Hmmm. I wonder what “other environmental factors” might be causing this widespread catastrophe in children?

Dr. Lund seems to be suffering from what I call the Nile River-God Syndrome, after Bernini’s depiction of the Nile River in his 1651 Fountain of the Four Rivers in Rome. The source of the Nile was unknown in Europe until the British explorer John Hanning Speke “discovered” the giant lake he called Lake Victoria in 1858.

When it comes to examining the possible role of childhood vaccines in causing the dramatic rise of the incidence of autism, the mainstream medical community remains steadfastly and willfully blind. They ought to know by now that—in the words of SNL’s Stuart Smalley—”denial is not a river in Africa.”

[…]

Via https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/daily-mail-scientists-discover-exciting

Colorized transmission electron micrograph of avian influenza A H5N1 virus particles (yellow/red)

By Dr Meryl Nass

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/finland-offering-farmworkers-bird-flu-shots-experts-us/story

As bird flu spreads among dairy cattle in the U.S., veterinarians and researchers have taken note of Finland’s move to vaccinate farmworkers at risk of infection. They wonder why their government doesn’t do the same.

“Farmworkers, veterinarians, and producers are handling large volumes of milk that can contain high levels of bird flu virus,” said Kay Russo, a livestock and poultry veterinarian in Fort Collins, Colorado. “If a vaccine seems to provide some immunity, I think it should be offered to them.”

[…]

But the wait-and-see approach “is a gamble,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University. “By the time we see severe outcomes, it means a lot of people have been infected.”

“Now is the time to offer the vaccines to farmworkers in the United States,” said Nahid Bhadelia, director of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Even more urgent measures are lagging in the U.S., she added. Testing of farmworkers and cows is sorely needed to detect the H5N1 bird flu virus, study it, and extinguish it before it becomes a fixture on farms — posing an ever-present pandemic threat.sability to infect human airways. It also spread between two laboratory ferrets through the air.

[…]

In considering vaccines, the agency takes a cue from a 1976 outbreak of the swine flu. Officials initially feared a repeat of the 1918 swine flu pandemic that killed roughly half a million people in the United States. So they rapidly vaccinated nearly 43 million people in the country within a year.

But swine flu cases turned out to be mild that year. [This is a lie and these authors know it. There were no cases of the flu for which the vaccine had been made—and the vaccine was rolled out anyway for a disease the experts knew did not exist.—Nass]. This made the vaccine seem unnecessarily risky as several reports of a potentially deadly disorder, Guillain-Barré Syndrome, emerged. Roughly one of every million people who get influenza vaccines may acquire the disorder, according to the CDC. [Another lie. One in a million was reported to have died from GBS, but ten times that many got GBS—Nass] That risk is outweighed by the benefits of prevention. Since Oct. 1, as many as 830,000 people have been hospitalized for the seasonal flu and 25,000 to 75,000 people have died.

For these reasons, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and about a dozen other countries are stockpiling millions of doses. Finland expects to offer them to people who work on fur farms this month as a precaution because its mink and fox farms were hit by the bird flu last year. “

[…]

Via https://substack.com/home/post/p-146655211

By Jeffrey A Tucker
There is only one major social media platform that is relatively free of censorship. That is X, once known as Twitter, and owned by Elon Musk, who has preached free speech for years and sacrificed billions in advertising dollars in order to protect it. If we don’t have that, he says, we lose freedom itself. He also maintains that it is the best path to finding the truth.

The crisis that broke out after the attempt on Donald Trump’s life put the principle in motion. I was posting regular updates and never censored. I’m not aware of anyone who was. We were getting second-by-second updates in real time. The videos were flying along with every conceivable rumor, many false and then corrected, alongside free speech “spaces” in which everyone was sharing their views.

During this time, Facebook and its suite of services fell silent, consistent with the new ethos of all these platforms. The idea is to censor all speech until it is absolutely confirmed by officials and then permit only that which is consistent with the press releases.

This is the habit born of the Covid years, and it stuck. Now all the platforms avoid any news that is fast in motion, except to broadcast precisely what they are supposed to broadcast. Maybe that works in most times when people are not paying attention. Readers do not know what they are missing. The trouble was that during these post-shooting hours when nearly everyone on the planet wanted updates, there were no press releases forthcoming.

By habit, I reached for what was once called television. The networks had plenty of talking heads and newscasters with their usual eloquence. What was missing from all the broadcasts that I saw in these hours were any factual updates. They too were waiting for confirmation of this or that before putting out any information at all beyond the basics. They let their “experts” speak as long as possible just to waste time before rolling out new advertisements.

Over time, I realized something. X was driving the whole of the news, while the newscasters had to wait for permission before reading scripted lines.

Meanwhile, on X, the situation was utterly wild. Posts were flying fast and furious. New rumors would circulate (the shooter’s name and affiliations, stories about a second shooting, claims that Trump was hit in the chest, and so on). But shortly after the rumor circulated, so did the debunking. The feature called “Community Notes” kept the faulty news in check, while the truth gradually circulated to the top. This happened on topic after topic.

The wildest theories ever were permitted to appear, while others would debunk them with reasoned arguments. The readers could decide for themselves. You could see how the seeming chaos gradually organized itself into communities seeking verification. Posters grew ever more careful about posting claims that could not be verified, or at least explaining what they were.

X was single-handedly holding the whole of the corporate media to account, and reporters and editors very obviously came to depend on their X feeds to figure out what to say next. It was the same with newspapers. When NYT, CNN, WaPo, and so on would make major missteps, posters on X would call them out, the word would reach the editors, and the headline or story would change.

In the end, X became the one place where you could find the fullness of truth. All the while, the old-world media was dishing out the most ridiculous headlines one could imagine. For many hours, the New York Times, CNN, Washington Post, and other such venues refused to say it was an assassination attempt on Trump. The headline led people to believe that this was a MAGA rally with some random shooters that got carried away and so Trump had to be ushered out. This really did happen, and readers were outraged.

CNN was probably the worst offender, with the following headline: “Secret Service Rushes Trump Offstage As He Falls at Rally.”

It took many hours and repeated attempts but eventually the mainstream media finally said that the incident was “being investigated” as an assassination attempt, even though it was very obvious that it was an attempt on his life that he barely survived with the slight turn of his head.

It was the kind of flurry of nonsense that further discredited the old corporate media right there in front of an entire planet that was no longer believing anything they said.

It’s hard to know why the corporate press did this. Were they just cautious and worried about misinformation? If so, how come so many of their headlines were of the same sort, that which refused to say that someone just tried to kill Trump? Were they just in the habit of waiting for officials to tell them what to say? Was it raw TDS that was driving this? It’s hard to know but the failure was conspicuous and obvious to all.

What stood out above all else was the way free speech on X worked to ferret out the real story, while actually driving forward the mainstream press to correct its errors and get the story right. One shudders to think how it would have all taken place in absence of this one platform, which became the go-to place for everyone. The most important lesson: free speech worked. And beautifully.

All Western societies are currently struggling with the question of just how much speech to allow on the Internet. The trajectory for years now has not been a good one. Once-free platforms have become more frozen, more propagandistic, more staid, and duller, even as this one platform has created a culture of freedom combined with community-driven accountability.

This freedom accomplished exactly what it was supposed to accomplish, while the censored platforms held onto misinformation much longer than they should have been.

Which makes the point. Too often, the battle over free speech is framed as misinformation/freedom vs. facts/truth/restriction. The very opposite has proven to be the case. The free platform proved itself capable of quick course correction alongside maximum agility in processing the floods of constant new information. Meanwhile, the venues in which “misformation” has been anathematized ended up being the major source of exactly that.

Freedom works. As messy as it is, it works better than any other system. Meanwhile, governments of the world have targeted X for destruction. Advertisers continue to boycott and regulators continue to threaten.

So far, it has not worked and thank goodness. But for X, the last 24 hours would have looked very different: nothing but propaganda, apart from a few marginal places here and there. Therein lies another irony: the way X is managed is increasing trust rather than reducing it.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/during-the-crisis-free-speech-worked-brilliantly/

Ian DeMartino

Israel’s GDP fell by nearly 20% from October to December 2023, though it rebounded with a 14% gain the next quarter, that was less than economists expected.

Roughly 46,000 Israeli businesses have shut down since October 7, according to the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv.

The Israeli economy has been declining rapidly since it launched its campaign in Gaza,particularly after the Yemen Ansar Allah movement (aka Houthi) and the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon have been taking action in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.

The Houthis have blockaded the Red Sea from ships it says are connected with Israel or the United States. Because of their actions, the southern port of Eilat –the country’s busiest port before the war– has been virtually shut down since October 2023. Exacerbating the situation further, foreign tourism has also collapsed during the war, and as of December, nearly half a million Israelis have left the country and that was before tensions inflamed significantly between Iran and Israel.

Meanwhile, the Ansar Allah movement has been attacking Israel’s north, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to evacuate the area, virtually wiping out businesses in the area. However, businesses around all of Israel are struggling, the paper said, with construction and ancillary industries being hurt the most but it noted that nearly every industry is being affected.

Yoel Amir the CEO of Coface Bdi, a services and credit risk management firm, told the paper that they estimate 60,000 Israeli businesses could shut down by the end of the year.

[…]

Via https://sputnikglobe.com/20240713/israeli-newspaper-says-country-is-collapsing-as-46000-businesses-shutter-1119357894.html

From left: Special Counsel Jack Smith, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon and former President Donald Trump. (@axios / X screen shot)

Blogging Hounds

Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the high-profile classified documents case, citing the unlawful appointment of Special Counsel Jack Smith.

This decision comes as a significant blow to the Biden regime and the Department of Justice, raising questions about the integrity of the entire investigation.

Attorney General Garland violated the Constitution by appointing Jack Smith to conduct this politically motivated persecution against President Trump.

The decision effectively halts the prosecution led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In her ruling, Judge Cannon wrote:

Former President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on the Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is GRANTED in accordance with this Order [ECF No. 326]. The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. U.S.

Const., Art. I, $ 2, cl. 2. Special Counsel Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the Appropriations Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 7, but the Court need not address the proper remedy for that funding violation given the dismissal on Appointments Clause grounds.

The effect of this Order is confined to this proceeding.

The court found that Smith’s appointment did not adhere to the Appointments Clause, which requires that principal officers of the United States be appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

The Special Counsel’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation was also deemed a violation of the Appropriations Clause, although the court did not address the remedy for this funding violation given the dismissal on Appointments Clause grounds.

The case, which stemmed from a grand jury indictment on June 8, 2023, charged Trump with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and additional conspiracy and concealment charges against Trump and his co-defendants, Waltine Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. The indictment was later expanded to 42 charges in a superseding indictment.

President Trump previously filed a motion to dismiss Jack Smith’s classified documents charges based on the “unlawful appointment and funding of Special Counsel.”

Day one of the expanded evidentiary hearing was held last month.

According to NBC News, President Trump’s lawyers “argued that an officer like the special counsel must be appointed “by law” and that the special counsel should be categorized as a “principal officer” and subject to Senate confirmation. The statutory text cited by the special counsel’s office “does not authorize” the U.S. attorney general’s appointment of the special counsel, his lawyer, Emil Bove, argued.”

Cannon did question whether Attorney General Merrick had any oversight role in seeking the indictment against Trump.

Jack Smith’s prosecutor James Pearce refused to answer and claimed it would be against policy to answer the question.

“Why would there be any heartburn to answer whether the attorney general signed off on the indictment?” Cannon asked.

Recall, Conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned Jack Smith’s authority as special counsel in his concurring opinion on the high court’s presidential immunity ruling.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Trump has absolute immunity for his core constitutional powers. Former presidents are entitled to at least a presumption of immunity for their official acts.

The Supreme Court ruled that there is no immunity for unofficial acts.

Clarence Thomas questioned Jack Smith’s authority because he was a private citizen when he was tapped as a special prosecutor.

[…]

Thomas also argued that Jack Smith is not senate confirmed (Trump’s lawyers are also using this argument before Judge Cannon).

[…]

Thomas once again reiterated that a special prosecutor must be senate confirmed.

[…]

In her detailed opinion, Judge Cannon emphasized the importance of the separation of powers and the role of Congress in the appointment process. She highlighted that none of the statutes cited by the Special Counsel—28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, 515, and 533—provided the Attorney General with the authority to appoint a Special Counsel with the full powers of a United States Attorney.

[…]

Read the ruling below:

View Fullscreen

Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2024/07/15/breaking-judge-cannon-dismisses-classified-documents-case-based-on-unlawful-appointment-of-jack-smith/

Kid on bike ( Kid Bike © Volodymyr Tverdokhlib | Dreamstime.com)

Lenore Skenazy

Kay Eskridge is a Kentucky mom, former child protective services worker, and fan of the Free-Range Kids movement. Over the years, she’s written to me several times about our shared passion for fostering kids’ independence. This includes a note she sent in 2021 saying that a 7-year-old riding her bike in their quiet Louisville neighborhood had been stopped by cops who wanted to know where her mother was.

But earlier this summer, it happened to Eskridge’s own kid.

“The police were called because my 8-year-old was riding her bike on our street,” says Eskridge.

Her note arrived in my inbox recently. Subsequently, we connected over a Zoom call. She set the scene: Her daughter, Julia, had just finished second grade. Thanks to a weird schedule, Julia arrives home two hours before her friends. That leaves her bored and eager for fun by late afternoon. On May 18, when at last a friend had made it home, Julia hopped on her bike to ride eight houses over to his place.

“She was three houses away,” says Eskridge, “and the police stopped her.”

The policeman was actually someone the family knew. (Eskridge’s husband is in local politics.) He told the girl that “this isn’t a good time to be outside,” according to Eskridge. Julia assured the officer that she was used to traffic and knew how to ride her bike, and continued on her way.

The officer left her alone but decided to pay a visit to the Eskridge house.

Her husband answered the door, but when Eskridge heard what was going on, she took matters into her own hands.

“I was not about to let him handle this,” she says. “So I come bursting through and say, ‘Can a child not ride her bike on the street in this neighborhood anymore? Is that what we’re saying?'”

The policeman assured her no, it wasn’t that. Rather, a woman had called the police because she was “upset that a child was outside.”

Eskridge informed the cop that it was not illegal for children to be outside. He agreed but implied that Eskridge needed to take that up with the woman.

She soon got her chance. When Julia returned home, she told her mom that a woman had come running over to her. Eskridge realized that must have been the neighbor who called the cops: an older lady who lived down the block. Eskridge went to talk to her and explained that kids need some independence.

“I explained how she’s not on screens when she comes home,” says Eskridge. The woman, a former teacher, eventually agreed that this parenting decision was sound, and the matter was finished.

Now Eskridge would like the rest of the world’s Good Samaritans to take a minute and think before reflexively calling the cops whenever there is a child outdoors.

[…]

Via https://reason.com/2024/07/10/cops-called-on-8-year-old-child-for-being-outside/

Evan Vucci/AP

Hannah Knudsen

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-KY) is investigating who is really “calling the shots” under President Joe Biden’s leadership, issuing subpoenas to three little-known White House staffers while trying to determine if there has been a “shadow government” this whole time.

“We’re looking to see who is actually calling the shots for Joe Biden,” Comer said during an appearance on Breitbart News Saturday.

“I mean, I think it’s very evident that he isn’t able to serve as president, much less an additional four years, and we’ve all been asking the questions ‘Who is actually running the show? Who’s pulling the strings?’” he said, noting that Republicans have used their sources, including disgruntled Democrats, to identify three White House staffers, whom Comer described as the “gatekeepers for Joe Biden” who have “shielded him” from his cabinet secretaries as well as from the mainstream media.

“They shielded him from lots of people that probably could have sounded the alarm much earlier than, than a week ago that Joe Biden wasn’t mentally able to serve as president. So we’ve subpoenaed them. No one had ever heard of any of the three, including myself, prior to determining that these were the three to subpoena. We’re gonna bring them in and we’re gonna ask them questions and we’re gonna see if, in fact, there was a cover-up, number one, and number two, even worse, we’re gonna determine whether or not there’s been a shadow government,” Comer continued, as it has been apparent, he said, that “Biden has not been in charge for quite some time.”

“After three years of Joe Biden, Watergate doesn’t look much different than jaywalking,” Comer said, noting that both the media and Deep State have continually covered up the financial crimes that the Biden family “has been committing for over two decades.”

Comer emphasized his belief that there is a cover-up by White House staffers on Biden’s ability to lead, as they, he said, have likely worked with the White House doctor to “create a false narrative, not just cover up.”

Comer said he believes concerns about a shadow government are one reason some Democrats are beginning to step out and call on Biden to drop out of the race. He also said they are driven by their fears of former President Donald Trump having a legitimate chance to make it back into the Oval Office.

One way or another, Comer predicted, the truth will come out.

LISTEN:

Breitbart · Rep. James Comer (R-KY) – July 13, 2024

“The difference between that investigation that we’ve just begun and the Biden influence-peddling investigation is that there are a lot of willing participants. There’s already been a number of stories and a number of prominent Democrats that have come forward and described the fact that … they don’t think that Joe Biden could pass a cognitive test,” the congressman said.

“You think about the job responsibilities of the President of the United States and the decisions that the President has to make on a daily basis — who’s been making those decisions? I mean, the White House has admitted that he’s only functional from eight o’clock to four o’clock — which I think that’s a stretch — but you know, there are a lot of things that happen before eight o’clock in the morning and after four o’clock in the afternoon,” Comer said, describing this as an issue of national security.

“The reason Cabinet secretaries get confirmed by the Senate is so the American people can kind of know who they are and how they think and what their positions are and determine whether or not they’re capable. If we’ve got three or four low-level staffers that have been deciding what weapons to send Ukraine, how to do an executive order that limits drilling that leads to higher gas prices, which creates more inflation — if these three or four employees that no one’s ever heard of have been making those decisions, then I think that there are a lot of people that need to be held accountable,” Comer said, noting that the mainstream media has been complicit because personalities have “attacked any Republican that would suggest that Joe Biden wasn’t healthy, even as recently as when we were trying to get Robert Hur to release the audio tapes.”

Ultimately, the ship is turning because most congressmen, Comer explained, are only interested in self-preservation, and they now feel their future is in “peril” due to Biden’s weakness as a presidential candidate.

“I think they’re gonna start talking and if they get beat, I think they’re gonna talk even more. So we’ve gotten a lot of sources and this investigation about who’s been calling the shots and who’s been involved in the cover-up — it’s rapidly proceeding,” Comer said.

When asked what accountability would look like, Comer said, “The accountability side looks like sending people to jail if they’ve committed a serious offense.” At the least, he said, it would involve removing these bad actors from the government payroll.

[…]

Via https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/07/13/exclusive-house-oversight-chair-james-comer-possible-shadow-government-were-looking-who-is-really-calling-shots-under-biden/

Meryl Nass

Europe’s governance system is ready to destroy food production. In the US, massive operations have destroyed food quality. Time to turn this mess around.

https://apnews.com/article/denmark-cow-tax-greenhouse-gases-9a570518639e0a1990806fd1a05ac11a

“We have succeeded in landing a compromise on a CO2 tax, which lays the groundwork for a restructured food industry -– also on the other side of 2030,” the head of The Danish Society for Nature Conservation, Maria Reumert Gjerding said after the talks in which they took part.

Farmers will pay on average $115 per cow yearly, starting in 2030, increasing to about $280 per cow yearly by 2035.

Denmark has about 1.5 million cows.  What will this tax do Denmark’s cattle industry and to the cost of meat and dairy products?

Given the huge cost of taxes to be levied, Denmark’s farmers won’t be able to compete with other producers of meat and dairy so they will have to shut down. Then other nations will impose similar taxes, gradually shutting down more and more farms. The ones left will be able to raise their prices so high we can’t afford to buy the little meat and dairy left.

And all because cows belch methane, which could be stopped by adjusting their feed, which I wrote about last year.

Save the planet by getting rid of cows? Yet cows are said to be needed to make barren land useful—because land too poor for growing crops can still support cows, sheep, goats. And the excreta from the cows fertilizes the land, while their hooves embed grasses in the dirt and enrich the soil.

We had to destroy this planet in order to save it! [An old Vietnam war saying in which “village” is replaced by “planet.”]

[…]

In Germany they attacked the farmers by raising the price of energy. In the Netherlands it was the nitrogen in the cows’ excreta, it was the need for land for homes, but whatever it was, the only solution was getting rid of cows—and preventing farmers from farming in other EU countries.

Door to Freedom and Children’s Health Defense will host our second Symposium on the Attack on Food and Agriculture on September 7 and most likely a second day, as there is a lot to say. Stay tuned.

[…]

Via https://merylnass.substack.com/p/destroying-meat-and-dairy-production