They warn Disease X “could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic.”

Klaus Schwab, the WEF, and the so-called global elites are gathering together for a 5-day annual meeting in Davos from January 15-19. One of the topics on the agenda has raised some eyeballs, “Preparing for Disease X” on January 17.

COVID has been reported to have claimed approximately 7 million lives worldwide, but “Disease X,” on the other hand, they warn, “could result in 20 times more fatalities than the coronavirus pandemic.”

Something interesting about people in power is that they also often believe that the world is overpopulated. If a pandemic 20 times as deadly as COVID did happen, claiming 140 million lives, would global leaders mourn or secretly celebrate that the world’s population was curbed?

Yuval Noah Harari, one of Barack Obama’s favorite authors and a frequent speaker at Davos, has raised “the big political and economic question of the 21st century,” which is “What do we need humans for? Or at least, what do we need so many humans for?”

[…]

Via https://vigilantfox.substack.com/p/here-we-go-again-wef-hosts-upcoming

By Victor Nava

New York Post

Several Democrats on Capitol Hill scolded President Biden on Thursday for launching airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen without congressional approval, arguing that the action was unconstitutional.

“Section 2C of the War Powers Act is clear: POTUS may only introduce the US into hostilities after Congressional authorization or in a national emergency when the U.S. is under imminent attack,” Khanna went on. “Reporting is not a substitute. This is a retaliatory, offensive strike.”

Echoing Khanna, Rep. Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) tweeted, “These airstrikes have NOT been authorized by Congress. The Constitution is clear: Congress has the sole authority to authorize military involvement in overseas conflicts. Every president must first come to Congress and ask for military authorization, regardless of party.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, called the US- and UK-led bombing campaign “an unacceptable violation of the Constitution.”

“Article 1 requires that military action be authorized by Congress,” she further explained.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) expressed his fear that Biden’s action in Yemen could risk the US “getting entangled into another decades-long conflict without Congressional authorization.

“The White House must work with Congress before continuing these airstrikes in Yemen,” he urged. 

“The people do not want more of our taxpayer dollars going to endless war and the killing of civilians,” she tweeted.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who has previously accused Biden of supporting “genocide” against Palestinians, also condemned the Yemen offensive.

“The American people are tired of endless war,” she tweeted, calling the airstrikes unconstitutional.

The attacks against Yemen come after a series of drone and missile attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis against shipping vessels in the Red Sea.

“The United States carries a special, historic obligation to help protect and defend these arteries of global trade and commerce,” a senior administration official told reporters Thursday.

“And this action falls directly in line with that tradition. That is clearly reflected in both our national security strategy and the national defense strategy. It is a key conviction of the president and it is a commitment that we are prepared to uphold.”

[…]

Via https://nypost.com/2024/01/11/news/dems-fume-after-biden-orders-yemen-airstrikes-without-congressional-approval/

Both South Africa and Israel are signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention which gives the ICJ the jurisdiction to rule on disputes over the treaty [Fatima Shbair/AP]

Al Jazeera

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) based in The Hague will hold its first hearing in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel on Thursday, with several countries welcoming the move amid a global chorus for a ceasefire in Gaza.

South Africa filed the lawsuit end of December, accusing Israel of genocide in its war on Gaza and seeking a halt to the brutal military assault that has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians, nearly 10,000 of them children.

The 84-page filing by South Africa says Israel violated the 1948 Genocide Convention, drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.

Both Israel and South Africa are signatories to the United Nations Genocide Convention, which gives the ICJ – the highest UN legal body – jurisdiction to rule on disputes over the treaty.

All states that signed the convention are obliged to not commit genocide and also to prevent and punish it. The treaty defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”.

Here’s what we know about the countries backing South Africa in its case against Israel, and the countries that oppose the case at the world court.

Which countries have welcomed South Africa’s ICJ case against Israel?

• The Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC): The 57-member bloc, which includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Morocco, voiced their support for the case on December 30.
• Malaysia: In a statement released on January 2, the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the South African application. It reiterated a call for an independent Palestinian state “based on the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”.
• Turkey: Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Oncu Keceli posted on X on January 3 welcoming South Africa’s move.
• Jordan: Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi said on January 4 that Amman would back South Africa.
• Bolivia: On Sunday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bolivia dubbed South Africa’s move as historic, becoming the first Latin American country to back the ICJ case against Israel.
• Besides countries, many advocacy groups and civil society groups worldwide have also joined South Africa’s call. These include Terreiro Pindorama in Brazil, Asociacion Nacional de Amistad Italia-Cuba in Italy, and Collectif Judeo Arabe et Citoyen pour la Palestine in France, reported independent outlet Common Dreams.

Which countries filed the ICC request earlier?

Bolivia also pointed out it had earlier filed a request to International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan alongside South Africa, Bangladesh, Comoros, and Djibouti to investigate the situation in Palestine. Khan said he received the request on November 30.

The ICC and the ICJ are sometimes conflated with one another. Both the courts are located in The Hague, Netherlands. While the purpose of the ICJ is to resolve conflicts between states, the ICC prosecutes individuals for committing crimes, according to the University of Melbourne’s Pursuit platform. While states cannot be sued at the ICC, the prosecutor can open an investigation where crimes, including genocide, were likely committed.

Who is not backing South Africa’s ICJ case?

The United States has voiced its opposition to the genocide case. National security spokesperson John Kirby called South Africa’s submission “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis” during a White House press briefing on January 3.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday that “there is nothing more atrocious and preposterous” than the lawsuit. Herzog also thanked Blinken for Washington’s support of Israel.

Israel’s Western allies, including the European Union, have mostly maintained silence on the ICJ case.

The United Kingdom, which has refused to support the case, has been accused of double standards after it submitted detailed legal documents to the ICJ about a month ago to support claims that Myanmar committed genocide against the Rohingya community.

[…]

Via https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2024/01/10/which-countries-back-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-at-icj/

Information Clearing House

UN’s top court hears South Africa’s case for an emergency order to stop Israeli military action in Gaza.

Information Clearing House

Pretoria is asking the court to act urgently “to protect against further, severe and irreparable harm to the rights of the Palestinian people under the genocide convention, which continues to be violated with impunity”.

South Africa filed the lawsuit at the end of December, citing statements made by Israeli public officials and the actions of its military, and wants an emergency order calling on Israel to suspend its military campaign.

More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing war on Gaza, including more than 9,000 children.

In an 84-page application submitted to the ICJ on 29 December, South Africa said Israel’s actions in Gaza were “genocidal in character because they are intended to bring about the destruction of a substantial part of the Palestinian national,
racial and ethnic group”.Israel has rejected the filing, calling it “blood libel” –  a
reference to antisemitic lies that originated in the Middle Ages, which
claimed that Jews murdered Christian boys to use their blood for
religious rituals.

It is the first time Israel is being tried under the United Nations’
Genocide Convention, which was drawn up after the Second World War in
light of the atrocities committed against Jews and other persecuted
minorities during the Holocaust.The ICJ is the UN’s highest court. Established in 1945, it deals with disputes between countries and provides advisory opinions. It has 15
judges who are elected for nine-year terms by the UN General Assembly
and Security Council.

The court can be expanded with the addition of a judge from each side of the case, in this case South Africa and Israel. The current judges at the ICJ are from the United States, Russia, China, Slovakia, Morocco, Lebanon, India, France, Somalia, Jamaica, Japan, Germany, Australia, Uganda and Brazil.

[…]

Via https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2024/01/11/first-day-of-icj-hearing-on-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel/09/

Dr Eddy Betterman

They are widely prescribed as a solution for clogged arteries, but statin drugs actually accelerate coronary artery calcification, according to a new study.

Research published in the journal Clinical Pharmacology reveals that statins are more aptly described as “mitochondrial toxins” in that they impair normal muscle function in the heart and blood vessels by depleting the body of coenzyme Q10, also known as CoQ10.

An antioxidant that cells use for growth and maintenance, CoQ10 does not synthesize properly when a person takes statins as prescribed by doctors to prevent heart disease, which is said to be the leading cause of death in the United States.

Also vital for the production of ATP, the fundamental energy carrier in cells, CoQ10 is an absolutely vital component of heart health. Without it, ATP production is inhibited and the body is left with an energy deficit that the new study’s authors say “could be a major cause for heart muscle and coronary artery damage.”

“We believe that many years of statin drug therapy result in the gradual accumulation of mitochondrial DNA damage,” the authors write.

(Fact check: Cholesterol is good for health, helping to promote longer life.)

Cut the statins and take CoQ10 to optimize heart health

A 2008 study looked at 50 statin patients to identify side effects like fatigue and muscle pain that are common in people with ATP problems and insufficient CoQ10.

When these 50 were told to stop taking statins and to supplement with CoQ10 for 22 months, all of them saw major improvements in their symptoms. Fatigue, muscle pain, breathlessness, memory loss and nerve pain all decreased when statins were stopped and CoQ10 was started.

According to the researchers involved with that study, the side effects of statins “are far more common than previously published and are reversible with the combination of statin discontinuation and supplemental CoQ10.”

One of the key nutrients the body requires to prevent calcification in arteries is vitamin K. Statin drugs impair vitamin K production, which in part explains why statins contribute to arterial calcification over the long term.

Optimizing vitamin K2 levels in the body helps to prevent plaque buildup and atherosclerosis, a condition marked by the thickening or hardening of arteries.

“Coronary calcification happens when calcium accumulates in the walls of the coronary arteries that provide oxygen to the heart,” one media outlet reported. “This plaque buildup is a sign of early coronary artery disease, which can block blood flow and trigger a heart attack.”

Back in 2021, another study was published that looked at the connection between statin use, vitamin K2 deficiency and coronary artery calcification. That study’s findings were “in agreement with the existing evidence about positive association between statins and vascular calcification.”

Another thing statins damage is selenoproteins, which are carriers of the mineral selenium, another vital nutrient for heart health. There is also growing speculation that statins trigger inflammation, which is another factor in arterial calcification.

“Physicians in general are not aware that statins can cause heart failure and are clearly not recognizing it,” the latest study’s authors stated, adding that doctors who prescribe cholesterol drugs “cannot ignore the moral responsibility of ‘informed consent.’”

“The body naturally makes more cholesterol in an attempt to repair cell membrane damage caused by free radicals,” wrote a commenter. “Free radicals are provoked by environmental toxins such as hidden infection, chemicals and pesticides, even pharmaceutical drugs that liver can’t break down.”

“Lowering cholesterol makes matters worse because the underlying issues are not addressed, and important nutrients such as thiamine and CoQ10 are robbed by the drug.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2024/01/11/statins-mitochondrial-toxins-linked-to-heart-disease/

Dmitry Orlov

‘Tis election season in the DSA (the Disunited States of America, that is) and, since I happen to be a Russian, it behooves me to engage in our traditional national sport — American election meddling. It is a good, clean sport in which the stakes are purely symbolic and wagering would be pointless. You see, the DSA is not a democracy and it does not matter who is president: the whole place is being flushed down the same golden toilet no matter who gets to sit on it. I have been consistently maintaining that this is the case for many years now and it is indeed the case now more than ever, though less than it will be tomorrow or the next day, so please continue to pay close attention.

What is Joe Biden? He is a vacant cipher of a man backed by a crack team of mostly Jewish neocons. He recently took a vacation from his vacation to give a campaign speech in which he read some lines from two teleprompters, one to the left of him, one to the right, swiveling from one to the other between sentences. Then his microphone was turned off. This was a sensible precaution, given that Biden likes to ad lib — and when he ad libs he confabulates most preposterously. Nobody needs to hear his spontaneous soliloquies — he was “a po’ black chile growin’ up in Mississippi when his momma tole ‘im…” or some such, so microphone off and loud music as soon as the prepared speech is over is now standard procedure. As to the speech itself, that’s best left to an AI program: just give it a word count and tell it to riff on the subject of “Orange Man bad” (Orange Man being Donald Trump).

Meanwhile, the Orange Man is not a vacant cipher at all. Although he does repeat himself (a sign of his advanced age) he is still full of verve, vim and vigor. What’s more, he knows exactly what’s going on: he recently wished that the American economy would collapse sooner rather than later because he does not wish to be another Herbert Hoover, whose bad luck was to hold the great office during the onset of the Great Depression. Instead, he wants to be inaugurated in time to pick up the pieces while blaming the inevitable disaster on his awful predecessor. But that’s where Trump’s thinking goes off the rails, letting his boisterous, crowd-loving personality get the better of him, for if he were able to reflect on the situation in a detached and dispassionate way he would realize that there is no America to be made great again and that nobody in their right mind should want to be its president.

I believe that the Disunited States of America will devolve into a disordered heap of squabbling, disrupted, destitute states and counties, warring urban ghettos and a whole lot of wrecked, pockmarked, toxic wasteland. Right now, it is barely able to persist thanks to a bag of hot air known as the federal debt which is growing ever huger and ever hotter. The debt is in a runaway mode, rolling over into shorter-term and higher interest rate paper until… poof! Past that final “poof!” the federal government stops functioning; game over. Bureaucracies are very durable things, growing ever larger, more powerful and more bureaucratic, and America’s federal bureaucracies are no exception, but the Achilles’ heel of all bureaucracies is their budget: stab them in the budget and they shrivel up and blow away, leaving behind abandoned hulks of vacant office buildings.

Some people still choose to comfort themselves with the idea that the mighty US dollar is still mighty because so many people have so much of it. Well, I have quite a lot of delicious Olivier salad still sitting in my fridge, left over from the New Year celebration a dozen days ago. It is very rich, full of the nutritious goodness of ham, vegetables and mayonnaise; perhaps I should claim it as an asset and add it to my net worth? It is delicious, I tell you! Some people also choose to comfort themselves with the idea that the mighty US dollar is still mighty because it is still being used to settle some large, though shrinking, percentage of international trade. Well, people do tend to show a great interest in the chips of any given casino as long as there remains the possibility of exchanging them for some real money. Once that possibility goes away, all they remain good for is playing tiddly-winks with the kindergartners.

On purely humanitarian grounds, I want to spare Trump the pain and agony of discovering in the course his very first cabinet briefing once elected that the mighty federal bureaucracy over which he was elected to preside has gone “poof!” Let him enter his dotage (he is old, you know) while persisting in his comfortable and inspirational fiction that if only he were allowed to run things again, America would be made Great Again. And it appears that the only way to make that happen is to give Biden another term. And… I have what I believe is a really good, workable plan on how to make that happen.

The first thing to observe is that very few people, sane or (more likely) otherwise, would want to vote for a near-cadaver like Biden. Some of the sanest and most clueful ones might even be paying attention to the unspeakable atrocities Israel is carrying out against the Palestinians, somehow relate this to the fact that Biden’s cabinet is stocked with Jews who are, in a knee-jerk sort of way, pro-Israel, and propagandize this fact among numerous members of the general populace, conditioning them to imagine piles of dead Palestinian babies and to projectile-vomit at the very mention of Biden’s name. Then, were an actual election to be held, in spite of a record-low turnout (many voters have been pre-conditioned to projectile-vomit at the very mention of Trump’s name), Trump would sail into the White House and into history as The Last US President, stealing Biden’s laurels. Thus, it is essential to prevent an actual election from being held, just like the last time.

Like the last time, the proven and efficacious way of doing this is by means of a man-made virus. To this end, we should consult Shí Zhènglì (石正丽), a.k.a. “The Bat Woman of Wuhan” and see what other viruses she has up her… test tube. The ideal virus would be none too lethal but quite contagious and somehow spectacular. Perhaps this one would make people break out in spots and, obviously, require wearing masks in public to cover up said spots. Thinking of the overall viral ad campaign, it would make sense to introduce some fashion elements: revive the fashion of wearing artificial beauty spots — little black circles, to cover up the spots, used as part of makeup, pioneered by Margaret Lucas Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1623–1673, which she used to hide her persistent zits. It would also help to introduce a new dance craze to hint at the sudden lethality of the new virus: called “The Plank,” it would include some of the usual gyrations, but in addition periodically half the dance floor would go stiff as a plank and do a trust fall, with the other half catching them; after that the usual gyrations would resume.

In order for this plan to work smoothly, it will be essential to discretely clue in the Chinese and the Russians. The Chinese would automatically be in the loop since the virus would be, once again, from Wuhan, but the Russians should get a free sample of the virus, conveyed in secret to Alexander Ginzburg, director of N. F. Gamaleya Federal Research Center for Epidemiology & Microbiology in Moscow, giving the center enough time to develop a vaccine, perhaps to be named Gopnik-V, which would then be sold to dozens of countries around the world, earning Russia billions of dollars just as it did with the 91.6% effective Sputnik-V. The Chinese and the Russians would then be fine with this plan, treating as a profitable opportunity and an entirely internal American political matter.

With the new virus spreading and lavishly propagandized and with people breaking out in spots all over the country, it would be possible to accomplish two important things. First, it would provide the rationale to throw caution to the wind and to fire up the dollar printing press again, emitting into circulation tens, then hundreds, then thousands of trillions of dollars of “helicopter money,” flooding the economy with free, though increasingly worthless, digital currency, thus masking the unfolding financial and economic collapse until after the election in November. Second, it would necessitate bringing back lockdowns, school shutdowns and working from home, paving the way to… electronic voting via smartphones. In the midst of a pandemic, you see, it would be inexcusable to allow anyone to vote in person.

The voting would be via a smartphone app and an internet server located in Wuhan, China. Why China? That’s so that anybody who brings up this scandalous fact could be labeled a conspiracy theorist and, if necessary, charged with sedition and imprisoned. The server should be pre-installed with a secret AI module that seemingly randomly converts Trump votes into Biden votes often enough to ensure a Biden victory while leaving no verifiable audit trail. Anybody with a US IP address should be able to vote, citizenship be damned, since that’s the trend anyway. Oh, and any foreigner smart enough to fake a US IP address using a VPN should definitely be allowed to vote, being so much smarter than the average US voter.

With these measures in place, Biden would sail to an easy election victory and a second term in office even while mouldering in his basement throughout the election campaign just like he did the last time. But then what if Biden croaks? Apparently, senile presidents are by now allowed to remain in office, but is having a dead president in office still a bridge too far?

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/965537b3-fa0e-4631-afdf-c39b41e431ab

By Josh Christenson

New York Post

Dr. Anthony Fauci confessed to lawmakers Tuesday that guidelines to keep six feet of separation — ostensibly to limit the spread of COVID-19 — “sort of just appeared” without scientific input.

Fauci, 83, revealed to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic that the “six feet apart” recommendation championed by him and other US public health officials was “likely not based on scientific data,” according to Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who is also a physician.

Schools nationwide remained closed well into the second year of the pandemic as a result of the social distancing guidelines, which were disputed by both research studies and other health officials.

“It never struck me that six feet was particularly sensical in the context of mitigation,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health who served as President Biden’s COVID response coordinator for 15 months, told the New York Times in March 2021.

“I wish the CDC would just come out and say this is not a major issue.”

Asked about a study in Massachusetts schools that found just three feet of distance between students resulted in “similar” COVID case rates, Fauci said the same month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was “very carefully” reviewing the data and would “likely” update them.

A top White House adviser to two presidential administrations, Fauci’s transcribed interview before the House COVID panel “revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority,” according to Wenstrup.

Those “failures” included foisting vaccination mandates on schools and businesses.

“After two days of testimony and 14 hours of questioning, many things became evident. During his interview today, Dr. Fauci claimed that the policies and mandates he promoted may unfortunately increase vaccine hesitancy for years to come,” Wenstrup said.

“It is clear that dissenting opinions were often not considered or suppressed completely. Should a future pandemic arise, America’s response must be guided by scientific facts and conclusive data.”

Wenstrup also said committee members “remain frustrated with Dr. Fauci’s inability to recollect COVID-19 information that is important for our investigation,” while “others we have spoken to do recall the facts.”

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who sits on the panel, said Tuesday night that Fauci had shown an “amazing ability to either forget what happened or then to find ways to shirk any sort of responsibility for the influence that was had,” during the two-day affair.

​​“They wash their hands of any sort of responsibility, saying, ‘Oh, those decisions were made by school districts.’ But the school districts know, if you don’t follow the guidance that’s coming out of the federal government, you open yourselves up to lawsuits,” Cloud said of Fauci and other US pandemic response officials.
Wenstrup also said committee members “remain frustrated with Dr. Fauci’s inability to recollect COVID-19 information that is important for our investigation.” Getty Images

“He says he’s still not convinced that there was learning loss — that in his view, that’s still really open for discussion,” Cloud also told The Post.

“I think [if] you ask any parent, they’ll tell you it was a major hit on their child’s development.”

Republican staff members said the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director also “admitted that America’s vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic could increase vaccine hesitancy in the future” but that he advised US colleges “to impose vaccine mandates on their students” during the pandemic.

In 2021, Fauci had also said it was “proven that when you make it difficult for people in their lives, they lose their ideological bulls–t, and they get vaccinated.”

The COVID select subcommittee will hear further testimony from Fauci in a public hearing later this year.

Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-Calif.), a doctor and the top Democrat on the subcommittee, dismissed the majority’s interview with Fauci in a statement as an “extreme fishing expedition,” calling on Republicans “to make the full transcript” available to the public.

The ranking member did not attend Monday’s transcribed interview with Fauci but showed up for the second day of questioning.

Wenstrup told reporters that the full transcripts of the interview with Fauci will be released once they are reviewed by majority and minority staff.

[…]

Via https://nypost.com/2024/01/10/news/fauci-admits-to-congress-that-certain-covid-social-distancing-guidelines-lacked-scientific-basis-sort-of-just-appeared/

Episode 6: Political Awakening of 1789

Living the French Revolution and Age of Napoleon

Dr Suzanne M Desan

Film Review

Louis XVI’s 1788 decision to call an Estates General to address France’s massive public debt reopened the possibility of power sharing between an absolute monarch and the nobility for the first time in over a century.

Mechanics of Choosing Deputies

Each of the three estates (clergy, nobility and everyone else) met in local assemblies to draw up a list of grievances and chose electors to select deputies to represent them at the Estates General. Although the king agreed to allot Third Estate commoners twice as many deputies as the other two estates, each estate had a single vote on the final proposal they sent the king.

In local assemblies, all men over 25 who paid taxes were allowed to vote on a list of  grievances. Except for actors, services and the bankrupt, all adult men were allowed. to vote for deputies. The only women allowed a vote were nuns belonging to the First Estate.

In Paris the Third Estate held their local assembly at the Palais Royal, a shopping arcade belonging to the duke Louis Philippe.* In rural areas, local assemblies met in parish halls and in cities they met in guild halls. Royal censorship had collapsed in 1788 and as the popular assemblies met, thousands of pamphlets were printed to sway popular opinion.

The Grievances

Altogether the three estates came up with 60,000 grievances. The top three were demands 1) for a constitutional monarchy, 2) for the Estates General to meet regularly and 3) for the clergy and nobility to pay more taxes in exchange for return for an advisory role in a representative body.*

The main Third Estate grievances were for 1) a reduction in seigneurial dues, church tithes and royal taxes, equal access (regardless of birth) to professions, an end to the nobility’s monopoly on hunting and fishing, free access to common lands, a reform of the seigneurial courts, an end to the salt tax and end to crop decimation by rabbits and birds owned by feudal lords 2) an increase in midwives and primary schools, 3) a standardization of weights and measures, 4) more uniform and fair systems of justice and taxation and 5) the removal of the toll gates around Paris.

Some Third Estate commoners had competing demands. The guilds wanted an end to guild monopolies to free up commerce. Female flower sellers wanted their guild reinstated to protect their meager earnings.

The Estates General Meets (January 1789)

There were 2000 spectators at the opening meeting at the king’s palace at Versailles on May 4, 1789. The king opened the Estates General but didn’t attend after the first day. The First and Second Estate met behind closed doors but the Third Estate opened proceedings to spectators.

Deadlocked over the first procedure (verifying membership), nothing happened for weeks. After persuading poor parish priests to leave the First Estate and join them, Third Estate deputies voted to rename themselves the National Assembly. After rejecting this demand, the king locked them out and they reconvened in an an indoor tennis court. There they committed to draft a constitution creating a constitutional monarchy.

While tacitly agreeing to a new system of consultation, the king simultaneously deployed royal troops on the outskirts of Versailles. In response more clergy and “liberal” nobles joined the National Assembly and refused to disband. As bread riots broke out in Paris and Lyons (France’s second largest city), on June 27th Louis XVI capitulated and directed the other two other estates to join the National Assembly.

*Some of the nobility saw the Estates General to gain back privileges they had lost to an absolute.

**The king’s cousin, Louis Phillipe renounced his title after the revolution.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/149323/149335

By Cassidy Morrison Senior Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com

• Dr Fauci said social distancing ‘six foot rule’ was not based on scientific data
• Despite efforts to silence lab leak theorists, Fauci admitted it is not a conspiracy
• READ MORE:  Fauci flip flops during first 7-hour session of grilling before House

Fauci, 83, sat before the House coronavirus subcommittee for a second seven-hour stretch of questioning on Tuesday about the pandemic response that he oversaw and its myriad flaws.

The infectious disease expert said that data did not support recommendations to keep six feet of distance from another person and that vaccine mandates he personally advised likely increased vaccine hesitancy.

Fauci also U-turned on his views of President Donald Trump’s 2020 orders to restrict incoming travelers from China.

He told Congress yesterday that he supported the ban – despite publicly criticizing the move in 2020.

The former President moved to restrict travel from China in January 2020 soon after Chinese officials identified around 10,000 cases of the novel virus.

Leading political figures on the left including President Joe Biden calling the then-President’s travel restrictions ‘hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.’

Dr Fauci, once seen as an ‘adult in the room’ amid a chaotic and confusing government response to the initial 2020 outbreak, has seen his sparkling public image take a hit in recent years.

He flip-flopped on crucial Covid safety information including masks and worked to silence scientists with views that differed from the mainstream.

The full extent of Dr Fauci’s testimony over the two days will be released after lawyers review their content to make sure no restricted information will be made public, though it’s not clear when that will be.

The snippets were revealed by Republicans on the committee, who laid out the key takeaways on a lengthy Twitter (X) thread.

Ohio Republican Brad Wenstrup, who heads up the subcommittee for the pandemic response, said Tuesday: ‘Dr Fauci’s transcribed interview revealed systemic failures in our public health system and shed light on serious procedural concerns with our public health authority.

‘While we remain frustrated with Dr Fauci’s inability to recollect Covid-19 information that is important for our investigation, others we have spoken to do recall the facts.’

Newly released highlights from the second day’s hearing revealed that the committee honed in on the issues of social distancing, mandatory vaccinations, early travel bans, and the now-infamous paper that called the lab leak a conspiracy.

Dr Fauci told the committee that scientific data was not a driver of the blanket six-feet-distance recommendation to reduce the spread of the virus, saying that the rule ‘just sort of appeared.’

He also said that vaccine mandates, which split the nation in 2021, likely reinforced a general sense of distrust in the government with more and more people questioning its motives.

Republicans on the House committee said that Dr Fauci ‘advised American universities to impose vaccine mandates on their students.’

While it is not clear exactly how Dr Fauci engaged with university leaders to install vaccine requirements, it is well known that he supported such mandates on university campuses as well as primary and high schools.

Mandates also sparked outrage about what millions of Americans perceived as government infringement on their personal freedoms.

Many chose to eschew the vaccines to, in their view, preserve their own autonomy despite mandates for attending university, going work, or taking public transit.

Rep Wenstrup told the Washington Examiner: ‘I can’t get into his mind, but I think he felt it was the right thing to do because he thought it would save lives… but he basically was saying the lesson learned [was it] didn’t get into the psyche of America.’

Dr Fauci was also said to have ‘played semantics’ with the definition of the lab leak theory, which maintains that the coronavirus that started sweeping the globe in early 2020 emerged from a Chinese lab where researchers tinker with viruses to make them more transmissible and/or virulent.

He was specifically speaking about the now-infamous Proximal Origins paper published in the journal Nature Medicine in March 2020. The paper argued that Covid had most likely evolved naturally after spilling over from animal reservoirs, rather than being engineered by scientists.

Dr Fauci was not an author of the paper, but he has come under fire for his role in commissioning it.

A House investigation later reported that Dr Fauci, along with former National Institutes of Health head Dr Francis Collins, orchestrated a conference call before the paper would be published, during which time they allegedly strong-armed scientists into publishing the natural origin theory.

But Dr Krisian Andersen, a co-author of the Proximal Origins paper who initially believed the virus showed signs of being genetically manipulated in a lab, told Congress last year, ‘there was no ‘prompting’ to disprove, or dismiss, a potential ‘lab leak.’

‘Although Drs. Fauci and Collins were on emails containing documents that would eventually help form the basis of the Proximal Origin paper, they were not sent drafts or final versions of the paper for ‘editing and approval’, nor did they, or any other NIH official, provide any edits or suggestions on the paper.’

Still, emails from Dr Andersen included language that Fauci ‘prompted’ him to write the paper with the goal of ‘disproving’ the lab leak theory, Dr Andersen told Congress that the statements they highlighted ‘are false and based on selective quote-mining of private emails, misrepresenting what was said.’

Recently-published internal communications among the scientists painted a picture of internal efforts to quash dissenting voices on more than just the issue of covid origins.

A petition written by who Dr Collins called ‘fringe epidemiologists’ Martin Kulldorff at Harvardi University, Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta and Stanford’s Jay Bhattacharya railed against blanket pandemic lockdowns, arguing for focusing instead on isolating people most susceptible to severe illness.

Dr Collins told Fauci: ‘There needs to be a quick and devastating published take down of its premises.’

Dr Fauci assured him that a take down was in fact, underway.

Rep Wenstrup said on Tuesday: ‘He testified that the lab leak hypothesis — which was often suppressed — was, in fact, not a conspiracy theory.’

The Republican added that Dr Fauci, during his testimony, was not as staunchly against Trump Administration-era travel bans on arrivals from China, a policy that was painted as xenophobic at the time.

During Monday’s hearing, Dr Fauci had backtracked on his earlier claims that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases never allocated government money to gain of function research.

He had insisted to Senators last summer that his former department ‘has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.’

Yet, recently publicized emails dated February 1, 2020 showed Fauci acknowledged that ‘scientists in Wuhan University are known to have been working on gain-of-function experiments to determine that molecular mechanisms associated with bat viruses adapting to human infection, and the outbreak originated in Wuhan.’

While video recordings and text have not been made publicly available, Rep Wenstrup told reporters after Monday’s first stretch of testimony that it was ‘pretty congenial’ but added there are ‘a lot of things that we’re learning’ about how Dr Fauci’s definition of risky ‘gain of function’ experiments on viruses and his role in dispersing grant money to fund such research.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12947075/Fauci-FINALLY-coughs-Covid-failures-admitting-lab-leak-credible-praising-Trump-China-revealing-told-schools-impose-vaccine-mandates.html