A day after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to a public discussion with Max Blumenthal on Israel-Palestine, his campaign walked back his words. RFK Jr. has pledged “unconditional support” to Israel while spouting vitriolic anti-Palestinian rhetoric.
One day after Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to comedian and podcaster Jimmy Dore’s proposal that he engage with The Grayzone’s editor-in-chief, Max Blumenthal, in a public dialogue on Israel-Palestine, Kennedy’s campaign nixed the discussion.
During an August 1 phone call with Grayzone correspondent Liam Cosgrove, RFK Jr. campaign communications director, Stephanie Spear, declared: “[Kennedy’s] not debating Max Blumenthal… He’s not gonna debate anyone. He’s running for president.”
“You’re not hearing me,” she emphasized. “We’re not gonna do it, okay?”
Hours after her call with Cosgrove, Spear contacted Blumenthal directly to explain that Kennedy would not agree to any public discussion with The Grayzone editor until Spring 2024, once the first five primaries are over.
She offered Blumenthal an off-the-record phone conversation with the candidate as an apparent consolation.
Though Blumenthal never insisted on a formal debate, but rather, a live interview such as as the ones Kennedy has granted popular media figures like Dore, Glenn Greenwald and Briahna Joy Gray, Spear repeatedly stated that the candidate would not debate anyone except the President of the United States until the first five presidential primaries are over.
“We’re hitting different demographics, and we’re also hitting on the different issues,” Spear emphasized. “So, you know, it’s really a strategy thing, and – we want to debate President Biden. He’s a Democratic candidate, that’s what we’re waiting for.”
This June, however, Kennedy enthusiastically accepted podcaster Joe Rogan’s offer to participate in a live debate with Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and one of the country’s most vociferous boosters of Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine mandates. Rogan pledged to donate $100,000 to a charity of Hotez’s choice if the doctor entered the octagon. Hotez, who provoked Rogan’s challenge by accusing him and RFK of “vaccine misinformation,” invited widespread mockery and scorn when he refused to debate.
But now, RFK is refusing to engage on an issue that he recently placed at the heart of his campaign, and which has shocked many supporters who believed he offered an alternative to the pro-war bipartisan consensus: his “unconditional support” for the state of Israel and its military’s conduct in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
During his conversation with Kennedy’s communications director, Cosgrove challenged Spear on the candidate’s sudden timidity. “RFK goes on all these interviews and says that he wants to debate people,” he stated, “so I’m a bit confused about why he says that, and you guys don’t want to debate. Is it your decision, or is it him saying that?”
“It’s the campaign’s decision, Liam,” Spear stated.
“He did not ask for a debate with Max,” she continued in an annoyed tone, “so maybe re-listen to that… We’re not gonna debate, I don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sought to define himself as “the strongest peace and freedom candidate in two decades,” while denouncing “neocons and warmongers.” At the same time, he has zealously defended the conduct of Israel’s military and justified the country’s decades-long occupation of Palestinians – even denying that any military occupation exists.
Kennedy placed his Likudnik views on Israel-Palestine at the forefront of his campaign message after being bombarded with accusations of antisemitism stemming from comments he made at a private July 14 event in New York City. Over dinner, he responded to a question about the origins of Covid-19 by opining that “there is an argument” the virus did not affect Ashkenazi Jews and people of Chinese descent as strongly as “Caucasians and Black people.”
“We don’t know whether it was deliberately targeted or not but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact,” Kennedy qualified.
When a New York Post reporter who had been present at the dinner published the candidate’s comments, a maelstrom of manufactured outrage burst forth from Kennedy’s opponents within the Democratic establishment. While the Biden White House and a host of Jewish pressure groups condemned Kennedy as an antisemite, a letter signed by 100 Democratic members of Congress likened him to Adolph Hitler.
When Kennedy arrived on Capitol Hill for July 20 testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz predictably blasted him as a Jew hater. He attempted to push back by deploying ultra-Zionist talking points.
“I’m the only person that has publicly objected to that $2 billion payout that the Biden administration is now making to Iran, which is a genocidal program. I’ve fought more ferociously for Israel than anybody,” Kennedy claimed.
He was apparently referring to the $2.7 billion Iran received in gas and electric payments from Iraq – not the US – after the Biden administration granted the latter country’s request for a sanctions waiver. In other words, Kennedy was framing cross-border trade between two regional, sovereign neighbors as “genocidal.”
Kennedy escalated his warlike rhetoric during a July 23 New York City event hosted by Shmuley Boteach, a former reality show rabbi recruited by the late Likudnik oligarch Sheldon Adelson to advance the cause of Greater Israel within the United States. (Adelson was a top funder of Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns).
During a 20-minute-long diatribe laden with anti-Palestinian venom and ultra-Zionist propaganda, Kennedy referred to hijabs as “habibs” and pronounced Chechnya as though he had not heard of the place until moments before the event. While pledging to prevent any country in the Middle East from obtaining nuclear weapons as president, the candidate seemed unaware that Israel possessed a secret nuclear arsenal.
Later in the interview, Dore displayed a tweet by Blumenthal that featured video of Israeli fighter jets bombing Gaza’s Shorouk Tower, an office building that housed studios of local and international media outlets. When Dore read the tweet, in which Blumenthal explained that he had conducted several interviews inside the building and collaborated with Palestinian colleagues who worked there, Kennedy questioned The Grayzone editor’s credibility.
“I love Max Blumenthal,” the candidate began, “but I do not think he’s objective on Israel. His reporting on Israel – it needs to be questioned.”
Dore responded, “Ok, here’s what I would ask: just like Peter Hotez ducked you and Joe Rogan, I would love – because Max is the guy to talk to about this, not me. Would you do an interview with Max? Because he would be able to talk to you about this way better than I can.”
“Yeah, I would love to talk to Max,” Kennedy said in a seemingly sincere tone.
Within 24 hours, however, his communications director was frantically explaining why no such conversation could take place.
[…]
Via https://thegrayzone.com/2023/08/03/rfk-jr-israel-palestine-dialogue/
Understanding Your Rights and Responsibilities in Childhood Vaccination: A Guide for Parents
Dr Paul Thomas
With summer winding down and schools about to open, parents around the country (USA) have received or will receive letters of exclusion from their child’s school. The letter will state that your child is required to be up to date on their childhood immunizations according to the CDC, or they will not be allowed to attend school.
You are not told that other than a handful of states that have eliminated both the religious and the philosophical exemptions, you are free to do whatever you believe is best for your child. You can do some, all, or none of the childhood vaccines. Each state may have a different form or process but rest assured; it is the law of your state that you have this right; the freedom to choose.
To learn more about the specifics for your state, NVIC (National Vaccine Information Center) https://www.nvic.org has all the information you need.
If you live in California, New York, West Virginia, Maine, and possibly Mississippi, the only exemption allowed is a medical exemption. All states allow medical exemptions, which is where a doctor writes a medical exemption.
The challenge for doctors is that the states only allow medical exemptions according to the CDC guidelines, which means you can only get exemptions for a vaccine that has caused death or a severe anaphylactic reaction. They essentially don’t allow exemptions for all vaccines. More importantly, doctors who write medical exemptions invite an investigation by their state medical board and risk losing their medical license. This has made medical exemptions something, in theory, one could hope to get, but in reality, and practically speaking, medical exemptions no longer exist.
So, what do you do if you live in one of the states that only allow medical exemptions?
Basically, you either must get your child up to date, home school, or leave the state for one that allows religious or philosophical exemptions. If you feel you have no choice but to get your child up to date, I highly recommend that you consult a medical provider to help you figure out the safest way to do this.
I am available for coaching at https://www.kidsfirst4ever.com. I don’t diagnose or treat as I am retired and relinquished my license.
Parents and guardians, there is nothing more important in your role to nurture and protect your children than how you handle the vaccine situation. There is no one size fits all that makes sense. Each vaccine should be looked at individually, and you should determine if it makes sense for your child, given the prevalence of the disease for which there is a vaccine and the risks and benefits of giving the vaccine or not giving the vaccine.
[…]
Via https://kidfirst4ever.substack.com/p/understanding-your-rights-and-responsibilities
Early European Colonization of India
Episode 23 Competing European Empire
A History of India
Michael Fisher (2016)
Following the 1453 Ottoman seizure of the Eastern Roman empire, the Turks totally controlled land access to India’s highly prized spice and cotton trade. This, in turn, created intense pressure on European leaders to discover a sea route to India.
In 1494, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordeallas (with the Pope’s approval), awarding Portugal colonization rights in Brazil, Africa and southern Asia as far as Japan. The treaty granted Spain exclusive colonization rights everywhere else.
Four years later in 1498, Portuguese explorer Vasca da Gamma discovered a direct sea route Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. This would lead to the first European colonies in Asia (30 years before the Mughals arrived).
The first Portuguese to land at Calicut in the late 15th century thought all the non-Muslims they encountered were Christians praying to a dark-skinned version of the Virgin Mary. The Calicut natives, in turn, found the behavior of the first Portuguese explorers extremely shocking. Kitted out with canons, the Portuguese boats seized all the other vessels in the harbor, slaughtered all their crew and passengers and set fire to them.
With their small ship holds, early Portuguese exporters mainly on pepper, forcing the price down by blocking African and Ottoman traders from purchasing it. They also forced all ships leaving Calicut harbor to buy and display a Cartaz, a flag displaying a Christian cross. In addition to South American gold and silver, Portuguese traders also introduced tomatoes, potatoes, chili peppers, invasive species and disease and European-style cannon and other munitions to India. These innovations quickly spread to the interior.
In 1560, the Portuguese set up an Inquisition in India to pressure native Indians to convert to Catholicism. In 1632, Shah Jahan captured 400 Portuguese men and women in an effort to discourage further colonization. He released all those who converted to Islam and distributed the others to his courtiers as slaves.
Although Portugal continued to dominate European trade into the 1800s, by 1850 they only occupied coastal trading settlements in Surat, Goa, Calicut, Cochin and Galle (in modern day Sri Lanka). Diu, Daman and Goa remained Portuguese colonies until 1961, when they were annexed by the Republic of India.
Northern Europe pursued a different, ultimately superior approach to colonization by putting it under the control of the first capitalist corporations: the English East India corporation founded in 1600, the Dutch East India Company founded in 1602 and the French East India Company in 1664. This created more financial certainty for merchants underwriting ships to sail halfway around the world (half of which never returned).
In 1600, Elizabeth I chartered the British East India Company, granting it a monopoly on all English trade from Africa to the Philippines. The charter granted them the right to raise armies and use military force. Cotton, which was far more comfortable than the wool and linen available in Europe, was their export of choice.
Between 1670-1740, there was a 500% increase in Indian imports to England, while massive inflation from the heavy influx of New World gold and silver further destabilized the Mughal empire. By the end of the 17th century, it had fragmented into numerous small kingdoms.
In 1668, control of Bombay shifted from the Portuguese to Charles II of England after he married a Portuguese princess. Owing to the cost of shipping English troops 12,000 miles away, the English East India company recruited local sepoy mercenaries to defend their colonial holdings.
The French East India Company captured Madras in 1745, which they swapped for Louisbourg Canada in the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/366254/366217
Alberta to pause new solar and wind power projects for six months amid review of end-of-life rules
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Alberta is pausing all approvals for new wind and solar power projects larger than one megawatt for the next six months, as it reviews where they can be built, how the surge in renewables affects the province’s power grid and rules about what happens to installations when they reach the end of their life.
Alberta leads Canada in renewables growth. The multibillion-dollar boom in the province over the past few years has been driven by an abundance of sun, a rapid and dramatic drop in the cost of solar technology and Alberta’s unique power market structure, which makes it easy for companies to sign renewable power purchase agreements, thus helping them with their corporate emissions-reduction goals.
Alberta’s power grid capacity is about 18,000 megawatts. Just a few years ago, in 2015, coal generated close to two-thirds of the province’s power. That year, a suite of climate policies introduced by the newly elected NDP included a goal to get Alberta off coal power by 2030, which is now set to happen by the end of 2023. Currently, about one-third of the grid is renewable power.
But the United Conservative Party government says the surge in wind and solar projects means policies need to be updated to reflect the current state of the market.
Affordability and Utilities Minister Nathan Neudorf said that could include mandatory security bonds that renewable developers must pay to ensure projects can be cleaned up when they reach the end of their life.
“When the electricity grid was set up 25 years ago, those were great policies, but the world’s changed. So we need to address this quickly and answer some of these challenges,” he told The Globe and Mail in an interview.
The pause on project approvals before the Alberta Utilities Commission (AUC) begins on Thursday, and runs until Feb. 29. Work on the policy review will begin immediately, led by the AUC. Microgeneration, projects under one megawatt and isolated generation projects will be exempted from the pause.
“The sooner we start with a defined process and timeline, the sooner we can resolve these items and move forward together,” Mr. Neudorf said.
“We think that transparency, as well as collaboration with industry, is going to set clear expectations, saying we all want to work together to a great end.”
There are 3,400 megawatts of wind and solar projects currently under construction in Alberta, worth more than $2.7-billion. They have brought jobs and a flood of new revenue for rural municipalities in the form of taxes.
But the developments have also caused consternation.
Rural municipalities worry that prime agricultural land is being used for solar panels rather than crops, and residents aren’t always fans of the wind turbines that spin on the horizon.
And energy projects have stung rural communities before. Orphaned oil and gas wells litter the province, left behind by bankrupt operators or run partially dry then sold to small companies that can’t – or won’t – pay to plug and mitigate them. Municipal councils and landowners don’t want to be stuck with a similar problem when it comes to solar and wind assets.
Renewable developers generally include terms to cover cleanup in contracts with landowners, but rural municipalities have said that’s not enough of a guarantee.
At the Rural Municipalities of Alberta fall convention last year, a resolution passed that urged the province to learn from its mistakes with fossil fuels and deal with the end-of-life issue for renewables before it’s too late. It asked the government to mandate the collection of adequate funds for a cleanup via, for example, a reclamation surety bond as a condition of project approval, with the amount of the bond based on data-driven projections of actual reclamation costs.
“We’re only expecting this industry to grow. The sooner we can actually get those expectations clearly defined and outlined for what happens at the end of life and reclamation, who pays how much, the better,” Mr. Neudorf said.
He said approximately 15 renewable projects will be affected by the pause.
The government has already spoken with around 200 individuals, Mr. Neudorf said, including landowners, stakeholder groups, consumer advocates and power providers that rely heavily on natural gas. He will meet with the Canadian Renewable Energy Association – the main group that advocates for wind, solar and energy storage solutions – later this week.
[…]
Texas Becomes Latest State to Withdraw From Soros-Zuckerberg Funded Corrupt ERIC Voter Database
Clever Journeys
On July 20, Texas wisely became the eighth state to resign from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) in 2023, and the ninth state overall.
ERIC has been a powerful tool misused by Deep State operatives as data indicates it is another tool (like Dominion Voting machines, Runbeck Elections ballot printers, Konnech voting tabulation, running Mules, USPS Union, etc.) to control and manipulate elections.
ERIC was originally funded by the Soros Open Society to bloat the voter rolls. Evidence indicates ERIC is politically compromised. Although sold to states as a way to purge invalid and ineligible voters, facts show this is not so true.
Those ballots were filled out by many people who have moved from the state, choose not to vote, or had died.
The “who moved and who died” are the richest lists for fake ballot submission.
These phantom names show up on requests for mail-in ballots, mailing lists from state election officials, and even in the CVRs (counted vote records) after an election.
This is the kind of stuff put into voting drop boxes by the “Mules”on the midnight to 3 a.m. shift.
For instance, the number of Michigan’s registered voters climbed dangerously—and impossibly—to 104% of its Voting Aged Population (VAP).
After the suspicious 2020 Election, which placed Joe Biden in the White House, citizen’s groups, rightfully distrustful of mainstream media narratives and corrupted state elections, began performing their own investigation. They found thousands of votes mysteriously counted by people who had moved out of state, as well as ineligible and dead voters.
By June 17, 2022, Verityvote.us, led by citizen investigator Heather Honey, demonstrated that the left-wing organization had crossed a red line.
“The primary effect of ERIC is to grow the voter rolls by converting eligible-but-unregistered (EBU) persons into registered voters. States divulge to ERIC personally identifying information of unregistered residents, including people who have declined to register for privacy reasons. FOIAs reveal that ERIC is sharing EBU records with Zuckerberg-funded CEIR.”
At its height in 2022, 33 states were participating members in ERIC.
While ERIC describes its mission as “to assist states in improving the accuracy of America’s voter rolls and increasing access to voter registration for all eligible citizens,” evidence has shown it is a tool to manipulate elections.
Alicia Pierce, a representative for Texas Secretary of State Jane Nelson, said compliance with Senate Bill 1070 was the reason for Texas’s withdrawal.
SB1070, which Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed on June 18, 2023, includes provisions that make compliance with ERIC’s bylaws effectively impossible and directs the Texas Secretary of State to develop a new voter registration data-sharing compact, or find a new program with annual dues less than $100,000.
The Texas State Senate approved SB1070 by a vote of 26-4 on April 12, and the Texas House of Representatives passed the bill 85-61 on May 23.
The withdrawal will become effective on Oct. 19.
The Texas Republican Party, which supports the state’s withdrawal from ERIC, said: “The ERIC membership agreement collects an extensive amount of personally identifiable information.”
These are the states that have so far withdrawn from using ERIC.
- Louisiana (Effective November 9, 2022)
- Alabama (Effective April 18, 2023)
- Florida (Effective June 3, 2023)
- Missouri (Effective June 3, 2023)
- West Virginia (Effective June 3, 2023)
- Iowa (Effective June 16, 2023)
- Ohio (Effective June 16, 2023)
- Virginia (Effective August 9, 2023)
- Texas (Effective October 19, 2023)
[…]
Former Editor: CIA Moderating Wikipedia
© AFP / Kirill Kudryavtsev
RT
Wikipedia is one of many tools used by the US liberal establishment and its allies in the intelligence community to wage “information warfare,” the site’s co-founder, Larry Sanger, has told journalist Glenn Greenwald.
Speaking on Greenwald’s ‘System Update’ podcast, Sanger lamented how the site he helped found in 2001 has become an instrument of “control” in the hands of the left-liberal establishment, among which he counts the CIA, FBI, and other US intelligence agencies.
“We do have evidence that, as early as 2008, that CIA and FBI computers were used to edit Wikipedia,” he said. “Do you think that they stopped doing that back then?”
Activity by the CIA and FBI on Wikipedia was first made public by a programming student named Virgil Griffith in 2007. Griffith developed a program called WikiScanner that could trace the location of computers used to edit Wikipedia articles, and found that the CIA, FBI, and a host of large corporations and government agencies were scrubbing the online encyclopedia of incriminating information.
CIA computers were used to remove casualty counts from the Iraq War, while an FBI machine was used to remove aerial and satellite images of the US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. CIA computers were used to edit hundreds of articles, including entries on then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, China’s nuclear program, and the Argentine navy.
Some edits were more petty, with former CIA chief William Colby apparently editing his own entry to expand his list of accomplishments.
“[The intelligence agencies] pay off the most influential people to push their agendas, which they’re already mostly in line with, or they just develop their own talent within the [intelligence] community, learn the Wikipedia game, and then push what they want to say with their own people,” Sanger told Greenwald.
“A great part of intelligence and information warfare is conducted online,” he continued, “on websites like Wikipedia.”
Earlier this year, X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk released a trove of documents showing how the platform’s former executives colluded with the FBI to remove content the agency wanted hidden, assisted the US military’s online influence campaigns, and censored “anti-Ukraine narratives” on behalf of multiple US intelligence agencies.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also admitted that Facebook, the biggest social media platform on Earth, censored accurate information that was damaging to President Joe Biden’s 2020 election campaign at the direct request of the FBI.
How to Get Free and Fair US Elections
The image above gets it right on the basics: Eligible voters come to their voting station with valid ID and proot of residency, and paper trail exists to validate machine entry and processing. But there are some subtleties around the edges requiring management. For example, voter registration should be in advance of the voting process, and not on election day. Why? Because there’s no time to check for fake ID or residency. Later on is a post on why there must be an election day deadline, beyond which votes cannot be added to the count. But first a look at some international standards regarding elections and balloting.
A Practical Guide to Democratic Elections Best Practice from Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE). Below is the section on Balloting.
Right:
To Universal Suffrage, To Equal Suffrage, To Secret Ballot, To Fair Elections
Which Guarantee the Free Expression of the Will of the People
Balloting Best Practices:
• Voting procedures must be understandable so that voters are able to vote without difficulty
• Voting should take place in a polling station; however, other means of voting are permissible for voters who are physically unable to attend a polling station, but only where there are safeguards in place to prevent fraudulent voting
• Observers and representatives of candidates and political parties must be permitted to observe the delivery of election materials, preparation of the polling place, voting, and counting of ballots
• Members of the military should vote in the place of their permanent residency, or in a polling station near their duty station
• Voting must be in person, by secret ballot
• Voters must present adequate identification information and sign register in order to vote
• Only the voter may mark a ballot, except that a voter who requires assistance for physical reasons may be assisted by another voter who is not a member of the election administration or an observer
• Ballots and voting materials must be securely maintained before, during, and for a sufficient period of time after an election
• The entire counting process must be conducted in a transparent manner in the presence of observers and representatives of candidates, political parties, and the media
• There must be procedures for, in the presence of observers, independent verification of all elements of the counting and tabulation
• All results of voting, tabulations, and protocols must be publicly posted at the polling station and copies given to representatives of observers, and transmitted to higher levels of election commissions in a transparent manner
• Intermediate tabulations and protocols must be publicly posted at intermediate election commissions and copies given to representatives of observers
• All final voting results must be published in media as soon as possible after elections in such a manner that voters are able to check results at their polling places
• Legal measures must be in place to deter electoral fraud in the voting, counting, and tabulation processes
Navarro Report On the 2020 US Presidential Election
There is extensive evidence that the US 2020 election did not respect the above best practices. The 2021 Navarro Report (link in red above) provides the details summarized in this table:
The detailed report includes many documented events, including evidence under the heading Outright Voter Fraud:
Fake Ballot Manufacturing and Destruction of Legally Cast Real Ballots
Fake ballot manufacturing involves the fraudulent production of ballots on behalf of a candidate; and one of the most disturbing examples of possible fake ballot manufacturing involves a truck driver who has alleged in a sworn affidavit that he picked up large crates of ballots in New York and delivered them to a polling location in Pennsylvania. There may be well over 100,000 ballots involved, enough fake ballots alone to have swung the election to Biden in the Keystone State.
Likewise in Pennsylvania, there is both a Declaration and a photo that suggests a poll worker used an unsecured USB flash drive to dump an unusually large cache of votes onto vote tabulation machines. The resultant tabulations did not correlate with the mail-in ballots scanned into the machines.
Arguably the most flagrant example of possible fake ballot manufacturing on behalf of Joe Biden may have occurred at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia. The possible perpetrators were caught in flagrante delicto on surveillance video. In one version of this story, poll watchers and observers as well as the media were asked to leave in the middle of the night after a suspicious water leak. Once the room was cleared, several election officials pulled out large boxes of ballots from underneath a draped table. They then proceeded to tabulate a quantity of fake manufactured ballots estimated to be in the range of tens of thousands
Finally, as an example of the possible destruction of legally cast real ballots there is this allegation from a court case filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona: Plaintiffs claim that over 75,000 absentee ballots were reported as unreturned when they were actually returned. These absentee ballots were then either lost or destroyed (consistent with allegations of Trump ballot destruction) and/or were replaced with blank ballots filled out by election workers or other third parties.
And so on, and so on. All of these worst practices were employed with impact because of a fundamental illegality that disqualifies any and all elections when it occurs. Jonathan Gault explains the problem in his American Thinker article Beware the ‘Long Count’. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.
Though barely campaigning, unable to speak, and drawing massive crowds, measured in dozens, waving to nobody, on the rare occasions when he was able to muster the energy to leave his basement, Joe Biden remarkably received the most votes of any candidate in US history. However, his historic popularity notwithstanding, his debatable victory nevertheless still required eking out miraculously close races in the hyper-partisan Democrat strongholds of Atlanta, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Las Vegas, each of which employed the Long Count.
[…]
Via https://rclutz.com/2023/08/03/how-to-get-free-and-fair-us-elections/
Cannabis: The “Gateway Drug” Leading AWAY from Prescription Drug Addiction
by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News
There are currently over 32 million Americans using FDA-approved anti-anxiety prescription drugs (benzodiazepines), based on 2018 data. That includes almost 400,000 children under the age of 5 years old, and over 100,000 infants under the age of 1. (Source.)
According to a study published on the National Institute of Health (NIH) website in 2016, benzodiazepine prescriptions increased 4.1 percent in 1996 to 5.6 percent in 2013, a 37 percent increase, while deaths from benzodiazepine prescriptions increased from 0.58 per 100,000 adults to about 3 per 100,000 adults, or about 8,000 deaths per year, an increase of more than 500 percent. (Source.)
And these statistics are for just one class of anti-psychotic drugs, anti-anxiety (benzodiazepine) drugs. According to data from 2020, about 77 million Americans are taking some form of an anti-psychotic drug. (Source).
Over 100 people die every day in the U.S. from prescription drugs (pre-COVID, that number would be much higher today), and over 50% of all drug deaths in the U.S. are from prescription drugs. (Source.)
By way of contrast, about 52 million Americans use cannabis (marijuana), which is still illegal at the federal level and not FDA-approved, and to date there has not been a single death attributed to cannabis use, according to the NIH.
There are no reports of teens or adults dying from marijuana alone.
But the pharmaceutical companies are desperately trying to develop a drug to help people stop using cannabis, or what is referred to as “marijuana use disorder.”
That’s because the withdrawal side effects from trying to stop using cannabis are so horrible (sarcasm):
No medications are currently available to treat marijuana use disorder.
Many people who use marijuana long term and are trying to quit report mild withdrawal symptoms that make quitting difficult. These include:
- grouchiness
- sleeplessness
- decreased appetite
- anxiety
- cravings
(Source.)
Compare those cannabis withdrawal symptoms to the withdrawal symptoms of FDA-approved benzodiazepine prescription drugs:
Benzodiazepine withdrawal can bring about a wide range of symptoms such as:
- Sweating.
- Increased heartrate (greater than 100 beats per minute).
- Anxiety.
- Agitation.
- Insomnia.
- Hand tremor.
- Perceptual disturbances (i.e., hallucinations).
- Seizures.
- Delirium characterized by disturbances in consciousness and cognition, with visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations.
Some people also experience anxiety and depression for several weeks or months following acute withdrawal. In severe cases, especially when untreated, benzodiazepine withdrawal may be fatal. (Source.)
Gateway Drug?
The corporate media and Big Pharma have been saying for decades now that cannabis use is a “gateway drug” leading people to become addicted to more dangerous drugs.
Well, I think everyone agrees that marijuana is a “gateway drug”, but a “gateway” leading in which direction?
The evidence points to cannabis use as a “gateway” AWAY from deadly prescription drugs, such as opioids and anti-psychotics.
See some of our previous coverage on how opioid addictions DECREASE in states that legalize marijuana:
How Cannabis Can Be Used for Safe and Effective Opioid Drug Withdrawal
Opioid Pain Killer Drug Addictions Can Be Cured With Cannabis
Dr. Oz Looks at Medical Marijuana as a Potential Cure for Opioid Addiction
An article published in Boston Magazine last week interviewed educated, suburban mothers who were turning away from alcohol in favor of cannabis, referred to as “cannamoms”.
The Really High Housewives of MetroWest
Out with the chardonnay, in with the gummies—why a new generation of Greater Boston parents are choosing cannabis to cope.
How did we get from “wine moms” to “weed moms”? Obviously, the legalization of cannabis has been a key factor, leading to increased accessibility and acceptability.
We spend way more time actually caring for our children than our own parents ever did—in hopes that this highly involved approach will maximize our child’s chances of future success. But at what cost? Parents are exhausted and stressed out. Is it any wonder mothers—who still take on the majority of childcare responsibilities—need something to take the edge off at the end of a long day?
That “something” used to be alcohol. Once upon a time, my friends and I enthusiastically embraced wine-mom culture, hosting happy-hour playdates with juice boxes, Goldfish, and chardonnay. We’d giggle knowingly at memes like “Oops, did I buy wine instead of milk again?” and dab at our faces with cocktail napkins inscribed with, “Shh, it’s my turn to wine.” Mommy juice helped us cope with the stresses of parenting—but only just.
Then the pandemic hit, and our carefully crafted façades crumbled. Suddenly, our children and spouses were home with us 24/7, and our worlds were turned upside down. We were homeschooling, working, and trying to hold it all together. It wasn’t long before Wine Wednesdays were preceded by Margarita Mondays and Boozeday Tuesdays—followed by Thirsty Thursdays. Gathering for drinks around a fire pit, bundled up in winter parkas and boots, gave us something to look forward to during that particularly bleak period.
About two years in, though, we began to feel pickled. Even one glass of wine gave me a headache or interrupted my sleep—and I wasn’t alone. Some of my friends were also begging off a second pour—it just wasn’t worth feeling like crap the next day. That’s when I first heard of cannabis gummies making the rounds in my cloistered suburban enclave. Word on the oak-lined street was that it gave you a nice buzz without the unpleasant side effects. Better yet, you could still carry out your duties as a parent—say, watching your daughter’s strings concert—and enjoy it a hell of a lot more than you would have otherwise.
That sounded enticing, but as someone who grew up in the 1980s with Nancy Reagan telling me to “Just say no” to drugs, I’d need a little extra push to convince me to give cannabis a go. (Full article.)
While I am not endorsing recreational use for drugs, or taking drugs at all to cope with “anxiety” in life, it sure looks to me that cannabis is being used as the new “gateway” drug OUT of dependence upon deadly prescription drugs, and also alcohol abuse.
Of course that means decreased revenues for Big Pharma, and not just for anti-anxiety drugs.
Learn more about the “other side” of cannabis that threatens Big Pharma. Some of our previous articles:
New Studies Provide Hope for Using Cannabis to Treat Brain Injuries and Diseases
Medical Cannabis Has Potential to Help Arthritis Sufferers
More Seniors Rejecting Pharmaceutical Drugs for Medical Cannabis
Older Americans Turning to Medical Cannabis to Heal Cancer and Other Diseases
Study: Cannabis is Protective Against Alcoholic Liver Disease
Medical Cannabis is Healing Autism
How Medical Cannabis Changed Our Lives: A Testimonial
Can Cannabis Help Reverse Alzheimer’s?
Study: THC from Cannabis Helps Restore Memory Loss due to Aging and Dementia
Former Cancer Research Biochemist Cured His Cancer with Cannabis
Cannabis Treats Diabetes and Protects Against Obesity
Study: Medical Cannabis Cures Inflammation in Gut – Hope for IBS, Crohns, Celiac Sufferers
[…]
Cannabis: The “Gateway Drug” Leading AWAY from Prescription Drug Addiction
Startling Revelations Change Everything New Zealanders Have Been Schooled to Believe
Bombshell revelations reported this weekend by The Australian, a leading broadsheet owned by the Murdoch group, have huge implications for pandemic policy here in New Zealand. They should completely change public perceptions and understanding of the Covid landscape. These implications include legal liability, safety of public health measures, future pandemic responses, and personal health choices.
This article is available as a PDF document to print/download or share.
The Weekend Australian leads with an investigative article entitled‘Covid Cover-Up: How Science was Silenced’covering a chilling admission of guilt from Robert Kadlec—former Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Health at the US Department of Health. Kadlec told The Australian that he, Dr. Fauci, and National Institute of Health Director Francis Collins privately discussed how to turn down the heat on China in the early days of the pandemic by playing down concerns about a lab leak from Wuhan.
Kadlec said,
“I think Tony Fauci was trying to protect his institution and his own reputation from the possibility that his agency was funding the Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers who, beyond the scope of the grants received from the National Institutes of Health, may have been working with People’s Liberation Army researchers on defensive coronavirus vaccines.”
‘Defensive coronavirus vaccine research’is a euphemism for military-funded gain of function research to mutate deadly pathogens in order to explore the creation of vaccines for use in the event of a bio-war.
Kadlec admitted, “We think vaccine research resulted in the pandemic—that vaccine research was the proximate cause.”
As a result, Kadlec said, “we decided to encourage a group of leading international scientists to calm down speculation on the origin of the virus.”
The front page Australian article dated 29th July 2023 and three other articles on subsequent pages of the same edition, all covering the explosive admissions, are hidden behind an expensive online paywall shared with the WSJ, but you can view a photo of the newspaper here and examine more detailed evidence here.
It comes on top of leaked private communications showing that leading scientists, very publicly debunking the lab leak theory, in actuality believed it was almost certainly correct. At the time, my own communications with top scientists working in the gene therapy field showed that it was widely understood that the genetic structures associated with the Covid spike protein were man made, yet saying so could lose you your job.
If you are new to this kind of discussion, you are probably asking why haven’t we seen articles like these here in New Zealand? The answer is revealed by a reporter from ABC News, talking with colleagues from the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian which was inadvertently caught on a hot mic. One describes it as ‘annoying and amazing’ that the lab leak theory now looks to be correct. The journalists admit that they never looked at the lab leak theory dispassionately, but relied on their ideological rejection of those asking questions. In other words, there was no credible investigation of the facts by mainstream media.
The Implications for New Zealand of the Latest Covid Revelations
For three years, we have been divided as a nation along the lines of vaccinated versus unvaccinated. It is now abundantly clear that both Covid and Covid vaccines originated from risky biotechnology research on mutated deadly pathogens.
Rather than a divided nation, we could have been a united nation, standing shoulder to shoulder against novel biotechnology experimentation.
There is a need to spell out the technical implications of this. The engineered spike protein has features which are completely foreign to our immune system. At the start of the pandemic, our physiology had no evolutionary context or memory of fighting off these novel genetic sequences. It is now apparent that the spike protein has a toxic profile, especially for the heart and circulatory system. Thus Covid infection had both short and long term unquantified implications for health. The various Covid vaccines were designed to teach our cells to produce Covid spike proteins in quantity, therefore the vaccines inevitably also had significant short and long term implications for health dictated by their pathogenic design.
If we had known that Covid was an engineered pathogen, we would have recognised that concerns about Covid vaccine safety were legitimate.
New Zealand was misled by the US administration. The lesson here is very clear. New Zealand must be more circumspect to scrutinise the health information supplied to our nation from nations and institutions who are clearly tied to commercial endeavours seeking to profit from actions and policy decisions resulting from this information. This includes information received from the WHO, ICMRA, FDA, CDC, WEF, and possibly through Five Eyes. It is now clear that some information we received during the pandemic from these sources was unreliable. False and/or misleading information was received at multiple levels of government, including Medsafe, the PM’s office, and probably our intelligence organisations. Yet New Zealand adopted a trusting perspective and vigorously acted upon it, possibly more stringently than other nations. The result has not just been policy missteps, but high rates of vaccine injury, excess deaths, economic hardship, and lasting social division.
There is no doubt that PM Jacinda Ardern curated misplaced trust in foreign official sources. We now know these sources were editing scientific dialogue and results to suit commercial and geopolitical agendas.
In a gross error of judgement, Ardern’s department created a policy of exclusion aimed at those questioning the severity of Covid, the lab leak hypothesis, and Covid vaccine safety. This legitimised actions at every level of government and the judiciary to cancel those raising concerns. The Ardern government, with the approval of opposition parties, framed this as a moral crusade and pursued agreements with social media companies to exclude legitimate science and debate. In actuality, we were being played by foreign interests. Our sovereign independence was being undermined to an extent it never has been before. We were losing our right to choose as a nation, and thereby our right to choose as individuals. This illustrates the inherent bankruptcy of the globalist outlook as opposed to our traditional New Zealand outlook of self-determination. It highlights the need for extreme caution in a world of globalised information and media dilution of science.
How Serious Are the Potential Dangers?
In a globalised world, we have to be very circumspect of foreign interests, which certainly do not coincide with those of New Zealand. Consider this article—New evidence of Beijing’s Covid cover-up and possible Wuhan lab leak revealed: China’s public health authorities cracked virus’ genetic code five DAYS before the world knew about the disease, scientist claims. China, like the US, was not sharing information, rather they were sharing disinformation, and they are likely to do so again in the future.
The freewheeling attitude to biotech risk management was underlined this week by a horrifying article entitled “Unassuming warehouse in California turns out to be illegal Chinese-run virus laboratory that was genetically engineering mice and experimenting with HIV, herpes and malaria“. The safety rules governing biotechnology experimentation are simply inadequate for the task. Risky experimentation involving deadly pathogens at poorly secured locations are proliferating around the world. Worse, many are being funded by governments and legally sanctioned. The entire gene editing enterprise, whether safely contained or not, is fraught with unacceptable levels of risk and rife with accidents. Much publicity generated by commercial biotech interests is aimed at persuading the public that these serious risks are non-existent.
On top of this, we have to consider that politicians have little ability to reliably sort the significance of varying evidence when considering any complex scientific advice they receive. Consider this paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine entitled “The Effect of Influenza Vaccination for the Elderly on Hospitalization and Mortality”, which studied 170 million episodes of influenza care and 7.6 million deaths among those over 64. It concluded back in April 2020:
“No evidence indicated that flu vaccination reduced hospitalisations or mortality among elderly persons. The estimates were precise enough to rule out results from many previous studies.”
Do we hear about this when being urged to take our flu shots? No. The media and the government have long since stopped caring about the exaggerations and profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry.
Across the board, the globalist agenda and the associated information network is driven by ideological priorities remote from our national interests.
[…]
In the wake of this weekend’s revelations we must appreciate that there are outstanding questions of legal liability.
We have covered some of these in our previous articles:
- Were we sufficiently warned by Pfizer of the results of trials and post-marketing data indicating very high levels of vaccine adverse effects across a range of conditions? Apparently not.
- Did our government decide to ignore concerning and unprecedented levels of domestic adverse effects of Covid vaccines because the US and UK authorities were spreading propaganda designed to dampen concerns around biotechnology in order to protect their commercial domination in the field of vaccine research, development and marketing? It appears so.
- As a result, did the New Zealand Government, our health service, and the Accident Compensation Commission unfairly deny the existence of Covid vaccine injuries, dismiss patients without investigation or testing and withhold compensation? Yes, they did.
- Did our courts trust government sources without requiring cross examination of government witnesses, and thereby disadvantage appellants? Yes, repeatedly.
- Is the NZ government still funding a disinformation project driven by ideology aimed at cancelling anyone asking questions about Covid origins, vaccine safety and pandemic policy? Yes, vigorously.
[…]
Vandana Shiva: Bill Gates and Silicon Valley Behind Push for ‘Farming Without Farmers, Food Without Farms’
By
On the latest episode of Russell Brand’s “Stay Free,” scholar, environmental activist and food sovereignty advocate Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discussed food fascism, the power of “philanthropy,” digital enslavement and how people can free themselves from this system.
Brand asked Shiva, a food sovereignty and environmental activist, to explain how this corporate takeover of nature happened.
Shiva said the privatization of land and resources under colonialism was the first step in transforming nature into “either a mine or a dump.”
Today, she said, privatization has become so entrenched that mega-corporation Cargill can own every chicken, chicken production facility, and every input needed to raise chickens, and then dump all of its waste into public rivers.
The situation we face today could not have happened, she said, without the criminalization of farmers — for which she held media organizations like The Guardian responsible because they attack farmers instead of the corporations.
“If the drivers are the corporations,” she said, “you have to have the guts to bite the corporations. You don’t target the victims. The farmers are victims of this system.”
Who are the real ‘food fascists’?
Brand asked Shiva why the global uprising of farmers — from Sri Lanka and India to Germany, England and the Netherlands — against the globalization of agriculture had come to be cast as a right-wing idea by the press.
Shiva said Mussolini himself defined fascism as “the convergence of economic and political power.” “Food fascism,” she said, “is the recent control over our food systems by giant corporations and the billionaires.”
Under colonialism, the British controlled the land, she said, but they didn’t control the food. The advent of agricultural industrialization, the green revolution and globalization made it possible for corporations to take control of food.
The call for “food sovereignty,” she said, “came as the call as opposite to the food dictatorship and food fascism.”
Now, she said, those people want to complete the separation of people from the land that began with colonialism.
Today, they want “farming without farmers.”
Being able to plant a seed, input love, knowledge and sun and produce food, “is the only truly independent production system and it’s that freedom they want to attack,” Shiva said, because they are threatened by it.
So they discredit farmers by calling them “fascists” and “right wing.”
“And anybody who facilitates that is essentially doing the work of these globalists,” she said, “they’re the fascists.”
How ‘philanthropy’ buys control
Today, people who talk about the disproportionate power and influence that billionaires like Bill Gates have over global agriculture and health are regarded as “conspiracy theorists,” Brand said.
He asked Shiva to explain Gates’ rise to power in plain language and with facts.
Shiva said people like Gates became wealthy through neoliberal trade liberalization, where trade in information, in the software and other forms of data Gates produced, went completely untaxed.
Then, she said, they used that money “philanthropically” to gain control of other sectors.
By donating massive sums of money to the global seed bank, to the World Health Organization and to media organizations such as The Guardian and the BBC, Gates and other billionaires took control of those institutions.
It even gives them the power to control governments, she said, who have been made desperate for money through indebtedness.
Gates and Silicon Valley, she said, “are very big players in the fake food future of farming without farmers, food without farms.” And they get journalists such as The Guardian’s George Monbiot to promote it.
Chasing enslavement
Shiva said this vision is built on “an imagined promise of an imagined future that we are never gonna arrive at. Because when you get there, you’ll find it doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to them.”
The systems that support their vision of the future appear to offer us convenience, but in reality, she said, maintaining them takes all of our time.
Many indigenous people, she said, still have a lot of time to enjoy life “because they’re not chasing enslavement through consumption.”
Shiva wondered why people would want a “smart home,” where, for example, “the fridge will tell you your milk is getting old. How dumb are we getting that we can’t open the door of our fridge and know our milk is getting old?”
“All that is surveillance data,” she said.
And processing that data takes big servers. “The tiny bits of enslavement we are getting into is [producing] 4% of greenhouse gases, which is more than the aviation sector,” she said.
She added:
“So, not only is it a very foolish kind of slavery, it’s a huge ecological footprint on the planet. Yes. And we can’t afford it. So we have to learn to walk lightly.”
Data is the new oil
Brand said he was alarmed at the increasing pace of “desacralization” where people prioritize materialism over spirituality and lose control over their lives. He asked Shiva how she thought censorship, the inhibition of free speech and the ability of the media to shut down dialogue, fed into this process.
Shiva said it was part of “a system of total control,” that makes that control highly profitable.
What’s new in this system according to Shoshana Zuboff’s “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” is that today, human beings themselves have been turned into raw material whose data can be extracted.
“That is the capital of today. Big data is the new oil, and then it’s used to manipulate us,” she said, adding “Any system that allows you the awareness of your real freedom must be censored.”
The strange thing, Brand said, is that this system of technological domination was sold to people as a way of empowering them and giving them their freedom.
Technology should be a tool, she said, but it “has been elevated to a god” and those opposed to that transformation are discounted, through Orwellian doublespeak, as “right wing.”
But, Shiva said, the last few years have shown there are three things people cannot give up:
“First, your ability to know and distinguish between truth and untruth. … And not allow post-truth to be projected as truth and the truth speakers to be projected as conspirators.
“The second is our ability to relate to each other without the intervention of a surveillance state and surveillance corporation.
“And third, because food is what makes us, it becomes our blood, ourselves, our brain.”
In other words, Brand said:
“Speak freely. Tell the truth. Communicate freely. Grow your own food. Don’t eat things grown in labs. Don’t eat bugs. And don’t listen to people who want to promote it.”
The Most Revolutionary Act 