The Most Revolutionary Act

Uncensored updates on world events, economics, the environment and medicine

The Most Revolutionary Act
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About stuartbramhall

Retired child and adolescent psychiatrist and American expatriate in New Zealand. In 2002, I made the difficult decision to close my 25-year Seattle practice after 15 years of covert FBI harassment. I describe the unrelenting phone harassment, illegal break-ins and six attempts on my life in my 2010 book The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee.

Early English Invasions of Wales and Ireland

Episode 16 English Invasion of Wales and Ireland

The Celtic World

Dr Jennifer Paxton (2018)

Film Review

During the early Middle Ages, Wales and England repeatedly raided one another. Wales also took advantage of disputes between and England’s regional kings. For example they allied with the pagan king of Mercia to kill King Oswald of Northumbria (ruled 634-542 AD). During the 8th century, King Offa of Mercia built a dyke to establish a clear boundary between the two countries and reduce the frequency of Welsh raids.

King Gwynnedd (ruled 1055-1063 AD) united all the Welsh kingdoms under a single monarch though the country refragmented again after his death. This meant the Welsh had no unified defense against repeated English invasions that steadily pushed the Welsh border westward.

By the 12th century, England was also more unified than Ireland, which was made up of four frequently warring provinces (Ulster, Connacht, Leinster and Munster). In the 1100s. the English controlled the western coast of France and much of Wales and had no interest in pursuing territorial gains in Ireland. However in 1155 AD, during the reign of Henry II, Pope Adrian IV (the first English pope) granted Henry the authority to invade Ireland to reform Ireland’s Catholic church.

Ousted as the king of the Irish kingdom of Leinster, Dermot MacMurrough (1110-1171 AD) sought help from Henry II in regaining his throne. When the English king declined, Dermot allied himself with the Welsh warrior Richard Fitz Gilbert de Clare (aka Strongbow), who responded along with a number of vassals and mercenaries.

Henry, about to be sanctioned by the pope for murdering Archbishop Thomas Becket, eventually joined them with siege equipment and a sizeable army. The other Irish kings initially welcomed Henry’s military occupation, believing he would secure their rights against the Norman lords who were were continuing to usurp Irish land.

Having captured a small portion of Ireland on the east coast, in 1177 Henry II sent his youngest son John Lackland (later King John) to govern the territory conquered by Strongbow. Although subsequent English kings claimed sovereignty over the whole island, in reality the king’s rule only ever extended to isolated regions. The rest of the island – referred to as Gaelic Ireland – remained under the control of various Gaelic Irish kingdoms or chiefdoms. The latter were often at war with the Anglo-Normans lords who controlled large fiefdoms throughout southern Ireland.

The area under English rule and law expanded and shrank over time. It reached its greatest extent in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, prior to the arrival of the Black Death in 1348. The plague had its most devastating effects on Irish townships, which were mainly controlled by the English.

In 1361, Edward III’s son Lionel married an heiress to the Earldom of Ulster, and Lionel was sent to rule Ulster on Edward’s behalf.

In 1366 the Irish parliament (established by the Normans in 1264) passed the Statutes of Kilkenny, over concerns that Ireland’s English settlers were going native. Under these laws Anglo-Irish settlers:

  • were forbidden to speak Irish among themselves.
  • were forbidden to use Irish first or surnames.
  • were forbidden to ride bareback (as the Irish did).
  • were forbidden to wear Irish haircuts (short in front and long in the back).
  • were forbidden to have Irish performers in their halls
  • were forbidden to use Irish law to settle disputes.

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

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5701024/5701058

Chemicals Found in Hand Sanitizers Linked to Asthma, Birth Defects and Infertility

By Brian Bienkowski

Quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats, which are used in disinfectants are linked to asthma, dermatitis, inflammation, infertility, birth defects and other problems.

“It’s ironic that the chemicals we’re deploying in vain for one health crisis are actually fueling another,” Erica Hartmann, a co-author of a new study examining the dangers of disinfectants and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University, said in a statement.

Hartmann and colleagues’ new study, published this week in Environmental Science & Technology, examines quaternary ammonium compounds, or quats, which are used in disinfectants and personal care products.

They reviewed the existing environmental and human health science on quats, which have been used much more since the pandemic began, and found that the compounds are linked to asthma, dermatitis, inflammation, infertility, birth defects and other problems.

They can also harm aquatic life and cause antimicrobial resistance, which can make drug-resistant viruses and bacteria.

“Antimicrobial resistance was already contributing to millions of deaths per year before the pandemic,” Hartmann said. “Overzealous disinfection, especially with products containing [quats], threaten to make it worse.”

Quat use and exposure

Quats can be found in disinfectants, baby wipes, eye drops, hair conditioners, fabric softeners and other products.

There was a spike in disinfectant use when the COVID-19 pandemic began, increasing exposure, and researchers saw an associated spike in quats in people.

People are mostly exposed via their skin and breathing quats, but food and water could be other potential sources of exposure.

Certain professions, including housekeepers, food or medical equipment preparation, dental assistants and nurses, are more highly exposed. Children and teachers may also have elevated exposure.

“Disinfectant wipes containing [quats] are often used on children’s school desks, hospital exam tables and in homes where they remain on these surfaces and in the air,” Courtney Carignan, a co-author and assistant professor at Michigan State University’s Center for Research on Ingredient Safety, said in a statement.

The most common quat is benzalkonium chloride, but if you see ingredients on labels that end in “ammonium chloride,” there are probably quats in the product.

The authors point out that U.S. regulation varies — pesticides, for example, list quats, while paints do not. Most quats are unregulated, and so are not tested for health impacts. This makes it a challenge to tease out how much people are exposed or what the health impacts are.

While the feds haven’t tested the compound, academic researchers have linked the chemicals to multiple health problems, and the authors point out that there is evidence going back more than 70 years that the chemicals spur antimicrobial resistance.

Using safer cleaning products 

The authors recommend not using quat-containing compounds when the chemicals are unnecessary. Soap and water usually do the trick — and if you need a disinfectant, the University of Massachusetts Lowell has a guide to safer products.

“Drastically reducing many uses of QACs won’t spread COVID-19,” Carol Kwiatkowski, a co-author and scientist at the Green Science Policy Institute, said in a statement.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/quats-chemicals-disinfectants-asthma-birth-defects-infertility-ehn/

 

Is WHO a Front Organization for Takeover of US Government?

Many analysts have warned that the ratification of either or both of these instruments would diminish or completely strip away sovereignty from nation-states and place public health decision-making power in the hands of the WHO and its director-general.

Details around how this might happen in the U.S., however, are difficult to pinpoint — partly because of the secrecy surrounding negotiations and partly because of the complex combination of domestic and international law that would have to come into play in order to strip U.S. sovereignty.

“If these amendments and if this pandemic treaty are passed, then that would basically be the end of our national sovereignty,” said lawyer Reggie Littlejohn, co-founder of the Sovereignty Coalition, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers and co-chair of the Stop Vaccine Passports Task Force.

Francis Boyle, J.D., Ph.D., professor of international law at the University of Illinois and a bioweapons expert who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, agreed. He described the WHO’s proposed instruments as “an attempt to take over the United States of America by using the WHO as a front for that purpose.”

“This is being backed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bill Gates, the Chinese communist dictatorship, Big Pharma and the biowarfare industry,” Boyle said.

Boyle said there’s been so much opposition to the dictates coming out of Washington over the handling of the pandemic “that these elites have decided to go to the WHO and use the WHO as a front organization to accomplish its objectives.”

[…]

Boyle, who has studied treaties going back to the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899, said the pandemic treaty “will automatically come into effect immediately upon its signature,” adding that he knows of no such treaty in existence today that does this.

“You will have a medical global police state issuing orders all the way down here in the United States,” Boyle said, “contravening state local health authorities, your governor, your local attorney general, your local surgeon general, and contravening all your democratically elected officials to accomplish this.”

The IHR amendments will deliver the same result via different means, and “will give these totalitarian dictatorial powers to Dr. Tedros [WHO director-general],” Boyle said.

[…]

According to the most recent draft of the IHR amendments, Littlejohn said, “They want to strike the word ‘non-binding,’ so that the IHR would become binding and the WHO would go from being an advisory body to a regulatory body.”

The proposal to remove the term “non-binding” came from Bangladesh, Littlejohn said, adding that there is “language in the IHR amendments that allows the WHO to step in and take power even without declaring a pandemic or a public health emergency. It just has to be a potential public health risk.”

Roguski said the EU proposed this provision, which refers to the recognition of a potential “pandemic situation” as opposed to an actual pandemic.

Littlejohn also cited provisions of the pandemic treaty (page 23, article 17), allowing the WHO “to tackle false, misleading misinformation or disinformation” in the name of strengthening pandemic or public health literacy.

[…]

An ‘end run’ around state and local control?

[…]

Article 19 of the WHO Constitution gives the WHA the authority to adopt conventions or agreements — such as the pandemic treaty — by a two-thirds vote,” Boyle said.

[…]

The WHO Constitution circumvents the U.S. Congress via its provision that any treaty “can provisionally come into force after approval by the WHA,” Boyle said.

[…]

Littlejohn noted that not only can any treaty “provisionally come into force” after WHA approval, but portions of treaties or agreements also can. As a result, “in whole or in part, the pandemic treaty can be applied provisionally … it’s possible that certain parts of the treaty” might be passed this month and could be brought to force provisionally.

Malaysia proposed a change to Article 42 of the IHR amendments, saying that recommendations have to be implemented “as soon as possible,” Boyle said. As a result, “If you have to implement recommendations, they’ve suddenly become binding. That gives up sovereignty and freedoms all over the place.”

Another document that can be used to strip the U.S. of its sovereignty is the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (NDAA), Boyle said. This law includes language “to facilitate national capacity to comply with and adhere to … other relevant frameworks that contribute to global health security.”

“The Biden administration can take the position that because of the NDAA of 2023, it can simply go right ahead and provisionally adhere to the terms of the pandemic treaty without the advice and consent of the Senate,” Boyle said. “The moment it gets reported out of the WHA, Biden can say ‘I’m invoking the NDAA’ to comply with and adhere to ‘other relevant frameworks that contribute to global health security.’”

According to Littlejohn, the language stating that the U.S. is “obligated to comply with and adhere to any relevant framework that contributes to global health security” likely includes both WHO instruments. “They can argue that … this passed through Congress … we’ve already agreed to ‘adhere to and comply with,’” Littlejohn said.

Boyle added the NDAA also includes the Global Pandemic Prevention and Biosecurity Act of 2022, which “paves the way for the IHR amendments and this treaty.” He argued that, through this, “the U.S. Congress has already given its authorization to both the IHR amendments and the treaty.”

These provisions would circumvent the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that police powers reside in the hands of the states, not the federal government.

“Police powers include public health,” Boyle said, “so the Biden administration could take the position immediately upon approving the WHA treaty, that we could provisionally bring that whole treaty into force, and that circumvents the 10th Amendment,” under the aegis of the NDAA, via the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

Boyle cited two Supreme Court decisions, U.S. v. Belmont (1937) and U.S. v. Pink (1942), “where the Supreme Court upheld executive agreements as the constitutional equivalent of treaties when it comes to circumventing the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — that’s the danger here.”

According to Boyle, though the current IHR, enacted in 2005, “were only recommended,” the U.S. government and U.S. Department of State nevertheless “took the position that this was a binding international agreement, that they listed in a publication called U.S. Treaties in Force.”

“They’re still there today,” Boyle said, “which means that even though they have not received the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, nevertheless they were approved by the executive branch of government in accordance with the WHO Constitution, which in turn had been approved by this joint resolution of Congress.”

Boyle argued that “this whole process … was produced by the fact that there was a lot of domestic opposition here in the U.S. on a state and local basis to all the orders coming out of Washington, D.C. … including the lockdowns and the vaccine mandates.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/who-takeover-us-government/

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Abducted Prior to Court Appearance

https://media.thecradle.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/khan-arrest-2-e1683629691311.webp

(Photo Credit Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images)

The Cradle
Khan’s PTI party vows protests in response to what they describe as his abduction by paramilitary forces

Former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan has been arrested by the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) from the Islamabad High Court (IHC), Geo News reported on 9 May.

Khan was taken into custody by security personnel known as “Rangers” outside the IHC where he had gone to seek bail as a result of graft charges.

According to Fawad Chaudhry, the official spokesperson of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf party (PTI), the ex-prime minister has been “abducted from court premises. Scores of lawyers and general people have been tortured.”

Khan was arrested in connection with the allegations that Bahria Town allotted land worth 530 million rupees to the Al-Qadir Trust, owned by the PTI chairman and his wife, according to Islamabad police.

“Khan has been whisked away by unknown people to an unknown location,” Chaudhry said.

According to Imran Khan’s spokesman Raoof Hasan, “He was taken away…before he could appear before the judges, which is in violation of all laws.”

“The party has given a call to immediately start protests across Pakistan,” PTI leader Azhar Mashwani tweeted.

Khan’s arrest was not authorized by IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq, however, who requested the attorney general appear before the court within 15 minutes and instructed him to immediately find out who was behind the arrest.

“If an inquiry has to be conducted, action will also be taken against the prime minister and ministers,” the chief justice said.

Security forces previously attempted to detain Khan last March after an Islamabad court issued an arrest warrant to ensure his attendance in court to face graft charges.

However, security forces were blocked by hundreds of the former prime minister’s supporters, who gathered outside his Lahore home to prevent his arrest. The clashes between both sides, in which security forces fired tear gas and water cannons, and Khan’s supporters threw stones, led to dozens of injuries.

The former cricket star, who was ousted as prime minister in a no-confidence vote in parliament in April 2022, went to Islamabad to appear before three courts on charges of selling state gifts and failing to disclose assets but failed to appear before the fourth court to face indictment in the graft case, which is a legal process for starting his trial.

Khan claimed the charges filed against him, which include terrorism charges, are an effort by his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to discredit him and prevent him from contesting the upcoming elections.

At the time of his ousting as prime minister, Khan accused the United States of working with a coalition of Pakistani opposition parties to topple his government.

Khan alleged that US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu met with the Pakistan Ambassador Asad Majeed and warned that there could be implications if Khan was not ousted as prime minister.

Khan has long been known for his opposition to US foreign policy. In 2017, Khan organized a motorcade march to Pakistan’s tribal areas to protest US drone strikes against Islamic militants.

In November 2022, Khan was the target of an assassination attack. A gunman opened fire with an automatic weapon on his convoy of lorries and cars, injuring Khan’s leg and killing one of his supporters, and injuring seven more.

[…]

Via https://thecradle.co/article-view/24615/imran-khan-arrested-on-graft-charges

Long Term COVID-19 Vaccine Data: Sustained Vascular Injury and Thrombosis at 2 Years

Early in 2020 I published with former US FDA physician Dr. Zhang that the SARS-CoV-2 viral Spike protein was damaging the vascular endothelium and causing blood clotting. This means capillaries would be systemically injured if exposed high concentrations of the Spike protein. Dr. Bruce Patterson has demonstrated the Spike protein is long-lasting (months to years) in the human body after both severe COVID-19 infection and vaccination. This leads us to a concern, that the vaccinated would have sustained vascular damage over the long-term. Now the first two-year data report in and the news could not be worse. The serious implications for long term cardiovascular risk cannot be understated.Xi et al used the massive TriNetX network with data on 95,156,967 individuals, of whom 7,318,437 met the inclusion criteria. After excluding cases with COVID-19 illness, 6,755,737 individuals were separated into two cohorts: 883,177 vaccinated and 5,871,737 unvaccinated individuals. In both cohorts, any diagnosis of retinal vascular occlusion six months and treatments including antiplatelets, anticoagulants, diuretics, contraceptives, used 4 weeks prior to the index date. Ultimately, 745,041 vaccinated and 3,874,458 unvaccinated individuals yielding matched pairs of 739,066 vaccinated cohorts to the unvaccinated cohort at a ratio of 1:1.

The results are striking. There is a progressively increasing risk of both arterial and venous occlusion in the retina over two years after injection and the survival curves continue to separate. The source the thrombi can be from the heart, aorta, carotids, and ultimately the blood vessels servicing the eyes and returning venous blood from the eye in the ocular orbit. The eye is a window to the systemic vasculature. In aggregate, these data drive the compelling conclusion that mass vaccination has caused ongoing, cumulative vascular injury in some recipients that has continued for at least two years. These data predict a rise in nonfatal and fatal events associated with progressive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease including: 1) myocardial infarction (heart attack), 2) stroke 3) peripheral vascular disease with systemic embolism, 4) critical limb ischemia with amputation. Additionally, vaccine recipients are likely to be generally hypercoagulable and are set up for venous thromboembolism with usual provocateurs (surgery, prolonged immobility, estrogen use, etc.).

The practical ramifications are many: 1) like patients with diabetes mellitus recipients should be vigilant and have a low threshold to see an ophthalmologist for a dilated retinal exam if there are any visual symptoms, 2) medical doctors and their patients should be assiduous in the detection and treatment of atherothrombotic disease in the coronary and systemic vasculature, 3) The National Eye Institute, American Association of Ophthalmology, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology, American Neurological Association, and all physician and hospital stakeholders should join me in calling for an immediate moratorium on COVID-19 vaccination.

See also

IZhang J, Tecson KM, McCullough PA. Endothelial dysfunction contributes to COVID-19-associated vascular inflammation and coagulopathy. Rev Cardiovasc Med. 2020 Sep 30;21(3):315-319. doi: 10.31083/j.rcm.2020.03.126. PMID: 33070537.

Dr. McCullough US Senate: to Save Lives Pull the COVID-19 Vaccines off the Market, Dec 7, 2022

Via https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/long-term-covid-19-vaccine-data-evidence/

Australia PM: No Point in Continued US Pursuit of Assange

https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/AP22281571399444-1683261141.jpg?resize=770%2C513&quality=80

 File: Alberto Pezzali/AP Photo

The WikiLeaks founder has been in a UK jail for years as he fights extradition to the US on charges including espionage.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed frustration at the United States’s continuing efforts to extradite WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange who has been in a high-security United Kingdom prison for the past four years as he fights the case.

Albanese, who is in the UK for King Charles III’s coronation, said he was frustrated there had not yet been a diplomatic resolution to the issue and concerned about the mental health of the now 51-year-old.

“There is nothing to be served by his ongoing incarceration,” Albanese told the ABC in an interview on Friday.

Albanese said Assange’s case had to be examined in terms of whether the time he had “effectively served” was more than a “reasonable” sentence if the allegations against him were proved.

“I just say that enough is enough,” Albanese said.

“I know it’s frustrating, I share the frustration. I can’t do more than make very clear what my position is and the US administration is certainly very aware of what the Australian government’s position is,” he added.

Assange, an Australian citizen, has spent years battling in UK courts to prevent his extradition to the US, where he is wanted on criminal charges including espionage over the release of confidential US military records and diplomatic cables in 2010.

[…]

Via https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/5/australia-pm-says-no-point-in-uss-continued-pursuit-of-assange

NIH Restarts Bat Virus Grant Suspended 3 Years Ago by Trump

An EcoHealth Alliance team conducts bat research fieldwork inside a cave in China in 2019

Jocelyn Kaiser

Three years after then-President Donald Trump pressured the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to suspend a research grant to a U.S. group studying bat coronaviruses with partners in China, the agency has restarted the award.

The new 4-year grant is a stripped-down version of the original grant to the EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit research organization in New York City, providing $576,000 per year. That 2014 award included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the coronavirus that sparked a global outbreak in 2002–04, and included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The new award omits those studies, and also imposes extensive new accounting rules on EcoHealth, which drew criticism from government auditors for its bookkeeping practices.

But EcoHealth’s embattled director, Peter Daszak, says his group is pleased: “Now we have the ability to finally get back to work,” he says.

After NIH halted the grant in April 2020, many scientists protested the move as political interference with scientific peer review. Now, they are welcoming the grant’s resumption. “It is long overdue. Unfortunately, the original cancellation reflects the ongoing partisan politics where first Trump and now many Republicans are attacking science unfairly,” says Nobel Prize winner Richard Roberts of New England Biolabs. In May 2020, he helped organize a letter from 77 Nobel laureates protesting the grant’s suspension.

Grant number R01AI110964, which NIH renewed in 2019 with a subaward to WIV that totaled nearly $600,000 over 8 years, is probably the most scrutinized grant in the agency’s history. Trump called for its cancellation in April 2020 amid unsupported allegations that a lab leak at WIV started the COVID-19 pandemic. The project later drew concerns for experiments, conducted in virologist Shi Zhengli’s lab at WIV, in which researchers attached the spike protein of various wild bat coronaviruses to a different virus “backbone” in order to gauge the wild pathogens’ potential to infect human airway cells. Such experiments allow scientists to isolate the role of the spike protein and study coronaviruses that they can’t culture easily.

Critics, including several Republicans in Congress, argued this work qualified as risky “gain-of-function” (GOF) research that makes potential pandemic viruses more dangerous and should have undergone a special review. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its director at the time, Anthony Fauci, responded that the work did not fit NIH’s risky GOF definition; the bat viruses weren’t known to infect people and WIV had no intention of making them more dangerous. NIH also pointed out that the WIV chimeras were only distantly related to SARS-CoV-2.

Concerns escalated when public records requests from the nonprofit news organization the Intercept revealed some of the chimeric viruses showed unexpected growth. NIH and EcoHealth disagreed about whether this result was reported promptly as required by the grant. (Earlier this year, an NIH advisory board recommended expanding the rules for risky GOF experiments.)

NIH told EcoHealth in August 2022 that because WIV had not responded to requests to turn over lab notebooks and electronic records, it had terminated the subaward to WIV. But the agency also said EcoHealth could renegotiate the grant without WIV. As discussions continued, in January a federal audit found that EcoHealth had misreported $90,000 in expenses for the grant, and that NIH had also erred by not justifying the grant’s suspension.

EcoHealth is sharing details of the new grant, which restarted on 26 April, in order to promote transparency, Daszak says. The project no longer involves collecting new bat samples or working with live viruses. WIV has no role beyond contributing more than 300 whole and partial genome sequences of SARS-related bat coronaviruses from its collection, Daszak says.

EcoHealth staff will use computers to analyze the viral genomes for risky features, then partner with a previous collaborator, Linfa Wang’s lab at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, to test whether the viruses’ spike proteins can bind to the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 receptor, which SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells. Wang’s lab will also study “pseudoviruses” that combine a wild coronavirus with a completely different virus that can’t cause human disease. And the project will study archived clinical samples from Southeast Asia to look for signs of “spillovers” where bat viruses infected people.

“We think we can achieve a huge amount of work based on archived samples … that will really answer some fundamental questions about why coronaviruses have such diversity,” Daszak says.

NIH is also imposing new requirements on all of EcoHealth’s NIH grants, including prior approval for spending, submission of invoices and timesheets, and a financial audit that EcoHealth must pay for. The nonprofit has three other NIH grants to collect bat and human samples in South and Southeast Asia, including one that proposes chimera work. But Daszak notes that work would only move forward if it passes the special GOF review.

Other virologists agree the revised grant will still yield valuable insights. “I consider the extra parts [in the original grant] useful, but not essential. So I think the project will still move forward very well,” says Stanley Perlman, a coronavirus expert at the University of Iowa. Virologist Simon Anthony of the University of California, Davis, who has worked with EcoHealth on a virus surveillance project called PREDICT, agrees. “In my view there is nothing wrong with taking the time to pause, reflect, and redirect so that this critical work can be conducted as safely as possible,” Anthony says.

But both he and Perlman say if viruses with the potential to spill over into humans are identified, it will be important to study the live pathogens in high-containment, biosafety level-3 conditions. Although not GOF research, some scientists have argued that even studying natural wild viruses imposes unacceptable risks of a lab escape and should be curtailed. Anthony, however, says “cutting out work with live natural viruses would be tremendously detrimental.”

One vocal EcoHealth critic, microbiologist Richard Ebright of Rutgers University, calls the restarted grant “an outrage” because EcoHealth “flagrantly and repeatedly” violated the terms of the grant.

[…]

Via https://www.science.org/content/article/nih-restarts-bat-virus-grant-suspended-3-years-ago-trump

 

Iraq and Syria to re-open crucial oil pipeline

The Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline revival.

Vanessa Beeley

According to various media reports– negotiations are ongoing to revive the strategic Iraqi Kirkuk to Syrian Baniyas oil pipeline. Iraqi Trade Minister Atheer Al Ghurairy has intimated increased efforts by Iraq to develop energy cooperation with Syria in the coming months and years.

During a meeting with the Syrian Oil and Mineral Resources Minister Firas Hassan Kaddour views were exchanged on the launch of investment in oil and energy fields in both countries. Despite the current US military occupation of Syrian oil resources, Kaddour presented a strategy to facilitate investment by Iraqi companies in the Syrian oil industry. On the table was the restoration of the Kirkuk-Baniyas oil pipeline which would re-connect Iraqi oil fields with Syrian maritime ports and crude oil refineries.

This would resolve some of Syrian energy deprivation issues and provide Iraq with a more expedient oil transport route to refineries in Syria that could process the 12% of total Iraqi oil reserves that originate in Kirkuk.

[…]

For Syria, added benefits would include a stimulation of trade in Syrian ports by increasing maritime traffic despite the threat of punitive US Caesar sanctions that target sovereign nations trade or collaboration with Syria. The Syrian economy would receive a boost from such trade and industry revival.

History of Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline and its geopolitical importance

The 800-kilometer long pipeline, which can discharge 0.3 million barrels of oil per day, was constructed by the globalist US Bechtel Corporation in 1952.

[…]

After the pre-planned and unlawful invasion of Iraq launched by the US in March 2003, Bechtel Corp. was one of the primary benefactors of the US savagery with and estimated $ 3 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts. It is worth noting that military industrial complex leader Lockheed Martin was handed “more than $ 11 billion increase in sales and contracts worth $ 5.6 million with the US Air Force in Iraq.” Bechtel made it onto the Business Pundit’s list of the ‘25 most vicious Iraq war profiteers’.

[…]

Syria and Iraq made several attempts to reactivate the strategic oil pipeline between 2007 and 2010. However, technical and political hurdles kept the pipeline shut down.

Pumping was resumed in 2010 but did not last long due to the start of the regime change war against Syria and the occupation of much of the route by ISIS terrorist groups. The US also destroyed sections of the pipeline allegedly in its war on terror/ISIS which has been proven to be a fraudulent claim.

The Russia and Iran element

For some time Russia has been trying to secure an influential role in Iraq via the oil industry route amongst others. Russian oil companies have invested in many of Iraq’s oil fields since 2010.

In 2019 Moscow was planning to help Baghdad to transport Kirkuk’s oil to the Mediterranean sea. In 2007 Russian Gazprom was scheduled to repair the pipeline but Iraqi lack of finances were an obstacle. In 2010, as mentioned, Iraq and Syria attempted to get the pipeline up and running again.

[…]

Back in 2019 Russia was trying to convince Iraqi and Syrian governments that it “can successfully implement the Kirkuk-Baniyas project”.

[…]

This pipeline track will also have potential to strengthen the Iranian-Russian alliance. Before ISIS took control of Mosul in 2014 there had been intensive discussions on an Iranian desire to build a pipeline connecting Iranian oilfields to the Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline.

From a geopolitical perspective the US regional resource piracy would inevitably come to an end. “There is a hope that this pipeline will link the fate of Iran, Russia, Iraq, Syria and even Lebanon economically and militarily” while squeezing the US and its Kurdish Contra proxies (Iraq and Syria) out of the equation.

The threat of a US-managed ISIS revival is also to be countered, with terrorist sleeper cells still embedded and active in Iraq and Syria but a united axis of terror-adversaries including Iran and Russia would be able to combat such a risk to the pipeline renewal.

[…]

As Robert F Kennedy JR wrote in 2016 for Politico Magazine – “Why the Arabs don’t want us in Syria”:

They don’t hate our freedoms. They hate that we have betrayed our ideals in their own countries – for oil

Let’s face it; what we call the “war on terror” is really just another oil war. We’ve squandered $6 trillion on three wars abroad and on constructing a national security warfare state at home since oilman Dick Cheney declared the “Long War” in 2001. The only winners have been the military contractors and oil companies that have pocketed historic profits, the intelligence agencies that have grown exponentially in power and influence to the detriment of our freedoms and the jihadists who invariably used our interventions as their most effective recruiting tool. We have compromised our values, butchered our own youth, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, subverted our idealism and squandered our national treasures in fruitless and costly adventures abroad. In the process, we have helped our worst enemies and turned America, once the world’s beacon of freedom, into a national security surveillance state and an international moral pariah.

Over the past seven decades, the Dulles brothers, the Cheney gang, the neocons and their ilk have hijacked that fundamental principle of American idealism and deployed our military and intelligence apparatus to serve the mercantile interests of large corporations and particularly, the petroleum companies and military contractors that have literally made a killing from these conflicts.

It’s time for Americans to turn America away from this new imperialism and back to the path of idealism and democracy. We should let the Arabs govern Arabia and turn our energies to the great endeavor of nation building at home. We need to begin this process, not by invading Syria, but by ending the ruinous addiction to oil that has warped U.S. foreign policy for half a century.

[…]

Via https://beeley.substack.com/p/iraq-and-syria-to-re-open-crucial/

Met Police arrest protesters despite approving their protest – and lock up Night Safety Team

Police arrest protesters during coronation weekend

Squawkbox

“I believe they had every intention of arresting us… simply because there was nothing that we did do that could possibly justify even being detained, never mind being arrested & held”Graham Smith, CEO of the ‘Republic’ group, told Radio 4 this morning that he believes police deceived him when they said they had no problem with the demonstration and fully intended to arrest them all anyway.

The Met Police’s outrageous conduct during the coronation has been further exposed with revelations that the force arrested protesters whose protest they had been notified of and said they had no problem with – and even brutally arrested City of Westminster’s official volunteer Night Safety Team while it did its job of protecting women, holding both groups in custody for extended periods.

Graham Smith, CEO of the ‘Republic’ group, told Radio 4 this morning that he believes police deceived him when they said they had no problem with the demonstration and fully intended to arrest them all anyway:

Meanwhile, police held Westminster’s Night Safety for some fourteen hours after arresting them – for possessing rape alarms, which they hand out to women out at night to help keep them safe:

Riz Choudhry, one of those arrested, accused the force of racially targeting him and of brutality toward the volunteers:

[…]

Via https://skwawkbox.org/2023/05/08/met-police-arrested-protesters-despite-approving-their-protest-and-locked-up-night-safety-team/?amp%3Butm_medium=rss&amp%3Butm_campaign=met-police-arrested-protesters-despite-approving-their-protest-and-locked-up-night-safety-team

RFK Jr: CIA Involved in JFK’s Murder

CIA involved in JFK’s murder – Robert Kennedy Jr

RT

US presidential candidate says the agency’s culpability in his uncle’s murder was “beyond a reasonable doubt”

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has alleged that the CIA was behind the assassination of his uncle, US President John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1963, and likely involved in the murder of his father, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot dead in 1968.

Speaking during an interview with WABC radio host John Catsimatidis on Sunday, Kennedy Jr. said “There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in [JFK’s] murder,” describing it as “beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.”

“The evidence is overwhelming that the CIA was involved in the murder, and the coverup,” the candidate continued, describing efforts to discredit this theory as a “60-year coverup.” Kennedy cited the book “JFK and the Unspeakable” by James Douglas as the best compilation of evidence on the subject, though dozens if not hundreds of works have been written about the assassination and the CIA’s alleged role.

The official US government explanation, published as the Warren Commission report the following year, holds that US Marine veteran Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in shooting the president while his motorcade was passing through Dallas on November 22, 1963.

Oswald was famously murdered before he could stand trial, though he managed to tell journalists he was “just a patsy” shortly after his arrest. The alleged lone gunman was shot dead by nightclub owner Jack Ruby (real name Jacob Rubinstein) while being transported from Dallas Police Headquarters to the county jail.

Speaking to Catsimatidis, Kennedy added that there was “very convincing but circumstantial” evidence the CIA was involved in the 1968 assassination of his father, Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. He described the official story of the assassination, which was pinned on Palestinian horse groomer Sirhan Sirhan, as physically impossible, arguing Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard at the hotel who was concurrently employed by military contractor Lockheed, had actually fired the shots that killed Kennedy.

Four years after JFK’s murder, nearly half of the American public did not believe that Oswald had acted alone. The CIA was concerned enough about this fact that it issued a directive in 1967 on how to discredit the so-called “conspiracy theorists” questioning the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Modern use of the term “conspiracy theorist” as a pejorative is often traced back to this 1967 memo.

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Via https://swentr.site/news/575946-cia-killed-jfk-rfk-candidate/