Abdi Salah (L) and Eid Ali

With a shoestring organizing drive that began just four months ago, Twin Cities Uber and Lyft drivers are pushing elected officials to tighten regulation of the app-based companies, and fighting for safety, transparency and a collective voice in their industry.

The Minnesota Uber/Lyft Drivers Association (MULDA) will bring its fledgling campaign to St. Paul tomorrow with a rally at the Capitol, set to begin at 12:30 p.m.

Drivers’ demands include higher pay and greater transparency from Uber and Lyft about how they calculate fares. The companies have slashed rates from nearly $2 per mile to around 85 cents over the last eight years, while scrapping a firm, 20% cap on their commission, drivers said.

Abdi Salah, who drives for both Uber and Lyft, said the companies recently removed fare breakdowns from drivers’ online activity log, leaving them to glean information about their cut from conversations with passengers. He recalled a recent trip from Edina to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, in which he claims he received just $14 out of a passenger’s $50 fare.

“This guy is going on vacation, and he’s pissed off,” Salah remembered. “He’s angry with me, and I was not late. He was mad at me because I was charging him $50. He said it was ridiculous for such a short trip.

“When I dropped him off, I showed him my receipt, and he was shocked. He gave me a $5 tip. Had I not engaged with him, he was going to give me a low rating, and I might not have been allowed to drive again.”

Salah and other drivers have concluded that Uber and Lyft are “charging anything they need to the customer, and the 83 cents per mile minus their (commission), that’s what they give to the driver,” he said.

During an interview earlier this month in the organization’s one-room office, located on the second floor a shopping center in Minneapolis’ Phillips neighborhood, MULDA President Eid Ali said the ride sharing companies’ practices amount to wage theft.

“We don’t trust Uber or Lyft, and there’s good reason why we don’t,” said Ali, who helped lead a successful push to regulate taxi companies in Minneapolis a decade ago. “The public is being ripped off, and so are the drivers. Uber and Lyft are getting as much money as they can from the riders, and in the end giving only a little bit to the driver.”

In meetings with Minneapolis City Council members and Mayor Jacob Frey, MULDA drivers have pushed for an ordinance that would regulate rates, as the city does with taxi cabs, and cap the percentage that ridesharing apps can take out in commission.

Drivers also have reached out to St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter and, with the rally tomorrow, hope to take their campaign statewide. MULDA’s first public event, a September meeting at the Embassy Suites in Bloomington, drew about 400 drivers and a handful of elected officials.

“They were really surprised,” Ali said of the legislators in attendance. “They were not expecting this type of organizing effort. Maybe they were underestimating us. Maybe they thought we were invisible, but that’s not true.”

While increasing pay and transparency are at the top of MULDA’s agenda, drivers have also raised concerns about safety and job security – issues they hope to one day address through collective bargaining.

The U.S. Department of Labor last week issued a proposal to bar firms like Uber and Lyft from classifying so-called “gig-economy workers” as independent contractors, which takes companies off the hook for benefits like workers compensation – and bars them from bargaining as a union.

Several drivers who came to MULDA’s meeting last month, Ali said, claimed to have been injured on the job, including a man who said he was shot by a passenger, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

“No one has bothered, not Uber and not Lyft, to help (him) because there’s not any protection, not any work compensation to protect those fellow drivers because we’re misclassified,” Ali said. “Up to today, he’s a piece of garbage in their eyes.”

[…]

Via https://advocate.stpaulunions.org/2022/10/19/uber-lyft-drivers-push-local-lawmakers-to-regulate-their-industry/

Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glance

• A little over a year ago President Biden proposed the establishment of a new biomedical research agency modeled after the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to propel cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases
• That agency — the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) — is now well on its way to being and up and running, with a $1 billion budget from Congress
• ARPA-H appears to merge national security with health “security” in a way that could lead to the criminalization of illness and general “wrong-think”
• The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is now recommending that all U.S. adults aged 65 and younger should be screened for mental health issues
• The screening recommendation falls right in line with the original intent behind ARPA-H, which was to monitor Americans for neuropsychiatric warning signs by harvesting private data from consumer electronic devices and health care providers. AI would then be used to predict whether an individual might commit a crime, so that it could be stopped before it happens

A little over a year ago President Biden proposed a plan to set in place a new health agency to drive the U.S. down a futuristic road that would lead to cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and other diseases.

At the time, investigative journalist Whitney Webb, author of “One Nation Under Blackmail,” warned that the new biomedical research agency — modeled after the nation’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — actually is a plan to merge national security with health “security” in a way that would “use both physical and mental health ‘warning signs’ to prevent outbreaks of disease or violence before they occur.”¹

[…]

ARPA-H — A ‘High-Risk’ Research Agency

That agency — formally named the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health² (ARPA-H) — is now well on its way to being and up and running, with a $1 billion budget from Congress to start. Public law 117-103 was enacted March 15, 2022, which authorized its establishment within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), under the National Institutes of Health (NIH).³

[…]

ARPA-H seems to fit hand in glove with Biden’s September 12, 2022, “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy,”⁴ which essentially establishes a fast-tracked pipeline for transhumanist dream projects.

Specified in that order is the development of genetic engineering technologies and techniques “to be able to write circuitry for cells and predictably program biology in the same way in which we write software and program computers,” as well as genetic technologies to “unlock the power of biological data” using “computing tools and artificial intelligence.”

Additionally, “obstacles for commercialization” [ie regulation] will be reduced “so that innovative technologies and products can reach markets faster.” ARPA-H is a tailor-made vehicle for fast-tracked (read poorly tested and incredibly dangerous) biomedical research. Like DARPA, ARPA-H will focus on “high-risk, high-reward research.”

[…]

As it stands, ARPA-H is also housed under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), just like the NIAID [run by Fauci]. So, we basically have two biowarfare/defense agencies smack-dab in the middle of a public health agency.

[…]]

Total Information Awareness

According to Webb, ARPA-H’s connections to DARPA suggests the new agency is a new version of DARPA’s failed Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, a biosurveillance project launched in the aftermath of 9/11.

[…]

The Era of Digital Dictatorship Is Upon Us

There can be little doubt today that “biosecurity” is the favored justification for the need of a digital dictatorship. Stripping you of your freedom is “for your own safety,” and you’re supposed to be thankful. If you’re not, the biosecurity state labels you a homicidal bioterrorist.

[…]

US Military Spends Millions Spying on Americans

According to Vice, the U.S. Navy, Army, Cyber Command and the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency have spent at least $3.5 million to access this tool. The question is why. As noted by Vice, rather than getting a proper warrant, U.S. agencies frequently simply purchase the desired data, be it cell phone data or internet use data, from private companies.

[…]

[…]

Google — The Biggest Spy Machine of All

A key player in this digital prison being built around us, on the taxpayers’ dime, is Google. Not only is it a massive spy machine, capturing “every word of every email sent through Gmail and every click made on a Chrome browser,”²⁰ it’s also a key censoring tool. Sure, it’s private and “can do what it wants,” but it’s actually doing the government’s bidding, so it’s not independent in any serious definition of the word.

[…]

Stop Feeding the Beast

Next, start weeding out any and all other Google products. All Google products are interconnected, and the data from all their different products and services are collected to build your personality profile.

That profile is then sold to third parties. It’s also used by Google to influence your thoughts, beliefs and behaviors using AI analytics.

[…]

Privacy Is Freedom, Freedom Is Privacy

[…]

Ditching Google products — all of them — will take a big chunk out of the data harvesting effort. So, don’t delay. Start today. Several of the most commonly-used Google traps are listed in the list below.

• If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts. Switch to a secure document sharing service — Ditch Google Docs and use another alternative such as Zoho Office, Etherpad, CryptPad, OnlyOffice or Nuclino, all of which are recommended by NordVPN.²⁴ Digital Trends has also published a number of alternatives.²⁵
• Delete all Google apps from your phone and purge Google hardware.
• Avoid websites that use Google Analytics — To do that, you’ll need to check the website’s privacy policy and search for “Google.” Websites are required to disclose if they use a third-party surveillance tool. If they use Google Analytics, ask them to switch!
• Don’t use Google Home devices in your house or apartment — These devices record everything that occurs in your home, both speech and sounds such as brushing your teeth and boiling water, even when they appear to be inactive, and send that information back to Google. The same goes for Google’s home thermostat Nest and Amazon’s Alexa.
• Don’t use an Android cellphone, as it’s owned by Google.
• Ditch Siri, which draws all its answers from Google.
• Don’t use Fitbit, as it was recently purchased by Google and will provide them with all your physiological information and activity levels, in addition to everything else that Google already has on you.
• Stop using Gmail — Use a privacy based encryption service like ProtonMail.
• Stop using Chrome browser and Google Search — Brave is the browser of choice and while you are there, you can use the new Brave search engine.

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/10/19/arpa-h-digital-dictatorship-on-the-horizon.aspx

Mass protest march in rural Haiti, Oct. 10, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @Saniz23893508

“Haiti is a great people. We are not your backyard,” Jean Charles Moiser said in front of the U.S. embassy.

By  Dr. Joseph Mercola

Analysis of U.S. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report data suggests the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been filtering and redesignating cancer deaths as COVID-19 deaths since April 2021 to eliminate the cancer signal.

Story at a glance:

• Analysis of U.S. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report data suggests the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been filtering and redesignating cancer deaths as COVID-19 deaths since April 2021 to eliminate the cancer signal.
• The signal is being hidden by swapping the underlying cause of death with main cause of death.
• Uncontrollable turbo-charged cancers the medical establishment had never seen before only started to occur after the rollout of the COVID-19 jabs.
• Before it was manipulated to eliminate the safety signal, data from the Defense Medical Epidemiology Database, or DMED, showed cancer rates among military personnel and their families tripled after the rollout of the shots.
• After the rollout of the COVID-19 jabs in 2021, cancer patients have gotten younger, with the largest increase occurring among 30- to 50-year-olds, tumor sizes are dramatically larger, multiple tumors in multiple organs are becoming more common, and recurrence and metastasis are increasing.

In a series of Twitter posts, The Ethical Skeptic — self-described as a former intelligence officer and strategist — has laid out a series of charts illustrating how cancer deaths are being mislabeled as COVID-19 deaths.

The suspicion is that this is an effort to hide the fact that the COVID-19 shots have resulted in soaring cancer rates.

The Ethical Skeptic also takes a deep dive into the data in “Houston, We Have a Problem, Part 1,” on TheEthicalSkeptic.com.

As noted in his article, seven out of the 11 International Classification of Diseases, or ICD, codes tracked by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics — including cancer — saw sharp upticks starting in the first week of April 2021.

“This date of inception is no coincidence, in that it also happens to coincide with a key inflection point regarding a specific body-system intervention in most of the U.S. population,” The Ethical Skeptic notes.

In other words, April 2021 was when large swaths of the American population were getting their first COVID-19 jabs.

 

$2 Million Match! Click Here to Double Your Impact!

 

Cancer diagnoses on the rise

The following graph, highlighted on Dr. Jennifer Brown’s Substack, illustrates the cyclical wave pattern of cancer diagnoses, from January 2015 and October 1.

As noted in the top-right text box:

“We should be at or near a seasonal nadir. Instead, we are at an all-time CA [cancer] excess, and heading up. Keep in mind there is substantial lag to CA reporting, so this likely under-represents true excess.”

At no point during the past seven years have we seen this rate of new cancer diagnoses.

Are the COVID-19 shots to blame? 

Probably, unless we can identify another widespread environmental factor or exposure that was introduced to the population, en masse, in early 2021, that didn’t exist before.

CDC fudging death records to eliminate cancer signal

According to The Ethical Skeptic’s analysis of U.S. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been filtering and redesignating cancer deaths as COVID-19 deaths since Week 14 of 2021 to eliminate the cancer signal.

The following two charts, posted on Twitter on October 1 and 2, illustrate how cancer mortality is being artificially suppressed.

As explained by The Ethical Skeptic:

“The set dynamics are complex, but the principle is straightforward. When a death cert lists Cancer as the UCoD [underlying cause of death] and COVID as MCoD [main cause of death] — the UCoD & MCoD are being swapped, and COVID is being listed as the UCoD 100% (425/wk).

“This results in 20% of all COVID deaths each week, also happening to be persons dying of Cancer — which is egregiously higher than it should be. This is clear over-attribution = equates to exactly the difference between the Cancer and All Other ICD-10 code lag curves.”

“The problem facing the CDC, is … What does one do when COVID Mortality is no longer substantial enough to conceal the excess Cancer Mortality?”

So, to rephrase, what The Ethical Skeptic is saying is that 20% of the weekly so-called COVID-19 deaths are actually cancer deaths, which is rather astounding.

But swapping the underlying and main causes of death, listing COVID-19 as the main cause, hides (to some degree) the fact that cancer deaths are going through the roof.

According to his analysis, the COVID-19 shot is killing 7,300 Americans per week.

COVID-19, meanwhile, is killing 1,740 people.

So, what will the CDC blame when COVID-19 disappears and they can no longer swap the underlying and main cause of death designations?

Department of Defense data showed massive cancer rise

Uncontrollable turbo-charged cancers the medical establishment had never seen before only started to occur after the rollout of the COVID-19 jabs.

Data from the DMED exposed by attorney Tom Renz and Sen. Ron Johnson (above), showed cancer rates among military personnel and their families basically tripled after the rollout of the shots.

As you may recall, within days of the DMED data being revealed, the database was taken offline, allegedly to “identify and correct” a supposed data corruption problem, and when it came back, the data had been altered to hide these glaringly obvious safety signals.

‘Turbo-cancers’ emerged after COVID jab rollout

Swedish pathologist, researcher, and senior physician at Lund’s University, Dr. Ute Kruger, describes the changes she has personally observed in the wake of the COVID-19 shots.

For example, she’s noticed:

• Cancer patients are getting younger — The largest increase is among 30- to 50-year-olds.
• Tumor sizes are dramatically larger — Historically, 3-centimeter tumors were commonly found at the time of cancer diagnosis. Now, the tumors they’re finding are regularly 4 to 12 centimeters, which suggests they’re growing at a much faster rate than normal.
• Multiple tumors in multiple organs are becoming more common.
• Recurrence and metastasis are increasing — Kruger points out that many of the cancer patients she’s seeing have been in remission for years, only to suddenly be beset with uncontrollable cancer growth and metastasis shortly after their COVID-19 jab.

These “turbo-cancers,” as Kruger calls them, cannot be explained by delayed cancer screenings due to lockdowns and other COVID-19 restrictions, as those days are long gone.

Patients, despite having access to medical screenings as in years past, are showing up with grossly exacerbated tumor growths, and she believes this is because the cancers are being “turbo-charged” by the mRNA jabs.

Dr. Ryan Cole has also discussed the explosion of cancer (see video below). He believes the shots are primarily accelerating already existing cancers, by way of immune dysregulation.

He noticed that cancers that could normally be controlled and kept in check, giving the patient several years of quality life, once they got the COVID-19 jab, the cancer would suddenly grow out of control and rapidly lead to death.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/cdc-cancer-deaths-covid-vaccines-cola/

By Eric Zeusse

Global Research

That headline’s phrase “long march” refers to Imran Khan’s promise to lead a million-plus-person “long march” to the capital city, which is Islamabad, to bring the downfall of the U.S.-led recently-installed coup-regime, which had installed Shebaz Sharif. “Rana Sanaullah,” in that headline, refers to the coup-imposed Federal Minister of the Interior, under Shebaz Sharif. Sanaullah was in a position to be able — with the rest of Shebaz Sharif’s Government (backed by the U.S.) — to carry out that threat.

Also on October 14th, Geo TV bannered “Rana Sanaullah will be arrested if he enters Punjab: Cheema”, and reported that, “Advisor to Chief Minister Punjab on Interior Omar Sarfraz Cheema said that Federal Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan will be arrested if he enters Punjab.” Both the dictators (the aristocrats and theocrats), and the democrats (Imran Khan’s group), are “gunning” against each other; and, right now, the dictators — with the crucial help of America — have the upper hand. For this reason, Imran Khan has not yet announced a date on which his proposed march will take place. He is instead travelling the country to campaign for it.

Imran Khan refers to himself as being a “party of one,” because he is up against the entire existing corrupt Government of Pakistan, and so he founded and leads his own Party, PTI. A joint web-search for “Imran Khan” “PTI” and “wikipedia” brings up no “PTI” but instead shows just “Imran Khan,” and that article says “He is the founder and chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), one of the largest political parties in the country.”

The way they did this was by Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruling for a no-confidence vote against Imran Khan in the parliament to oust him as the Prime Minister; and the parliament then appointed Nawaz Sharif’s brother to replace Imran Khan. They would have liked to appoint Nawaz, except that, as Reuters had headlined on 24 December 2018, “Ousted Pakistani PM Sharif gets seven years’ jail for graft”, and, like any other pretend-‘democracy’, the aristocrats and theocrats who controlled Pakistan’s Government needed a public-electoral fig-leaf in order to give any permanency to their joint dictatorship over the country; so, they chose Nawaz’s younger brother instead.

[…]

Another, and even more telling, interview with Imran Khan had occurred on the night of 19 June 2012, when Julian Assange interviewed him by remote from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and its youtube started being copied over six hundred times to the main Web archive, web dot archive dot org, but then all of those hundreds became mysteriously destroyed so that even at that archive, which is headquartered in the U.S., none of those copies any longer functions. However, the show can still be seen at RT, https://assange.rt.com/khan-episode-nine.html, from which it has been archived twice, such as here, and copies elsewhere also remain online, such as here and here and here and here and here, and the transcript of it is here; so, the U.S.-and-allied regimes might not be able to eliminate all copies of it from online. Anyway, this interview shows not only why Assange is being destroyed by the U.S./UK regime, but that they also are doing all they can to destroy Imran Khan.

19 June 2012 happened to be Assange’s first night being protected from the UK/U.S. regime inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, which was when the democrat, Rafael Correa, was leading that country.

Correa himself became replaced by the secret U.S. agent Lenin Moreno as Correa’s successor, who on 2 April 2019 allowed UK to drag Assange out to supermax solitary confinement in London’s Belmarsh Prison awaiting ultimate extradition to the U.S. (Assange isn’t a citizen of either country, but of Australia, which has done nothing to protect him or his rights as an Australian citizen, and is therefore obviously a slave-regime to the UK/U.S. regime — and yet Australians aren’t revolting against that slavery by their Government.)

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-regime-threatens-hang-pakistan-popular-leader-he-holds-anti-coup-march/5796521

Dr Eddy Betterman

General Christian Blanchon of France has written a powerful letter in which he praises the unvaccinated for going against the tide by preserving their God-given immunity.

People who refused to get “vaccinated” for Covid-19 are “superheroes,” he says, for refusing to cave to the demands of the Big Pharma-allied globalists who are trying every trick in the book to convince everyone to comply.

Unlike French Pres. Emmanuel Macron, who proudly persecuted the unvaccinated in his country for refusing to permanently damage their DNA with the gene-editing experiment, Gen. Blanchon believes that those who followed Nancy Reagan’s just say no advice by resisting the drug shots “embody the best of humanity.”

“Even if I were fully vaccinated, I would admire the unvaccinated for standing up to the greatest pressure I have ever seen, including from spouses, parents, children, friends, colleagues, and doctors,” he wrote, adding that the unvaccinated are people of “personality” and “courage.”

Instead of following the herd straight off the cliff, the unvaccinated used critical thinking, leading them to the conclusion that experimental drugs from Big Pharma probably are not a good bet, especially for an alleged virus that has never even been isolated.

“They are of a particular kind,” Gen. Blanchon says about the unvaccinated, adding that “these are the soldiers that any army of light wishes to have in its ranks.”

“They are beings above the average of their societies; they are the essence of the peoples who have built all cultures and conquered horizons. They are there, by your side, they seem normal, but they are superheroes.”

Those who resisted covid jabs are “the chosen ones of the invisible ark”

It takes a certain kind of conviction and persistence to stand strong in the face of this relentless jab assault – especially when one’s job or family is on the line. People who quit a pressuring job and trusted God for provision instead deserve to be commended.

According to Gen. Blanchon, these folks along with everyone else who resisted “did what others could not do,” further describing them as “the tree that withstood the hurricane of insults, discrimination, and social exclusion.”

“And they did it because they thought they were alone and believed they were alone,” he further writes.

Some unvaccinated people were even excluded from their family’s Thanksgiving and Christmas table. They suffered “immeasurable discrimination, denunciations, betrayals, and humiliation … but they continued,” Gen. Blanchon says.

It is now clear as day who has beliefs they truly stand by and who simply obeys whatever the government and big corporations tell them to do – even when the orders are unlawful, make no scientific sense, and put one’s health and life at risk.

By choosing not to get jabbed along with the rest of the herd, the unvaccinated “purebloods” represent “the chosen ones of the invisible ark, the only ones who managed to resist when everything fell apart.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2022/10/18/french-general-unvaccinated-superheroes-best-of-humanity/

People protesting in Por-au-Prince, Haiti, Oct. 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @ChallengePetro

Newsletter

Nevertheless, China will support targeted sanctions, including a travel ban, assets freezes and arms embargo on gang members and their supporters.

China supports sanctions against Haitian gang members and their supporters but is wary over the deployment of an international armed force in the country, said a Chinese envoy on Monday.

“Rooting out the scourge of gang violence is both an entry point for any improvement in the current situation and a prerequisite for a solution in the country,” said Geng Shuang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, noting that China will support targeted sanctions, including a travel ban, assets freezes and arms embargo on gang members and their supporters.

“We hope that these measures will be robust and effective and that they will make a true difference in deterring gang violence, cracking down on violent crimes, and cutting off the supply of funding and the weapons to criminal gangs,” he told the Security Council.

The recent proposal by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on supporting Haiti’s improvement of its security situation should be studied carefully. China will have an in-depth exchange of views with others, said Geng.

“At a time when the Haitian government lacks legitimacy and is unable to govern, will sending such a rapid-action force to Haiti receive the understanding, support and cooperation from the parties in Haiti, or will it face resistance or even trigger a violent confrontation from the population? These are the things we need to consider in an integrated manner and treat with caution,” noted Geng. [See Thousands of Haitians Hit Streets Against Troop Deployment]

Via https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/China-Wary-of-International-Troop-Deployment-in-Haiti-20221018-0004.html

Episode 27: Japan – Geography and Early Cultures

Foundations of Eastern Civilization

Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)

Film Review

In this lecture, Benjamin describes how Yayoi society became hierarchical with the population increase following introduction of wet rice farming.

Unlike the peaceful and egalitarian Jomon* culture, the Yayoi tended to build hilltop communities, which they surrounded with defensive stockades and moats. It’s common to find weapons caches in Yayoi tombs, with skeletal remains showing evidence of violence.

According to Benjamin, the Yayoi imported bronze weapons from Korea and melted them down to produce their own. Less militaristic Yayoi cultures made bronze bells, instead of weapons, which their communities used in agricultural rituals.

Although printed books didn’t appear in Japan until the eighth century AD, there is considerable information about the Yayoi in Han Dynasty records. The former had a tributary relationship with the Han (sending them cloth, pearls, bows, arrows and slaves in return for silk, gold and jade).

Laer Wei Dynasty (3rd century AD) records describe the Yayoi as living in more than 110 small states under the overall control of the Yamatai. Strongly influenced by Korea’s Three Kingdoms period (see Ancient Korea: Consolidation of Class Society), they are best known for the elaborate tombs and burial mounds constructed by their elites.

With the rise of the Tang Dynasty in China (618-907 AD), the Yamatai feared invasion by them or the powerful Silla regime in Korea. Reducing regional semi-autonomy, they substantially increased taxes to strengthen coastal fortification. When King Tenmu came to the throne (673-686 AD), he introduced a census to increase taxes still further and to facilitate  military and forced labor conscription. Tenmu also introduced legal codes that reduced the power of nobles, while bringing Buddhism under formal state control.

It was under his regime, the Yamatai adopted the name Nippon (translated “origin of the sun”) as the name of their state.*

In 710 AD, capitol moved to Heijo (Nara). Strongly influenced by the Tang, the latter is laid out in a grid pattern like Chang’an China.

*Japan’s indigenous Ainu people are believed to share a common ancestor with the Jomon.

**The current Japanese name for Japan is Nippon-Koku.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5808608/5808665

By Caitlin Tilley, Health Reporter For Dailymail.Com and Mansur Shaheen Deputy Health Editor For Dailymail.Com

Boston University scientists were today condemned for ‘playing with fire’ after it emerged they had created a lethal new Covid strain in a laboratory.

DailyMail.com revealed the team had made a hybrid virus — combining Omicron and the original Wuhan strain — that killed 80 per cent of mice in a study.

The revelation exposes how dangerous virus manipulation research continues to go on even in the US, despite fears similar practices may have started the pandemic.

Professor Shmuel Shapira, a leading scientist in the Israeli Government, said: ‘This should be totally forbidden, it’s playing with fire.’

Gain of function research – when viruses are purposefully manipulated to be more infectious or deadly – is thought to be at the center of Covid’s origin.

A Chinese laboratory located just miles from the first cluster of cases carried out similar research on bat coronaviruses.

But the practice has been largely restricted in the US since 2017.

Dr Richard Ebright, a chemist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, told DailyMail.com that: ‘The research is a clear example of gain of function research.

He added: ‘If we are to avoid a next lab-generated pandemic, it is imperative that oversight of enhanced potential pandemic pathogen research be strengthened.’

In the new research, which has not been peer-reviewed, a team of researchers from Boston and Florida extracted Omicron’s spike protein — the unique structure that binds to and invades human cells.

It has always been present in the virus but has become more evolved over time. Omicron has dozens of mutations on its spike protein that made it so infectious.

Researchers attached Omicron’s spike to the original wildtype strain that first emerged in Wuhan at the start of the pandemic.

[…]

Via https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11323677/Outrage-Boston-University-CREATES-Covid-strain-80-kill-rate.html