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The Unz Review

In an unprecedented step, Youtube has severely restricted as “inappropriate or offensive” Seymour Hersh’s blockbuster Nord Stream Pipelines interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Hersh won his Pulitzer Prize more than a half-century ago in 1970 as the fiercely independent reporter who uncovered America’s My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War. During his following decades at the New York Times and the New Yorker he broke some of the biggest stories in journalistic history, including the domestic spying activities of the CIA, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses of the Iraq War, and the killing of Osama bin Laden, while being honored with two National Magazine Awards, five George Polk Awards, and numerous other accolades.

Hersh’s long career arguably ranks him as the most renowned living American journalist, and indeed Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University described him as such in a recent interview.

Then late last week, Hersh dropped a bombshell as big as anything in his career, revealing on his Substack platform the exact details of how the Biden Administration had secretly destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, an attack on $30 billion of vital European energy infrastructure that constituted an act of war against Germany, one of our closest NATO allies.

As I discussed in my own column, despite Hersh’s stellar career and the massive implications of his remarkable story, almost all our mainstream media outlets boycotted it, ensuring that it received minimal attention.

Hersh said he wanted his story to stand on its own, and was only willing to do a very limited number of interviews, with the first of these being with a small radio podcaster:

He soon followed this up with a half-hour appearance on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, a leading left-liberal news program broadcast on more than 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide, many of them PBS and NPR affiliates.

During that interview, Hersh responded to criticisms and explained that Ukraine’s war with Russia was going far worse than reported by the American media. According to Hersh and some of his government sources, the American attack on the pipelines may have been a disastrous mistake that could result in the collapse of NATO once most Europeans became aware of what had happened.

Democracy Now! has 1.3 million subscribers on its large Youtube channel, and immediately released Hersh’s important interview on that platform. Within hours the segment was approaching 250,000 views on its way to a likely total of many millions, becoming one of the channel’s most popular videos. I naturally linked it in several comments on our website.

But the same day it was released, Youtube suddenly censored Hersh’s Democracy Now! appearance, claiming that it represented “a violation of community standards” and was “offensive”:

As a result, Hersh’s Democracy Now! segment can no longer be viewed anywhere except on the Youtube site itself, and then only after clicking through two layers of warnings. The obvious intent was to drastically reduce Hersh’s potential audience and this will surely succeed. I assume that these restrictions have been combined with the most severe sort of shadow-banning. So a segment that would have probably been seen by many millions will only get a small fraction of that total.

Such Youtube censorship of a top mainstream journalist on a leading mainstream channel seems completely unprecedented, a massive escalation of the previous measures directed against the political fringe.

[…]

Via https://www.unz.com/runz/banning-seymour-hershs-offensive-ideas/

Episode 5 Late Archaic Innovations

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

In North America, the late Archaic period dated roughly between 4000 and 2000 BP. There were fewest changes along the Pacific coast, where food was most abundant. Here population increased ten times over the  Paleoindian period. One new late Achaic innovation was leeching acorns to remove bitter and harmful tannins. After leeching, late Archaic humans pounded them into powder, which they cooked in large pots. There is evidence they traded with inland peoples.

Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest gave rise to the the first permanent villages in North America. Living in multiple family groups in long rectangular houses, these late Archaic humans fished for salmon and buried their men with projectile points and their women with grinding stones. Their remains reflect a high proportion of violent deaths, suggesting they began living in villages for mutual protection. Moreover long standing feuds between villages led an “us vs them” mentality and a drive cultivate and exploit cultural distinctions. Totem poles are the Pacific Northwest’s best known cultural innovation from this period.

Southwest

In the Southwest (Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada), the late Archaic period dates from 4100 BP, triggered by the arrival of corn agriculture, learned from incoming migrants from Mesoamerica (where it was first domesticated). From 3500 BP on, Southwest peoples were also growing beans, squash and sunflowers.

With the arrival of agriculture, these peoples began living in permanent settlements and left behind artifacts (such as baskets) related to foodstuffs cultivation, as well as elaborate rock petroglyphs depicting animals and geometric shapes.

North Florida/Georgia

In the north Florida/Georgia, the late Archaic period starts around 3,000 BP as sea levels fall and indigenous humans migrate to the coast. Here an abundance of shellfish fosters the development of permanent settlements and the use of giant shell middens* for burials.

This would be the first North American culture to make ceramic bowls and plates, which they tempered with grass and Spanish and traded with other regions.

Northeast Woodlands (includes eastern Canada)

Northeast Woodlands culture is found in five distinct regions east of the Mississippi, which coalesced when the Archaic period ended. All five regions saw an increase in cemeteries and bodies buried with axes and art objects painted with red ochre. In coastal areas, these peoples used canoes in summer to hunt ted sea mammals and swordfish. They hunted caribou in winter and fished for salmon in spring. Towards the end of the late Archaic period, villages with round pit houses began to appear.

Great Lakes area

Around the Great Lakes, which were rich in copper ore, the Archaic period saw the emergence of metallurgy and the bow and arrow. Collecting copper deposits they found lying on the ground, around 4000 BP, Great Lakes peoples pounded them into spearhead, axes and fishhooks. This technology slowly spread down the Mississippi to the Gulf Coast.

The first use of the bow and arrow in North America dates from 2500 BP in Canada, where it was used to kill moose, muskrats and other game. Globally bow and arrow originated in South Africa in 71,000 BP. It arrived in Europe around 9000 BP and in Siberia in 5000 BP. It most likely arrived in North America via the Bering Strait.

South of the Great Lakes, populations remained low during the late Archaic period, as people lived in semi permanent villages near shell middens, buried their dead portion of violent deaths) with their tools and other possessions. These indigenous American relied more on nuts and acorns than game for food.

*Midden – old dump for food waste and other domestic garbage.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5712746

Zachary Stieber

The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) is being urged to offer players cardiac screening in light of the growing concern over COVID-19 vaccines causing heart inflammation.

The Health Freedom Defense Fund urged the association in a recent letter to implement screening because the vaccines can cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation. Young males are the most at risk.

Most NFL players received a COVID-19 vaccine under pressure from teams and the league.

“Safety signals illustrate that the near and long-term health outcomes of the COVID-19 vaccines remain uncertain,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the fund, told DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the players association, in the letter.

“A multitude of adverse reactions to these injections, including myocarditis, are wide-ranging and confirmed, and as such, prudence dictates that the NFLPA investigate the extent to which the COVID-19 shots may have resulted in injury, compromised health or death of players,” Manookian said.

She pointed out that Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, suffered a cardiac arrest on the field during a Monday Night Football game in January. The reason for the incident remains unknown; Hamlin declined to convey during a recent televised interview what his doctors told him about the incident. Former NFL players also have suffered heart attacks and strokes following vaccination.

The NFLPA should introduce “a testing and screening program to determine whether players have been adversely affected by the injections and to develop a set of functional medical protocols and treatments in order to address and heal any deleterious effects of the vaccines,” Manookian said.

The NFLPA declined to comment to The Epoch Times.

The association hasn’t responded to the letter, which was sent via email and regular mail, Manookian told The Epoch Times.

Former NFL player Ken Ruettgers, who started the Voices for Medical Freedom podcast, previously warned an associate who works for the NFLPA of post-vaccination cardiac events and offered to connect the group with doctors with knowledge of the issues.

The associate thanked Reuttgers but didn’t accept the offer, he told The Epoch Times.

“The challenge is, it’s almost like a fighter pilot that, ‘I don’t want to be tested because if I come up positive, I don’t want to be grounded,’” he said.

Manookian informed the NFLPA that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed a warning regarding myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, on the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. She also pointed to research papers on post-vaccination myocarditis.

Among them were a study by Florida authorities that found a jump in cardiac-related deaths among the vaccinated; a study that found an increased risk of myocarditis and myopericarditis after a second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine and the first and second doses of Moderna’s vaccine, with the highest risk in young males; a reanalysis of the original clinical trials that found a higher number of serious adverse events of special interest among the vaccinated; and experts in Germany reporting, after analyzing autopsies, that some of the deceased likely died from vaccine-induced myocarditis.

“We have a growing body of scientific evidence showing that there is a risk to young males in particular, and many of them have some critical cardiac problems,” Manookian said.

The NFLPA did the right thing when it comes to concussions, supporting stronger protections for players, she said.

“I think that we should be doing the same thing with respect to these COVID injections and the potential for subclinical cardiac issues,” Manookian said.

‘Not Unreasonable’

Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist based in Philadelphia, reviewed the letter.

“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the NFL Players Association to at least consider the fact that young healthy men now are at such low risk of COVID, do you want to take the risk of myocarditis related to the vaccine?” Koka told The Epoch Times.

Still, he advised against screening all players.

“If you randomly screen a bunch of NFL players with an MRI, you’re going to see some bright spots show up and you’re not going to have any real hard idea whether or not this is something real. And it could affect the career in terms of, does a team want to sign this player who has some questionable abnormality on a cardiac MRI? That would be terrible. So you don’t want to do that,” Koka said. “So you have to be really, really careful about how you screen these folks and make sure that you don’t end people’s careers for no reason.”

COVID-19 can also lead to myocarditis and heart issues, according to some research. Other papers indicate that COVID-19 infection doesn’t lead to an increase in myocarditis or pericarditis. Autopsy data haven’t supported the idea that COVID-19 heightens the risk, according to Koka.

Screening can lead to an increase in myocarditis detection. MRI screening led to a 7.4-fold increase in detection among college athletes over symptom-based screening, according to one study.

Manookian said it’s important to discover whether players have myocarditis but said the screening should be voluntary, not mandatory.

“This is about raising awareness about a potential health problem and providing the opportunity for the players to have access to testing and screening. And if a problem is determined, then some kind of healing protocol for them,” she said.

Rest is generally the main component of myocarditis recovery. Medicine is typically prescribed for recovery from cardiac arrest.

If an athlete with myocarditis passes certain cardiac tests and doesn’t have arrhythmias after six months, then they could potentially play again, according to Koka. Five athletes for whom suggestions of myocarditis or pericarditis were found returned to play without cardiac injury, researchers reported in 2021. It’s unclear whether Hamlin will return. He told ABC that’s his goal.

[…]

Via https://www.theepochtimes.com/nfl-players-association-urged-to-screen-for-heart-issues-over-vaccine-side-effects_5060341.html?src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge

By Egor Shapovalov

The Government Junta of Chile was the highest organ of state power in the South American nation during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship. The period was characterized by repressive policies and extensive economic transformation. It is estimated that more than 3,000 people were killed, and tens of thousands disappeared during the military rule.

New research into the remains of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda has confirmed that poisoning was the cause of his death in 1973, the poet-diplomat’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes has said.

Following the court-approved exhumation of the body, international experts were called in to examine the remains of the Nobel laureate.

According to Reyes, the results of the study confirmed he died not from cancer, as stated in official documents, but from poisoning.Reyes has detailed that the final report outlined traces of the botulism agent had been found in the poet’s remains. Moreover, experts at McMaster University in Canada and the University of Copenhagen determined the bacteria had entered his body before death, thus confirming the idea of poisoning.

“We now know that there was no reason for the clostridium botulinum to have been there in his bones,” Reyes told Spanish media. “What does that mean? It means Neruda was murdered through the intervention of state agents in 1973.”

he report was released to Paola Plaza, a Chilean judge, on Wednesday; however, she has not made the findings public. It’s expected the report will be publicly released on March 7.In Chile, Neruda is known not only as a poet but also as a diplomat and public figure. The Chilean Communist Party nominated him for president in 1970, although he later withdrew his candidacy in favor of socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, who would later go on to be overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet in a US-backed coup.

Neruda died on 23 September 1973, 12 days after the coup d’état that toppled the Allende government. He died at the Santa Maria Hospital in Santiago. Speculation on Neruda’s cause of death has remained a hot talking point for decades, with his body having been first exhumed under court order in 2017.

[…]

Zachary Stieber

A new bill in Congress would ban federal funding for institutions that deny care to patients for not having a COVID-19 vaccine, after multiple patients in the United States seeking transplants have been rejected over their vaccination status.

The 2-page bill states that “no funds authorized or appropriated by Federal law, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are authorized or appropriated by Federal law … shall be made available to a facility that refuses to provide treatment to an individual based on the COVID-19 vaccination status of such individual.”

The legislation is called the COVID-19 Vaccination Non-Discrimination Act.

“No American should be denied access to critical care based on a personal medical decision, yet tragically, many hospitals and other medical facilities continue to discriminate against those unvaccinated for COVID-19,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a doctor who cosponsored the legislation, said in a statement.

He said that the bill “will protect the rights of vulnerable patients to make their own health care choices and ensure that federal taxpayer dollars do not support facilities that turn away patients based on their COVID-19 vaccination status.”

“There’s no reason that medical facilities should deny care to people based on their COVID-19 vaccination status, and there’s certainly no reason for institutions that do so to receive any federal funding. Unfortunately, this is happening far too often, including in my home state of North Carolina. The COVID-19 Vaccination Non-Discrimination Act will remedy that injustice, and affirms that people have the right to make their own medical decisions,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), who introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives, added.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) are co-sponsors of the Senate bill.

Denied Transplants

Multiple patients in the United States have been denied transplants during the pandemic because of their refusal to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

James Jooyandeh, a U.S. Army veteran, was denied a lung transplant because he declined to get vaccinated.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to offer lung transplant as a treatment option for you due to your unwillingness to receive recommended routine health maintenance, including your vaccinations, which is an absolute contraindication to lung transplantation at our center,” a doctor at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Wisconsin that was treating Jooyandeh wrote to him.

Other patients have been removed from waiting lists due to their vaccination status.

DJ Ferguson, 31, for instance, was removed in 2022 from a heart transplant waiting list by Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Other patients have been unable to get transplants even though they’re vaccinated because their donors have not received a shot.

The Cleveland Clinic, for instance, told a man in 2021 he wouldn’t be able to receive a kidney because his donor was unvaccinated. The clinic also refused to undertake a kidney transplant for a 9-year-old boy because his father, the donor, refused to get a vaccine.

Both COVID-19 infections and vaccinations can trigger organ transplant rejections, studies show.

Some cases have gone to court. Ross Barranco, a 73-year-old Michigan man, is among those who have brought litigation over being rejected for a transplant.

“To qualify for a transplant, both of my kidneys have to be functioning at 20 percent or less. What if the vax destroys the remaining function before the operation? If it does, I’m done,” Barranco told The Epoch Times.

Fate of Legislation

Democrats control the Senate, with 51 seats held by Democrats or nominal independents who caucus with the party.

No Democrats are co-sponsors of the new legislation.

Republicans control the House after flipping a number of seats in the midterm elections.

Bills typically require 60 votes to pass the Senate and a simple majority to pass the lower chamber.

Republicans during the pandemic have generally been supportive of individual choice and freedom to remain unvaccinated while Democrats have generally supported restrictions and mandates, including vaccine mandates.

Democrats, though, have shown an increased appetite to turn back restrictions and mandates in recent months.

Party members, for example, helped insert a provision in the defense funding bill that forced the military to repeal its vaccine mandate, which had remained in place since its imposition in August 2021.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said at the time that the mandate initially made sense but did not any longer, given the primary series of a vaccine provides little to no protection against infection.

President Joe Biden signed the bill despite opposing the inclusion of the mandate repeal, according to the White House.

Biden imposed or directed the imposition of a number of mandates, including ones for federal workers, federal contractors, and all health care workers at facilities that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding. Most have been struck down or suspended by courts. The health care one is one of the few still in effect.

[…]

Via https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-bill-would-prohibit-federal-funding-for-health-care-facilities-that-deny-care-to-unvaccinated-patients_5059292.html

Until Proven Otherwise

New 12 min film by New Zealand Doctors Speaking Out with Science.

Dave Hamm, an ethical substance peer navigator with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), weighs a piece of rock cocaine as the province of British Columbia decriminalized the possession of small amounts of cocaine, methamphetamine, MDMA and opioids like heroin, fentanyl and morphine, in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada January 31, 2023. REUTERS/Jennifer Gauthier

By Jennifer Gauthier

VANCOUVER, Jan 31 (Reuters) – The western Canadian province of British Columbia on Tuesday began a three-year pilot program to stop prosecuting people for carrying small amounts of heroin, meth, ecstasy, or crack cocaine, as part of an effort to fight a drug overdose crisis.

B.C. accounts for about a third of the 32,000 deaths due to overdose and trafficking nationally since 2016, according to official data. The province declared drug overdose a public health emergency that year.

The problem worsened with the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted illicit drug supply chains as well support services, leaving people with more toxic drugs that they used alone.

Preliminary data released Tuesday by the province showed there were 2,272 suspected illicit drug toxicity deaths in 2022, the second largest annual number ever recorded, behind 2021, which had 34 more deaths.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government said in May it would let B.C. decriminalize the drugs in a first-of-its-kind exemption in Canada. By not prosecuting people carrying small amounts of drugs, the B.C. government hopes to tackle the issue as a health problem rather than through the criminal justice system.

The province says the exemption is intended to reduce the stigma associated with substance use and to make it easier for people to approach authorities for guidance.

Robert Schwartz, a professor at the University of Toronto, said the measure was commendable as a first step, but that more needed to be done to tackle the drug problem.

“The problem that we have with these substances is that we have a huge, illicit supply that’s causing great harm,” Schwartz said. “To really deal with this, we need a comprehensive public health approach. This decriminalization, it’s a first step.”

The drugs on the exemption list, which also includes fentanyl and other opioids, remain illegal and the exemption from arrest is only for possession of up to 2.5 grams for personal use.

“For many years we have had a de facto policy not to arrest people for personal drug possession” but this change will mean fewer seizures of small amounts of drugs, a spokesperson for the Vancouver Police Department said.

Other Canadian communities are closely watching the pilot. They also face a rise in drug overdose deaths.

Many health experts argue decriminalization would encourage drug users to use them in safer spaces where they can access medical care.

[…]

Via https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-province-tries-decriminalizing-drugs-fight-overdose-crisis-2023-01-31/

By Andrew Korybko

Lula did indeed make a deal with the devil, in this case his US nemeses who were responsible for his imprisonment, in order to be sprung from jail and subsequently given a fighting chance to return to office. Upon doing so, this geopolitically repentant leader whose multipolar worldview was noticeably recalibrated behind bars did exactly as the US expected him to do, namely condemn Russia like all Sanders-style leftists have done and then rush to Biden to “kiss the ring”.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who was just re-elected to a third non-consecutive term in office and is popularly known as Lula, did what had previously been unthinkable for the same man who used to be regarded as a titan of the global multipolar movement. After meeting with Biden, who was Vice President when the US orchestrated “Operation Car Wash” against him and his successor Dilma Rousseff, Lula released a joint statement in which he fiercely condemned Russia.

According to the official White House website, “They deplored the violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine by Russia and the annexation of parts of its territory as flagrant violations of international law and called for a just and durable peace.” No leader of Russia’s other fellow BRICS partners had ever expressed such sentiments, not even former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, which proves that Lula has indeed recalibrated his worldview since his imprisonment in a more pro-US direction.

This development wasn’t surprising since Lula had earlier condemned Russia by comparing its special operation in Ukraine to the US’ Hybrid War on Venezuela. At the same time, he put forth a G20-like peace proposal that wasn’t just ignored by Russia, but even indirectly criticized by it an insincere publicity stunt that actually goes against Moscow’s interests. Intrepid readers can learn more about the first incident here and the second one here since they’re beyond the scope of the present piece.

Nevertheless, by fiercely condemning Russia while meeting with Biden in DC, it should be obvious to all that Lula made a proverbial deal with the devil. In hindsight, it compellingly appears as though the information that was leaked about his case proving the courts’ political bias against him and which ultimately annulled their prior ruling (which thus let him run for re-election last year) was probably the result of a US intelligence operation aimed at once again manipulating Brazil’s political process.

Throughout the course of his first two terms and the unfinished one of his successor, the US regarded Lula as a titan of the global multipolar movement whose foreign policies posed a threat to its hemispheric hegemony. For that reason, they leaked the detailed materials implicating Lula, Rousseff, and other Workers’ Party members in a massive corruption scandal that would serve to discredit their rule, jail that aforementioned titan, and pave the way for installing a much more pliable leader.

The US’ Hybrid War on Brazil achieved all three of its initial goals but the last of them proved to be unsustainable after Bolsonaro refused to sanction Huawei in exchange for an official NATO partnership and later defied similar demands against Russia in a surprising flex of his independence. Not only that, but his conservative-sovereigntist worldview that’s inaccurately been smeared as solely being a so-called “far right-wing” one is the polar opposite of the ruling US Democrats’ liberal-globalist one.

While the sequence of events that reversed the primary outcome of “Operation Car Wash” began under the Trump Administration, objective observers already know that his military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) were working against him and his worldview this entire time. This was proven by their complicity in the Russiagate conspiracy theory, among many other examples, with their preemptive efforts to manipulate Brazil’s 2022 elections being another case in point.

The US’ “deep state” believed that their country’s interests would be best served by replacing increasingly independent Bolsonaro with a geopolitically repentant Lula, ergo why they worked so hard to reverse the same outcome that imprisoned the latter. They concluded that he’s no longer the multipolar titan that they previously thought he was, but is more akin to a Bernie Sanders-style leftist, which thus makes him amenable to manipulation in pursuit of their foreign policy goals.

Just like Sanders and his ilk fiercely condemned Russia, so too did Lula, which was entirely predictable once one realizes that this Brazilian leader has turned into a “fellow traveler” of the US left. The Workers’ Party has gradually been infiltrated by pro-US liberal-globalists who prioritize the promotion of so-called “woke” identity-centric politics at home over tangible improvements in poverty alleviation, workers’ rights, and accelerating the global systemic transition to complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”).

This observation explains why one of the three largest paragraphs of Lula’s joint statement with Biden included a pledge to fight racism and support LGBTQI+ persons. That’s not to deny the existence of racism in either of their countries, but just to point out that the Brazilian leader apparently believes that he can’t effectively counteract it with US assistance, which is a tacit deferral to the US’ de facto seniority in their revived partnership and thus by default confirms his country’s position as its “junior partner”.

Further evidence of the US’ successfully reasserted hegemony over Brazil in the aftermath of last year’s elections, which were manipulated by its intelligence services as was previously explained, can be seen by Lula agreeing to “strengthen democratic institutions” with Biden. This represents one of the most cringeworthy self-inflicted humiliations that any world leader has ever committed since it was during Biden’s term as Vice President that “Operation Car Wash” was orchestrated against Lula and his party.

[…]

Via https://korybko.substack.com/p/lula-made-a-deal-with-the-devil-by