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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.

House GOP to embark on sweeping probe of covid origin, U.S. response

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House Republicans on Monday commissioned a special investigative panel focused on the coronavirus pandemic, hoping to leverage their new, powerful majority to press scientists and federal officials about the origin of the public health crisis and the government’s response to it.

Party lawmakers officially chartered the new effort in a sprawling package setting the chamber’s rules for the next two years, awarding it a sweeping mandate — from looking into vaccine development, school closures and other mitigation measures to examining the roughly $5 trillion in emergency federal aid approved since early 2020.

Republicans have long derided Democrats, public health experts and others who advocated for an aggressive government response to covid-19, which has claimed millions of lives globally. At the center of GOP criticism is the suspicion that the coronavirus originated out of laboratory experiments in Wuhan, China, potentially backed by U.S. money — a view at odds with peer-reviewed scientific papers pointing to a more likely origin in a Wuhan market.

In the process, Republican lawmakers also have clashed with scientists and doctors on a wide array of policies meant to arrest the spread of the virus — opposing vaccine mandates, blasting in-person capacity limits and rejecting new federal funding for tests, treatments and other tools.

With new control of the House, however, the GOP aims to surface those concerns in a more prominent setting, questioning a wide array of current and former government officials, potentially including Anthony S. Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The panel, officially named as the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, essentially replaces a Democrat-led legislative body that had focused its work on monitoring emergency coronavirus aid for fraud. Under Republicans, it does not yet have a leader, but it is expected to hold its first hearing in February.

“There’s a lot of confusion out there, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there, and I believe every American regardless of their political ideology would like to know the truth,” said Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is set to chair the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, under whose umbrella the covid panel will do its work.

Comer said that congressional investigators would “talk to the researchers,” including “all of the people that were involved” at the National Institutes of Health around the development of vaccines. In December, the congressman joined with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who is set to oversee other investigations of the Biden administration, to demand Fauci and NIH retain records involving “the origins of covid-19, the [Chinese government’s] efforts to cover it up, and all related national security risks.”

The new panel highlights the tectonic shift underway in Washington after two years of Democratic control of Congress and the White House. Even before the GOP officially captured the House, Republicans had made clear that they would embark on several politically charged probes — predominantly targeting Biden and his top aides and family members.

In recent months, GOP lawmakers have told the White House to preserve records related to the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the private Florida residence of former president Donald Trump. They have signaled other coming investigations of Biden’s domestic and foreign policies, including his 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan. And they have set in motion an entire investigative body to look into the “weaponization of the federal government,” focused on law enforcement and national security agencies.

“We will hold the swamp accountable, from the withdrawal of Afghanistan to the origins of covid and to the weaponization of the FBI,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said on Saturday in his first remarks after winning the leadership post.

In an interview Monday, Comer stressed that the upcoming coronavirus inquiry would have a wide agenda, but he rejected the idea that its focus is political in nature.

“This isn’t about Joe Biden or Donald Trump. This is about covid-19,” he said, later adding: “We’re concerned about some government employees, and these employees were hired long before the previous two presidents. So I don’t think it’s political at all.”

The official charter for the 12-member subcommittee tasks it with exploring the origin of the pandemic as well as federal funding for “gain-of-function research.” The term refers to scientific efforts to create novel versions of pathogens to better understand how they work and, potentially, to combat them.

Republicans including Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have charged for years that the U.S. government funded such research at a key lab in China, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, creating “super viruses” and potentially sparking the global spread of the coronavirus. Those accusations often have drawn sharp, public derision from Fauci, who once described Paul’s contention as “entirely and completely incorrect.”

To date, there is no evidence the novel coronavirus was in a laboratory before the outbreak, and Chinese scientists say they never had it in any of their facilities. Peer-reviewed scientific papers, meanwhile, have attributed the start of the pandemic to a market where the virus may have leaped from animals to humans. But Republicans have maintained otherwise and repeatedly signaled a desire to probe the matter further — setting up the new majority to force federal officials to testify on “gain of function” research and the “lab leak” theory.

Fauci, for his part, previously has expressed an openness to testifying in front of Congress. He did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans also intend to explore capacity restrictions on schools and businesses, which experts for a time saw as necessary to curb the spread of the coronavirus, especially before vaccines and antivirals were available. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chairman of the House Rules Committee, said during floor debate Monday that the focus would allow lawmakers to “finally look into the financial and societal impacts of shutdowns.”

And the House’s new, guiding rules indicated the select subcommittee would similarly probe the “development of vaccines and treatments,” with Comer on Monday citing an interest in the “effectiveness of the vaccines and the concerns that people are starting to raise with respect to side effects.”

In a sign of their commitment, Republicans late last year secured an end to a policy requiring that military service members be vaccinated against the coronavirus. They brokered the deal as part of a sweeping measure authorizing Pentagon spending, having previously threatened to shut down the government just to end the policy.

The GOP also pledged to probe the roughly $5 trillion in emergency federal spending adopted since the start of the pandemic. The relief packages — all but one of which was bipartisan in nature, and one of which was signed into law by Trump — helped unemployed workers and cash-starved businesses in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But the money also enabled vast waste, fraud and abuse, with criminals taking advantage of lax federal regulations and some state officials, largely Republicans, put the money toward tax cuts, immigration crackdowns and other pet project.

[…]

Via https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/01/09/house-covid-origin-investigation/

Childhood Obesity: Are Drugs and Surgery the Answer?

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childhood obesity aap guidelines feature

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ new clinical guidelines for treating childhood obesity recommend weight-loss drugs and surgery, prompting some to ask why the academy is focused on profit-generating treatments rather than addressing the root causes.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday issued new clinical guidelines for treating childhood obesity, recommending physicians offer weight-loss drugs and surgery to obese children.

“While we applaud the AAP for addressing the grave issue of childhood obesity, their newest recommendations are misguided and negate the root causes,” Dr. Michelle Perro told The Defender.

For many years, the AAP unsuccessfully promoted the “diet and exercise” mantra while obesity rates continued to soar, Perro said.

Perro, a pediatrician, executive director of GMO Science and author of “What’s Making Our Children Sick?: How Industrial Food Is Causing an Epidemic of Chronic Illness, and What Parents (and Doctors) Can Do About It,” added:

“What has not been addressed are the obesogens in American children’s meals, substances that produce obesity, lurking in their food at home as well as school, caused mostly by pesticides and plastics. The cause of the metabolic disorder of obesity is that it is an environmental disease.

“Unless we remove the pesticides and other toxicants, the promotion of drugs and surgery are panaceas, bandaids, and foster the ‘pill for ill’ model, rather than root-cause real solutions.”

Mary Lou Singleton, midwife and family nurse practitioner, told The Defender the new AAP guidelines “offered no meaningful analysis or explanation of what is driving the childhood obesity epidemic.”

Singleton added:

“I found no mention of the massive changes in the U.S. food supply that correlate with the skyrocketing rates of obesity among children and adults alike …

“The document fails to address the school lunch program, which is providing a significant amount of the calories U.S. schoolchildren are eating weekly. Most schoolchildren in the U.S. are fed plastic-wrapped, chemically-preserved, pesticide-laden food made in factories months or years earlier. In addition to the sugar, the chemicals in these foods have endocrine-disrupting obesogenic properties.”

The new AAP guidelines recommend against a “watchful waiting” approach that may delay treatment, instead directing pediatricians and other providers to treat obesity early — referring children ages 6 years and older and potentially those ages 2 to 5 years who are overweight or obese for intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment.

The guidelines also recommend that obese children 12 and older be offered weight-loss medications alongside health behavior and lifestyle treatments and that doctors refer severely obese children 13 and older to surgeons to evaluate whether they would be good candidates for metabolic and bariatric surgery.

They also state that pediatricians may consider weight-loss medications for children as young as 8 to 11 years old.

Overweight and obese children and adolescents should also be evaluated for related comorbidities, the guidelines also state.

Devastating side effects for kids, big profits for Big Pharma

The guidelines offer consensus recommendations on the use of pharmacotherapy for children ages 8 and up, and provide a list of potential medications.

As of March 2021, the only U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmacotherapies for obesity were orlistat and liraglutide in children 12 and older and phentermine in teens 16 and older, according to an AAP study.

GlaxoSmithKline’s orlistat, which blocks fat absorption, has shown “modest results” for weight loss in teens, but may cause intolerable gastrointestinal side effects and possible fat-soluble vitamin deficiency.

Phentermine is approved only for short-term therapy and may increase heart rate and blood pressure and cause irritability and insomnia. Long-term studies of their use in children are not available.

The AAP guidelines also recommend metformin, a diabetes drug approved for children ages 10 and up, which hasn’t been approved as a weight-loss drug, though it has been used off-label for that purpose in children.

Studies of metformin’s effect on weight loss in children have shown mixed results. Side effects include lactic acidosis, a metabolic condition that can be life-threatening. Up to 50% of patients who take metformin experience diarrhea.

One of the more recently approved drugs on the list being promoted for adolescents is an expensive, well-marketed, once-weekly injectable — semaglutide — sold under the brand name Wegovy and manufactured by Novo Nordisk.

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found Wegovy helped teens reduce their body mass index (BMI) — the measure used by doctors to detect excess fat — but it also reported a significant rate of gastrointestinal adverse events.

The study was funded by Novo Nordisk.

“Based on the study’s own findings, this drug should never be recommended for children despite the reduction in BMI,” Perro told The Defender, “because the risk outweighs the benefit.”

Perro said the study’s findings “ignore the adverse events … which seems to be a popular trend in the promotion of new drug therapies in children.”

This class of recommended drugs, known as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists — which include exenatide, dulaglutide, and semaglutide — have been found to cause thyroid cancer in mice. The drugs also have been linked to pancreatitis and even pancreatic cancer in adults.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists drugs are injectable medications administered weekly, so if a child is having a severe reaction the drug cannot be removed from their system, Singleton noted.

As The Defender reported in August 2022, as obesity rates rise — in children and adults — Big Pharma can expect windfall profits.

According to Fierce Pharma, analysts at Morgan Stanley Research told clients, “Drugmakers like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are poised to unlock a global obesity market that could be worth more than $50 billion by the end of the decade.”

Wegovy helped fuel the forecasts.

It is not just high drug prices that make obesity a hot market. Since obesity in 2013 was officially classified as a chronic disease, it is now “on the cusp of moving into mainstream primary care management,” said Morgan Stanley — because it can be treated directly instead of treating its consequences, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

[…]

Surgical treatments for kids, ‘safe and effective?’

Commenting on the AAP surgical recommendations, Singleton told The Defender, “I was shocked to see the AAP state ‘weight loss surgery is safe and effective for pediatric patients.’”

“While children are less likely to experience serious surgical complications than adults, the mortality rate for children undergoing weight loss-surgery is 1 in 500. Most parents would not consider this an insignificant risk,” she added.

According to a major study of pediatric weight loss surgery, the Teen-LABS study, 9.3% of children experienced complications severe enough to require a second surgery and 7.1% had life-threatening complications.

The two approved methods of weight loss surgery for children — sleeve gastrectomy or gastric bypass — entail removing or rendering permanently dysfunctional a large percentage of the stomach.

“These body parts are not redundant,” Singleton said. “They serve important purposes in the digestive process. ‘Bypassing’ them means children will permanently be left without the use of these organs. They can never be reintegrated into the digestive system.”

Possible long-term risks of such surgeries also include an increased risk of vitamin B12 deficiency, which can lead to pernicious anemia and increased risk of osteoporosis.

[…]

Obesity in U.S. children increasing at an alarming rate

Obesity is one of the most common pediatric chronic diseases in the U.S. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 5 U.S. children and teens are considered obese.

Childhood obesity rates are even higher among poorer children.

 

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/childhood-obesity-aap-guidelines-drugs-surgery/

100 Reasons to Stop the New WHO Treaty

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Please watch the video or listen to the audio and follow along with the transcript below.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/jKCzznE8CK2r

Please be patient. The audio may take a few moments to download.

This article is an in-depth, very serious analysis of both the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

Please share this article with everyone you possibly can.

I know that this article is long. Here is the short version:

The World Health Organization is attempting a GLOBAL POWER GRAB by seeking to have the 194 member nations of the World Health Assembly adopt amendments to the International Health Regulations as well as adopt a completely new international agreement commonly referred to as the proposed “Pandemic Treaty.”.

The proposed amendments would make the WHO’s proclamations legally-binding rather than just advisory recommendations. The changes would institute global digital health certificates, dramatically increase the billions of dollars available to the WHO and enable nations to implement the regulations WITHOUT respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of people.

Agreement by a simple majority of the 194 member nations is all that is needed to adopt the amendments because, as amendments to an existing agreement, neither the advice and consent of the United States Senate, nor the signature of the President would be required.

These amendments are being negotiated in secret without any opportunity for comment by people from around the world.

Below you will find the source documents for the proposed “Pandemic Treaty” and the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations.

Please watch the video or listen to the audio and follow along with the transcript below, which details the Top One Hundred Reasons why We, the People of the World need to:

#StopTheTreaty

#StopTheAmendments and

#ExitTheWHO

[…]

Via https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/100-reasons

The West and the Majority of the World

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The majority world (in red)

The majority world (in red) | Photo: Stephen Sefton

Since its inception, the leaders of the ALBA countries have denounced North American and European imperialism’s brutal exploitation and domination and its gangster diplomacy of “Do what we want or else…”.

In 2004, Comandante Fidel Castro and Comandante Hugo Chávez founded what is now the Bolivarian Alliance of the peoples of our America, ALBA which now includes Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Caribbean island nations of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica, St Kitts and Nevis, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda and Santa Lucía. A year earlier, in 2003, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was formally constituted, which now includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, India, Pakistan and Iran. Both organizations share practically the same principles of solidarity, equality among their members and mutual respect for different ideologies. This suggests that, at that same time, in different poles of the majority world, a common decision arose to build a world free of the economic strangulation and neocolonial aggression of the United States and its allies.

Since its inception, the leaders of the ALBA countries have denounced North American and European imperialism’s brutal exploitation and domination and its gangster diplomacy of “Do what we want or else…”. In May of this year, President Comandante Daniel Ortega declared at the 21st ALBA-TCP Summit: “They have not stopped practicing the Monroe Doctrine, they have not renounced the Monroe Doctrine. In the name of democracy, they impose a tyrannical, imperialist, terrorist, international policy… imperialism has not changed, the essence of Imperialism is there, a totally criminal essence.”

At that same meeting, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro expressed, “Enough is enough of the centuries of plunder, of invasions, of threats, of imperial hegemonism, this is our century! The 21st century… and our path is that of Latin America and the Caribbean, of ALBA, of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, this is our path, the path of equals, the path of respect, the path of inclusion, the path of unitary convocation, that is our path.”

At the same summit, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz Canel also expressed the commitment of the ALBA countries to unity among diversity “In the face of attempts at exclusion and selectivity, it is urgent to strengthen the authentic mechanisms of Latin American and Caribbean to integrate and act in concert. Together we will be able to effectively defend our sovereignty and self-determination without interference or external pressures….We call to unite, not to divide; to contribute, not to subtract; to dialogue, not to confront; to respect, not to impose.”

After decades of increasingly aggressive provocations on the part of the United States and the European Union, in February of this year the Russian Federation finally acted to defend itself. And in his historic speech on September 30, President Vladimir Putin elaborated the vision of a multipolar world, based on the same principles of ALBA and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, genuine cooperation, respect between equals, unity in diversity, a commitment to dialogue and international law. The similarity between the ALBA country leaders’ vision and the vision expressed by President Putin in his speech is very striking.

He spoke of the faith of the majority world’s peoples in a multipolar world in order to “strengthen their sovereignty and, therefore, to acquire true freedom, historical perspective, the right to independent, creative, authentic development, to a harmonious process.” President Putin made clear that it is also about faith in the human capacity to overcome differences, collaborate for the common good and create a world of solidarity. He stated explicitly, “Our values are love for neighbor, mercy and compassion.”

The contrast of these common visions of the ALBA countries, of Russia, China and their allies, with the practice of the West could not be stronger. As President Putin puts it, “Western countries have been saying for centuries that they bring freedom and democracy to other nations. Everything is just the opposite: democracy becomes repression and exploitation; freedom, slavery and violence. The entire unipolar world order is inherently undemocratic and devoid of freedom. It is mendacious and hypocritical to the core.”

The truth of this categorical condemnation of the United States and its allies is self-evident in the colonial history of imperialism from its origins to its evolution over the last century to neo-colonialism. In the United States and Europe, since the introduction of universal suffrage last century enabled the Western elites to pass off their nations as democracies, in practice essentially, in exchange for guaranteeing their populations’ socio-economic development, those elites have been able to count on their countries’ peoples to collaborate in the looting of the majority world. This ensured that the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America paid the costs of the prosperity and development of Western nations as, one way or another, they continue to do.

However, the scope of geopolitical power and control of majority world resources by Western elites is now more limited. In part, this setback for the West results from the growing cooperation and commercial and financial power of the nations of the Eurasian space. In turn, the increasing economic and diplomatic activity of China, Russia and their allies has promoted the development of their relations with the nations in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially with the countries and peoples committed to the defense of their sovereignty.

The desperate response to the relative decline of their global power on the part of the American and European oligarchies takes three main forms. First, in their own countries, the exploitation of the labor force and the repression of dissent are increasing. Secondly, they act with greater aggression of all kinds against Russia and China and their regional allies such as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua or Syria, Iran and the Democratic Republic of Korea. And the third form of the Western reaction to their decline is to apply greater intimidation and harassment against countries vulnerable to economic pressure to ensure that they remain obedient.

In North America and Europe, neoliberal policies implemented since the 1980s have normalized repression and economic exploitation. In the United States there is a permanent political offensive against the social security system and investment in public services generally. In Europe, public services are being cut or privatized. In the United States and the European Union there have been huge transfers of wealth to corporate elites both during the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and as part of the financial measures in response to the economic collapse caused by measures addressing Covid-19. At the same time, even the IMF recognizes that labor remuneration in the West has fallen in real terms. Likewise, the terms and conditions of work for people throughout the West are becoming increasingly precarious. Only 10% of the workforce in the United States is organized into unions. In European countries the average is 23% and generally much lower.

It is impossible to summarize concisely all the nuances of this reality. But among the main effects associated with increased domestic economic repression in Western countries and increased aggression overseas, have been censorship on social networks and suppression of information in the media, especially on international events. These practices reinforce the West’s extensive and intense psychological warfare against the majority world and facilitate the economic and military aggression and terrorism of the United States and its allies against any nation that tries to defend its sovereignty and independence.

This marks a deep and irreparable collapse of moral and intellectual integrity on the part of Western elites and their peoples, signaling a comprehensive, insidious spiritual defeat. On the other hand, a growing number of the majority world’s governments and peoples insist on their sovereign right to manage their international relations at the international so as to open up and promote new possibilities for national, regional and international development. Perhaps the most important expression of this faith in the future is the broad support for the so-called BRICS+ group of countries, originally organized by China, Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, from countries around the world, including Iran, Algeria, Turkey, Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Thailand and even Nicaragua.

[…]

Via https://www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/The-West-and-the-Majority-World—Repression-Versus-Openness-20221124-0016.html

 

Coca-Cola paid NAACP to call scientists who link soda pop to obesity “racist”

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Citizens News

A former lobbyist at Coca-Cola has come forward with bombshell information about the junk food corporation’s deceptive, racist, and potentially criminal behavior. Calley Means, who worked on behalf of The Coca-Cola Company in years past, says the multinational purveyor of poison “food” paid the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to slander as “racist” any and all scientists, researchers, or other “opponents” whose work exposed Coke products as toxic.

Coke also paid off willing parties to produce pseudoscience “debunking” the link between soft drink consumption and diseases like obesity and diabetes.)

“Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding,” Means recently revealed. “I say Coke’s policies are evil because I saw inside the room.” “The first step in playbook was paying the NAACP and other civil rights groups to call opponents racist. Coke gave millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation – both directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association (ABA).”

As silly as it all sounds, these tactics worked. As the Farm Bill for 2011-2013 was being negotiated and finalized, thousands of articles flooded the news cycle that helped Coke avert soda taxes and possible removal from the food stamp program.

Aggressive lobbying and slander allowed Coke to lie to the public that soda pop is “one of the cheapest ways to get calories”

Means says Coca-Cola also partnered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to funnel money into “academia,” which used it to produce “research” claiming that soda taxes would harm low-income populations. “I watched as the FDA funneled money to professors at leading universities – as well as think tanks on the left and right – to create studies showing soda taxes hurt the poor,” Means says.

“They also paid for studies that say drinking soda didn’t cause obesity.” Coke was also able to get away with making the false and ludicrous claim that its soft drink products are “one of the cheapest ways to get calories,” which Means describes as “a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences.”

It was none other than the ABA that aided Coke in purveying the lie that taxing soda pop would hurt not just poor people but also “local businesses” while “unfairly targeting one product.”

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also complicit in this racket, having put forth more lies claiming that “there are no bad foods, only bad diets.”

The entire regulatory structure of the United States has clearly been co-opted by Big Industry, which is steering all the “science” in its own favor. Coca-Cola is just one example among many of what an absolute joke this entire system has become – and that some would argue always was.

“The word ‘racist’ has lost all its meaning,” wrote a commenter about Coke’s flagrant abuse of the English language. “The word has been so overused that it lost its meaning.”

[…]

Via https://citizens.news/687867.html

New Zealand to Vaccinate People Against Monkeypox with Unapproved Vaccine

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Syringe With Drops - Sputnik International, 1920, 09.01.2023

Sputnik International

New Zealand authorities are preparing to vaccinate the population against mpox, also known as monkeypox, with a vaccine that has not yet been approved, local media reported on Monday.

The authorities want to get a vaccine out as soon as possible, but Medsafe, New Zealand Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Authority has asked for necessary documentation from the manufacturer, which means that the vaccine will be rolled out unapproved, New Zealand’s TV channel reported.

Since it is against the law to advertise unapproved medicines, there will be no big marketing campaign and the vaccine’s proprietary name will not be used, media reported.

“That’s right, we can’t [promote or advertise unapproved medicines]. But we are making sure that everyone has the opportunity for a funded visit with their medical practitioner to discuss whether the vaccine is right for them,” Associate Health Minister Ayesha Verrall stated.

In August 2022, media reports said the country’s authorities are considering the use of the Jynneos mpox vaccine recommended in the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom. The report said only about 5,000 vials of the vaccine that is enough for immunization of nearly 20,000 people were so far obtained. The vaccine will be available from January 16.

Mpox is a rare viral disease that is usually transmitted to people from wild animals and is endemic in some African countries. The disease usually results in fever, rash and swollen lymph nodes. Since May 2022, mpox cases have been reported from countries where the disease is not endemic. The disease affected over 83,000 people in 110 countries, including 66 fatalities, according to the latest data from the World Health Organization. New Zealand has registered 41 confirmed cases.

[…]

Via https://sputniknews.com/20230109/new-zealand-to-vaccinate-people-against-mpox-with-unapproved-vaccine—reports-1106161787.html

White House Colluded With Twitter to Censor RFK, Jr., Emails Reveal

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By  Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

A series of Jan. 6 tweets by newly sworn-in Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey detailed how Biden officials sought to censor tweets by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief litigation counsel of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and others.

Citing documents and emails between social media employees and White House officials, Bailey exposed how the White House sought to censor Kennedy for a tweet questioning “suspicious” deaths of elderly individuals after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and seeking a good faith investigation into the true causes of the deaths.

The White House specifically targeted Kennedy’s Jan. 22, 2021, tweet about the then-recent death of baseball Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, 18 days after he publicly received the Moderna vaccine.

[…]

In a press release issued today, Landry said, “Government censorship is bipartisan; if they don’t like you, they will censor you — regardless of your political affiliation. No one is safe when the First Amendment is violated.”

Missouri and Louisiana in May 2022 sued President Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other Biden administration officials, alleging they violated the First Amendment by colluding with social media platforms to censor COVID-19-related content and content related to the 2020 U.S. presidential elections that contradicted the official government narrative.

“Throughout our case, we have uncovered disturbing collusion between Big Tech and Big Government,” added Landry. “Today’s reveal is yet another example of the ongoing coercive efforts by the White House to pressure social media companies into censoring American citizens.”

Legal experts familiar with the ongoing Louisiana and Missouri lawsuit told The Defender that Biden administration and federal government officials have until now claimed during their depositions that they never explicitly directed social media companies to remove content.

Instead, they claimed the government provided these platforms with “the science,” with no expectation, partnership or knowledge of what they would do with it.

According to legal experts, Meta claimed Kennedy and CHD were never targeted by name in the federal government’s communications with the platform.

However, Bailey cited an email showing government officials clearly called for the removal of Kennedy’s tweet about Hank Aaron’s death.

White House wanted Kennedy tweet ‘removed ASAP’

Over a span of nine tweets posted Jan. 6, Bailey revealed several emails and documents showing how Biden officials tried to censor social media content that opposed the government’s COVID-19 narrative.

“When I took office, I swore that I would protect the Constitution. Here’s why,” Bailey tweeted. He followed up with this tweet:

The first example Bailey used to demonstrate collusion pertained to Kennedy:

 

The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of a Jan. 23, 2021, email by White House official Clarke Humphrey, digital director for the White House’s COVID-19 Response Team, to unidentified individuals at Twitter and copied to Robert Flaherty, White House director of Digital Strategy.

In the message, Humphrey “wanted to flag the below tweet” and asked about “the process for having it removed ASAP.”

Specifically, what Humphrey “flagged” in her email was a tweet by Kennedy from Jan. 22, 2021, addressing the death of baseball great Hank Aaron just days after he received the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Kennedy’s tweet was accompanied by a link to a story about Aaron’s death published on Jan. 22, 2021, by The Defender.

Humphrey, in the same email, also suggested “we keep an eye out for tweets that fall in this same ~[general] genre,” adding that this “would be great.”

When questions arose about Aaron’s death following his COVID-19 vaccination, the federal government and the media sought to quash that conversation, Kennedy told The Defender.

Kennedy said:

“The White House was working to suppress this, and the implication is that they didn’t want Blacks in particular to understand the risks of vaccination. And so, they asked Twitter to suppress such content.

“At that point, it became clear that I was being shadow banned at that time, because my account simply stopped growing. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. And I had been growing my audience at a very, very high rate.”

A Jan. 31, 2021, “fact check” by The New York Times claimed that the Fulton County, Georgia, medical examiner determined Aaron’s death was not related to his vaccination.

However, Kennedy said that in a conversation he had with the Fulton County medical examiner subsequent to the publication of that article, the medical examiner claimed he had never examined Hank Aaron’s body. A subsequent letter Kennedy wrote to the Times was never published.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/white-house-censorship-twitter-rfk-jr/

Dmitry Orlov: The Last Crusade, Part 2

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Dmitry Orlov

We are, most of us unwittingly, bearing witness to a momentous development: the end of the thousand-year Drang nach Osten—the relentless eastward march of the reanimated corpse of the Western Roman Empire, with the Pope as its symbolic head and Vatican as its symbolic capital—known as the Crusades. Of these, the Southern Crusades are far better known in the West, while the Northern Crusades, launched in 1147, are far less widely known. But they were kept going the longest—until February 22, 2022—because, unlike China, India and just about every other non-Western country, Russia has never surrendered to anyone.

The gauntlet was thrown down in 1252, when Alexander Nevsky accepted an official document, called yarlyk, from Khan Batyj of the Golden Horde (part of the Mongolian Empire), allowing him to reign as the Grand Prince of Kiev (and thus the ruler of all of Russia), rather than ask for a blessing from the Pope in Rome, as was required of all Western kings. To these Western potentates, their claim to be ordained by God was based on approval by His head office at the Vatican; to the Russians, the Pope was just some heretic usurper. The religious distinction played itself out over time, but the notion that there is an exclusive club of Western nations who deserve to wield authority over the rest of the world has remained to this day.

There followed a series of onslaughts on Russia spanning many centuries, all stemming from the same simple principle: that which the West cannot control must be destroyed. The Germans and the Swedes kept on attacking it until 1709. Then the French attacked again in 1812; and then the Germans in 1941. The Americans were poised to attack in March of 2022, via their Ukrainian/NATO proxies, but were preempted by Russia’s Special Military Operation. Thus, the last Crusade has been aborted and further attempts seem unlikely, since, at this point, there is no question of destroying that which the West cannot control, and not just Russia but also much of the rest of the world. Even tiny North Korea can stand up to the collective West and wag a finger in its face. The thousand-year show is nearly over.

Over the previous centuries, every time after Russia expelled yet another crusader, some other Western nations would take the lead and attempt to march on Moscow: it was the Germans (as the Teutonic Knights), then the Swedes, the Poles, then some more Swedes, then the French under Napoleon, then the Germans under Hitler, and now the Americans (disguised as some hapless, clueless Ukrainians) under Biden. (Yes, the last act of this drama is most definitely a farce.) But who could possibly rise up as the next crusader du jour? Nobody! There isn’t anyone left in the West to continue the project.

There is a curious 100% correlation between the foreign languages the Russians choose to study and the Western capitals they then come to occupy. The Russians studied French—and Russian cavalry rode into Paris; they studied German—and Russian tanks rumbled into Berlin. And now the Russians are all studying English, starting with the second grade. Therefore, we should expect some Russian fireworks over Washington (London is only capable of some minor dirty tricks by now). This correlation is just something to watch out for—in the future.

But we are already in a position to review the history of this the last and final crusade, which is currently nearing its end. To do so, we need to rewind back to 1998, 24 years ago. The Russian economy lay in ruins, the first Chechen War was essentially lost and the West was busy looting what was left of the Soviet economy. Separatist sentiments were rife and the country could have fallen apart at any moment, fulfilling the age-old Western dream of erasing Russia from the political map.

And then something went horribly wrong: instead of drunk president Yeltsin, Putin came to power and actually won the Second Chechen war. Putin’s appearance on the world scene had come as a complete surprise to the Western deep state, which then realized that it needed a whole new plan to destroy Russia for sure this time: a new, globalist Drang nach Osten. The main goal of this new onslaught was the continued complete domination by the US of the entire world, assured by dismembering, engulfing and devouring its main geopolitical opponent, Russia. Russia was to be simultaneously attacked from the west (via the Ukraine), the south (via the Caucasus) and the east (via Afghanistan and Central Asia). Russia’s trade in oil and natural gas was to be disrupted, its economic connections to the world economy severed, and its politics disrupted by internal protests.

By September 11, 2001 the new plan was ready and launched in grand style by knocking down three New York skyscrapers using two Boeing passenger jets—a sort of latter-day miracle of loaves and fishes that left those hampered by knowing a little too much arithmetic at a distinct disadvantage. This gave the US a carte blanche for suspending civil liberties at home and for inserting its forces anywhere abroad as part of its Global War of Terror, which was, given the engineered nature of the 9/11 event, a sham on top of another sham.

Step one was to prepare a Central Asian incursion by invading Afghanistan in 2001. That effort went famously badly. There were two failed coup attempts—one in Turkmenistan in 2002 and another in Kyrgyzstan in 2005—both thwarted by Russia’s special services. The Americans lingered in Afghanistan for an interminable 20 years, having been sidetracked into profiting greatly from the heroin trade, but once American drug addicts started switching to the much more cost-effective Chinese-made fentanyl there was no reason to continue the Afghani heroin business. The last parting present was the attempted coup in Kazakhstan in January of 2022, which was quelled by Russian troops invited by Kazakhstan’s president. Thus ended the effort to destroy Russia via Central Asia.

Step two was to prepare a terrorist incursion via the Caucasus. The government of Georgia was overthrown in 2003 and the US, with Israeli assistance, started training the Georgian military. An effort was made to organize yet another round of Chechen separatist mania, with an infusion of Islamic fundamentalists via Georgia’s Pankisi gorge. This could have posed a problem for Russia—or not, we’ll never know for sure, because on August 8, 2008 Georgia’s psychologically unstable president Saakashvili jumped the gun and started shelling Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. That region was arbitrarily lumped into Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic by the Bolsheviks and then got stuck there after the Soviet Union disintegrated, similarly to what happened to the Donbass in the Ukraine. Russia responded by flushing the Georgian military out of the area and generally defanging it. What Saakashvili did, in essence, was trade a Georgian tactical defeat for a Russian strategic victory. Georgia has remained defanged ever since, putting the southern incursion plan in limbo.

Step three was by far the most successful. The Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004 was followed up by various other revolutions and coups, culminating with the violent Maidan revolution in the spring of 2014. Inspired by Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Russophobic pipe dreams, the US pinned great hopes on the Ukraine and took a no-expense-spared approach to turning it into a sort of anti-Russia. This effort has so far led to Russia expanding by five new regions (Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson) while turning the Ukraine into a world class parasite, flooding Europe with eight million migrants and sucking in a hundred billion dollars in aid (used to feather a great many oligarchic nests) and weapons (which are either destroyed at the eastern front or used to flood the international black market).

The Ukraine is now a zombie failed state, its economy more than halved, its infrastructure wrecked, its society savaged and its government by far the most corrupt on the whole planet. Although this part of the plan to destroy Russia has gained the most traction, its chances of allowing the US to dismember, engulf and devour Russia are still nil.

Meanwhile, a bad harvest in Russia in 2010 provided what could have been a major strategic windfall in what became known as the Arab Spring. Grain price increases in African and Middle Eastern countries which had subsisted largely on Russian grain imports caused major misery there. As a result, social upheaval, sometimes culminating in government overthrow and civil war, gripped Tunis, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria, Bahrein, Algiers, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Djibouti and Western Sahara.

This situation allowed the US to hatch an entirely new plan for attacking Russia from the south by playing the Islamic radicalism card yet again. It had failed famously in Afghanistan and in Chechnya, and so, following typical US government logic, why not use it again? Radicalized Islamic youth from these various distressed countries were organized into ISIS, a.k.a. the Caliphate or the Islamic State, which was then infused into Iraq, Syria and Libya, provided with weapons , training and lavish media support with Hollywood-style propaganda videos of beheadings of infidels wearing traditional American orange jumpsuits. The execution was not without its comedic elements: at one point the Pentagon ISIS and the State Department ISIS went to war against each other, in what must have been the world’s first instance of interdepartmental terrorism.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/c43462b6-39fe-4c67-952c-00bc15b6e152

Rome’s Amazing Public Water Systems

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another public fountain in pompeii | Jennifer Smith | Flickr

Roman public fountain

Lecture 14: Go With the Flow – Urban Water Distribution

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

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

Many former Roman cities still have partial remains of their public water systems (eg  basins, water channels, clay pipes and public toilets. Nearly all the metal fixtures (lead pipes, iron fasteners and bronze faucets) are gone, having been recycled. However the public water system in Pompeii (buried by volcanic eruption in 79 AD) has survived intact. Historians also have a good description of Rome’s public water system in De Aquaducur, written by Rome’s water commissioner Sextus Julius Frontinus in 97 AD.

All Roman cities had gravity-based continuous flow water systems. From the aqueduct, water flowed into two sequential settling tanks to remove sand, silt and other suspended solids. It there it went to constellum divisorum, which divided the flow into separate pipes (lead, favored to its low melting point) headed to public fountains (the primary water source for most residents), the public baths and private homes (about 10%).

Plumbarii* produced the lead pipes by pouring molten lead into a horizontal cooling tray and shaping it around a cylindrical wooden form. They then soldered the seams together with a lead-tin alloy with an even lower melting point.

Paying their own plumbarii to attach a bronze fitting called a calyx to the water main to deliver water to their private homes, the wealthy elite mounted the delivery pipes (at times made of silver) on their interior walls as a status symbol. The pipes emptied into a centrally located basin, with the overflow channeled to the sewer system. It often traveled through their garden, where it was used for irrigation.

Fountains were usually located at the base of a 20-foot tall constellum, which, like a modern water tower, functioned as a reverse siphon (reducing water pressure for downhill users). Pompeii had 50 fountains, spaced roughly 300 feet apart. Most were rectangular stone basins held together with clamps. Fountain overflow ran down the streets (as a form of street cleaning) to be collected by the sewers.

Water directed to public toilets was usually waste water from the public baths. It entered the toilets via two channels, one beneath the toilet seats to carry away wastes and one in from of the seats for hand washing. Both emptied into the sewer system.

Roman toilets may actually have been bad for public health | Science | AAAS

Both rain and waste water entered the masonry sewers through openings in the street pavement. The sewers emptied into larger collector channels, which emptied into a single great sewer that emptied into the river. Rome’s main sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, still operates today.

However most people emptied their waste directly into the street. Pompei had tall stepping stones across many of their streets to enable people to keep their feet dry. Gaps between stones allowed vehicles to pass.

Pompeii, Italy. Raised stepping stones across the cobbled street at Stock Photo, Royalty Free ...

*From the Latin word for lead plumbum.

**They paid water charges to the city based on the size of the calyx.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/146678/146706

Media Blackout: US Power Grid Under Attack

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Mohammad Mesmarian

The US power grid is under attack as extremists shoot, sabotage, and vandalize electrical equipment at power stations. One of the highest-profile attacks was when two men used guns to paralyze a substation in Washington state on Christmas Day, leaving thousands without electricity. The incident made national news, but strangely enough, another attack last week on the Las Vegas power grid went unnoticed by the national press.

Mohammad Mesmarian, 34, rammed his car through the gate of a solar power generation plant outside Las Vegas on Wednesday and set his car on fire, intending to damage a massive transformer, 8 News Now reported.

“Employees at the plant said they found a car smoldering in a generator pit,” 8 News Now said, adding the Mega Solar Array facility provides power to 13 properties on the Las Vegas Strip, all belonging to MGM Resorts. 

Investigators believe Mesmarian “siphoned gasoline from his car to put on wires at the transformer,” 8 News Now said, citing documents from investigators. 

“Mesmarian clarified he burned the Toyota Camry,” police said. “Mesmarian said he burned the vehicle at a Tesla solar plant and did it ‘for the future.'”

Here’s security camera footage of Mesmarian lighting his car on fire next to a giant transformer:

8 News Now said Mesmarian caused “major damage,” estimating it could take two years to receive parts and fix the transformer. Luckily, the damaged unit wasn’t online at the time of the incident.. 

“Following an incident at the Mega Solar Array facility, on-site personnel immediately notified authorities and shut down the plant’s operations as a precaution in accordance with industry-standard safety protocols,” an Invenergy spokesperson said.

Mesmarian was arrested at a campground Thursday. He’s being charged with committing an act of terrorism, first-degree arson, third-degree arson, destroying or injuring real or personal property of another, and escape by a felony prisoner.

Why is the national press absent in reporting this terror incident on the power grid? 

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/media-blackout-over-terror-incident-vegas-power-plant