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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.

Europe Puts Scruples Aside, Imports Record Levels of Russian Liquid Natural Gas

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Posted BY: Breitbart

NWO Report

The European Union has seen imports of liquid natural gas from Russia rise to record levels this year, sending billions to Moscow while waxing poetic about their support of Ukraine.

Though shipments of natural gas sent via pipelines from Russia to Europe have fallen sharply since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, Europe has ironically turned to Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), a chilled form of the gas that can be shipped in sea tankers, to make up the difference.

According to research conducted by the energy market analysis firm, ICIS for the German business newspaper Handelsblatt found that imports of LNG from Russia rose by 21 percent over pre-war levels to the EU states and Great Britain. The analysis found that between January and November of this year, the EU plus the UK paid Moscow nearly 27 billion euros ($28.4/£23.5 billion) in exchange for the record flows of liquid natural gas.

The European money spent on Russian LNG alone is just under the total aid that EU institutions and member states have sent to Ukraine since the start of the full-on war in February. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy Ukraine aid tracker has found that the EU has collectively sent 29 billion euros in military and financial assistance.

While European nations have been largely successful in filling up their gas storage containers prior to the winter, the true test could start to begin in the Spring. Supplies of liquid natural gas on the open market were artificially higher than normal this year given the reduced manufacturing output of Communist China due to Beijing’s draconian zero-Covid strategy, which has severely impacted production.

Via https://nworeport.me/2022/12/07/europe-puts-scruples-aside-imports-record-levels-of-russian-liquid-natural-gas/

Joe Vogler and the Alaskan Independence Party: The Last Secession Attempt in the United States

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Modern Diplomacy

The political system in the U.S is characterized by a bipolar system of division between the Democratic and the Republican Party. As a result, independent parties are hardly noticed and barely manage to scrap votes in the elections. However, independent parties in the U.S have been around since the creation of the nation and some of their leaders have gone as far as pursuing secession from  the U.S. Joe Vogler was an Alaskan politician that rallied a major nationalistic movement in Alaska for the state to secede from the U.S.

[…]

Joe Vogler: An Alaskan nationalist from Kansas

Joe Vogler was born on April 24, 1913, in Kansas, U.S. In 1942, he moved to Alaska where he worked as a civilian employee of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers in Fairbanks. Although he graduated with a law degree from the University of Kansas, his move to Alaska demonstrated his humble beginnings and love for a more traditional lifestyle away from the metropolises of America. Besides working construction in military bases, Vogler was involved in the development of real estate and mining in Alaska.

Described by his admirers as a stand-up, no-nonsense man, Vogler started his early nationalist views of an independent Alaska in the early 1970s, where he frequently wrote letters to editors in newspapers, calling for Alaska to secede from the federal government of the U.S. In 1973, he founded the Alaskans for Independence organization to label his petition drive to secede from America. In 1984, he founded the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), which he led for almost a decade until his sudden disappearance and death in 1993.

The Alaskan Independence Party: Libertarian conservatism at its finest

The Alaskan Independence Party (AIP) gained momentum in the early 1980s when Joe Vogler founded the party with a clear focus on the independence of Alaska from the United States. The ideology of the party is a mix of Alaskan nationalism and libertarian conservatism. It is easy to see where Alaskan nationalism comes from and why it was advocated. As one of the largest states in the U.S, Alaska has immense mineral and oil wealth, with the oil and gas industries being the largest component in the state. Almost 85% of the state budget is supplied by oil revenues. Not to mention that Alaska has an important geopolitical position, being isolated from the continental U.S and sharing a maritime border with the Russian Federation.

The position of Alaska on the world map is a very strategic one and a major advantage in trading, fishing, and mining. Marie Francis, a writer from Southcentral Alaska and a registered member of AIP shares the same views as many Alaskans who advocate for the independence of their state. In her own words as posted in the Anchorage Daily News she describes how beneficial would be the actual secession of Alaska for the people that live there, who many times feel abandoned by the federal government due to their small population.

“As the U.S. engages in trade wars, an independent Alaska would make international trade agreements on our terms. Our geographic position at the top of the Pacific grants us access to Asian and North American markets, and as Arctic shipping lanes open in the decades to come, European markets. Currently, we are relegated to the position of a dejected American outpost, yet almost all air cargo being transported between the United States and Asia flows through Ted Stevens Intl. Airport. Alaska’s economic potential is much greater than what the U.S. allows” (Anchorage Daily News, Marie Francis).

[…]

Margaret Randall, an American writer and academic describes the notion of libertarian conservatism as an expression of personal freedom and individualism, the same ideology that can be found in the early works of Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was an American naturalist and philosopher, mostly known for his advocacy of individualism and limitation of the power that the American government had at that time. His book Civil Disobedience (1849), argues that any form of progress comes from the ingenuity of the people not from the government, and as a result, the best thing for any government to do is to let the people govern themselves and flourish.

[…]

Joe Vogler’s controversial views and sudden disappearance

Joe Vogler made a couple of unsuccessful bids for public office, with the first one being back in 1974, when he ran for governor of Alaska, only to lose by a large margin to Jay Hammond who represented the Republican Party. After that, in 1978, he tried to run as a lieutenant governor alongside Don Wright, only to lose again to Jay Hammond. He made two last attempts to run as a governor in 1982 and 1986,

[…]

On May 30, 1993, Joe Vogler suddenly disappeared, just a couple of weeks before he addressed the United Nations on the issue of Alaskan independence.

[…]

After a couple of months of unsuccessful attempts to find Vogler, a man called the authorities informing them that a suspicious truck with a bullet hole at the back was seen at Fairbanks at the same time that Vogler disappeared. The man driving the truck was identified and was taken into custody. Manfried West immediately confessed to the murder of Joe Vogler. He claimed that Vogler wanted to buy plastic explosives from him, and when the deal went wrong he shot Vogler and buried him. After almost a year, an anonymous tip revealed the location of Vogler’s body. He was buried in a shallow grave outside Fairbanks. West was convicted of 80 years of prison time and currently serves his time at the Palmer Correctional Facility in Sutton.

[…]

It is important to mention that Vogler managed to gain the support of Iran to sponsor his speech at the U.N. At that time, relations between the two states had deteriorated right after the Persian Gulf War when Iran was accused of trying to replace Iraq as the most dominant power in the Gulf. By 1992, under the Bush Administration, Congress had passed the Iran-Iraq Nonproliferation Act, sanctioning specific materials that could be used for the development of advanced weaponry. As a result, Iran’s support to Joe Vogler would have been an embarrassment for the U.S if he managed to speak at the podium at the U.N.

[…]

Vogler was accused by many, of being a socialist, and people in D.C were worried that his views may find support back in Moscow, who could seek to find an opportunity to have closer relations with an independent Alaska.

The Alaskan Independence Party today and the future of independent parties in the U.S

In 1990 … Wally Hickel, businessman and AIP member was elected governor of Alaska on the Independence Party ticket, making the AIP one of the few third parties that had managed to hold public office in the U.S.

[…]

Today the Alaskan Independence Party remains the third most powerful party in the state of Alaska. According to its official website, AIP now has almost 19.000 registered members, nearly 25% of the size of the Democratic Party in Alaska.

[…]

Via https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2022/12/03/joe-vogler-and-the-alaskan-independence-party-the-last-secession-attempt-in-the-united-states/

Rise of the East Asian Tigers

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Soros Says China's Economy Looks Like the U.S. Before the Crisis - Bloomberg

Currency speculator George Soros tried to crush 12 Asian tigers simultaneously in 1997

Episode 47: Rise of the Asian Tigers

Foundations of Eastern Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

China

In 1972, four years before Mao’s death, Nixon sought to capitalize on the split between the Soviets and Chinese[1] by re-opening relations with China for the first time in 23 years.

A five-year power struggle following Mao’s death in 1976 meant his successor Deng Xiaping only assumed paramount power in 1981. It fell to Deng to gradually transform China into a quasi-capitalist state, through what he referred to as the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, science and technology and defense).

Deng reformed government-run collective agriculture by allocating land to groups of 30-40 families. Any surplus produced could be sold on the open market. Because Mao’s Cultural Revolution had virtually destroyed China’s professional and managerial class, Deng sent tens of thousands of students overseas for professional training. He also opened China to foreign investment, leading to a surge in development in mainland coastal areas. When the British returned Hong Kong to China in 1997, Deng enabled it to continue as a major economic hub by granting it “special status.” [2]

In December 2001 after China joined the WTO, massive trade expansion produced 10% annual growth rates for nearly two decades. By 2011, they would become the second largest economy in the world. I was disappointed in Benjamin’s failure to mention China’s unique approach to money creation, which is a far bigger factor in their massive economic growth. Unlike Western countries, where 97% of money and credit is created by private banks, in China money creation is managed by China’s central bank as a public utility. [3]

Benjamin does mention that as of 2013 China dominates the world in terms of technological development, including clean energy (with the double the US investment in clean energy).

South Korea

According to Benjamin, South Korea experienced similar dramatic economic growth as China. However what he fails to mention is the role of massive US military and economic aid during US military occupation (which didn’t end until 1994 – see link).

Japan

Benjamin also marvels at Japan’s economic miracle. Here again, thanks to $2 billion in US economic aid, By 1949, the Japanese economy had returned to pre-war levels by 1949. He fails to mention the CIA installed war criminals to run Japan’s postwar government and secretly funded single party rule (by the Liberal Democratic Party) from 1949-63. See The Long US War Against the Third World

Benjamin does credit Japan’s extremely low wages, in part, for its economic success. However he fails to mention the role of its dictatorial government in violent suppressing unions and wages.

He does acknowledge that US military occupation of Japan continues (there are still 23 US bases there, despite growing popular opposition) despite US occupation “officially” ending in 1952. As a condition of surrender, Japan agreed to abolish its armed forces, as well as a “mutual defense treaty,” whereby the US would provide its military defense.

He also mentions how Japan “spiraled into recession” in the 1990s (from which it never recovered) though it continues to be the world’s largest economy. He blames Japan’s recession on overpopulation and difficulty accessing key resources. In my view, a more logical explanation is that China could offer cheaper labor to Western factories seeking to move their factories to low wage Asian economies..

Other Asian Tigers

Benjamin mentions other Asian economies who became economic “tigers,” although he fails to mention the role of low wages in luring Western manufacturers to shut down their factories and move to Asia. Or the role of authoritarian anti-labor policies in keeping wages low.

  • Indonesia [4]
  • Thailand [4]
  • Taiwan [4]
  • Malaysia
  • Singapore

My biggest disappointment with this lecture Benajamin’s failure to mention currency speculator George Soros’ attack on the currencies of South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong (which was still a British colony), Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Brunei and Vietnam. This move virtually collapsed the economies of South Korea, Indonesia, and Thailand. See https://www.winton.com/longer-view/east-asian-crisis-1997

[1] And distract from negative Watergate coverage (Benjamin doesn’t mention this).

[2] Hong Kong is governed by its own provincial council (selected by the mainland government).

[3] In Western countries, the main purpose of money creation is to increase profits. In China money is created to be spent into the economy for industrial and other social and economic needs. See https://mronline.org/2022/07/02/economist-michael-hudson-on-inflation-and-fed-plan-to-cut-wages/

[4] Indicates countries historically run by US puppet dictators – see The Long US War Against the Third World

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5808608/5808703

5 Takeaways From Fauci’s Deposition in Social Media Censorship Lawsuit

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anthony fauci deposition takeaways feature

By Zaccary Stieber

The Epoch Times

The 446-page transcript, released Monday, of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deposition in a lawsuit alleging he and other Biden administration officials colluded with tech companies to censor social media content raises questions about Fauci’s involvement in orchestrating an official, government-sanctioned COVID-19 narrative.

Dr. Anthony Fauci’s deposition, taken as part of a lawsuit alleging collusion between the U.S. government and Big Tech to censor people, was released on Dec. 5.

The 446-page document shows the questioning of Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser. Fauci was under oath on Nov. 23.

Here are some takeaways:

Fauci relied on others to dismiss lab leak theory

Fauci said he did not have the expertise to determine whether COVID-19 came from nature or a laboratory, despite repeatedly dismissing the theory that it originated in a Chinese lab.

“I am not qualified since I am not an evolutionary virologist to make any kind of definitive determination about whether a genome could or could not be a laboratory construct or experimentally manipulative,” Fauci said at one point.

“I have relied, as anyone would, with highly qualified, respected evolutionary virologists to come to that conclusion or not.”

Portions of the deposition dealt with a paper released in early 2020 as a preprint and later published following peer review by Nature Medicine.

Kristian Andersen and other scientists claimed that they analyzed genomic data and that “our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

Fauci held a secret phone call with all of the authors of the paper just weeks before it was published — some of the authors before the call expressed in since-released emails that they thought the virus did not come from nature — and has since acknowledged receiving multiple drafts of the document prior to its publication.

Kristian Andersen, the lead author, told Fauci at one point, “Thank you again for your advice and leadership.”

Fauci said in the deposition that he had “very little” to do with the paper and that he did not recall making any “substantive comments” to the authors regarding the paper.

Confronted about press conference

Despite having communicated repeatedly with the authors, Fauci said he couldn’t recall their names during a White House press conference in April 2020.

“There was a study recently that we can make available to you where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences there and the sequences in bats as they evolved. And the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human,” Fauci said at the time, at the prompting of then-President Donald Trump.

“So the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make that available to you,” he added.

Fauci said he did not make the paper available to any reporters after the press conference but was then presented with an email showing that he did.

“I don’t recall it,” Fauci said, after reading the email.

Says he didn’t advocate for censorship

Shortly after Fauci’s comments, Big Tech companies began censoring people who suggested COVID-19 came from a lab, including an Epoch Times reporter.

Facebook and other Big Tech firms also later cracked down on the Great Barrington Declaration, a document offering an alternative way to approach the pandemic, after Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at the time, spoke out against it.

Internal emails showed Fauci and Collins conspiring to rebut the declaration. The NIH has directed people questioning the opposition to Wikipedia.

Fauci noted that he does not have social media accounts and insisted that he did not call for censorship.

“No, I have not,” Fauci said when asked whether he’d asked a social media company to remove misinformation. He also said that, to his knowledge, none of his staffers had.

According to emails produced in the case, the government communicated with Big Tech concerning the removal of multiple accounts they said were pretending to be Fauci.

Twitter removed an account and company officials said it would “freeze” similar handles to try to prevent impersonation, while Facebook removed accounts on both Facebook and Instagram.

“I was not aware that they were flagging many accounts, but from looking at this, they are trying to get rid of fake accounts because fake accounts are bad things, I believe,” Fauci said.

“To my knowledge, they don’t get involved in trying to influence social media in any way. But when someone impersonates me, I think it’s totally appropriate for them to be concerned about that.”

Fauci was later shown an email that showed National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases officials were trying to connect to Google “on vaccine communications, specifically misinformation,” and that a meeting was planned. He said he wasn’t sure whether the meeting ever took place.

Concerned about misinformation

Fauci said that he was concerned about misinformation and disinformation, and believed that such information could lead to the loss of life.

“I think in any situation where egregious misinformation such as some of the ones I referred to before, such as information that would discourage people from getting vaccinated, that in my mind, would be a way that life that could otherwise have been saved would be lost, if people were persuaded not to pursue a life-saving intervention,” Fauci said.

Asked if he thinks steps should be taken to curb misinformation and disinformation, he demurred.

“That’s not my area. I’m very well aware of the concept of freedom of speech. The area of the curtailment of that is something that is not in my area of expertise. Those are legal and other things. And I really don’t have any opinion on that,” he said.

Fauci said he favors open debate and, generally, the best way to combat misleading and false information is to “flood the system with correct information.”

But he also said: “I think honest debate is important, but when it goes beyond debate and leads people who are unwitting about these things to do things that are clearly detrimental to their life and their safety, I find that disturbing. How you mitigate against that, I would leave to other people.”

Daughter worked for Twitter

Fauci has been in touch with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and appeared several times in Facebook Live videos with Zuckerberg.

Fauci said that his discussions with Zuckerberg “were very clearly directed at getting me on some Facebook podcast to encourage people to get vaccinated” and that they went no further.

Fauci was asked whether he knows anyone who works for a social media company, besides Zuckerberg.

[…]

“Well, a person who used to work as a software engineer for Twitter was my daughter,” Fauci said.

Fauci said he never discussed with his daughter the content posted on social media or the origins of COVID-19.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/anthony-fauci-deposition-social-media-censorship-lawsuit-et/

UK Warnings About Threats to Food Security

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Fair Deal Food

As fuel and fertiliser costs soar, farmers get only a tiny share of the retail price for their produce

VIDEO: Egg shortage due to unfair supermarket prices – not avian flu: Farmers Guardian, subscribers only

Farmers Weekly reports that food and farming groups are dismayed at the wafer-thin margins left for primary producers once everyone else in the food chain has taken their share of the cash.

A new report from food and farming alliance Sustain, Unpicking Food Prices has considered a range of products commonly found on supermarket shelves and examined where the available profit goes.

Two examples: a pack of four beefburgers with a retail value of £3.50 only returns a net profit of 8.7p, the researchers estimate, while a block of Cheddar cheese, worth £2.50, generates just 3.5p in profit.

While average retail prices have risen from £2.05/kg in 2017 to £2.20/kg in 2022, farmgate returns have slumped from 60p/kg to 40p/kg over the same five-year period

But the lion’s share is kept by the retailer with farmers left to pick up the crumbs – just 0.1p from the burgers and 0.05p from the Cheddar cheese.

Head of sustainable farming at Sustain, Vicki Hird, says this demonstrates the imbalance in the food supply chain “Farmers hold a disproportionately high amount of the risk when it comes to producing food, but receive a disproportionately low amount of the reward, reflecting their relative weakness in the supply chain.”

Ms Hird should contact Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller, former chief of MI5 the country’s security service, who says that security of food supplies would fit within the government’s own definition of national security. She believed this meant strengthening domestic supply (FT):

“Several people [have] said that [food security] was about just getting a secure food line from somewhere else . . . I’ve interpreted it differently.

“We have a hope that we will continue to get food from our nearest neighbours as we get energy from them . . . The more we can be self-sufficient, the better chances we have of withstanding price hikes, spikes, shocks and so on — and politics.”

The NFU today focussed only on the price of inputs and the need to import labour but they, the government and the former chief of MI5 need to become aware of the risk to food security posed by low returns from supermarkets as farmers’ costs soar.

[…]

Via https://fairdealfooduk.wordpress.com/2022/12/06/threats-to-food-security-from-the-farming-press-a-farmers-union-and-the-former-head-of-mi5/

 

Florida to Hold Vaccine Makers Liable Over mRNA Claims

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Posted BY: Bill | NwoReport

Gov. Ron DeSantis said Florida wants to hold vaccine makers liable over claims about the mRNA shots that DeSantis said aren’t true.

DeSantis made the announcement during a Republican Party of Florida event on Saturday, according to American Greatness.

While the federal government has given vaccine manufacturers immunity over harm from the Covid-19 shots, it appears Florida is looking into persecuting the makers over false advertising claims or through other similar avenues.

“We did a study in Florida and we saw an 86 percent increase in cardiac-related activity in people ages 18 to 39 from mRNA shots and so we’re going to be doing some stuff to bring accountability there,” DeSantis said, according to AG.

The study likely involved Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, whom DeSantis said he was keeping for his second term.

Dr. Ladapo, a frequent target in the media despite his Harvard education, has been skeptical about the efficacy of Covid-19 shots.

“His evidence-based principles serve as a counterweight to the increasingly political positions of the entrenched medical establishment, especially on schools, masks, and mRNA shots,” DeSantis once said about Ladapo.

In fact, the recently-released deposition of Dr. Anthony Fauci reveals the medical establishment’s own flip-flopping when it came to mask mandates, for example, which indicates the media attacks against Ladapo are motivated by politics more than anything.

[…]

Via https://nworeport.me/2022/12/06/florida-to-hold-vaccine-makers-liable-over-mrna-claims/

Scientists Struggle to Explain Why Covid Spared Unjabbed

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scientists explain why covid spared unjabbed
 

Dr Mercola

 Story at-a-glance

  • “Vaccine equity” remains high on the global cabal’s list of priorities, even though real-world evidence shows the COVID shots have done more harm than good
  • Africa, where fewer than 6% of people have received the COVID jab, have maintained an extremely low COVID-19 death rate throughout the last three years, likely because they didn’t have equal access to experimental COVID injections
  • While wholly ignoring the African experience, U.S. media are now trying to scare people into taking additional shots for fall by warning of an incoming “tripledemic” of COVID, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)
  • The tripledemic narrative is scientifically implausible. Respiratory viruses tend to interfere with each other’s spread, such that one typically ends up dominating
  • Pfizer’s and Moderna’s pediatric trials both found RSV infection was more prevalent among children who got their COVID jabs than those who didn’t

The globalist cabal that invented and drove the make-believe COVID narrative is facing growing problems, as holes in the logic just keep getting larger over time. Case in point: The irrational promotion of vaccine equity.1

According to the World Health Organization and other globalist strongholds, the Western world must sponsor vaccine deliveries to developing nations to make sure everyone has an equal chance at survival.2

The problem is that developing nations with the lowest COVID jab uptakes have fared no worse, and in some cases far better, than developing countries that greedily “hoarded” shots and boosters for themselves.

The African Conundrum

According to early predictions, Africa would be decimated by COVID for lack of shots,3 yet the COVID death toll in Africa has remained consistently lower than anywhere else over the past three years. Everyone feigns surprise.

[…]

The situation was still the same in November 2021, when media reported that Africa, where fewer than 6% of people had received a COVID shot, was among the countries least affected by COVID. Researchers theorized that “lower rates of urbanization, genetic reasons or exposure to other diseases may have spared the continent the more lethal effects of the virus.”7

No one in mainstream media has been willing to address any of the towering elephants in the room, which include the fact that the COVID shots don’t prevent cases or deaths, that natural immunity is superior, and that COVID-19 was never as lethal a threat as they said it was. Africa gives us real-world evidence of these facts, yet the globalist cabal still insist that “vaccine equity” is an imperative goal.

Even though places like Africa didn’t have adequate access to COVID shots, and even though they fared just as well or better than the Western world where COVID shot uptake was high, the cabal insist we still need to make sure that, next time, Africa will get the same kind of injection coverage as the rest of the world.

This makes no sense, especially when you consider that the majority of COVID deaths in the U.S. and elsewhere now occur among those who got the COVID jabs.8

[…]

New Wave of Fear-Porn to Drive Vaccination Uptake

While wholly ignoring the African experience, U.S. media are now trying to scare people into taking additional shots for fall by warning of an incoming “tripledemic” of COVID, flu and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). As fear of COVID variants is wearing off, perhaps fear of three simultaneous viral threats will re-stoke the flames of paranoia? As reported by STAT News November 22, 2022:10

“A viral hurricane is making landfall on health care systems battered by three pandemic years. With the official start of winter still weeks away, pediatric hospitals are facing crushing caseloads of children sick with RSV and other viral illnesses.

Schools that promised a ‘return to normal’ now report widespread absences and even closures from RSV and flu in many parts of the country, contributing to parents missing work in record numbers.

With this year’s flu season beginning some six weeks early, the CDC has already declared a flu epidemic as hospitalizations for influenza soared to the highest point in more than a decade. A storm of these proportions should demand not only crisis clinical measures, but also community prevention efforts.”

In other words, expect renewed calls for masks, social distancing, lockdowns and the canceling of holiday get-togethers where people might share wrongthink and love for humanity in equal measure. And, of course, expect massive COVID booster and flu shot campaigns, and shaming of those who decide to abstain.

The Problem With the Tripledemic Narrative

The problem with the tripledemic narrative is that it’s scientifically implausible. Those with little or no understanding of how viruses work might fall into the trap of thinking that if one virus is bad, two or three circulating at the same time will be far worse. But it’s not that linear in real life.

In a November 18, 2022, Science magazine article, Jon Cohen explained why a simultaneous tripledemic is unlikely:11

“Triple threat. Tripledemic. A viral perfect storm. These frightening phrases have dominated recent headlines as some health officials, clinicians, and scientists forecast that SARS-CoV-2, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) could surge at the same time in Northern Hemisphere locales that have relaxed masking, social distancing, and other COVID-19 precautions.

But a growing body of epidemiological and laboratory evidence offers some reassurance: SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses often ‘interfere’ with each other.

Although waves of each virus may stress emergency rooms and intensive care units, the small clique of researchers who study these viral collisions say there is little chance the trio will peak together and collectively crash hospital systems the way COVID-19 did at the pandemic’s start.

‘Flu and other respiratory viruses and SARS-CoV-2 just don’t get along very well together,’ says virologist Richard Webby, an influenza researcher at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. ‘It’s unlikely that they will circulate widely at the same time.

[…]

COVID Shots Likely Responsible for Soaring RSV Rates in Kids

In related news, evidence suggests RSV didn’t soar out of season for no reason. In fact, it appears to be a result of the pediatric COVID jab campaign. Documents from Pfizer’s and Moderna’s pediatric trials submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reveal the injected group suffered higher rates of RSV, specifically, compared to controls.

Moderna’s trial involving 2- to 5-year-olds found RSV was four times more prevalent among children in the jabbed group compared to the unjabbed:13

[…]

The same pattern was found in the 6- to 11-year-old trial, where RSV affected 0.3% of those who got the jab, and zero percent among controls. Children who got the jab were also more likely to contract some kind of upper respiratory tract infection (3.9% compared to 2.5%).

Pfizer’s pediatric trial had similar results. Among 6-month-olds to 4-year-olds, RSV bronchiolitis was reported in five participants, compared to three in the control group. Is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control investigating this pattern? We’ll see.

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/12/06/scientists-explain-why-covid-spared-unjabbed.aspx


The Trumpification of Elon Musk

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https://assets.realclear.com/images/59/593204_6_.webp
By J. Peder Zane
Real Clear Politics
 

The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump.

The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent.

Democrats denied Trump’s presidency from day one; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden themselves declared for years that he had stolen the 2016 election. In the name of election integrity, Democrats turned a bogus conspiracy theory cooked up by Clinton’s campaign about Russian collusion into years of official investigations that undermined and tainted Trump. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that a lie, Democrats immediately seized on a few innocuous sentences in a Trump phone call with a foreign leader to launch just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Those events are well-known, but ponder them for a moment. This was a soft coup, a nonviolent version of Jan. 6 that was far more dangerous than the Capitol riot. The effort to remove a lawfully elected president was planned and orchestrated by officials at the highest level of government and the media. While Jan. 6 was a one-off eruption of crazed anger, the false attacks on Trump edged our political discourse toward Orwellian Newspeak by presenting lies and smears as ringing defenses of sacred constitutional values.

The ongoing attacks against Musk are following the same playbook. The man once hailed by liberals as a genius for developing electric vehicles is now Public Enemy No. 1 because he says Twitter should allow more free speech. Ponder that as well: Musk’s enemies are casting him as a threat to the country because of his commitment to one of America’s most cherished freedoms.

Progressives have abandoned their longstanding anti-corporate stance to argue that an unelected, unaccountable company must aggressively censor the vox populi. We saw the same dizzying turnabout in Russiagate, where the left abandoned its historic defense of Russia to cast dealings with that nation as un-American (making Joe McCarthy their new “Uncle Joe”). 

Yes, Musk has restored Donald Trump’s Twitter account which the company’s previous leaders had disabled when he was president. But there is zilch, zero, nada evidence at this point that Twitter has become a toxic cesspool of hate. Nevertheless, that is the bogus claim being advanced by thought leaders including Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school.

Ponder the argument here that a corporation should have the power to remove the president of the United States from communicating through one of the nation’s prime networks. The same people who cheered that decision also thought it was appropriate for Twitter to help swing the 2020 election by prohibiting users from sharing blockbuster reports about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, recorded on his laptop.

[…]

The attacks on Musk shed light on a darker mystery of American life: Why did liberals attack Trump so savagely? Yes, Trump is a coarse, combative man who has the same relationship with truth as a used-car salesman. But that hardly makes him an outlier in our coarse, combative culture where, the left has long argued, truth and almost everything else we used to define as reality are just social constructs.

At bottom, they saw Trump – and now Musk – as a threat to their power and privilege. For all their talk of democracy and the will of the people, liberals have always embraced a top-down approach in which a benighted few control society. Trump was the first president without political or military experience. He  was not just an outsider; he  also promised to expose the hypocrisy and self-dealing of the ruling class, both Democrats and Republicans (hence the rise of “Never Trump” Republicans).

The fact that this man with no political experience accomplished so much – including helping the economy hum, brokering a peace deal in the Middle East, calling out China’s ruthlessness, and creating conditions for the development of a COVID vaccine in record time – exposed the failures of our best and brightest. He wasn’t a threat to the nation, but to their authority.

Liberals see Musk as a similar threat. For decades they have largely controlled the flow of information in prestige publications and network news divisions. The rise of social media gave them new mechanisms for defining national narratives, and for silencing those who disagreed with them through cancel culture and outright censorship. They see Musk’s promise to restore free speech on Twitter as a threat to this power. Whoopi Goldberg stated this baldly when she counseled liberals to walk away from Twitter until they figure out how to “get the control you need” of the platform.

[…]

Via https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/12/01/ponder_the_treatment_of_musk_and_trump.html/

GOP Congress Members to Military: Drop the Covid “Caccine” Mandate or No More Defense Funding

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Drop the covid “vaccine” mandate or no more defense funding, say GOP members of Congress to military

Dr Eddy Betterman

There may not be enough Senate votes to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this year unless every branch of the United States military stops forcing servicemembers to get “vaccinated” for covid.

Thirteen Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul of Kentucky and Rick Scott of Florida, have pledged to vote against this year’s installment of the NDAA unless the military’s covid jab mandate is immediately repealed.

A veteran himself, Scott tweeted that in the past he “fought hard for big [national] security wins in the NDAA,” but that this year he will not vote to move the bill forward unless the Department of Defense (DoD) stops tyrannizing military servicemembers with its covid jab mandate.

“I think on the NDAA one thing that’s going to be important is that we don’t give cloture unless they agree that we’re not going to keep kicking people out of the service for their – if they’re unvaccinated,” Scott added in a statement to Fox News.

“I think that we’ve got to start standing up for people.”

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Scott and the other 12 senators wrote that the DoD’s jab mandate has “ruined the livelihoods of men and women who have honorably served our country.”

“While the Department of Defense certainly must make decisions that will bolster military readiness, the effects of the mandate are antithetical to readiness of our force, and the policy must be revoked,” that same letter further reads.

Paul added in his own tweet that he, too, will oppose the NDAA this year “unless the Senate votes on an amendment to prohibit discharges from the Armed Forces solely because of vaccination status.”

That same amendment would also reinstate service members who were discharged for not getting jabbed, as well as issue them back pay for the entirety of their time off the ranks. […]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2022/12/05/drop-the-covid-vaccine-mandate-or-no-more-defense-funding/

Isolation and Cold War Conflict: Korea and Vietnam

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Syngman Rhee | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

US Puppet Dictator Syngman Rhee

Episode 46: Cold War Conflicts: Korea and Vietnam

Foundations of Eastern Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

By 1950 half the world’s population was under Communist rule.

The Sino-Soviet split (1960-1989) related in part to ideological differences[1] and in part to Chinese pique that 1) the Soviets sided with India over Tibet and 2) their foreign aid to non-communist nations like India and Egypt exceeded that to China.

The first Chinese atomic bomb test in 1964 greatly increased Cold War tensions.

The fifties witnessed the first of numerous proxy wars between the US and Soviet Union: the Korean War (1950-53). Following Japan’s surrender, (in a move opposed by the majority of Koreans) the US and Soviet Union divided the newly independent Korea [2] at the 38th parallel and became temporary “trustees. ” Unable to agree on a framework for nationwide elections, the Americans engineered the “election” of notorious puppet dictator Syngman Rhee in May 1948, and declared South Korea as “The Republic of Korea.”[3]

North Korea held their own elections in August 1948 for the first Constitutional Assembly of the Peoples Democratic Republic of North Korea. The Assembly chose anti-Japanese Korean resistance fighter Kim Il-Sung as premier.

In what North Koreans have always viewed as a war of liberation against US occupation of Korea, the North Koreans invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. Within a few weeks they controlled nearly nearly the entire peninsula. In response the US, with UN backing, deployed their own troops. After the latter drove North Korean forces back above the 38th parallel, China entered the war. After Chinese-backed North Korean forces seized Seoul for the second time, the US/UN forces again drove them north and the war became a virtual stalemate. The Korean War ultimately killed two million Korean troops and civilians and 36,000 US troops.

Benjamin also gives an extremely brief overview of the Vietnam War, which like the Korean War, arose out of the Vietnamese independence movement.[4] Following the Japanese surrender the Viet Minh, the primary resistance fighters against Japanese occupation, immediately proclaimed Vietnam independence from France. When French troops re-occupied in November 1946, the Viet Minh fired on a French warship in Haiphong Harbor. The subsequent French massacre of 6,000 Vietnamese civilians triggered a Viet Minh guerrilla war against France.

Initially the war was a stalemate (1947-49), until Chinese troops assisted in driving the French out of northern Vietnam. From 1952 on, the US financed the French war against the Chinese-backed Viet Minh. In 1954, the French surrendered and the peace treaty signed in Geneva temporarily (pending nationwide elections) divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel.

Unwilling to hold Vietnam-wide elections (they knew North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh would win), in 1955 the US appointed puppet dictator Ngo Dinh to run South Vietnam. From 1957-on, he faced a growing South-Vietnamese based insurgency, known as the Viet Cong. The inability of the South Vietnamese army to crush the insurgency led to the growing presence of CIA and US military advisors in South Vietnam. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson sent the first (mostly drafted) troop divisions to South Vietnam .

The ten-year war resulted in the death of 3-4 million Vietnamese, 2 million Laotians and Cambodians [5} and 58,159 US troops.

[1] Mao proclaimed the Soviets’ pursuit of “peaceful co-existence” as “revisionist,” while Khrushchev declared the Chinese “dangerous leftist adventurers.

[2] Korea had been occupied by Japan since 1910 (see 19th Century Korea: Resisting European Colonization to Fall Victim to Japan )

[3] Although Benjamin erroneously refers to the 1948 Republic of Korea as a pro-Western democratic state, the late Chalmers Johnson has thoroughly documented that Korea was under US military occupation (South Korean troops were under US military command) until 1994 (when a mass uprising overthrew the last US puppet dictator). The Korean people fought for decades to expel the US military, despite their mass protests and demonstrations being violently suppressed by the US-run Korean military. See The Long US War Against the Third World

[4] Prior to World War II, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia were also French colonies.

[5] Owing to brutal US carpet bombing of Laos and Cambodia.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5808608/5808701