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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.

Do Vaccines Make Us Healthier?

By  Children’s Health Defense

Three groundbreaking studies examined what federal health officials admit they’ve never investigated — whether vaccines improve overall health. The results were “jaw-dropping.”

Do vaccines make us healthier?

Everyone, no matter where they stand on the vaccine debate, should want to know the answer to that question.

Yet our national health agencies have never tried to find out.

In the video below, you’ll learn about three groundbreaking studies that set out to answer this most basic question.

The studies (here, here and here) were conducted independently, using different methods — but all three compared the overall health of vaccinated people versus the overall health of the tiny fraction of people in the U.S. who have never been vaccinated.

The results, revealed in the video below, are “striking.”

[Ed note: unvaccinated  have a much lower incidence of allergies, asthma, autoimmune disease, ear infections, autism, gastrointestinal disease, autoimmune disease, anemia, ADHD and neurodevelopmental disorders.]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/do-vaccines-make-us-healthier/

Chile’s Secret Nazi Past

The Colony: Chile’s Dark Past Uncovered

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

This documentary concerns a secretive post-World II German colony in Chile. Named Colonia Dignidad, the colony was run as a cult by ex-Nazi pedophile and Baptist minister Paul Schaefer. Roughly 300 of Schaefer’s followers emigrated from Germanye in 1961, after he persuaded him the Soviets were about to invade. In Chile, Schaefer and his close circle of supporters were in close contact with Mengele, Rauff and other Nazi war criminals who escaped to South America.

On Schaefer’s orders, the cult removed babies from their parents’ custody at birth and raised them communally. Parents who tried to establish close relationships with their offspring were publicly punished humiliated and sometimes beaten. Cult members who escaped and sought sanctuary in the German embassy (in Santiago) were returned to the colony.

Children began a life of heavy farm labor at age 7. Allowed only one rest day a year, both children and adults worked 12-hour days seven days a week. Schaefer used the farm profits to expand his land holdings.

When the fascist dictator Pinochet came to power in a 1973 CIA coup, Schaefer made his hospital facilities available to the Chilean army to interrogate human rights activists under torture.

Despite the restoration of Chilean democracy in 1990, it would take the government until 2005 to investigate and close Colonia Dignidad. Schaefer (who died in 2010) was arrested and given a 20 year sentence for child molestation in 2005. Five of his accomplices were arrested and sent to jail in 2013. The sixth fled to Germany, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Chile.

Winfried Hempel, one of the children abused at the colony, has since become a lawyer. He’s suing the governments of Chile and Germany. He has compelling evidence that both were aware of the atrocities yet did nothing to stop them.

In 2019 the German government agreed to pay 50,000 euros to each of the 50 remaining victims. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48318295

 

Killing Democracy Once and For All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’Etat that is Destroying Life as We Know It

But what is interesting about the elite coup that is being implemented now, under cover of the supposed Covid-19 pandemic, is that the final facade of our ‘democracy’ is being dismantled in plain site with most of the human population begging for it to be done provided that they are kept ‘safe’.

Baher Kamal's avatarHUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By Robert J. Burrowes*

Politically savvy individuals know that democracy has rarely existed and probably never outside small groups of humans who deliberately organize themselves to share power or grant it temporarily to one or a small number of people for a particular purpose. In most contexts, ‘democracy’ is simply a label used to deceive the unwary into believing that ordinary people have a say in how we are governed. But this has never been the case in any political framework on a larger scale.

Robert J. Burrowes

Whatever victories have apparently been achieved in the long struggle to achieve political representation, human rights, dignity, economic justice, cultural and gender identity, ecological sustainability and other causes dear to the hearts of those who have struggled, the elite (local, national or global) has always retained control and merely surrendered the minimum necessary to keep the bulk of the…

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Another New York State Supreme Court Ivermectin Order Helping 81-Year-Old Farmer

Another New York State Supreme Court Justice Ivermectin Order Helping 81-Year-Old Farmer

TrialSite

John W. Swanson, an 81-year-old farmer from Stafford, New York, a rural area east of Buffalo, was infected with COVID-19, on a ventilator, and according to a legal affidavit, ‘on death’s doorstep’ at United Memorial Medical Center (part of Rochester Regional Health).  Apparently, the patient was given one dose of ivermectin, which immediately had a positive impact, as he started breathing again.

But in what is becoming a similar New York State story, the hospital’s doctors then refused to give follow-up doses of ivermectin. And the patient’s family moved swiftly for justice. Swanson’s wife Sandra hired the same attorneys that were able to convince other New York State judges to compel other hospitals to administer ivermectin to dying patients, which as TrialSite reported on has appeared to save lives.

In this case, it appears to be working again as Sandra Swanson recently told the Buffalo News: “I definitely think the ivermectin is helping him.” She also told the local press that the hospital has been denying her any visitation with her husband. Veronica R. Chiesi, a spokesperson for United Memorial Medical Center, declined to comment on the Swanson case. Read below about the unfolding ivermectin saga, including growing evidence of censorship and an introduction to the rapidly advancing TrialSite platform for biomedical research-oriented social engagement.

Thanks to the reporting of Dan Herbeck at the Buffalo News, TrialSite learned of yet another New York State case where rural or regional hospitals are denying COVID-19 patients ivermectin treatment at the request of families and their doctors.  Thanks to a savvy law firm there, Judges are ruling on the side of the patient.

What’s going on in New York?

There is at least three cases now that TrialSite has reported on in New York State where the family of elderly or seriously ill COVID-19 infected patients were denied ivermectin treatments. While dozens of studies from around the world show overwhelmingly positive results, regulatory authorities and apex research bodies are hesitant to accept any of the positive data yet and have pounced on any data that shows neutral results.

In New York, TrialSite is aware that the ongoing reporting by this media platform, the outspoken Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) and other reports of the accumulating positive data associated with ivermectin research around the world, have been reviewed by family members.

Not easily dismissed by hospitals that refuse to treat the elderly patients, New York families have turned to a couple of attorneys, including Ralph C. Lorigo and Jon F. Minear, both with West Seneca, New York-based Law Office of Ralph C. Lorigo.

In one case, Lorigo’s firm got to work to secure a Judge’s declaration that the Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital treat an 80-year-old New York State patient staring at death from COVID-19 with ivermectin. Thanks to this lawyering work, Supreme Court Judge Henry J. Nowak aligned with the family and compelled the providers to care for Judith Smentkiewicz. The additional treatments helped as she rapidly improved thereafter.

[…]

Via https://trialsitenews.com/another-new-york-state-supreme-court-justice-ivermectin-order-helping-81-year-old-farmer/

Jan. 6 defendants win unlikely Dem champions as they face harsh detainment

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

“Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren fled the Capitol on Jan. 6 from a mob she later called domestic terrorists. Now she and another Senate Democratic leader are standing up for their attackers’ rights as criminal defendants.

Most of the 300-plus people charged with participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot have been released while they await trial, but dozens of those deemed to be dangerous, flight risks or at high risk of obstructing justice were ordered held without bond. D.C. jail officials later determined that all Capitol detainees would be placed in so-called restrictive housing — a move billed as necessary to keep the defendants safe, as well as guards and other inmates. But that means 23-hour-a-day isolation for the accused, even before their trials begin.

And such treatment doesn’t sit well with Warren or Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), two of the chamber’s fiercest critics of solitary confinement.

“Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren said in an interview. “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.”

The Massachusetts Democrat, a member of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership team, said that while some limited uses of solitary confinement are justified, she’s worried that law enforcement officials are deploying it to “punish” the Jan. 6 defendants or to “break them so that they will cooperate.”

Her sentiments are shared by Durbin, who also chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee and expressed surprise that all of the detained Jan. 6 defendants were being kept in so-called “restrictive housing.” While their defense of accused rioters’ rights as criminal defendants is unlikely to change the Justice Department’s handling of those cases, it’s a notable case of prominent progressives using their political clout to amplify their criminal justice reform calls even on behalf of Donald Trump supporters who besieged the entire legislative branch in January.

Durbin, who has long sought to eradicate solitary confinement, told POLITICO that such conditions should be a “rare exception,” for accused insurrectionists or any other prisoners.

[…]

Via https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/19/capitol-riot-defendants-warren-483125

3 Reasons Miami School Might Be Right About Asking Teachers Not to Get COVID Vaccine

Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, has made international headlines.

By  Sayer Ji

Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, faced a global media assault after asking staff not to get vaccinated, but these three facts about the vaccines lend support to the school’s decision.

Centner Academy, a private school in Miami, has made international headlines for directing its employees who have not yet received the experimental COVID-19 vaccine, to wait until the end of the school year, as a precautionary step to protect the health of their school community, given both concerning new anecdotal reports that the vaccinated can adversely affect the health of the un-vaccinated, and that clinical safety and efficacy data for the mRNA vaccines will not be completed until sometime in 2023.

Thus far, mainstream media reporting has focused and railed against the following statement made by Leila Centner, co-founder and CEO of Centner Academy, to her employees (in an internal email later leaked to the press) as being the most controversial and contestable:

“Tens of thousands of women all over the world have recently been reporting adverse reproductive issues simply from being in close proximity with those who have received any one of the COVID-19 injections, e.g., irregular menses, bleeding, miscarriages, post-menopausal hemorrhaging and amenorrhea (complete loss of menstruation).

“No one knows exactly what may be causing these irregularities, but it appears that those who have received the injections may be transmitting something from their bodies to those with whom they come in contact. Until more is known, we must err on the side of caution when it comes to the welfare of our students and the school team.”

You can read Leila’s entire letter and comment which she posted to Instagram here.

Leila Centner’s private communication, now a matter of global public scrutiny, even reaching the White House press secretary for comment on April 27, came under fire by a number of conventional allopathic physicians, including Dr. Aileen Marty, a physician and infectious disease specialist with Florida International University’s Wertheim College of Medicine, who commented as follows:

“But there’s not one citation, there’s not one physician or scientist whose name is spelled out in there. There’s no references. There’s nothing. There is no scientific evidence provided. Rumor is the only thing that’s there, and if you look at the reality, there’s zero, zero science behind those allegations.

“If they believe it, and they then share this big lie, it has a horrific impact on our entire community.”

While these comments by Dr. Marty, and now hundreds of other mainstream media reports have attempted to dismiss Leila Centner’s statements as a “source of misinformation, without basis in science,” we believe they have significant merit, and are at the least worth exploring further.

Fact #1: Vaccines make some sick. Sick people are more likely to compromise the health of others

Whereas the mainstream media and government health authorities have been dogmatically pushing the unequivocal narrative that the COVID-19 (and all) vaccines are “safe and effective” a priori, it is undeniable that the COVID-19 vaccines are presently only approved for distribution to the public under an Emergency Use Authorization, in lieu of proper clinical safety and efficacy trial data being available, and which are not estimated to be completed until April 2023 for the Pfizer vaccine.

This makes COVID-19 vaccines, by definition, experimental, as Leila Centner has repeatedly offered as an explanation for her precautionary stance as to their unintended, adverse effects they may have to the health and well-being of her school staff, faculty, children and larger community.

Human medical experimentation, as defined by the Nuremberg code of medical ethics (1947), must not only be voluntary, but the participant needs to be fully informed of both the risks and benefits, in order to be able to give their full legal consent. Also, if the medical experimenter has reason to believe an intervention may cause harm, disability or death he or she must suspend the experiment immediately.

In the case of the experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, government data reveals the COVID-19 vaccines are having profound, adverse health effects on a subpopulation of recipients, as documented in the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), which as of April 28, lists a total of 85,926 reports of the vaccinated experiencing adverse effects, ranging from death to hundreds of other symptoms and life-threatening conditions.

Moreover, VAERS is known to be highly ineffective in capturing the true extent of the actual number of vaccine adverse events, due to its highly passive, post-marketing surveillance methodology. Peer-reviewed research indicates that the rate of report capture is as low as 1% for thrombocytopenic purpura (low blood platelet related bleeding disorder) following the MMR vaccine and hypotonic hyporesponsive (bluish skin; reduced consciousness) episodes following the DTP vaccine.

The implication is that the actual scale of adverse effects within the vaccinated, which include immune dysregulation and suppression, may be several orders of magnitude higher than the already alarming scale of events reported through the conservative numbers offered by VAERS — which are almost universally ignored by the very same media attempting to discredit, defame and make an example out of the Centner Academy.

Given that those who are experiencing immune dysfunction as a result of being vaccinated are more likely to express virus reactivation, such as a cluster of cases recently reported for vaccine-induced Herpes Zoster, or may also experience a disrupted microbiome leading the the overgrowth of opportunistic bacteria, fungi, virusess, i.e., so-called “pathogens,” the health risks to those around them may also increase significantly. It should be noted that this phenomenon of vaccine-induced adverse health effects is not solely associated with the COVID-19 or mRNA vaccines.

Greenmedinfo.com has a database of over 1300 studies indicating over 150 potential adverse health effects from vaccines presently in the CDC vaccine schedule. Therefore any vaccine could, in theory, weaken or disrupt the immune system of a vaccine recipient, increasing the likelihood that they may transmit infection or disease-provoking aspects of either their microbiome or cell contents (mediated via extracellular vesicles) to those around them, which will be explained in greater detail in section #3.

Fact #2: The Pfizer mRNA vaccine clinical trial study design warns against proximity (shared air inhalation or skin contact) between vaccine participants and the unvaccinated as a possible vectors of harm

Titled, “A Phase 1/2/3 Study to Evaluate the Safety, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals,” the Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine study protocol document explicitly identifies in section 8.3.5. the need for monitoring what it calls “Exposure During Pregnancy or Breastfeeding, and Occupational Exposure.” A concern they take seriously enough that they require any incident to be reported within 24 hours to the Pfizer Safety system.

According to the document an EDP [environmental exposure during pregnancy] occurs if, for example: “a male vaccine recipient exposes a female partner prior to or around the time of conception.”

Exposure to the study intervention is defined as “inhalation or skin contact,” indicating that physical proximity between the vaccinated and unvaccinated is recognized by the Pfizer study protocol to be a cause for concern for transmission of potential side effects of the vaccine.

The document also gives the following example of an EDP scenario: “A male family member or healthcare provider who has been exposed to the study intervention by inhalation or skin contact then exposes his female partner prior to or around the time of conception.” Clearly, in this case Pfizer is acknowledging that something as simple as a healthcare provider or family member who has been exposed to an mRNA vaccine recipient through “inhalation or skin contact” (i.e., physical proximity) could generate an adverse event and/or affect the study outcomes.

Another example provided in section 8.3.5.2 titled, “Exposure During Breastfeeding,” gives the following example of what constitutes such an exposure:

“An example of environmental exposure during breastfeeding is a female family member or healthcare provider who reports that she is breastfeeding after having been exposed to the study intervention by inhalation or skin contact.”

Finally, in section 8.3.5.3., an “Occupational Exposure” occurs,

“when a person receives unplanned direct contact with the study intervention, which may or may not lead to the occurrence of an AE. Such persons may include healthcare providers, family members and other roles that are involved in the trial participant’s care.”

Clearly, the Pfizer mRNA vaccine protocol design reveals that concerns for how the vaccinated may adversely affect the health, and even reproductive outcomes, of the unvaccinated simply by being within physical proximity, are being taken extremely seriously by the manufacturer of the vaccine itself. In light of this, Leila Centner’s expressed concerns quoted at the beginning of this article are, in fact, backed by the most authoritative document we have on the experimental vaccine, and the nature of the human experiments being conducted on their behalf.

So far, there has been no acknowledgment or reporting on this fact by the global mainstream media, the vaccine manufacturers nor government health authorities. It will be up to the reader to share this article, and get the word out.

Fact #3: There is a plausible epigenetic molecular mechanism in biology whereby the vaccinated may affect the health status of the unvaccinated 

The third major substantiating factor behind identifying the potential harm the vaccinated may have on the unvaccinated concerns the discovery of so-called horizontal information transfer within biological systems mediated by extracellular vesicles, which include a virus-like phenomenon known as microvesicle shedding and/or exosome-mediated transfer of nucleic acids. This falls within the category of epigenetics, which the apologists and shills for the mRNA vaccines’ purported safety and efficacy conveniently ignore in order to make their claim that was debunked in 1970 with the discovery of the enzyme reverse transcriptase.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/miami-school-might-be-right-asking-teachers-not-get-covid-vaccine/

The Anti-Lockdown Movement Is Large and Growing

By Jeffrey A. Tucker | AIER | April 29, 2021

Feeling outgunned, outnumbered, overpowered, smothered, and censored? Many people who oppose Covid lockdowns and all their associated restrictions feel this way. It’s hard not to. You can hardly post on social media without triggering warnings, corrections, and sometimes outright blocks.

Bans are part of the mix too, the complete deplatforming of people merely because they want their freedoms back. It’s creepy. We never thought we would see these days but here we are.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media continues to push restrictions – mask mandates and vaccine passports – just as it has for the past 14 months. The technology of intimidation is getting more sophisticated.

But how true is it that anti-lockdown people are a small and increasingly marginalized minority?

Consider:

  • The Wall Street Journal is one of the world’s largest circulation newspapers, with twice the physical circulation of the New York Times. Its editorial page has been consistently against lockdowns nearly from the beginning.
  • Fox News has been running anti-lockdown commentary for a full year. It very easily dominates all cable TV news, hosting 6 of the top 10 shows. It is trouncing CNN, for example, which is struggling for viewers.
  • The top-rated commentary show for this year and last has been Tucker Carlson Tonight, which offers gripping anti-lockdown interviews and commentary on every show, including interviews with scientists and activists left and right.
  • Elon Musk, among the most prominent tech entrepreneurs in the world, has fiercely spoken out against lockdowns.
  • Joe Rogan has the most popular podcast in the English language, and he has been consistently against lockdowns and Covid mandates for a year, most recently telling his audience the common-sense point that healthy young people should not be forced to be vaccinated since the virus is no threat to them.
  • The Onion once ruled satire on the web but the site has been terrible on lockdowns. Its traffic has been sinking steadily. The anti-lockdown Babylon Bee started low and has soared to new highs, often beating The Onion. The Babylon Bee has been ruthless in satirizing Covid hysteria, and is being rewarded for doing so.
  • The Epoch Times has as much web traffic as the Wall Street Journal and has been fantastic on lockdowns, running a full 45-minute long interview with Great Barrington Declaration signatory Jayanta Bhattacharya.
  • Polls show strong opposition to all stringency measures among Republicans (40% want immediate opening of everything) and much less opposition among Democrats. It’s tragic and wrong that there should be any partisan divide on what is a question of science and good sense but that’s what happens when you politicize a disease.
  • The scientists who drafted the Great Barrington Declaration were pilloried last year but now cannot come close to keeping up with interviews, testimonies, article requests, and media contacts. Last year this time, they were quiet scientists; now they are among the most famous epidemiologists in the world.
  • Even the CDC is playing catchup to the anti-lockdown position, adjusting its advice on the J&J vaccine in light of Martin Kulldorff’s article in The Hill, even as they shoved him off their vaccine evaluation commission.
  • Protests are rarely reported by the national media but they are happening. The Five Freedoms campaign pushed by the DailyClout is gaining traction. Those freedoms are: no vaccine passports, no mask mandates, no emergency law, open schools up 100%, and freedom of commerce, worship, and petition.
  • Noncompliance is nationwide. Many parts of the country were speakeasies since last April but now the push to live life normally is spreading even to New York, where the Hardcore scene this past weekend publicly flouted all regulations and is thus being investigated.

The most important reason why anti-lockdowners should not feel demoralized is that the facts are overwhelming on the side of freedom and traditional public health principles.

Consider for example this CDC chart of 3 states that imposed strict measures (Michigan, California, and Massachusetts), and still enforce many measures plus mask mandates, versus 3 states that have been open with no such mandates (Florida, Texas, and South Carolina). Look at the trajectory of severe outcomes from the virus:

[…]

Via https://alethonews.com/2021/04/30/the-anti-lockdown-movement-is-large-and-growing/

BMJ Calls to End Masks in Schools, Zero Evidence They Prevent Anything

Editor of BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine calls for end to masks in schools, declares zero evidence they prevent anything

Dr Eddy Betterman

Professor Carl Heneghan, a professor of evidence-based medicine and editor of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) publication Evidence-Based Medicine, has issued a warning that face masks are “useless” at protecting against infection with the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

During a recent appearance on British news, Heneghan explained that forcing children to wear a face covering all day long while at school is especially pointless – and many would say harmful – because cloth and plastic have never been proven to stop the spread.

“In the absence of evidence, if you think they should be wearing them, go and talk to some children,” Heneghan says. “That’s what I’ve done and said, ‘What’s the reality on the ground? What’s it like for you in class? How does it feel?’ And I can tell you they hate them.”

“They find it really difficult. They don’t adhere to the guidelines, so, for instance, they go in the pocket to pull them out. That’s a dangerous issue with co-infections and the potential for that to stay infected for a period of time.”

Heneghan believes in taking a common sense, precautionary approach when it comes to imposing interventions like masks that have the potential to cause harm. The government seems to be mandating them willy-nilly using not science but fear and superstition as backing. In Heneghan’s apparent view, this is a mistake.

“So, I think, look, it comes back to at the end of the day common sense. And, in effect, we’re going in two weeks’ time, they’re being told they can remove them,” he says.

“I think, again, the government should start to look cool and calmly at the data, and then think, ‘Where does it have an evidence base and where doesn’t it?’ And that’s all I ever do is say, ‘Where’s the evidence to inform what we do?’ And if it’s lacking, then you have to err on the side of not intervening.”

[…]

Via https://dreddymd.com/2021/04/30/editor-of-bmj-evidence-based-medicine-calls-for-end-to-masks-in-schools-declares-zero-evidence-they-prevent-anything/

Feminism in the Cherokee Nation

Wilma Pearl Mankiller timeline | Timetoast timelines

Mankiller

Directed by Valerie Rehorse Mole (2017)

Film Review

This 2017 documentary is a tribute to the late feminist Native American Wilma Mankiller, the first woman to become a Cherokee Nation Principal chief in 1985.

The precolonial Cherokee Nation as a matriarchal society in which children, property and homes all belonged to women. Early British settlers belittled the Cherokee as a “petticoat” culture because female elders to signed along with men. With the Trail of Tears and the mass relocation of Cherokee from the Southeast to Oklahoma, European patriarchal values (which treated women as chattel) gradually prevailed.

Mankiller was born to an extremely poor family in Mankiller Flats Oklahoma. In the mid fifties the family was relocated to San Francisco by the same US official responsible for Japanese internment during World War II. There the family were housed in the notorious Hunter’s Point housing project.

During the 1960s, Mankiller worked together with United Food Workers activist Dolores Huerta and helped the Black Panthers with their children’s breakfast program. In 1969 she participated in the Native American occupation of Alcatraz and Pitt River land seized illegally by PG&E and the federal government.

In 1977, she returned to Mankiller Flats, where she launched numerous community projects to assist local Cherokee communities to become independent of corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs (BAF) control. Elected deputy chief in 1983, she assumed the role of Principal Chief in 1985, after Clinton appointed her predecessor as Undersecretary of the Interior. She was elected in her own right in 1985 and 1990.

After developing lymphoma in 1995, she chose not to run for reelection. Nevertheless she continued to actively campaign for her tribe’s economic and political independence until her death in 2010.

One of her most important achievements was involving the Cherokee Nation in the gaming industry. This not only freed them from economic dependence on the BAF, but created thousands of jobs and funded the construction of four major health care centers.

The film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

 

Drought-hit California moves to halt Nestlé from taking millions of gallons of water

Phoenix Lake in Ross, California. Long-standing fights in California between farmers, cities and environmental groups over the state’s scarce water supplies have heated up.
Phoenix Lake in Ross, California. Long-standing fights in California between farmers, cities and environmental groups over the state’s scarce water supplies have heated up. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
San Francisco
Nestlé, accused of taking millions more gallons than it is entitled to, receives draft cease-and-desist order from state officials

California water officials have moved to stop Nestlé from siphoning millions of gallons of water out of California’s San Bernardino forest, which it bottles and sells as Arrowhead brand water, as drought conditions worsen across the state.

The draft cease-and-desist order, which still requires approval from the California Water Resources Control Board, is the latest development in a protracted battle between the bottled water company and local environmentalists, who for years have accused Nestlé of draining water supplies at the expense of local communities and ecosystems.

Nestlé has maintained that its rights to California spring water date back to 1865. But a 2017 investigation found that Nestlé was taking far more than its share. Last year the company drew out about 58m gallons, far surpassing the 2.3m gallons a year it could validly claim, according to the report.

Nestlé has sucked up, on average, 25 times as much water as it may have a right to, according to the Story of Stuff Project, an environmental group that has been fighting to stop the bottled water company’s operations in California for years.

State officials sent the company a letter notifying it of the draft order on Friday.

“We have a limited amount of water,” said Julé Rizzardo, the assistant deputy director of the Division of Water Rights. “And as we face our second dry year in a row, it’s important that we use our authority to protect the municipal water supply and the environment.”

Strawberry Creek, which Nestlé has been siphoning from, is a tributary of the Santa Ana river, which provides drinking water for about 750,000 residents. The region’s watersheds also provide a habitat for deer, fox, mountain lions and threatened Alameda whipsnakes.

The draft order comes two months after Nestlé, which is based in Switzerland, sold its US- and Canada-based water brands to equity firms One Rock Capital Partners and Metropoulos for $4.3bn.

[…]

Via https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/27/california-nestle-water-san-bernardino-forest-drought