By Ron Clutz

Wind and Solar The Grand Illusion

Mark Mills explains the many ways the deck is stacked against those gambling on Wind and Solar energy to replace hydrocarbon fuels.  The transcript is below in italics with my bolds and added images.

Have you ever heard of “unobtanium”?

It’s the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It’s a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they’ve found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power.

They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries.

The simple truth is that we can’t. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet.

To understand why, consider some simple physics
realities that aren’t being talked about.

All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.

So, we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we’re told is to use batteries.

Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.

Consider the world’s biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day’s worth of America’s electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world’s energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.

Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from nonrenewable materials.

Consider some sobering numbers:

A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.

Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.

Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.

Where’s all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.

Australia’s Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global “gold” rush for energy materials will take miners into “…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.”

And who is doing the mining? Let’s just say that they’re not all going to be union workers with union protections.

Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: “The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks.”

And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware.

Then there’s the waste. Wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries have a relatively short life; about twenty years. Conventional energy machines, like gas turbines, last twice as long.

With current plans, the International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that by 2050, the disposal of worn-out solar panels will constitute over double the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste. Worn-out wind turbines and batteries will add millions of tons more waste. It will be a whole new environmental challenge.

Before we launch history’s biggest increase in mining, dig up millions of acres in pristine areas, encourage childhood labor, and create epic waste problems, we might want to reconsider our almost inexhaustible supply of hydrocarbons—the fuels that make our marvelous modern world possible.

And technology is making it easier to acquire and cleaner to use them every day.

It would take a wind farm the size of Albany county NY to replace the now closed Indian Point nuclear power plant.

The following comparisons are typical—and instructive:

It costs about the same to drill one oil well as it does to build one giant wind turbine. And while that turbine generates the energy equivalent of about one barrel of oil per hour, the oil rig produces 10 barrels per hour. It costs less than 50 cents to store a barrel of oil or its equivalent in natural gas. But you need $200 worth of batteries to hold the energy contained in one oil barrel.

Next time someone tells you that wind, solar and batteries are
the magical solution for all our energy needs ask them
if they have an idea of the cost… to the environment.

“Unobtanium” works fine in the movies. But we don’t live in movies. We live in the real world.

I’m Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, for Prager University.

[…]

Via https://rclutz.com/2024/05/01/wake-up-energy-transition-not-happening/

By Sharyl Attkisson

The Verdict is In: The Amish Approach to Covid was Superior. So why don’t our public health officials seem interested?

It could be one of the most important lessons learned for the next pandemic. And it should make international headlines.

But it seems like those who made the mistakes during Covid aren’t very interested.

The Amish population that largely rejected public health recommendations fared no worse in terms of health impact than the rest of the country that masked, isolated, and vaccinated. That’s according to available data and a federally-funded study that attempted to evaluate the Amish approach.

These findings imply the US could have avoided experimental vaccines that have serious side effects; and circumvented costly shutdowns that devastated the economy, travel, businesses, mental health, and education at the expense of trillions of US tax dollars.

The Amish Covid Control Group

The Amish are a Christian group that emphasizes the virtuous over the superficial. They don’t usually drive, and don’t routinely use electricity or have TVs. And during the Covid-19 outbreak, they became subjects in a massive social and medical experiment.

After a brief shutdown in the beginning, the Amish chose a different path that led to Covid tearing through the community at warp speed. It began with an important religious holiday in May of 2020.

“When they take communion, they dump their wine into a cup, and they take turns to drink out of that cup,” Calvin Lapp explained to me. He’s an Amish Mennonite living in the largest Amish community in the US centered in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

“So, you go the whole way down the line, and everybody drinks out of that cup. If one person has coronavirus, the rest of the church is going to get coronavirus. The first time they went back to church, everybody got coronavirus.”

Lapp says the Amish weren’t denying Covid. They were facing it head-on. “It’s a worse thing to quit working than dying. Working is more important than dying,” he says. “But to shut down and say that we can’t go to church, we can’t get together with family, we can’t see our old people in the hospital, we got to quit working? It’s going completely against everything that we believe. You’re changing our culture completely to try to act like they wanted us to act the last year, and we’re not going to do it.”

That also meant avoiding hospitals. The Amish simply refused to go to the hospital, even when they were very sick, because that would mean they couldn’t see visitors. And, to them, they’d rather be very sick at home with people around them than be isolated in a hospital.

The Amish anecdotes were powerful, but solid proof wasn’t easy to find because the Amish didn’t typically take Covid tests. Their thinking, says one observer, was, “I’m sick. I know I’m sick. I don’t have to have someone else telling me I’m sick.”

“We didn’t want the [Covid positive test] numbers to go up, because then they would shut things more. What’s the advantage of getting a test?” explains Lapp. They also didn’t mask. Or vaccinate. “No, we’re not getting vaccines,” said Lapp at the time. “Of course not. We all got the Covid, so why would you get a vaccine?”

Without hard data to go by, I dug in to investigate the results of the Amish approach to Covid in terms of deaths. One thing became clear: whether looking at anecdotes or coroner numbers, there was no evidence of any more deaths among the Amish than in places that shut down tightly. Some claim there were fewer. And instead of obliterating their economy the way most of the world did with mandatory shutdowns and pressure to isolate, Lapp says the Amish stayed completely open, and made more money as a community than ever before!

The Amish provided a sort of ready made control group. In a normal scientific environment, the full weight of the research community would put its efforts into learning more and launching studies with verifiable data. But that’s not what happened. Quite the opposite.

There appeared to be a bias on the part of some outside the Amish community to throw cold water on their strategy.

A history professor who studies the Amish declared in an email that the Amish approach to Covid had failed because, he said, “Amish excess deaths nationally shot up . . . from September to November of 2021 . . . matching the national pattern in deaths.”

He seemed to have no realization that he was making the opposite point than what he intended. If Amish death rates truly “matched the national pattern” while the Amish avoided shutdowns, masking, isolation, experimental vaccines, and all the expense—then wasn’t the Amish approach superior?

Furthermore, if Amish deaths truly “shot up” during that short time period, equalling the national pattern—doesn’t that imply that their deaths had been lower than the rest of the nation for a critical time prior to that? And lastly, it’s unclear what data the professor was using to make his claim about the number of Amish Covid deaths since nobody was able to track them with any precision.

A Questionable Study

As part of what I see as an effort to try to discredit the superior Amish approach, there was a taxpayer-funded study published in the Journal of Religion and Health on June 11, 2021. It was titled: “Closed but Not Protected: Excess Deaths Among the Amish and Mennonites During the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The title alone seems to wrongly imply there were more deaths among the noncompliant Amish than in the rest of the US.

In a convolutedly worded conclusion the authors wrote, “The excess death rate for Amish/Mennonites spiked with a 125% increase in November 2020. The impact of COVID-19 on this closed religious community highlights the need to consider religion to stop the spread of COVID-19.”

It seems to me that they clearly intended to leave the impression that the Amish and Mennonite suffered a far worse fate for having rejected CDC recommendations. But that’s untrue. And it didn’t take a lot of digging to find serious flaws in the study.

I found some of the processes researchers followed to reach their conclusions unclear. When I contacted the study’s lead author, Rachel Stein, she refused to answer some important questions.

The first obvious problem I saw is that the researchers failed to study the very population at issue—the Amish. Instead, they studied a confusing conglomeration of Amish and Mennonite. It matters because Mennonites are more likely than Amish to live lives closer to those of ordinary Americans and follow public health recommendations. How did this problem escape the study reviewers?

For example, almost all the residents living at two Mennonite Home Communities in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, got vaccinated for Covid. According to the facilities’ websites: “Numerous vaccine clinics have been held at [Mennonite Home] and [Woodcrest Villa], resulting in almost all residents being vaccinated against COVID-19 infection.” These Mennonite residents also wore masks, isolated, and followed CDC protocols, including social distancing. So, in “Closed but Not Protected,” the scientists may as well have been analyzing the regular CDC-compliant population, not the uniquely Amish approach. Their conclusions didn’t necessarily reveal anything about the Amish approach.

A second issue with “Closed but Not Protected” can be found in the geographical choices the researchers made. Though their conclusions made sweeping generalizations about the Amish approach, they had in fact omitted the most populous Amish community in America: Pennsylvania. Instead, they focused their attention exclusively on “Ohio, with the second and fourth largest Amish settlements in the USA.”

When I asked study author Stein at West Virginia University why she excluded Pennsylvania, she provided a surprising answer. She indicated she and her colleagues chose Ohio because it had a disproportionately high number of Amish and Mennonite obituaries compared to Pennsylvania and other states. According to Stein, Ohio is “home to approximately 23% of the US Amish population, but contributing 56% of the total obituaries published” and “Pennsylvania was not represented to the same degree as Ohio in the data.”

Incredibly, this seems to mean that when they saw evidence of a more positive outcome in Pennsylvania—fewer obituaries—they excluded that data from their study.

Why did the researchers ignore the obvious possibility: that the Pennsylvania Amish and Mennonite had fewer published obituaries compared to Ohio because their death rate was lower? In effect, the decision to omit Pennsylvania would seem to artificially elevate the apparent death rate among Amish and Mennonite people and present the worst case outcome for Closed Religious Communities (CRCs).

I think the most significant flaw with the study is that it buries an earthshattering finding—one that’s contrary to establishment science narratives: Even using the worst case outcome that likely exaggerated the toll that Covid took on the Amish, the researchers found no evidence the Amish suffered any worse than the rest of America. At the same time, the Amish managed to avoid shutdowns, isolation, masking, testing, hospitalization, and vaccination.

The Amish approach appears to be far superior.

The Journal’s Response

It’s been almost one year since I first began raising questions about the study with the lead author and then with the publisher, Springer Nature.

In September of last year, a spokesman for Springer Nature told me, “We take such concerns seriously and, as mentioned before, the Springer Nature Research Integrity Team are now looking into the matter thoroughly and following an established process. This investigation can take some time, but we would be happy to update you with further developments when possible.”

When asking for an update seven months later, a Springer Nature spokesman replied on April 3, 2024:

“I can confirm that we are continuing to look into the concerns raised carefully, following an established process and in line with COPE guidelines. I’m afraid we cannot share any further information while the investigation is ongoing, but we would be happy to provide an update once it is complete. Please note that we cannot predict when this will be…as a general principle, while we endeavour to proceed with investigations as swiftly and efficiently as possible, there are a variety of reasons why our investigations can sometimes take longer to complete. When looking into issues we may need to consult external experts, liaise with author institutions or COPE, or wait for authors to confer with their colleagues, prepare responses and, where appropriate, provide additional materials.”

Can Data From Federally-Funded Study Be Kept Hidden?

In response to my request to see study supporting materials, data, and communications, which the public owns since it was a taxpayer-funded study (and the tenets of solid science require transparency so that any findings can be replicated), West Virginia University stalled and then eventually provided only heavily-redacted materials that revealed very little except that several other observers had also questioned the study.

According to Springer Nature, “Journal of Religion and Health has a research data policy which encourages authors to publish data in a public repository where possible, but does not require that they do so.”

The National Science Foundation, which used US taxpayer money to fund the questioned study, provided no meaningful information when asked.

[…]

Via https://sharylattkisson.com/2024/05/the-verdict-is-in-the-amish-approach-to-covid-was-superior/

Chris Morrison

BBC oddball Chris Packham has hit back at claims reported on Neil Oliver‘s GB News show that half the world’s population could die if Net Zero was implemented in full. “So Ofcom can you please explain how you allow this utter BS to be broadcast,” he wails. Running to Ofcom would appear to be a trade protection measure – millions will die has been the tried and trusted modus operandi of climate catastrophist Chris for decades.

This would appear to be the same Chris Packham who told the Telegraph in October 2010 that there were too many humans on the planet, and “we need to do something about it”. In 2020, he informed the Daily Mail  that “quite frankly” smallpox, measles, mumps and malaria were there “to regulate our population”. Over his broadcast career, untroubled by Ofcom interest, Packham has claimed mass extinctions of all life on Earth unless humans stop burning hydrocarbons. Of course there are those who point out that these popular mass extinctions only seem to exist in computer models. Hydrocarbons, meanwhile, have led to unprecedented prosperity and health, unimaginable to previous generations, across many parts of a planet that now supports a sustainable population of humans numbering eight billion.

Of course Net Zero is not going to kill four billion people because Net Zero is never going to happen. Day-by-day, support is crumbling around the world as the political collectivisation project, supported by increasingly discredited computer-modelled opinions, is starting to fall apart as it bumps into the hard rock of reality. History teaches us that tribes that grow weak and decadent are easy prey for their stronger neighbours. But the suggestion that four billion will die if Net Zero should ever be inflicted on global populations is worth examining. After all, it is likely to be true.

The four billion dead noted on GB News came from a remark made by Dr. Patrick Moore, one of the original founders of Greenpeace. Interviewed on Fox News, he said: “If we ban fossil fuels, agricultural production would collapse. People will begin to starve, and half the population will die in a very short period of time”. Four billion dead if artificial fertiliser is banned is not ‘BS’, it is an almost guaranteed outcome. In a recent science paper, Emeritus Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen of Princeton and MIT respectively noted that “eliminating fossil fuel-derived nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides will create worldwide starvation”. With the use of nitrogen fertiliser, crop yields around the world have soared in recent decades and natural famines, as opposed to those local outbreaks caused by humans, have largely disappeared.

Much of the luxury middle class Net Zero obsession is based on a seeming hatred of human progress. It is a campaign to push back the benefit of mass industrialisation, although it is doubtful that many of the ardent promoters think the drastic reductions in standards of living will apply to them. It is narcissism on stilts and based on an almost complete ignorance of how the food in their faddy diets arrives on their plates. It shows a complete disregard for the central role that hydrocarbons play in their lives. It is based on a profound distaste for almost any modern manufacturing process. These days, they do not know people who actually make things, and when they meet them they often dislike them. Nutty Guardianista George Monbiot recently tweeted that ending animal farming is as important as leaving fossil fuels in the ground. “Eating meat, milk and eggs is an indulgence the planet cannot afford,” he added.

Leaving fossil fuels in the ground will mean the following products will largely disappear.

Circulated on social media and recently published by Paul Homewood, the illustration is a wake-up call to the importance of hydrocarbons. Without it, humans would struggle to make many medicines and plastics. Similar difficulties would be found in the manufacture of common products such as clothing, food preservatives, cleaning products and soft contact lens.

Alec Epstein, the author of the best-selling book Fossil Future, agrees that Net Zero policies by 2050 would be “apocalyptically destructive”, and have in fact already been catastrophically destructive when barely implemented. A reference here, perhaps, to the wicked policies conducted by Western banks and elites in refusing to loan money to build hydrocarbon-fuelled water treatment plants in the poorer parts of the developing world. Billions still lack the cost-effective energy they need to live lives of abundance and safety, notes Epstein. Many people in developing countries still use wood and dung for cooking. Like Happer and Lindzen, he believes that if Net Zero is followed, “virtually all the world’s eight billion people will plunge into poverty and premature death”.

Much of what is planned is hiding in plain sight. The C40 group, funded by wealthy billionaires and chaired by London mayor Sadiq Khan, has investigated World War 2 style rationing with a daily meat allowance of 44g. Reduced private transport and massive restrictions on air travel have all been considered. Labour party member Khan has already made a cracking start on his elite paymasters’ concerns having recently driven many of the cars of the less affluent off London roads with specialist charging penalties.

Honesty rules the day at the U.K. Government-funded UK FIRES operation where Ivory Tower academics produce gruesomely frank reports showing that Net Zero would cut available energy by around three quarters. They assume, rightly, that there is no realistic technology currently available, or likely in the foreseeable future, to back up power sourced from the intermittent breezes and sun beams. No flying, no shipping, drastic cuts in meat consumption and no home heating are all discussed. A ruthless purge of modern building material is also proposed with traditional building supplies replaced by new materials such as “rammed earth”

[…]

Via https://dailysceptic.org/2024/04/19/how-many-billions-of-people-would-die-under-net-zero/

The Cradle 

International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors have held meetings with the staff of Gaza’s two largest hospitals, Al-Shifa Hospital in the north of the strip and Al-Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Two unnamed sources told Reuters on 29 April that ICC prosecutors have listened to the testimonies of several staff members of the two hospitals – both of which have been stormed by the Israeli army since the start of the war in October.

One source said that the Israeli army’s operations in and around both hospitals could become part of an ICC investigation. The sources refused to provide further details, and the ICC prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the operational aspect of the probe, citing concerns over the safety of witnesses and victims.

The ICC has said it is investigating both sides of the conflict.

In November, Al-Shifa Hospital was invaded by the Israeli army, who evacuated its staff at gunpoint and turned the facility into a detention center. The hospital was attacked again on 18 March, and hundreds were killed in a subsequent two-week Israeli operation inside and around the medical center.

Khan Yunis‘ Al-Nasser hospital was also stormed by Israeli troops in February. Several people were killed, including patients.

Palestinian rescue workers demanded urgent probes and international intervention following this month’s discovery of hundreds of bodies – many unidentifiable – buried in mass graves near the two hospitals.

Some of the bodies found showed signs of torture and execution. Other bodies had missing organs. Among the corpses found at the mass graves were those of children and elderly persons.

The investigations come after reports earlier this month saying the ICC was looking to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

Netanyahu is reportedly in a state of extreme anxiety over the matter. According to Hebrew reports, Washington is involved in an effort to block the ICC from issuing the warrants.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has threatened the ICC with “retaliation” if international arrest warrants are issued against senior Israeli officials for war crimes committed in Gaza.

“Legislation to that effect is already in the works,” officials told Axios on 29 April.

US lawmakers threaten ICC against issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials
US law allows for the use of military force in The Hague to ‘liberate‘ any US citizen or citizen of a US-allied country being held by the ICC

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers has threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) with “retaliation” if international arrest warrants are issued against senior Israeli officials for war crimes committed in Gaza.

According to officials who spoke with Axios, “legislation to that effect is already in the works.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul told the US publication that the legislation would call for sanctions against ICC officials “involved in investigating the US and its allies.“

Representative Brad Sherman is quoted as saying that Washington should “think of whether we stay a signatory“ to the Rome Statute — the treaty that established the ICC and established four core international crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv are among the 124 states that remain signatories of the ICC Rome Statute of 1998.

“We have to think about talking to some of the countries that have ratified [the treaty] as to whether they want to support the organization,“ he added.

“If unchallenged by the Biden administration, the ICC could create and assume unprecedented power to issue arrest warrants against American political leaders, American diplomats, and American military personnel,“ House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement issued on 29 April.

The Republican lawmaker also called on the White House to “immediately and unequivocally demand that the ICC stand down” and “use every available tool to prevent such an abomination.”

Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the ICC has been investigating war crimes committed by the Israeli military in Gaza. The court says it is also probing alleged violations by Palestinian resistance groups.

After reports broke earlier this month saying the ICC was looking to issue arrest warrants against top Israeli officials – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – the US and its allies began pressuring the court to back out, claiming the warrants could “jeopardize” a ceasefire deal for Gaza.

“Group of Seven nations have begun a quiet diplomatic effort to convey that message to the Hague-based court,” diplomatic sources who spoke with Bloomberg are quoted as saying.

Israel has been accused of genocide by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also based in The Hague.

An interim ruling at the start of the year determined that Israel was plausibly guilty of the crime of genocide and ordered it to stop genocidal acts during its war on Gaza and take measures to guarantee the efficient provision of humanitarian aid to the strip.

In 2002, two years after Washington withdrew from the Rome Statute, then-president George W Bush signed into law the “American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002,” which authorizes the use of military force in the Netherlands to “liberate” any US citizen or citizen of a US-allied country held by the ICC.

Dr Eddy Betterman

The Japanese people have had enough of their government and the pharmaceutical industry getting away with murder.

The relatives of people who died after getting “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) are demanding compensation from the Japanese government, which like the United States government pushed the shots in a format similar to Operation Warp Speed.

Relatives of the now-deceased have been sharing testimony before a government and press panel about what happened to their loved ones who took the injections, thinking they would provide protection, but died.

Plaintiff No. 7, as they are calling the person in the video below, explained as part of a class-action lawsuit how COVID jabs took the life of the plaintiff’s 19-year-old son in Fukushima, the same prefecture where a massive earthquake occurred back on March 11, 2011.

“My son had his third dose of the vaccine on May 1, 2022,” Plaintiff No. 7 explained. “Then, in the early hours of May 4 at 4:30 a.m., he suddenly shouted and immediately after went into cardiac arrest.”

“He was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and put on ECMO, but he passed away a week later on May 11. He was only 19 years old. He couldn’t even celebrate his coming of age. On my birthday, he was absent while the numerical candles were on the birthday cake we ate.”

(Related: Did you know that 70 percent of COVID jab deaths in Japan occur within 10 days of injection?)

Every business that forced COVID jabs guilty of medical murder

Plaintiff No. 7 would go on to explain how sad the birthday was without the son, who worked at a pharmaceutical company prior to his passing. The young man suffered side effects after his first and second doses and was not planning to take a third until his employer forced him to comply.

“The president also strongly urged him, resulting in him getting vaccinated,” Plaintiff No. 7 continued. “He was happy that the side effects were the least after the third dose.”

“He said he would go to sleep as usual the day before his cardiac arrest happened. Yet, such a thing has occurred. As a result of getting vaccinated for the sake of his company and to protect himself, he lost his life at the young age of 19.”

Plaintiff No. 7 emphasized repeatedly how life is no longer the same without the son – and this is just one of many such cases that the families of Japanese victims are sharing in an effort to attain justice for the crimes against humanity their loved ones endured.

The following video shows another portion of the press conference in which plaintiffs address a glaring disparity in Japan’s vaccine injury compensation payout system, which unfairly benefits older people and not younger people.

Insider reported:

In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then-relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company’s top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called “AI agents” — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.

“Agents are not only going to change how everyone interacts with computers,” Gates wrote. “They’re also going to upend the software industry, bringing about the biggest revolution in computing since we went from typing commands to tapping on icons.”

Today, though, it’s clear that Gates’ secret correspondence anticipated Copilot, the artificial intelligence tool that has helped propel Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable public company. Powered by a version of OpenAI’s GPT large language model, Copilot debuted last year as a tool within Microsoft products to help users with tasks such as preparing presentations and summarizing meetings. “Copilot now sounds exactly like what he wrote,” the executive said.

That’s not by accident.

Publicly, Gates has been almost entirely out of the picture at Microsoft since 2021, following allegations that he had behaved inappropriately toward female employees. In fact, Business Insider has learned, that Gates has been quietly orchestrating much of Microsoft’s AI revolution from behind the scenes. Current and former executives say Gates remains intimately involved in the company’s operations — advising on strategy, reviewing products, recruiting high-level executives, and nurturing Microsoft’s crucial relationship with Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bb-banking-surveillance-republicans-investigate-major-banks-warrantless-data-sharing/

At a time when governments and global organizations are seeking additional powers to deal with pandemics or other catastrophes, a burgeoning effort is rising in opposition to defend local autonomy and personal liberties.

Next month, member nations of the World Health Organization (WHO) are gathering to grant the agency vast new powers during “health emergencies.”

Meanwhile, some state lawmakers are attempting to wrest back control of health issues to their states and their citizens. And although their success has been mixed, they say they’re in it for the long haul.

“We’re almost to a place in this country that the federal government has trampled on the sovereignty of states for so long that in peoples’ minds, they have no options,” Tennessee state Rep. Bud Hulsey told The Epoch Times.

“It’s like whatever the federal government says is the supreme law of the land, and it’s not,” he said. “The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.”

Other states have tried to follow this path, but have been less successful.

Maine state Rep. Heidi Sampson attempted to get a “joint order” passed in support of personal autonomy and against compliance with the WHO agreements, but it garnered little interest in the Democrat supermajority legislature.

“You should have the right to direct what you put in your body, instead of having some entity, whether it’s the state, the federal government, or some international conglomerate telling you, you must take this,” she told The Epoch Times.

“Executive orders are only supposed to apply to the executive branch of government,” Mr. Hulsey said. “If they go beyond that and apply to the people, now it’s law, and of course, the president can’t make laws.

“But the country acts like it’s a law,” he said.

Many examples of this occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, when numerous directives were handed down from both the Trump and Biden administrations.

While courts ultimately ruled that federal agencies don’t have this authority, the administration issued the orders anyway and they were generally enforced by public officials and employers. Nullification would give Tennessee citizens a way to push back if they believe their rights are being violated.

“Nullification is not revolt, all it is is ignoring,” Mr. Hulsey said. “We’re taking a position that we are going to ignore this edict.”

As with many of these efforts, however, the nullification bill is facing hurdles. This bill is currently stalled in Tennessee’s state senate, which tabled it for “summer study.”

Karen Bracken, founder of Tennessee Citizens for State Sovereignty and a former county commissioner, said it’s often a long term effort.

“We just passed legislation last year against the U.N. 2030 agenda and net zero,” Ms. Bracken told The Epoch Times.

“It took 10 years to get that bill passed, so you just have to keep plugging away.”

Ms. Bracken’s organization has been instrumental in drumming up public support for the nullification bill, but she said that passing laws only goes so far to protect civil liberties if citizens don’t stand up for themselves.

“We’re giving you the tools to stand up and fight for your rights,” Ms. Bracken said. “But I can’t make you stand up and fight.”

At the federal level, similar efforts are also running into roadblocks.

The U.S. Constitution requires two-thirds Senate approval to ratify treaties, however, the question of whether or not the U.S. Senate should have a say regarding the upcoming WHO treaty has become a partisan issue.

Silvia Behrendt, a former legal consultant to the WHO and now the founder of Global Health Responsibility Agency (GHRA), called the Austrian vaccine law “a lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

“They were not allowed to buy shoes or clothes, only food and very essential things,” Ms. Behrendt told The Epoch Times. While the Austrian government didn’t strenuously enforce the law and has since revoked it, it succeeded in intimidating people to take the vaccine, she said.

Today, the GHRA is calling for new laws to protect personal autonomy in the wake of what she calls the “global health security agenda” pursued by governments during COVID-19.

Without protective laws, the group says governments, in partnership with the WHO, will assume authority and once again violate civil liberties by enacting lockdowns, forcing mass vaccinations, and taking other controlling measures.

“I thought from the very beginning that after this disaster, we need a treaty, but the content needs to be set by ourselves so something like this would never happen again,” Ms. Behrendt said.

“You need to think about the safeguards, and the first safeguard would be to have prior informed consent [for drugs and treatments] and to have the guarantee that you can refuse medical treatment,” she said. “This would be the first principle we have to legislate in a pandemic treaty.”

[…]

Via https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/states-move-to-reject-who-treaty-federal-health-diktats-5635764

Episode 13 Second Intermediate Period

The History of Ancient Egypt

Professor Robert Brier

Film Review

Egypt was the only civilization to collapse twice and recover.*

Dynasty XIII (1783 1640 BC): All we know about Dyansty XIII is there were ten kings who built small mud brick pyramids in Dashur. Whereas previously only pharaohs could achieve immortality, nobles began building pyramids during the XIII dynasty near Snehorn. Some of the XIIIth dynasty kings built wooden statues (wood, which had to be imported from Lebanon, was very expensive and these statues only survived due to Egypt’s extremely dry desert). These included a large wood statue of the ka of King Hur. Kng Hur also built four small pyramids in the Sahara.

Dynasty XIV (1707-1650 BC): reigned in the delta region with a capital at Fayum.

During Dynasty XV (1650-1542 BC): Dynasty XV were foreign kings, known as the Hyksos, who were most likely Semites from Palestine or Canaan. Their rule in the Delta region may have resulted from military conquest or massive peaceful migration. Their capital was Avaris. Although they left no human remains or artifacts due to the high water table, their frescoes survive from other Mediterranean cultures. A jar with a Hykso cartouche was found in the palace of Knossis in Greece. The Hyksos worshiped Setf (the evil god with a canine body, goat head and forked tail) and Resheph, the god of storms and of war. They built a few pyramids but left no human remains and it’s unknown whether they mummified their dead.

Dynasty XVII (1550-1229 BC – there was no dynasty XVI): refers to princes who ruled in Thebes during the Hyksos occupation of the Delta. The Hyksos king Apophos sent a papyrus to to the Thebean prince Seqenenre (500 miles away) stating “The roaring of the hippopotami in your pools prevents me from sleeping! Hunt them and kill them, that I may rest.” Seqenenre sent his first son Kamose north to avenge his honor by laying siege to the walled city of Avis. Sequenenre’ second son Ahmos would drive the Hyksos all the way north to Palestine, became the first king of the 18th dynasty.

*Brier explains how to make papyrus scrolls in this lecture, by cutting the middle of a papyrus stalk into 18 inch segments, beating them with a mallet, drying them in the son and using their sap to glue them together before polishing them with a flat stone.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/1492791/1492821