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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.

Growing Number of Physicians Refusing COVID19 Booster Shots

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Growing number of physicians now refusing to get COVID-19 booster shots

Dr Eddy Betterman

A growing number of doctors have voiced out their refusal to get injected with the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) booster shots, citing a lack of clinical trial evidence.

Dr. Todd Lee of McGill University in Canada is one such doctor who rejected the boosters. Lee contracted the B11529 omicron strain despite being triple-vaccinated.

“I have taken my last COVID-19 vaccine with RCT (randomized clinical trial) level evidence it will reduce my risk of severe disease,” he tweeted. Lee alluded to the lack of results for the updated boosters, which were cleared for use in both the U.S. and Canada in the fall of last year based on data from mice experiments.

“Pay close attention to note that this isn’t anti-vaccine sentiment. This is ‘provide evidence of benefit to justify ongoing use,’ which is very different. It is only fair for a $30 billion-a-year product given to hundreds of millions,” he added.

Dr. Vinay Prasad of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) also remarked that he will not take any additional boosters unless clinical trial data becomes available. “I took at least one dose against my will,” he recounted. “It was unethical and scientifically bankrupt.”

Epidemiologist Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, also from UCSF, joined Lee and Prasad in opposing the boosters. She recounted how she experienced an adverse reaction to her first dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, and that she took the second dose “against [her] will.”

“If I could do it again, I would not have had any COVID-19 vaccines,” Hoeg tweeted.

“I was glad my parents in their 70s could get COVID vaccinated, but have yet to see non-confounded data to advise them about the bivalent booster. I would have liked to see an RCT for the bivalent for people their age and for adults with health conditions that put them at risk.”

Other experts call for a stop to mRNA COVID shots

Other experts, meanwhile, urged a halt in the use of messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines – particularly those from Pfizer and Moderna.

“At this point in time, all COVID mRNA vaccination [programs] should stop immediately,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Retsef Levi said in a video statement.

“They should stop because they completely failed to fulfill any of their advertised [promises] regarding efficacy. More importantly, they should stop because of the mounting and indispuGtable evidence that they cause unprecedented level of harm – including the death of young people and children.”

Levi pertained to myocarditis or inflammation of the heart muscle following vaccination, which authorities have acknowledged as linked to the COVID-19 shots. He cited two studies to back up his call.

The first study Levi cited found that nearly three in 10 children injected with Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine suffered from cardiac issues. Meanwhile, the second study detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein antigens in the blood of vaccinated youth.

Louisiana-based physician and researcher Dr. Joseph Fraiman commented that “people should not be given the [vaccines] outside of a clinical trial.”

“I see the likelihood that the harm could outweigh the benefit in the group who stood to benefit the most from the vaccine,” he said. “I don’t see how anyone couldn’t be certain that the benefits are outweighing the harms on a population level, or even in the high-risk groups. I don’t see the evidence to support that claim.”

“Given alternative causes are unlikely to cause myocarditis within one week of vaccination, this is essentially conclusive evidence that we’re seeing sudden cardiac deaths from the vaccines.”

Fraiman and his colleagues re-analyzed the original Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccine trials that led to their approval. They concluded in a peer-reviewed study that vaccinated individuals were at higher risk of serious adverse events.

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2023/02/03/growing-number-physicians-refusing-covid-19-booster-shots/

Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature

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Toxicology Reports

Neil S Miller

Toxicology Reports

Volume 8, 2021, Pages 1324-1335

Highlights

• Additive or synergistic toxicity may occur following multivalent vaccination.
•Infant deaths post-vaccination are often misclassified as SIDS or suffocation in bed.
•Of all reported SIDS cases post-vaccination, 75 % occurred within 7 days (p < 0.00001).
•Inflammatory cytokines in the infant medulla act as neuromodulators causing prolonged apneas.
•Adjuvants that cross the BBB may induce fatal disorganization of respiratory control.

Abstract

Although there is considerable evidence that a subset of infants has an increased risk of sudden death after receiving vaccines, health authorities eliminated “prophylactic vaccination” as an official cause of death, so medical examiners are compelled to misclassify and conceal vaccine-related fatalities under alternate cause-of-death classifications. In this paper, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database was analyzed to ascertain the onset interval of infant deaths post-vaccination. Of 2605 infant deaths reported to VAERS from 1990 through 2019, 58 % clustered within 3 days post-vaccination and 78.3 % occurred within 7 days post-vaccination, confirming that infant deaths tend to occur in temporal proximity to vaccine administration. The excess of deaths during these early post-vaccination periods was statistically significant (p < 0.00001). A review of the medical literature substantiates a link between vaccines and sudden unexplained infant deaths. Several theories regarding the pathogenic mechanism behind these fatal events have been proposed, including the role of inflammatory cytokines as neuromodulators in the infant medulla preceding an abnormal response to the accumulation of carbon dioxide; fatal disorganization of respiratory control induced by adjuvants that cross the blood-brain barrier; and biochemical or synergistic toxicity due to multiple vaccines administered concurrently. While the findings in this paper are not proof of an association between infant vaccines and infant deaths, they are highly suggestive of a causal relationship.

[…]

Via https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750021001268?via%3Dihub

Are Public Health Authorities Sacrificing Our Children on the Altar of Vaccines?

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Marc Girardot

COVID, the pinnacle of a medical collective lunacy entrenched in vaccine propaganda at any cost, even at the expense of our children’s health. This needs to stop.

I want to give credit to and compliment Neil Z. Miller of the Institute of Medical and Scientific Inquiry in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a courageous and insightful article that triggered and inspired me today : “Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990–2019 and review of the medical literature”. All of you should read it. It’s an eye opener.

[…]

Mislabeling Vaccination Deaths for 50 Years?

[…]

In 1979, the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. redesigned the ICD coding list – International Classification of Diseases – and erased the possibility for the world’s coroners to label a cause of death related to vaccination!

[…]

“Vaccines and sudden infant death: An analysis of the VAERS database 1990-2019 and review of the medical literature” by Neil Miller, 2021

In the US alone, in the past 25 year, nearly $ 5 billion have been awarded to 9,946 victims [2] of vaccination, or to their families. Obviously, 10,000 people represents the tip of a much larger iceberg. Those who had the clairvoyance to acknowledge vaccination harm, who had the fortitude and resources to fight for compensation and who benefited from the good fortune to win in court are a happy few in the tens of millions of vaccines injured, most of whom lived through their pain and health drama never knowing the vaccination was the cause of their Parkinson’s disease, or their cancer.

National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program Monthly Statistics Report 

However there’s no question : In front of the Law, despite public health manipulations, vaccines harm exists and vaccination has been recognised as a killer in many cases, notably of babies.

Collectively, if we continue to hide vaccination harm, we will never get to understand the underlying cause of these dramas, and will never stop them.

[…]

Data show that for decades, public health officials and doctors have been playing Gods, indiscriminately injecting kids with an ever growing arsenal of products, occasionally killing them, often harming them for life.

Prior to the 1960s, the concept of sudden infant death syndrome didn’t even exist, and was not listed in the main causes of mortality. So, between 1960 and 1980, public health had to realise immunisation was a cause for serious concern. In 1979, they chose to hide it from the public and to protect vaccine manufacturers. And so harm has continued … as if nothing could be done to avoid vaccine adverse effects.

Between 1990 and 2019, 2,605 infant deaths were reported in VAERS, 78.3% of these deaths occurring within a week of vaccination! For the record, using a 59x myocarditis under-reporting factor (likely conservative) as per the Engler et al study on SmallPox vaccines – one can estimate that nearly 153,700 babies died of vaccination over thirty years. Some 5,120 families sorrowed each year during decades.

17% of all infant deaths reported in VAERS occur the day of vaccination. And 78% within a week!

That’s no coincidence. In any other business, that synchronicity would be evidence enough, specially given:

  • healthy kids don’t normally die,
  • the stake are high: our kids’ lives!
  • the precautionary principle would invite to a review, if not an immediate complete halt.

[…]

Public Health Authorities have managed to turn ethics upside-down supposedly for the greater good.

Except if it’s truly for the greater good, why are they spending so much energy trying to:

  • Erase all traces of vaccination-induced death or harm by stopping coroners using the appropriate label;
  • Relabel vaccination-caused deaths with other illegal labels: bed suffocation, strangulation fallacies, COVID…
  • Fragment and camouflage all adverse effects so as to make them acceptable (viral, bacterial, genetic, unexplainable!) as if Guillain-Barré, autism, SIDS, hepatitis or pediatric myocarditis hadn’t the same root cause. A very dark divide and conquer strategy built on hubris and arrogance, possibly corruption.

[…]

Whether it is to capture billions of dollars in revenue, or to pay tribute to the vaccine God (some are religious and utterly irrational about vaccines), we have sacrificed our collective health to this lunacy, and the emotional and economic consequences of this are simply gigantic.

Imagine if we could avoid many cancers, most Parkinson and Alzheimer’s diseases, MSI, autism…and more. That’s what we are contemplating, however hard it is to believe.

As we are witnessing in the gruesome aftermath of COVID vaccination, immumisation accidents occur frequently [4]

[…]

Throughout multiple articles, I have demonstrated that inadvertent intravascular injection of vaccines is a reality, and that the mechanism of harm [5]can – and will – apply across the endothelium according to the exposure of the endothelium. And so to SIDS, one needs to add clinical and sub-clinical damage to:

the brain likely explaining the explosion of autism this past 20 years,

  • the heart explaining the rise in pediatric myocarditis [6]
  • the liver explaining hepatitis as we saw over summer

the bone marrow explaining children blood cancers such as Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia which particularly touch toddler below 5 years of age;

  • the pancreas with Type 1 Diabetes

Contrary to what we have been made to believe, vaccination is neither safe for our children, nor for us. Poor vaccination protocols have been the likely premier cause of illnesses for over a century.

[…]

Via https://covidmythbuster.substack.com/p/have-public-health-authorities-been

New bill would ban anyone under 16 from using social media

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Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) is proposing a bill banning users under 16 from accessing social media. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

By Christiano Lima

Washington Post

A growing number of U.S. policymakers and federal officials are angling to keep children and young teenagers off social media entirely, citing mounting concerns that the platforms may harm their well-being and mental health. It’s a notable escalation in the rhetoric around keeping kids safe online, which has largely focused on setting new digital protections.

The push gained traction after the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told CNN on Sunday that he believes 13 is “too early” for kids to be joining apps like Instagram and TikTok, which he said can create a “distorted environment” that “often does a disservice” to kids.

Since then, other officials including Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and the Federal Trade Commission’s Alvaro Bedoya have either voiced support or shared the remarks on Twitter. Jim Steyer, a prominent children’s safety advocate, called the comments “a huge deal.”

“This is exactly the kind of leadership we need from our Federal government when it comes to educating the public about technology’s impact on society,” Steyer, whose advocacy group Common Sense Media has close ties to the White House, said in an emailed statement.

Now the movement is fueling legislation on Capitol Hill: A House Republican on Thursday is introducing a bill to ban kids and teens under 16 from using social media.

The bill represents one of the most stringent efforts yet to keep kids off major platforms, going far beyond more narrow bipartisan proposals to set up guardrails for kids online.

The measure, led by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), would require companies to verify users’ ages and allow parents to sue them if they fail to keep those under 16 off their sites. It would also empower federal and state agencies to enforce the standards.

The proposal sets a high bar: While lawmakers have introduced bills to expand restrictions on practices like targeting ads to users up to 18, few have called for outright bans.

Stewart likened the effect social media can have on children and teens to that of drugs, a refrain that’s becoming increasingly common in Washington.

“We protect our children from drinking, from smoking, from driving. They can’t drive when they’re 12,” he said in an interview. “We should protect them from the impacts of social media.”

Many social media platforms, including TikTok and Twitter, already prohibit users under 13 from joining, but some such as YouTube offer a separate service designed for kids, while others like Instagram have mulled launching their own.

Those plans have faced intense scrutiny from children’s safety advocates and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have said they don’t trust the companies to safeguard their children.

Stewart’s proposal would open companies up to liability if they fail to adequately vet users’ ages and likely pose significant compliance challenges for companies, who have poured major funds into developing verification tools they acknowledge can fall short.

Many kids and teens don’t have identification, while others find workarounds to join platforms. In turn, a number of platforms have resorted to asking users to provide their birthdays.

Tech industry leaders have urged lawmakers to help those efforts by crafting legislation to set up standards or best practices for age verification. Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of U.S. public policy, told Senate lawmakers at a hearing in 2021 that any effort to update children’s privacy protections should include “a better way to verify age across the internet.”

NetChoice, a trade group representing social networks including TikTok and Twitter, pushed back on the surgeon general’s comment that 13 is “too early” for kids to be on social media, arguing such decisions should be left to parents. 

[…]

Via https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/02/new-bill-would-ban-anyone-under-16-using-social-media/

Why Smart Meters Are Good for Utility Companies, Bad for Consumers

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smart meters health privacy feature

Proponents of smart meters say the devices promote energy conservation by providing detailed feedback to consumers about their habits, but critics say the technology can be harmful to health and it poses real privacy concerns.

Smart meters — or “advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) installations” — are wireless devices that use radiofrequency (RF) radiation to transmit information about how much water, gas and electricity consumers use to utility companies.

The U.S. rolled out its first smart meters in 2009 when Congress introduced the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to the SGIG website, the program “aimed to accelerate the modernization of the nation’s electric transmission and distribution systems.”

In 2015, smart meters got a big push from the Obama administration, which funded the rollout of about 18 million smart meters.

In 2021, U.S. electric utility companies installed more than 111 million smart meters — roughly 88% of the meters were installed in personal residences.

Promoters of the technology argue the meters promote energy conservation because they measure and record electricity usage frequently and provide the data to the utility company and consumer at least once a day, allowing the consumer to get detailed feedback on their energy habits.

However, critics say the technology can be harmful to health, especially for those who experience electromagnetic sensitivity — and especially for children.

They also cite privacy and personal liberty concerns about how utility companies use the data collected by smart meters — and who they share that data with.

‘People unwittingly sleep … on the other side of the wall and get very, very ill’

“Smart meters are a bad idea because they use two-way radiofrequency microwave radiation to send your usage data for electric, gas, water, solar and propane energy,” said Cecelia Doucette, a technology safety educator and the director of Massachusetts for Safe Technology.

Doucette told The Defender that doctors at the 2021 EMF Medical Conference — where healthcare practitioners earned continuing education units on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness associated with electromagnetic fields (EMF) — underscored that “smart meters, close-range cell towers and 5G small cells are primary triggers of microwave sickness.”

“These meters are installed directly on our homes and elsewhere with no informed consent, and people unwittingly sleep or spend time on the other side of the wall and get very, very ill,” she added.

Richard Conrad, Ph.D., principal of the consulting service Conrad BioLogic, in 2013 published a study based on a survey of 210 individuals who considered themselves affected by smart meters.

The results showed “a full 97.6% of the 210 respondents were either very sure or fairly sure that their smart meter caused new or worsened symptoms.”

About 45% of the respondents believed the smart meters caused them to become electrically sensitive.

In 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) — part of the National Institutes of Health — determined from a $30 million study that there was “clear evidence” that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is associated with cancer and DNA damage.

Since then, more studies have linked EMR — including the RF radiation portion of the EMR spectrum — to many adverse health effects including tinnitus, fatigue, headaches, dizziness and disorientation and nausea and vomiting.

Children especially at risk

In 2021, researchers — including Beverly Rubik, Ph.D., founder and director of the Institute for Frontier Science — reviewed more than 250 peer-reviewed research reports on the detrimental bioeffects of wireless communication radiation and concluded RF radiation may:

  • cause morphologic changes in erythrocytes including echinocyte and rouleaux formation that can contribute to hypercoagulation;
  • impair microcirculation and reduce erythrocyte and hemoglobin levels exacerbating hypoxia;
  • amplify immune system dysfunction, including immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyperinflammation;
  • increase cellular oxidative stress and the production of free radicals resulting in vascular injury and organ damage;
  • increase intracellular Ca2+ essential for viral entry, replication, and release, in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways; and
  • worsen heart arrhythmias and cardiac disorders.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies everything on the RF-EMF spectrum as a 2B “possible human” carcinogen.

Children may be especially at risk, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

The authors of a 2005 article published in the AAP’s journal, Pediatrics, wrote:

“Concerns about the potential vulnerability of children to RF fields have been raised because of the potentially greater susceptibility of their developing nervous systems; in addition, their brain tissue is more conductive, RF penetration is greater relative to head size, and they will have a longer lifetime of exposure than adults.”

In their executive summary on wireless technology and public health, Physicians for Safe Technology state:

“The abundance of peer-reviewed science showing harm coupled with obsolete radiofrequency safety guidelines that fail to address long-term health effects and non-thermal biological effects indicate that a precautionary approach is essential to reduce potential harm to the public and the environment.”

Even after NTP researchers in 2018 alerted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to its findings, the FCC went ahead and granted approval for 5G wireless technology.

The FCC’s actions came as no surprise to Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics which, in 2015, published a 56-page investigative report titled, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates.”

[…]

“The wireless industry will deploy delay tactics by saying we need more than one study to prove harm,” Doucette said, “and right on the heels of our $30M study, Italy’s Ramazzini Institute published another large study that corroborated the NTP findings.”

[…]

Smart meters expose people to continuous RF radiation by emitting a “sharp” electromagnetic pulse.

[…]

A California investigation for the utility company PG&E determined smart meters could pulse up to 192,000 times a day, Bathgate noted.

Additionally, he said, most smart meters don’t have a surge suppression mechanism [present in old analog meters] and thus pose a fire risk.

In March 2015, a dump truck hit a PG&E power pole in Stockton, California, causing about 5,000 meters that had been placed on residents’ homes to instantly explode due to overvoltage.

[…]

According to EMF Safety Network, there have been at least 10 incidences in the U.S. similar in nature to the Stockton incident — and others in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

[…]

Attorney: “yet another invasion of individual liberty, autonomy and privacy’

Smart meters capture and disclose an extraordinary amount of information about what people are doing inside their homes, W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator on behalf of Children’s Health Defense’s EMR-related legal work, told The Defender.

[…]

McCollough, a former Texas assistant attorney general and telecom and administrative law attorney, said this invasion of privacy is even worse when smart meters are combined with other Internet of Things devices like “smart” thermostats, refrigerators and washing machines.

“The utility can discern what appliances are being used and even when individual lights are turned on or off,” McCollough said. “It can develop a fine-grained ‘home’ profile that it can then sell to data brokers without user consent using a ‘surveillance capitalism’ model. There are also, of course, surveillance state implications.”

Smart meters also can “restrict people’s ability to use electricity as they wish by allowing the utility to remotely turn off heating and cooling without user consent — even if the user has medical needs requiring heating or cooling to maintain a prescribed temperature inside the home,” McCollough said.ii, where customers of Maui Utility can choose to opt in — rather than opt out — of having a smart meter installed.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/smart-meters-health-privacy/

Amazon Nightmare Reminiscent of Dotcom Collapse

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The e-commerce giant is having one of its worst years in the stock market since the bursting of the internet bubble in 2000.

It’s a dark year for Amazon.

A year to forget.

The e-commerce giant undoubtedly wants to put 2022 behind it and get out of what appears to be a real stock market nightmare.

The numbers speak for themselves: The Amazon stock closed the December 22 trading session at $83.79, which represents a 49.7% drop compared to December 31, 2021. This is the lowest closing level for the Amazon stock since March 12, 2019. Basically, the group, founded by Jeff Bezos, has completely erased all the gains during the two years when strict restrictions were put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.

During these two years, the economy more or less migrated online to the delight of Amazon  (AMZN) – Get Free Report, a juggernaut targeting both consumers and businesses, ranging from the sale of groceries to cloud computing services.

Out of the $1 Trillion Club

But the removal of the various anti-Covid-19 measures in 2022 coincided with a stock market rout of the group. Amazon was kicked out of the trillion club last month, the inner circle of companies with a market value of at least $1 trillion. In this selective club, there are only four companies left: Apple  (AAPL) – Get Free Report, Saudi Aramco, Microsoft  (MSFT) – Get Free Report and Alphabet  (GOOGL) – Get Free Report.

The Seattle, Washington-based firm’s market capitalization is nearly $855 billion at the time of this writing versus $2.1 trillion for the iPhone maker, $1.82 trillion for the Saudi oil giant, $1.78 trillion for the software juggernaut and $1.14 trillion for the parent company of Google.

The Amazon stock is thus about to experience the second bad year in its history after the year 2000, during which it had fallen by 79.6%. It was the bursting of the dot-com bubble and many experts, at the time, were predicting the bankruptcy of the group. Today things have changed and Amazon is seen as a titan.

To properly assess the group’s stock market setbacks this year, one has to put it into perspective. The S&P 500 stock market index only lost 19.1% at last check, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by only 8.1%. The Nasdaq 100 index, which consists primarily of technology stocks, is certainly down sharply by 33%, but still much less than Amazon.

Amazon is impacted by the economic slowdown which affects most of the tech companies, considered to be growth stocks. Price increases for goods and services are at their highest in 40 years in many Western countries, forcing central banks to raise interest rates, which makes access to credit expensive.

In the United States, many economists believe that the aggressive rise in interest rates will cause the economy’s so-called hard landing, aka a recession. The tech sector tends to perform well when the economy is healthy and confidence is high.

Consumers tend to spend on tech products and services when things are going well. But as soon as the economic situation deteriorates, they begin to be cautious, favoring necessary purchases, often to the detriment of tech.

Revenue Slowdown + Rivian

“There is obviously a lot happening in the macroeconomic environment,” Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, said last month. “We’ll balance our investments to be more streamlined without compromising our key long-term, strategic bets.”

The company, which is in the process of drastically reducing costs through job cuts and the cancellation of projects, expects a slowdown in its revenues in almost all its sectors of activity, even from the Amazon Web Services division, or AWS, which used to be a growth engine.

Amazon announced on October 27 that it expects fourth-quarter revenue between $140 billion and $148 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 2% to 8%. This was below analysts’ expectations of $155 billion.

This forecast was particularly disappointing to investors, because it focused on the end-of-year holiday period, which is supposed to be a time when consumers tend to increase their spending.

Moreover, the big investment in the manufacturer of electric vehicles Rivian  (RIVN) – Get Free Report is turning into a nightmare. Rivian’s stock is down 81% this year. Amazon held a 17.34% stake in Rivian as of September 29. Rivian’s stock market crash likely translates into asset write-downs in Amazon’s financials.

[…]

Via https://lordrakim.wordpress.com/2023/02/02/amazon-nightmare-is-reminiscent-of-the-dotcom-collapse-thestreet/

Hunter Biden’s Biolab Firm Metabiota Linked to EcoHealth, World Economic Forum

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The Blogging Hounds

Hunter Biden’s firm invested $500,000 in Ukrainian biolab operator Metabiota, which then received a $23.9 million contact from the Pentagon for bioresearch. Metabiota head Nathan Wolfe worked together with EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak on SARS-based coronavirus research. The Russian  Defence Ministry claims to have over 20,000 documents on the US biolab project in Ukraine.

On Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the destruction of all documents related to Hunter Biden’s partner firm Metabiota, blogger Jacob Creech AKA @WarClandestine reported in June 2022 and again yesterday on Twitter after he was reinstated.

Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in the San Francisco bioresearch firm Metabiota and raised millions more through firms that included Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to e-mails on Hunter Biden’s laptop, as the New York Post reported March 26, 2022.

On April 4, 2014 Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote to Hunter Biden: “As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.”

[…]

On April 8, 2014, Burisma manager Vadym Pozharshki wrote to Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer, inquiring about a proposed deal with Biotech firm Metabiota. “As I understand Metabiota was a subcontractor to principal contractor of the DoD B&V (Black & Veatch)… What kind of partnership Metabiota is loooking for in Ukraine? … The principal contractor B&V (Black & Veatch) seems to be also the party that operates in Ukraine on similar or the same projects. There is no competition here?”

Vadym Pozharshki met with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in Café Milano in Washington, DC on April 16, 2015, as e-mails on the Hunter Biden laptop show. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote on April 17, 2015. “It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”

On May 12, 2014, Hunter Biden joined the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, according to its press release, where he earned $1 million a year for inclear services.

Metabiota was spun off from San Francisco not-for-profit organization Global Viral 2014, previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Institute (GVFI), according to the Global Viral website. Neil Callahan and John DeLoche, employees of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners, were appointed to the board of Metabiota.

Metabiota head Nathan Wolfe is an expert on Viral Pandemics who serves on the editorial board of EcoHealth and is a member of DARPA’s Defense Science Research Council. Wolfe co-authored a paper 2017 on “Global patterns in coronavirus diversity” with Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and the EcoHealth PREDICT Consortium. GVFI Vice President Joseph Fair appeared at the Wuhan Institute of Vorology with Dr. Shi Zhengli 2013.

On Oct. 3, 2014, Rosemont Seneca Technologies Partners (RSTP) Managing Director John DeLoche wrote to Hunter Biden that RSTP would “increase our investment in Metabiota by 250 k … They raised about $2.4 mm of which we represent $500 k (250 k from the first investment plus this one). They intended to raise a max. of $1,6 mm but it was oversubscribed. The way to think about this one is that Palantir is to the CIA what Metabiota is to the USDA. … They hope to raise another $15 mm at least $80 mm pre which would be a nice 5x mark-up to our investment.”

[…]

On Oct. 9, 2014, John DeLoche wrote to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and RSTP manager Rob Walker: “Is there anyone we can call in DC to get a sense of how legit Metabiota is viewed within the various government agencies? We want to make sure we thoroughly do our diligence here, especially as Goldman and now Morgan Stanley will be doing diligence on the fund and Metabiota towards investing in both.

Additionally, who have we introduced them to in DC? Can you please provide a list of the various folks within Cornerstone as well as outside the firm where we have made intros? This data will go in our investment memo which we are trying to compplete and get to potential LPs by Tuesday.”

Rob Walker answered on Oct. 9, 2014: “I am going to have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low.”

[…]

Metabiota received a $23.9M contract from the DoD in 2014 after $340k from DHS 2013, writes Rogan O’Handley AKA “DC Draino”:

Metabiota was selected as a World Economic Forum TechPioneer 2021.

(Twitter)

We are thrilled to announce that Metabiota has been selected as a 2021 World Economic Forum TechPioneer!
We look forward to collaborating to build a world that is more resilient to epidemics.
Read more here:https://t.co/GeeV97m3yr @wef #techpioneers21

— Metabiota (@metabiota) June 15, 2021

Writing on Twitter, Jacob Creech claimed that “Biden was trying to cover his tracks in Ukraine, because he was afraid Trump was going to look into the dealings there.”

(Twitter)

1) Now I’m really gonna blow your mind.

Remember the leaked phone call from Biden to Poroshenko in November 2016?

Right after Trump was elected. Biden was trying to cover his tracks in Ukraine, because he was afraid Trump was going to look into the dealings there.

From @OANN pic.twitter.com/iz8PmXZuzT

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) February 1, 2023

Lawyer Tom Renz claimed the US embassy “just removed all their Ukraine bioweapons lab documents from the web.”

(Twitter)

US embassy just REMOVED all their #Ukraine #BIOWEAPON LAB DOCUMENTS from the web. Why hide things if there’s nothing to hide? #WEF #DOD #truth #diedsuddenly #Pfizer #Moderna https://t.co/0Y2Oh1VlEE

— Tom Renz (@RenzTom) January 30, 2023

The Russian Ministry of Defence claims to be in possession of more than 20,000 documents that supposedly expose the USA’s bio-warfare programs in Ukraine. In a tweet on Monday 1/30, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) alleged, “The materials confirm that the Pentagon aimed at creating elements of a biological weapon, & testing it on the population of Ukraine.”

[…]

Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2023/02/02/more-hunter-bidens-biolab-firm-metabiota-linked-to-ecohealth-world-economic-forum-russia-claims-it-has-20-000-biolab-documents/

Shipbuilding in Ancient Greece and Rome

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Ostia015.jpg | Friends of San Diego Architecture

Lecture 22: Machines at Sea – Ancient Ships

Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From the Catapult to the Pantheon

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

Romans

As Romans weren’t a seafaring people, this lecture mainly focuses on Greek technology.  To build a naval fleet during the first Punic War (264-241), the Romans merely copied the technology used by their Carthaginian enemies. By 200 BC, they had already abandoned it, relying on allies (mainly Persia) to defend their maritime interests. Once Augustus came to power (27 BC – 14 AD) he built the empire’s first commercial fleet to import wheat from Egypt.

Roman cargo ships were up to 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Some carried 400 -1,000 tons of cargoes that included grain, wine, building stone, metal ingots, oil and looted art treasures. In their heyday, the Romans had a fleet of several hundred.

Grain ships to the Roman province of Egypt took 20 days to reach Alexandria. Owing to unfavorable winds, the return trip to 45-60 days. To avoid Mediterranean winter storms, they only sailed between April and September, which mean each ship took two trips a year.

Greeks

By the 3rd millennium BC, the Minoans and early Greeks had developed two major sea goingl prototypes: the roundship and the longship. Both remained in use throughout the classical era and into the Middle Ages.

Roundships were merchant vessels powered mainly by sails though the sometimes carried supplemental oars. They had broad, rounded hulls (with a 4:1 length to width ratio) to maximize cargo capacity.

Longships were either naval or pirate vessels with a large crew of oarsmen that were built for speed. Most had one supplemental sail.

All classical ships used shell-first hull construction. More recent plank-on-frame construction originated in late antiquity in northern Europe and is still used today. With the latter approach, the inner skeleton is built first and the planks (connected to the shell rather than each other) are added later.

With early shell-first construction, the outer shell segments were sewn together with linen cord. This technology was eventually replaced with mortise and tenon joints along the length of each plank.

Because buoyancy* is distributed unequally in rough water, both the hull and the keel (the ship’s backbone) had to be reinforced to prevent sagging. Most keels required at least two lengths of timber connected by a locking scarf joint.

The square sail used by the Greeks required a sophisticated system of support and control. Mounted into a socket in the ship’s keel, the mast was held in place by standing (stationary) rigging: stays (ropes extending fore) and shrouds (ropes extending aft).

Running rigging (used to adjust the sail) consisted of a halyards that would raise or lower the yardarm, lifters that would move it from side to side and braces that would rotate it horizontally. Brails  would rotate it horizontally.

Byzantium Novum Militarium: Early Greek Ship

The sail itself was controlled by sheets. The helmsman adjusted the leeward (downwind) sheet to control the speed of the vessel. Pulled taught, the sail caught the full force of the wind.

An extremely flexible steering system (based on two steering oars) combined with precise sail adjustment allowed Greek ships to tack 11 1/4% (ie sail against the the wind) for the first time in human history. The Greeks added a small sail in the front of the boat to prevent the ship listing to leeward when it tacked. This eventually led to the emergence of three masted Greek and Roman freighters.

*Discovered by Archimedes in his bathtub around 246 BC.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/146722

‘Obscene’: Exxon Posts Record $56 Billion in Profits — But Keeps Gouging Consumers

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record profits exxon feature.

Common Dreams

ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, sparking renewed calls by consumer and climate advocates for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.

As ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, consumer and climate advocates renewed calls for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.

Texas-based ExxonMobil posted a $55.7 billion profit last year, breaking not only its own previous company record — $45 billion in 2008 — but setting a historic high for the Western oil industry, according to Reuters.

The company’s profit is a 144% increase from 2021 and, as Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn noted, “enough money to send every person in the U.S. $178 to help offset the costs of high fossil fuel costs and gas bills.”

Marathon Petroleum — the top U.S. refiner — said Tuesday that it raked in $16.4 billion last year while approving a $5 billion stock buyback, and Phillips 66 reported $8.9 billion in adjusted 2022 profit, a 253% increase from 2021.

Tuesday’s earnings reports came just days after Chevron announced a $35.5 billion 2022 profit, a company record, and days before Shell, BP and Total are all expected to follow suit on the strength of profits related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the European energy crisis.

Meanwhile, the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline crept up to over $3.50 on Tuesday, with average prices by state ranging from $3.40 in Nebraska to $4.93 in Hawaii, according to the American Automobile Association.

Last year, “families across Pennsylvania paid $5 a gallon for gas while Exxon made profits that ‘smashed earnings records’ and Chevron posted ‘record earnings,” said U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), responding to recent Big Oil profit reports. “This price gouging is simply disgusting, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for Stop the Oil Profiteering, lamented that “while we’re getting robbed at the pump, Big Oil’s obscene profits are out of control and billionaire fossil fuel CEOs are getting richer and richer.”

DiPaola continued:

“Big Oil is shattering records precisely because of the pain the public is feeling at the pump. We’re paying more for gas and electricity because Big Oil companies are gouging Americans and benefiting from a rigged system that keeps prices high in times of war and crisis. And on top of that, Big Oil CEOs are making massive bonuses and rewarding big Wall Street investors while families are having to decide between filling up their gas tanks or paying for medication and childcare.”

“Enough is enough,” she added. “It’s time to fight back against the politicians and Big Oil CEOs who put their billions before the health and safety of our families, our communities, and our climate. We need to hold them accountable now with solutions like a windfall profits tax, and invest in clean energy solutions that can free us from expensive fossil fuels.”

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that “Big Oil has imposed a private tax on the American people — to the tune of more than $90 billion from just two companies alone.”

“It’s past time for the American people to take that money back,” he added. “A windfall profits tax would tax Big Oil on its inflated revenues — due only to the rising global price of oil and having nothing to do with Big Oil’s costs or investments — and return the money to American consumers.”

Last March, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a bill to tax excess oil company profits and use the proceeds to pay American households a quarterly refund. That same month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would tax windfall profits of major corporations at a rate of 95%.

While President Joe Biden has threatened to support a windfall profits tax on oil companies if they don’t ramp up production, he has not yet done so.

Responding to the increasing calls for taxing excess Big Oil earnings, ExxonMobil chief financial officer Kathryn Mikells told Reuters that windfall profits taxes are “unlawful and bad policy,” and would have “the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve.”

In a Reuters opinion piece published Tuesday, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome and project lead for Earth4All initiative, wrote that “oil and gas companies are perhaps the most flagrant example of our upside-down world.”

“Despite being responsible for the majority of the emissions that cause climate change, they continue to make higher and higher profits,” she explained. “At the same time, vulnerable people in the lowest-income countries, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most impacted by the extreme weather events caused by a warming world, are getting poorer.”

“There is absolutely no reason not to tax windfall profits in all sectors, in particular when they have been made during periods of scarcity and speculation when the rest of the world is worse off,” Dixson-Declève added. “Ending tax incentives and subsidies for fossil fuels is simply a no-brainer in a world where climate change is already costing untold financial and human losses every year.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/exxon-record-profits-gouging-consumers-cd/

Swedish prosecutors joined Starmer’s CPS in destroying huge evidence in Assange case

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Investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, centre, at last weekend’s Media Freedom event in London

Sqwawkbox

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) under Keir Starmer and the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) destroyed or hid thousands of pages of evidence showing their correspondence in pursuit of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, an author and investigative journalist has found after years of legal action to enforce Swedish Freedom of Information Requests. The UN’s body on arbitrary detention has ruled Assange’s captivity wrongful.

Stefania Maurizi first published revelations six years ago of the extent of evidence destroyed – without proper explanation and outside normal procedure – by the CPS. Now, after eight years of ‘trench warfare’ with the authorities to uncover the truth, she writes that:

It is now clear that both of the authorities handling the Swedish case, the SPA and the CPS, destroyed a large part of their email exchanges. Why? What did those documents contain and on whose instructions were those materials destroyed? Now more than ever some sort of explanation is urgently needed, considering that the United States is currently acting through the Crown Prosecution Service itself in the extradition proceeding against Julian Assange.

The pages of correspondence between the two authorities that have disappeared appear to amount to thousands of pages. What is on record is that the CPS was very keen for Sweden to pursue its extradition of Assange, with a CPS official telling the Swedes not to ‘dare get cold feet’, even though they could have easily come to the UK to question Assange in now-dropped rape allegations that the supposed victims reportedly did not want to pursue anyway.

Maurizi writes that the allegations were used to undermine the left’s empathy for Assange, as a means of reducing opposition to the extradition to Sweden, from where Assange would almost certainly have been sent to the US, whose government wants to jail him for up to 175 years for revealing US war crimes.

The case against Assange should have been thrown out of court summarily last year when the US government’s main witness, an Icelandic hacker who had said Assange incited him to access US systems to obtain documents, admitted that he had been lying all along. Instead, the court rubber-stamped the extradition request and Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh high-security prison pending the exhaustion of all appeals.

The eagerness of the CPS to extradite Assange is not the first such case associated with Keir Starmer. The ‘Labour’ leader was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), as he never tires of mentioning – but he was revealed to have flown personally to make a grovelling apology to the US government when then-PM Theresa May quashed the extradition of autistic hacker Gary McKinnon, which Starmer had personally guaranteed to his US counterpart.

The Assange case is also not the first time Starmer has been associated with destroyed or disappeared CPS documents. Starmer’s supporters have claimed that he played no role in the CPS’s decision, during his tenure as DPP, to ignore allegations against serial rapist Jimmy Savile.

However, the CPS said that documents relating to the decision not to pursue Savile were ‘not kept’ and claimed this was in line with its ‘data retention policy’. However, as Maurizi notes, the CPS has never produced any policy mandating such destruction of documents.

Starmer – who has been described as a ‘long-time servant of the British security state’ and is currently sheltering at least two alleged sex pests in his Shadow Cabinet – has himself declined to respond to requests to either deny or admit that he was involved.

[…]

Via https://skwawkbox.org/2023/02/01/swedish-prosecutors-joined-starmers-cps-in-destroying-huge-evidence-in-assange-case/