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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.

EU leads more than 1 billion-euro commitment to eradicate vaccine-derived polio

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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is pictured in Seattle
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By and

BRUSSELS/LONDON, Oct 11 (Reuters) – The European Union together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the European Investment Bank have announced a new financing package of more than 1 billion euros ($1.06 billion) to eradicate polio, the EU and the foundation said on Wednesday.

Cases of polio have declined by 99% since the 1990s thanks chiefly to mass vaccination campaigns worldwide.\However, eradicating the disease completely has proven more challenging. The wild form of polio is now only endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but the vaccine-derived strain is more widespread.

Vaccine-derived polio can occur when children are immunized with a vaccine containing a weakened version of the live virus. They are protected, but the weakened virus excreted by these immunized children can spread and mutate among an unvaccinated population, ultimately becoming harmful.

Both forms of the disease are often asymptomatic, but in rare cases can paralyse and kill children.

Humanity has only eradicated a single disease: small pox. And that was over 50 years ago. Today, we are on the verge of ending another: wild polio virus. The virus that once paralysed 7,000 children every week, has only paralysed 9 people this year,” Bill Gates told reporters at a press conference.

“But while Polio is nearly gone, there are also another 280 children who have been struck by a different polio variant.”

The financing package is expected to reach 1.1 billion euro ($1.17 billion), as part of Europe’s Global Gateway investment strategy. UNICEF and the World Health Organisation will be the implementing partners.

($1 = 0.9435 euros)

($1 = 0.9433 euros)

[…]

Via https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-leads-more-than-1-billion-euro-commitment-eradicate-polio-2023-10-11/

A $3.1 Billion Industry, Surveilling Kids at School Is Making Them ‘Anxious’ and Scared

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digital surveillance kids school feature

Technology surveillance companies that sell their products to school administrators are creating a “digital dystopia” for U.S. schoolchildren, a new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) report concluded.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased school shootings, a $3.1 billion educational technology (EdTech) surveillance industry has scored huge profits based on the claim that its digital tools — including video cameras, facial recognition software, artificial intelligence (AI)-driven behavior detection technology, online and social media monitoring software and more — prevent bullying, self-harm and school violence.

However, the industry failed to back up that claim with evidence and instead used fear as a primary marketing tactic, the ACLU report said.

The ACLU — after conducting its own research and reviewing additional research commissioned by the U.S. Department of Justice — found a “lack of clear evidence” that the products advertised by EdTech firms keep students safe.

Chad Marlow, the report’s principal author, said as a parent of two K-12 students, he understands how parents and school officials worry about keeping kids safe.

Marlow told The Defender he “regretfully” watched school administrators and state legislatures opted to use funds on surveillance technologies “to keep our children safe.”

“These decisions haunt me,” he said, “because, as an ACLU senior policy counsel focused on privacy, surveillance and technology issues, I know full well that surveillance does not deter bad conduct, and it certainly does not protect our students.”

Marlow said the 61-page report reveals a “living surveillance nightmare” that is “inadvertently hurting our kids” by denying them access to important information, undermining their trust of adults and making it “too risky” to communicate certain thoughts they have.

“It’s the exact opposite lesson we should be teaching our students,” he said.

Greg Glaser, a digital privacy expert and attorney with Children’s Health Defense (CHD), praised the ACLU for rolling back the curtain on the EdTech industry’s tactics of marketing “constant” video surveillance as a supposed attempt to “dissuade criminality” among students.

“If parents could not only see but experience what their children experience in these hellish environments, there would be an exodus [from U.S. public schools],” Glaser told The Defender.

14% of students say surveillance makes them feel ‘anxious’

The ACLU’s report does more than debunk the EdTech surveillance industry’s claims of efficacy and draw attention to its “deceptive marketing practices” that use fear to persuade officials to purchase its products.

The report also showcases the voices of more than 500 students ages 14-18 who participated in a nationally representative survey about how tech surveillance in their schools impacts them.

The report includes comments from more than three dozen students who shared their opinions in focus groups led by the ACLU.

Some students reported that being surveilled increased their fear and anxiety by making them feel “anxious” (14%), “exposed” (15%), “paranoid” (13%) and “violated (12%). Some even said the technology made them feel “unsafe” (7%) and “scared” (5%).

More than a quarter of the students surveyed said they were concerned about what their school — and companies their school contracts with — did with the personal data it collected.

Eighteen percent said the surveillance limited what they chose to say online, signaling indirect censorship.

According to Marlow, one of the report’s most compelling findings was that “the use of student surveillance technologies significantly harms students, especially those who are the most vulnerable, which includes students of color, LGBTQ+ and non-binary students, students with disabilities, low-income students, and undocumented students.”

For example, the report explained how school surveillance can “intensify” the well-documented racially discriminatory effects of the school-to-prison pipeline “particularly when students of color are accused of wrongdoing.”

Marlow said a chief aim of the project was to bring this information to school policymakers in the hope that “the money we spend on students safety goes towards interventions with the most proven benefits and least harm.”

“The ACLU cannot be physically present in every meeting to help educate decision-makers,” he said, “so we released our report to provide an unbiased, honest, and in-depth analysis of the EdTech surveillance industry and its products that we hope will aid school districts in their future decision-making.”

Surveillance in schools about getting students ‘to march in lockstep with a police state’

Commenting on the report, John Whitehead, a civil liberties attorney and author, said it shows how young people are groomed “to march in lockstep with a police state.”

Some schools are now using a host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, RFID (radiofrequency identification) and GPS tracking devices, Whitehead said.

Whitehead told The Defender:

“Instead of being taught the three R’s of education (reading, writing and arithmetic), young people are being drilled in the three I’s of life in the American police state: indoctrination, intimidation and intolerance.”

Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D., author of “Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom,” said the object of EdTech surveillance in schools is “clearly” subjection to authority rather than deterrence of crime.

Rectenwald said the school system is the primary site of indoctrination, where children “are molded into the kinds of subjects that the system requires.” He said surveillance technologies in schools “habituate students to a life of being constantly surveilled and controlled.”

“Biometric surveillance is the elite’s tool for monitoring and controlling subjects to a degree thought unimaginable by the likes of Hitler, Stalin and Mao,” he said. “It is no wonder that a significant percentage of the school students under surveillance find themselves feeling ‘paranoid,’ anxious and trapped. They are trapped — in a giant panopticon.”

Whitehead agreed:

“Under the direction of government officials focused on making the schools more authoritarian (sold to parents as a bid to make the schools safer), young people in America are now first in line to be searched, surveilled, spied on, [and] threatened.”

Schools ‘a microcosm of the total surveillance state’

According to Whitehead, from the moment children enter a U.S. public school to the moment they graduate, they will be exposed to a “steady diet” of:

  • Draconian zero-tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior.
  • Overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech.
  • School resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students.
  • Standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking.
  • Politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them.
  • Extensive biometric and surveillance systems that when coupled with everything else acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.

“This is indeed a digital dystopia: our nation’s schools have become a microcosm of the total surveillance state which currently dominates America,” Whitehead said.

W. Scott McCollough, CHD’s chief litigator for the organization’s electromagnetic radiation (EMR) cases, agreed.

McCollough said the ACLU report’s key findings reflected realities in society at large, telling The Defender:

“The surveillance state is sold through fear porn. The profits are great especially when subsidized by the government. The tools don’t actually work toward solving the stated concern but do accomplish other ends: everyone is abashed and the knowledge of constant monitoring does change their behavior.

“As usual, the children provide lessons for us all.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/ed-tech-surveillance-industry-kids-school/

US Lawmaker: Israel knew of Hamas attack in advance

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Israel knew of Hamas attack in advance – US lawmaker
RT
Representative Michael McCaul backed up earlier claims that Egypt tipped officials off to an impending assault

Three days before Hamas’ large-scale assault on Israel, the Egyptian authorities warned their counterparts in Tel Aviv that such an operation was imminent, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters on Wednesday.

“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen,” McCaul said following a closed-door intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill.

“I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given,” McCaul continued. “I think the question was at what level.” 

The Associated Press reported on Monday that Israeli officials ignored repeated warnings from Cairo that Hamas was planning “something big.” Citing a source within Egyptian intelligence, the news agency claimed that the Israeli government felt that an attack was unlikely to come from Gaza, and would probably take place in the West Bank instead.

The AP report did not specify how recently these warnings were allegedly made.

Hamas militants began firing barrages of rockets into Israel from Gaza on Saturday, with fighters then pouring across the border and raiding Jewish settlements near the Palestinian enclave. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by declaring a state of war and launching airstrikes on Gaza.

Israel has since come under rocket fire from Lebanon and Syria, and as of Wednesday, more than 1,200 Israelis are dead and 3,200 injured, according to government figures. At least 1,100 Palestinians have been killed and more than 5,300 wounded, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

Saturday’s surprise attack has been viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s intelligence services, which were previously believed to have eyes and ears throughout Gaza.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that he was notified of Hamas’ plans before the onslaught.

Shortly after McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official told the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office.

[…]

Via https://www.rt.com/news/584687-israel-knew-attack-egypt/

New Interactive Federal Map Shows How States Rely On Marijuana Tax Revenue To Fund Public Services

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Schedule 6 Foundation

A new map published by the U.S. Census Bureau details the proportion of state revenue made up by marijuana tax money, and in some cases, the figures are eye-popping.

In Oregon, for example, roughly $1 in every $20 the state made during some recent time periods came from legal cannabis transactions. According to the federal data, marijuana taxes comprised 4.67 percent of Oregon’s total revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, 4.7 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 5.21 percent in the third quarter of 2021.

While Oregon by far relied heaviest on marijuana tax dollars, other states—including Michigan, Illinois, Alaska and Colorado—consistently saw marijuana revenue make up at least 1 percent of state income over the past two years.

The data covers the third quarter of fiscal year 2021 through the second quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, although the bureau has said that the sales data it reports for a given quarter typically reflects revenue that states collected on sales made during the prior quarter.

During the most recent quarter for which data is available, which accounts for sales through the end of December 2022, more than 3 percent of Oregon revenue came from legal cannabis. In Michigan and Illinois, the marijuana sector made up more than 2 percent of total revenue, while Alaska and Colorado made just over 1 percent of revenue from cannabis. Arizona and Missouri, meanwhile, saw between 0.5 percent and 1 percent of tax money come from cannabis.

While the revenue is just a small fraction of overall state tax revenues, the billions of dollars flowing into state coffers represent an outsized contribution from the sale of a single crop. In Illinois, revenue from the state’s legal marijuana industry was $451.9 million during the fiscal year that ended June 30. That’s nearly one-and-a-half times the $316.3 million Illinois made in alcohol taxes during the same period.

In fiscal year 2022, both Colorado and Washington received more tax revenue from legal cannabis than from alcohol or cigarettes.

The interactive map also allows sorting by the amount of change in state marijuana tax revenue from quarter to quarter. In the second quarter of fiscal year 2023, states such as Mississippi, Connecticut and New York saw cannabis tax revenue double from the previous quarter, while California, Missouri and Maine saw between 60 percent and 90 percent revenue growth. Massachusetts, meanwhile, observed a 33.4 percent decrease in cannabis tax revenue.

While not every state with legal marijuana provided data for the new map, the project nevertheless represents the federal government’s growing effort to account for the size and scope of the legal cannabis industry. The Census Bureau describes the accounting as a “new data product,” and it includes the collection and publication of cannabis-related economic data from both public and private sectors.

Late last month the agency published a report showing that legal cannabis states had collected more than $5.7 billion in marijuana tax revenue over an 18-month period, a figure it intends to update quarterly going forward. Census also recently updated its survey of private businesses to better capture marijuana-related economic activity.

Together, the new tracking and reporting efforts—which come nearly a decade after the first state-legal sales of adult-use cannabis in the United States—indicate an increasing willingness by the federal government to acknowledge the billions of dollars in annually economic activity as the result of state-level marijuana legalization, even as the substance remains federally illegal.

The new state tax revenue data used to build the infographics “result from a complete canvass of all state government agencies,” the bureau said in a separate note about its survey methodology. While it refers to the revenue as “quarterly cannabis excise sales tax collections,” it also says that “taxes” are defined rather broadly.

“For this dataset, the concept of ‘taxes’ is comprised of all compulsory contributions exacted by a government for public purposes,” Census said. “Tax revenue is further defined to include related penalty and interest receipts of a government but to exclude protested amounts.”

The bureau has two separate tax codes for marijuana revenue that it asks states to report, one for taxes on cannabis transactions and another for business license fees. It’s not clear whether the totals in the new report include sales tax figures alone or revenue from both categories. A Census spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for clarification this week.

The agency said its own figures might not align perfectly with state-reported data “because the Census Bureau may be using a different definition of which organizations are covered by the term, ‘state government.’” The bureau’s definition, it explains, “refers not only to the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of a given state, but it also includes agencies, institutions, commissions, and public authorities.”

Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, told Marijuana Moment earlier this week that he welcomed Census’s acknowledgement of the sector’s economic contribution. “This data highlights the fact that legal cannabis markets are making positive contributions to their communities,” he said. “However, we still aren’t even close to reaching our full potential to replace criminal markets with tax-paying, regulated businesses.”

Notably, the current Census Bureau reporting period does not include the bulk of sales from this year, during which some states have broken monthly sales records multiple times.

In Illinois, for example, officials recently touted the industry’s “unprecedented growth” in fiscal year 2023, with regulated stores selling more than $1.5 billion in marijuana products. In September, stores in the state sold more individual cannabis products than during any prior month. Tax revenue, however, dropped in fiscal year 2023, falling to $420.9 million from a record $435.1 the previous year. As in past years, Illinois made significantly more revenue from cannabis than from alcohol, which brought in about $316.3 million during the same period.

Connecticut, meanwhile, tallied more than $25 million in total sales in September, besting a record set the previous month.

Licensed retailers in Maryland, sold a record amount of adult-use cannabis products in September although medical marijuana sales fell.

In New Mexico, monthly sales in September narrowly missed a monthly sales record set in August as the state crossed the half-billion-dollar mark in total adult-use sales.

August was also a record-setting month in Rhode Island, which sold its highest amount of cannabis for the fourth consecutive month, notching $9.7 in monthly receipts.

Purchases of adult-use cannabis in August also broke a record ($23.7 million) in Montana, state officials reported, although medical marijuana sales were at their lowest ($5.0 million) since recreational markets opened early last year.

In Maine, too, marijuana sales reached a record high in August, with nearly $22 million worth of purchases, according to recent data from the state Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP).

Early last month, Massachusetts officials reported that retailers have now sold more than $5 billion in adult-use marijuana since the state’s recreational market launched five years ago. Sales reached $139.3 million in August alone, with the year-to-date total at $1.05 billion within the first eight months of 2023.

Michigan marijuana sales also reached another record high in July, with nearly $277 million worth of cannabis sold.

In Missouri, meanwhile, retailers have been selling about $4 million worth of marijuana per day on average since the state’s adult-use market opened up in February—and the state saw a record $121.2 million in cannabis purchases in June.

Biden, US Politicians Greenlighting Potential Genocide of Palestinians

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Press TV – October 12, 2023

Political analysts have warned that US President Joe Biden’s unflinching backing of Israeli aggression against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip could give the Tel Aviv regime the greenlight to commit mass atrocities and genocide against the people of Palestine.

And while the US has always supported Israel in previous incursions and attacks on Palestinians, a number of concerned experts say this time is completely different.

“What’s different now is that the president and Congress have provided the greenest of possible green lights to enable Israel to do anything that it wants to do up to and including genocide,” Josh Ruebner, a political analyst, told Middle East Eye on Thursday.

“Make no mistake about it, by providing 100 percent backing for any action that Israel takes in the Gaza Strip, President Biden is complicit in Israel’s commission of war crimes, and potentially much, much worse,” said Ruebner, who is also the author of Shattered Hopes: Obama’s Failure to Broker Israeli-Palestinian Peace.

“As of this point, I do not believe that President Biden will stop Israel at any point,” Ruebner added.

“It’s unclear how long this green light will last. It’s unclear to what extent mass murder would need to be committed by Israel before it’s reined in by the United States,” he said.

In his public address on Tuesday, Biden described the actions of Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group against the Israeli regime, as “sheer evil,” and said that the US stands behind Israel and will provide it whatever it needs to attack Gaza.

“We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack,” Biden said. “Let there be no doubt. The United States has Israel’s back. We’ll make sure the Jewish and democratic state of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have.”

No mention of concern for Palestinians

Yet none of Israel’s actions against the civilian population of Gaza received a mention in Biden’s speech on Tuesday.

“Biden’s address to the nation, was horrifying in that he didn’t express one iota of concern for the loss of Palestinian civilian life, the war crimes that are being committed currently by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, and the widescale incitement to genocide that we’ve heard in recent days from Israeli political and military leaders,” Ruebner said.

Instead, Biden said with confidence that “we uphold the law of war.”

However, experts said the US and Israel both have an extensive history of violating international humanitarian law and the laws of war.

“The United States has been the most fervent violator of the laws of war and international law in general on a global scale ever since it played a leading role in establishing the so-called ‘rules-based’ international order during the post-WWII years,” Kenney-Shawa said.

“I want to be clear with my words right now. It’s rich that the US would claim to abide by the laws of war. Anyone who still believes that the US would uphold the laws of war or respect the international laws it wrote is deluding themselves.”

“In the past, the US may have been counted on to go through the motions of parroting the usual de-escalatory talking points, like calling for ‘both sides’ to avoid civilian casualties or for Israel to exercise a modicum of restraint,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a US policy fellow for al-Shabaka think tank.

“But today, Biden and the rest of the American political establishment are fervently united in giving Israel carte blanche to completely devastate Gaza.”

Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said that rather than calling for a ceasefire and end to the hostilities, the US is “cheerleading” the latest Israeli assault.

“The Israeli forces are murdering entire families in Gaza while supplying arms to their violent settlers in the West Bank to carry out attacks. The situation in Gaza was already devastating and again the people of Gaza are facing attacks from the most powerful military force in the region, with no Iron Dome, no military, and no US government valuing their lives,” Abuznaid said.

Israel fighting religious war, hellbent on exterminating Palestinians

US Senator Lindsey Graham has said clearly and unequivocally in an interview aired on right-wing channel Fox News that “we are fighting a religious war, and I am on Israel’s side”.

Graham’s message to Israel was: “Do whatever it takes. Raze this place to the ground.”

And nearly 400 members of US Congress signed a measure introduced on Tuesday, in which it condemned the Hamas resistance group for its attack on Israel and gave complete support for Israel’s right to defend itself.

“Lawmakers on the left and on the right, from Lindsey Graham to Ritchie Torres, are using this opportunity to viciously demonize Palestinians in order to drum up anti-Palestinian hatred that will give Israel cover to commit unspeakable crimes right in front of our eyes,” said Kenney-Shawa.

“Israel is hellbent on exterminating Palestinians in Gaza, and it knows no one will get in between them and what they see as their divine objective.”

Deadly Israeli bombing campaign

Israeli air strikes have so far targeted hospitals, mosques, and residential buildings across Gaza. Entire families have been wiped out by the bombing campaign.

The Israeli violence has also once again made its way into the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces have killed 28 Palestinians.

So far, in addition to about 1,500 Palestinians that have been killed, at least 6,268 have been injured. It is unclear how many buildings have been razed, as the number continues to rise by the hour.

Israel has imposed a full siege on the already blockaded enclave, cutting off electricity and water and also refusing requests to allow the entry of food and medical supplies. It also threatened to bomb aid trucks trying to enter from the Egyptian border with Gaza.

The UN Refugee Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) said on Tuesday that it has about 12 days of supplies of food and water for the nearly 200,000 people taking shelter in its school buildings. While a blockade is not necessarily a war crime, the intentional starvation of a civilian population as a war tactic is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In previous Israeli incursions on Palestinians, the US had called for Israel to use restraint. However, in the past few days, there have been no such calls coming from Washington, at least in public.

The attack on Israel from Hamas and Palestinian resistance groups has been dubbed by Israelis as their own 9/11.

The rhetoric around it has caused even more concern about the fallout for Palestinian civilians, as well as Palestinians across the Western diaspora, as Western governments have begun using the rhetoric aimed at cracking down on pro-Palestinian sentiment by equating it with support for Hamas.

“The mass attack on Israeli civilians on Saturday was not only unprecedented in its scope, in terms of Israeli civilians being impacted by Palestinian attacks. That’s obvious. What hasn’t been discussed so much yet, is that what Hamas did on Saturday is the deepest, darkest fear of every settler colonial society,” Ruebner said.

He added that in looking throughout history, settler-colonial states have often responded in “an overwhelming perhaps eliminatory response.”

“And I gravely fear that Israel’s response will pale in comparison to anything that it has inflicted on innocent Palestinians up to this point, including 1948. That’s how dire I think the situation is.”

The Israeli regime launched its onslaught on Saturday after Gaza-based resistance groups carried out a multi-front operation in response to Israeli crimes.

According to media, the Hamas operation has left 1,200 Israelis dead and nearly 3,000 others injured.

UN Chief Antonio Guterres has already expressed concern over the situation in Gaza, saying the clashes will deteriorate the situation exponentially. He said he was “deeply distressed” by an announcement that Israel will initiate a complete siege of Gaza.

[…]

Via https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2023/10/12/712593/US-Biden-Gaza-Palestine-Israel-

How Israel Helped Create Hamas

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The Intercept

Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It

Hamas wants to destroy Israel, right? But as Mehdi Hasan shows in a new video on blowback, Israeli officials admit they helped start the group.

What do you know about Hamas?

That it’s sworn to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United States and the European Union? That it rules Gaza with an iron fist? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks?

But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?

This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.

In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback.

[…]

Via https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/

Human Use Of Cannabis—For Food, Fiber And Psychoactive Effects—Stretches Back Millennia

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Schedule 6 Foundation

A new paper in the European Journal for Chemistry traces the history of cannabis through “thousands of years of contact with mankind,” noting the plant’s legacy as a source of fiber, nutrition, medicine, spirituality and pleasure.

At the same time, it notes that cannabis “is perhaps one of the greatest controversies in contemporary humanity” and a key driver of the modern war on drugs.

The paper, “From ancient Asian relics to contemporaneity: A review of historical and chemical aspects of Cannabis,” was written by Gabriel Vitor de Lima Marques and Renata Barbosa de Olivera, of the pharmacy department at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Brazil.

The cannabis plant appears to have first been used for its fiber, as a material for ropes and other manufactured goods, the authors wrote. Use of hemp fiber dates back to approximately 10,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia and to roughly 6,000 and 5,000 years ago in China and Kazakhstan, respectively.

Ancient peoples considered cannabis one of the five main grains, along with rice, soy, barley and millet, the paper continues. And once stalks were processed into hemp fibers, they became durable materials for ropes, sails and boat rigging, clothing, paper, animal husbandry and more.

“Used as a stunner to facilitate the capture of fish,” it says, “Cannabis is possibly the first plant to be cultivated for non-food purposes.”

Consuming cannabis for its physiological effects, meanwhile, dates back to about 3,000 years ago, the study says:

“The first people to use Cannabis as both a therapeutic and a narcotic tool were from the Indian region, circa 1000 years BCE, mainly because of its religious connotations. The two purposes were often linked. Described in the Vedas as one of the five sacred plants, it was believed to have arisen from a drop of amrita (sacred nectar) that fell from heaven onto the earth and was able to bring joy and freedom to those who used it.”

Marijuana’s psychoactive effects were also recorded in the world’s oldest pharmacopoeia, the Pen Ts’ao Ching, the roots of which date back to 2,700 B.C.E.

In the Indian region, the paper continues, preparations were used at events ranging “from more casual occasions such as weddings and family gatherings, festivals celebrating the coming of the seasons such as the Holi festival, to ceremonies of important religious nature such as Durga Puja.”

“It is understood that marijuana is as significant and respected for these people as communion wine or sacred host is for Christians,” authors wrote. “For its other facets, ayurvedic medicine used Cannabis practically as a panacea: as an analgesic, anti-spasmodic, anticonvulsant, anti-inflammatory, aphrodisiac and anaphrodisiac, appetite stimulant, treatment of female tract diseases, abortifacient, inductor of childbirth, among several other applications.”

The paper’s findings challenge fundamental assertions by leading prohibitionists, such as Kevin Sabet of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), that outlawing cannabis while permitting alcohol is justified because alcohol has a longer history of use.

“The key difference between alcohol and drug prohibition,” Sabet wrote in a 2011 op-ed, “lies in the substance itself. Alcohol, unlike illegal drugs, has a long history of widespread, accepted use in society, dating back to before biblical times. Illegal drugs cannot claim such pervasive use by a large part of the planet’s population over such a long period of time.”

As the new paper explains, “Semitic people also knew about the psychoactive properties of Cannabis centuries before the Christian era,” using the plant formulations ranging “from ointments to external injuries to oral preparations for various ailments and ‘sicknesses of the spirit.’”

“It was common in the Mesopotamian/Persian region to use cannabis-based incense in certain social rituals, such as funerals,” it continues, “which is even mentioned in the Aramaic version of the Old Testament of the Bible for aromatic and narcotic purposes.”

While the paper does not take a political position on the legalization of cannabis, it notes that jurisdictions around the world in recent years have moved to legalize or decriminalize the plant, “such as South Africa, Canada, Georgia, and Uruguay, and some states in the United States,” while others—including Germany, the UK, Chile, New Zealand, and Brazil—have authorized marijuana products for medical use.

“Efforts to deconstruct the stigma, legalize the use of the plant, and explore potential therapeutics have been placed in focus over the last six decades, due to discoveries related to the active principles of Cannabis in the 1960s and its promising developments for contemporary medicine,” the authors wrote.

Humans are, of course, still unraveling the mysteries of the cannabis plant, as the recent explosion in CBD demonstrates. A recent study also shed light on the experience of cannabis when it found that consuming multiple cannabinoids produce a stronger, longer-lasting high than taking pure THC.

And while evolution and selective breeding have traditionally been responsible for changes in the cannabis plant over time, increasingly humans are charting its course. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently said that a genetically engineered hemp plant “may be safely grown and bred in the United States.”

[…]

Via https://www.marijuanamoment.net/human-use-of-cannabis-for-food-fiber-and-psychoactive-effects-stretches-back-millennia-new-report-says/

The House Cagefight Continues for Speaker

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Nel’s New Day

The U.S. media is consumed with reports from Israel, detailed interviews of suffering from those attacked by the Hamas. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is paralyzed by no Speaker in the House after eight far-right Republicans voted Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) out of the office a week ago. The proposed new leadership has one goal—burn down the government. While the media concentrates on the exciting visuals of Israelis dying, it ignores the people who the GOP House leadership may kill through its radical approach to ruling, not governing.

The disaster came to a head began last November when a majority of eight Republicans were elected for the House. The election for the 118th congressional House Speaker began on January 3 and lasted four days and 15 ballots. McCarthy got the job by making a deal with the devil, but he failed to pay the piper. Despite all the right-wing promises he made, he let Democrats vote to stop a government shutdown in October, a cardinal sin for the “Freedom” Caucus. On October 2, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), joined by seven other far-right House members, succeeded in their desire to remove McCarthy from leadership.

Three conservatives want to fill the void:

Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), who is not a member of the House, has offered to help the country by taking the position although the rules ban anyone indicted of a felony from being a member of the leadership.

Jim Jordan (R-OH), part of the January 6 insurrection, thinks his “weaponization” reputation will get him the Speaker position. Turning from what Republicans call a moderate to a radical rightist, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), is one of his strong supporters, accidentally brought back Jordan’s refusal to report the sexual assaults on his wrestling athletes while he coached at Ohio State University. Mace said she was unfamiliar with the allegations despite public testimony and on-the-record reports and called Jordan “a strong voice for women.” She also claimed ignorance about allegations of Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) sexual misconduct, illegal drug use, and public corruption being investigated by the House after she voted to send them to the ethics committee. More about Margaret Brennan’s Face the Nation interview with Mace and statements with other journalists.

[…]

Jordan promises to cause a shutdown unless Democrats support his extreme, unworkable restrictions on asylum-seeking. The next deadline for the congressional budget agreement is November 17. His declaration of no funding for processing or releasing new migrants into the U.S. is “non-negotiable” although the law mandates the requests. Detaining all the migrants, too, would cost billions of dollars.

[Note: Mace also called Joe Biden “the most corrupt president in U.S. history” and accused him of bribery, money laundering, and orchestrating a prostitution ring. Last weekend, Fox’s Maria Bartiromo asked her for “specific policy decisions that Biden made that he was paid for.” Mace said she hadn’t had “the ability to research that.”]

Steve Scalise (R-LA), perhaps the most benign candidate after the others—including Oklahoma’s Kevin Hern—dropped out, is known for his ties to white supremacy. He spoke at one of their conferences and called himself “[ex-Ku Klux Klan grand wizard] David Duke without the baggage” but denied knowing anything about white supremacy. Duke said Scalise was “friendly” with Kenny Knight, Duke’s “longtime political adviser.” Like Jordan, Scalise voted against Biden’s legal electoral vote on January 6. Scalise may be the weakest candidate because of his recent diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer in the bone marrow.

McCarthy  changed his mind today for the fifth time when he asked Republicans not to nominate him for Speaker after he said he was willing to run for Speaker again to show strength after Hamas attacked Israel. Earlier, McCarthy told Hugh Hewitt that he would do anything the conference wants him to do if he were elected. And that was after he promised he wouldn’t run again in his California seat after saying he would resign. All in the span of one week.

Therefore, the choice, as it stands, for the second in line to the presidency is among an insurrectionist, an insurrection supporter, and a white supremacist. (Probably between the insurrection supporter and white supremacist as the third one gos back to his presidential campaigning and legal issues.)

Jordan’s scandal regarding his refusal to report sexual assaults puts him in accord with former Speaker Dennis Hastert who served from 1999 to 2007. Indicted in 2015 and serving 13 months in prison, the evangelical Christian advancing “family values” committed financial offenses relating to the sexual molestation of five of his teenage wrestling athletes, 14 to 17 years old, in the 1960s and 70s. The statute of limitation had run out on the charge of sexual assault. Jordan’s Ohio congressional district is only a few hours’ drive from Hastert’s Illinois home.

Several House Republicans laid red lines in the sand to vote for a speaker. The current chaos came because the far-right insisted that one person could initiate a motion to remove a Speaker. A movement under foot is that this could not happen again without at least 50 percent of each party’s conference agreeing with Republicans that they won’t support a candidate without a pledge to change the rule. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) tweeted that she would “ditch” the rule so long as Jordan is elected Speaker, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) won’t vote for a speaker without the promise of an anti-transgender bill. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said she would only support a speaker willing to defund DDT’s prosecution.

GOP senators are split over the choice of Speaker; mainstays want Scalise with a fast transition. They also don’t want Jordan’s impeachment inquiry, calling it a “political loser,” and think they can count on him to avoid a government shutdown and provide more funding for Ukraine. Others who want DDT to shake up the party prefer his endorsement, Jordan. Mike Braun (R-IN) endorsed Jordan because he is a “fighter.” All the senators, however, are keeping their distance to avoid the impression of meddling in House business.

[…]

If Republicans elect Scalise, he would be the most conservative House speaker in history, and Jordan is far to his right. That gives Jordan a better chance to win the contest.

Speaker candidates quickly unplugged Fox’s idea to televise the debate among them. Bret Baier said on air that Jordan, Scalise, and Hern had all agreed to the event, but they were pressured to change their minds. Instead, the candidate forum will be a closed-door debate.

The “festivities” kicked off Monday night when the House GOP conference huddled and vented their anger and recriminations for the first of many closed-door meetings. At the lengthy Tuesday closed-door meeting, candidates outlined their vision,  but the vote was split. Republicans want unanimity for one of the candidates before he is presented to the entire House for a public vote. After the Tuesday meeting, Rep Troy Nehls (R-TX) said, “I don’t know how the hell you get to 218,” adding that “it could be a long week.” Some of those leaving the meeting said they want to get McCarthy back

On Wednesday, candidates return to give more pitches.

Via https://nelsnewday.wordpress.com/2023/10/10/the-house-cagefight-continues-for-speaker/

The Status of Women in 1215

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Saint Hildegard von Bingen - First German Nutritionist

Hildegard of Bingen

 

Episode 20 The Status of Women in 2015

1215: Years That Changed History

Dr Dorsey Armstrong (2019)

Film Review

Armstrong makes an interesting contrast between women’s rights in Europe and those in the Mongol Empire during the 13th century. European women had some political rights prior to 1215, they lost them with Fourth Lateran Council* and the rise of the persecutory society. In contrast Mongol women, who previously were viewed as commodities, gained significant status under Genghis Khan. He used the first kuritai he called in 1216 to ban women from being bought, sold or traded. He also appointed his wives and daughters to rule over newly conquered steppes territories while he and his sons went off to conquer new kingdoms.

He appointed

  • his first wife Börte to rule the Tatar region around the Kherlen River
  • his second wife Kulan to rule the Kentil Mountain region
  • his third wife Yeshi to rule the Tuul River region
  • his fourth wife Yesugen to rule the Khangai mountain range

He had seven (or eight daughters), which he married off to his most trusted allies. They, too, would rule in their husbands’ place when they went off to battle.

After Genghis Khan died, women were largely pushed aside in favor of male rulers (whether they were qualified or not), and Armstrong believes this was a major factor in the decline of the Mongol empire.

Armstrong uses the last half of this lecture to trace the lives of three of Europe’s most powerful and influential women during the early Middle ages: Hildegarde of Bingen, Eloise and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

  • Hildegarde of Bingen (1098 -1179) – nun and “doctor” of the Catholic church. Her parents dedicated her to the church at birth, and she entered a convent to begin religious study at age eight. She engaged in preaching tours around Germany, and both church and government officials frequently sought her advice. She preached openly against church corruption, wrote theological books, authored the  first morality play, composed music and wrote scientific papers on sexuality and gynecology.
  • Eloise – best known for her love affair with her tutor Abelad, she was a renowned scholar, who could read and write Latin, Greek and Hebrew and was a skilled physician and mathematician. After her uncle castrated Abelard for impregnating her, the former lovers both founded separate religious orders.
  • Eleanor of Aquitaine – after marrying Louis VII of France and giving birth to two daughters, she somehow obtained an papal annulment and married Henry II of England. Bringing Aquitaine as her dowry, she continued to rule there in place of Henry. After she backed Henry’s sons Richard the Lionhearted and John in a revolt against him, Henry put her on house arrest between 1173-90 (Richard released her following Henry’s death). While serving house arrest, she continued to direct her own network of spies and followers.

After women came under the total control of their fathers and husbands following the Fourth Lateran Council, European women lost the ability to achieve this level of advanced education and social influence.

*See 1215: How the First Lateran Council Legitimatized Persecution

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/12392969/12393011

COVID Masking Hysteria Was Never About Following the Science

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Anthony Fauci coronavirus mask
. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Sen Rand Paul
Newsweek

The following essay is an excerpt from Sen. Rand Paul’s new book, Deception: The Great Covid Cover-Up, due out from Regnery on October 10.

By the spring of 2020, when I returned from my COVID sabbatical, all previous knowledge of immunity seemed to have been discarded. This contagion of “know-nothingism” could not be missed. On my return to the Capitol after recovering from COVID, I was met by a gaggle of young journalists, the ones who occupy a spot between the Capitol subway and the escalator to the Capitol. They barreled up to me with multiple masks on their twenty-something-year-old faces and demanded to know why I wasn’t wearing a mask.

I calmly explained to them that the benefit of having survived COVID-19 was that I now had immunity. They challenged me, saying that I didn’t know how long my immunity would last. I responded in kind, replying that they didn’t know my immunity wouldn’t last.

The week before I returned from quarantine, I had donated my blood to researchers at the University of Louisville for analysis. They found that I had a robust antibody response to three different sites on the COVID-19 surface.

The reporters, none of whom had a science degree (nor had any of them likely even passed an advanced science course), angrily and self-righteously excoriated me for my “ignorance” and my “dangerous noncompliance.” What they did not do was challenge my position in any meaningful way by citing scientific studies based on randomized controlled trials showing any efficacy of masking for viral infection. No. The ignorance of today’s “journalists” is staggering. They only know how to repeat the dogma fed to them.

I tried to reassure the poor flat-earthers that “of all the people you’ll meet today, I’m probably the safest person in Washington. You won’t catch COVID-19 from me!” Their eyes visible above their “BLM” and “Trust Science” masks only narrowed in angry and impotent disbelief. Our media repeatedly and stupidly conflated the use of masking in clinical and surgical settings involving body fluid spatter and bacterial infection with effectiveness against viruses 10 times smaller than the smallest bacteria in public settings.

And Anthony Fauci played along. (Except, of course, in his private email, where he advised a personal friend not to bother masking since, of course, “The typical mask you buy in the drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus, which is small enough to pass through material.”) Of course, while he was writing this privately, he was sanctimoniously lecturing me in a Senate hearing wearing a ridiculous Washington Nationals cloth mask. When I rightly called him out for his public health theater, he angrily and huffily denied that it was theater. I am still shocked at the childishly ignorant and emotional responses he gave, and by the media’s fawning response to it.

I told the press and anyone who might be interested via Twitter statements and press releases of the randomized controlled studies around the world, including the large and telling DANMASK study. Even the New York Times admitted, “Researchers in Denmark reported on Wednesday that surgical masks did not protect the wearers against infection with the coronavirus in a large randomized clinical trial.”

As Anthony Lazzarino, M.D., commented in the British Medical Journal, “The DANMASK-19 study proved that surgical facemasks have limited air filtering capacity with respect to SARS-CoV-2.”

I offered them a large, randomized-controlled mask study of influenza from Vietnam that showed the cloth mask–wearing group had more infections than the control group wearing no masks. As Dr. A. A. Chughtai and his coauthors concluded, “Rates of infection were consistently higher among those in the cloth mask group than in the medical mask and control groups.”

I would point out that the pores of a surgical mask were six hundred times larger than the virus. But, to these young nonscientists, I was portrayed as the person who did not “believe the science.” Never mind that science is about objective provability, not belief.

[…]

Via https://www.newsweek.com/covid-masking-hysteria-was-never-about-following-science-opinion-1832201