to really give proper attention to all of them. Too much appears to be happening at the same time and too quickly. The Tokyo Olympics, involving about 11,000 athletes competing in 339 events of 41 sports, were over in just 17 days.

To avoid all these problems, the International Olympics Committee has already taken some decisions from time to time, including organizing the Winter Olympics in a different year from the main Summer Olympics. However these reforms do not go far enough and the main Summer Olympics is itself too massive an event for a single place and concentrated within too short a time.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/thousands-evicted-paris-ahead-olympics/5863582

Fear of Trump’s Return Forced Kiev to Change Rhetoric on Peace Talks

The departure of Joe Biden and the possible victory of Donald Trump in the American presidential elections forced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba to change their rhetoric and adopt a more favourable position, but the reality is that the Kiev regime is not ready for peace negotiations with Moscow.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba signalled for the first time during his visit to Beijing on July 24 that his country is ready to negotiate directly with Russia and that these talks should achieve a “just and lasting peace.”

“I emphasized two principles that must be steadfastly upheld. First, no agreements about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he said during his three-hour meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. “Second…full respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. If these two principles are adhered to, we can engage in any discussions and seek any solutions.”

It is recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that Moscow would immediately end combat operations if Kiev retreated from Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye, dropped its NATO ambitions, and recognized Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea, ideas that the Kiev regime rejected as an absurd ultimatum. This suggests that Ukraine is not actually seeking a realistic peace deal and is still holding onto absurd demands but without the military capabilities to fulfil them if Moscow disagrees.

China is clearly advocating for a political solution to this conflict and for negotiations to begin, which is also why Kuleba chose Beijing to announce Kiev’s supposed new position. Although Zelensky recently said Russia might be invited to the second peace summit in November, Kuleba expressed a slightly different point of view, mentioning bilateral negotiations because China is encouraging it.

The first peace conference in Switzerland on Ukraine, which was mainly attended by Kiev’s Western allies, occurred without Russia’s participation. This was the first time in history that so-called peace negotiations were conducted without one side in the conflict and with an illegitimate president, Zelensky, whose mandate expired in May. Zelensky initially opposed Russia’s participation in that conference, even though China, among other countries like India and Brazil, stressed that this issue would not be peacefully resolved without Russia’s involvement.

It is recalled that Beijing invited Kuleba right after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán visited the Asian country as part of his “peace mission,” which included meetings with Zelensky in Kiev, Putin in Moscow, Xi Jinping in Beijing, and Donald Trump in Florida. It is not a mistake that Orbán met with Trump since he is the only presidential candidate in the US willing to push Kiev towards the negotiation table.

Another problem is that Kiev does not express consistent rhetoric. Take, for example, the recent speech of Valery Zaluzhny, the current ambassador of Ukraine to the UK and the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who said that it is impossible to reach any agreements and that the war must continue until Ukraine achieves victory.

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Press Secretary Maria Zakharova highlighted that Zelensky’s rhetoric is related to the US election. In other words, Kiev fears it will be left without support and financial and military assistance if Trump comes to power. For this reason, the regime is changing its rhetoric, even if some figures like Zaluzhny continue promoting war.

The Kiev regime has been following Trump’s position, who said that he would try to end the war in Ukraine after winning the November elections. Zelensky cannot do anything about this development. Therefore, it is no coincidence that he will invite Russia to the second peace summit, which, he says, will be held in November, the same month as the US election.

Despite Kiev saying it is open to the possibility of negotiations, which Moscow has repeatedly expressed an interest in, Kiev introduced a ban on negotiations at the legislative level. Russia has always favored negotiations, as seen with the Minsk and Istanbul Agreements, which were destroyed by Ukraine with the help of the West, notably Biden and now former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and not by Russia. This leaves Russia no other option but to continue fighting on the battlefield until Ukrainian forces capitulate entirely.

The Kremlin understands that if Trump returns to the White House, support for Ukraine will completely dry up, forcing the Kiev regime to negotiate with Moscow. But if the Democrats remain in power, support will not halt but will continue to decline as the US simply does not have the resources to save the Ukrainian military from its predicament short of direct intervention.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/fear-trump-return-kiev-rhetoric-peace-talks/5863724