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Australia Passes “Age Verification” Bill to Keep Children Under 16 Off of Social Media – Back Door to Digital ID Requirements for EVERYONE

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by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

From the perspective of the consumer who uses social media, however, it became obvious that “age verification” requirements to access online services effectively mean that EVERYONE then will eventually have to prove their age, NOT just children.

Last week, Australia became the first nation in the world to pass strict legislation prohibiting children under the age of 16 from using online social media.

The reaction from Big Tech was mostly negative, as the issue at hand that this legislation concerns is “age verification” software in order to comply with laws such as this.

While Australia is a small country when it comes to online social media users, most saw this as a “test case” and an issue that will soon spread to other countries as well.

What Australia’s Social Media Kids Ban Means for Tech

While U.S. tech executives were tucking into their turkey on Thursday or guzzling Koia shakes, Australian lawmakers were approving a law that bans children under 16 from having a social media account.

Whoa! Australia is a relatively small country whose revenue contribution to Meta Platforms, Snap or TikTok is likely minuscule. But investors have to consider the possibility that the land Down Under is the canary in the coal mine of social media regulation.

After all, the Australian law is a more aggressive variation on laws passed by many U.S. states over the past couple of years, all aimed at protecting children from the worst of social media.

The U.S. state laws vary widely: some states, such as Tennessee, require social media firms to verify that parents consent to their children having an account. Age verification, to ensure social media firms know when a child holds an account, is becoming more common.

It’s hard to say whether these efforts have had much of an impact. Then again, tech industry lobby groups have sued to block implementation of many of these laws.

Tech companies are also trying to dodge responsibility for verifying who’s a kid and who’s an adult. Meta argues that the responsibility should sit with the mobile app store providers, Apple and Google. Apple says the opposite, as this Wall Street Journal report detailed.

But last week, The Washington Post reported that two Republican congresspeople were preparing a federal bill making the app stores responsible.

Social media firms aren’t ignoring the broader issue. Meta, for instance, recently made Instagram accounts for teens private by default, which should make it a bit harder for creepy adults to stalk kids. But given the pressure—including from mothers, as The Information recently reported—such efforts aren’t likely to be enough for social media’s critics.

To be sure, how exactly Australia plans to enforce the law is very unclear, particularly as it says social media companies can’t require state IDs as an age verification tool. If politicians are as worried about kids’ safety online as they claim to be, they wouldn’t make it difficult for social media firms to verify ages.

Tech companies have to prepare for the possibility that Australian-style bans could spread to other countries.

That would be particularly damaging for Snap, whose Snapchat app skews younger than those of other social media firms. But it wouldn’t be good for TikTok, Meta or even Reddit either.

If nothing else, the Australian law adds to a growing assembly of international regulations that threaten to mire tech firms in an ever expanding bureaucratic bog. While engineers are tech’s most valuable source of talent today, one day soon lawyers may take precedence. (Source.)

From the perspective of the consumer who uses social media, however, it became obvious that “age verification” requirements to access online services effectively mean that EVERYONE then will eventually have to prove their age, NOT just children.

A few Australian lawmakers clearly saw this, and warned the public that this was a back door way of rolling out government-issued national IDs to everyone in Australia.

Here is a brief video (under 5 minutes) of their concerns and warnings.

Their voices were largely unheard and probably suppressed, as I saw nothing about this in the U.S. media until after the bill passed.

My Australian friend, Dr John Gideon Hartnett of Bible Science Forum, covered the implications of this bill in a recent article, stating that he had no intentions of complying with a requirement of a National ID in Australia, and encouraged others to not comply either.

Australia’s Controversial Social Media Age Verification Bill Now Law

The Australian government’s Social Media Age Verification Bill has been passed without debate, aiming to impose biometric digital ID on citizens aged 16 and over. Critics warn it represents a shift towards authoritarianism and encourage voters to oppose Labor and Liberal parties.

The Australian Labor government, with support from the Liberal Opposition, therefore the Uniparty, just passed into law the Social Media Age Verification Bill without any real debate.

No other country in the world has such draconian laws.

But I think it is a good thing, not because of the police state surveillance, but because it might wake up a sleeping mass against the imposition of the authoritarian state.

It is really about forcing us all onto the biometric digital ID blockchain.

Craig Kelly wrote on X

The Social Media Age Verification Bill is not about “protection the children” it‘s about forcing every Australian 16 and over to obtain biometric facial recognition digital ID.

And VPNs won’t save you, because the new law empowers ACMA to force global surveillance of social media to hunt down Australians using VPN’s – and force them to comply by obtaining biometric digital ID.

But Australians have one last chance to stop this at the next election, by voting for the Libertarians or One Nation.

For it you rock up to vote Labor or Liberal as you have always done – you are voting for the implementation of totalitarian state.

It is time to wake up Australians!

This is the progression towards the state described by George Orwell in his famous novel 1984.

He just got the year wrong by 40 years.

As far as I can tell BibleScienceForum should be unaffected by this denial of freedom of speech to Australian under-16-year-olds.

The issue of biometric facial-recognition and digital ID won’t affect me either because I WILL NOT COMPLY! Nor should you comply!

That might mean that I will not be able to post anything on social media (X.com, Telegram.com and Facebook.com etc) because I will not be applying for a digital ID. But if they force me off all forms of social media, so be it. (Full article.)

Age Verification IDs Online will NOT Protect Children, but Make them MORE Available to the Pedophiles!

As I have previously reported, these huge social media companies run by billionaires could care less about “free speech” and they are ALL involved in child sex trafficking.

Please read this article, especially the last part, that I recently published that shows the problem with child sex trafficking that ALL of these huge social media companies are involved in, and the many links I provided in that article: Do Big Tech Billionaires Promote “Free Speech” or Child Sex Trafficking? What is “Free Speech”?

With this new law in Australia, which is most certainly a test case to be rolled out to the U.S. and many other countries soon, young girls and young boys aged 16 and over can be listed in a hackable database along with an image of their face and other personal details.

Even if the software companies swear up and down that this information will remain private, you can be sure that it will not, as cyber security software and other security measures to prevent this still lag way behind in their abilities to keep this data private, as we see in the news most every day reading about how these hackers so easily obtain this data.

If you want to keep your children safe from online predators, your only solution is to keep them offline completely, or only allow them online in your own home with you or another trusted adult present with them during their entire online activities, and completely avoiding ALL social media sites, or any other sites that require your child to create an account.

This also means that if they leave your home without you present with them, not supplying them with a “smart” cell phone.

There are still flip phones available for concerned parents who want to keep in touch with their children when they are not present, that cannot connect to Internet sites. (One review of such cell phones here.)

I agree with Dr. Hartnett that everyone should RESIST and NOT comply with obtaining Government-issued digital IDs.

If enough people refuse to comply, they will not be able to accomplish their goals, because compliance is necessary for this to work.

And even if the majority of people do comply, there is no guarantee this will work either, because the technology will always be dependent upon people owning devices to access the Internet, an Internet that is stable and ALWAYS available, electricity to run it all, and many other things that are necessary, but are by no means certain, in the future.

[…]

Via https://vaccineimpact.com/2024/australia-passes-age-verification-bill-to-keep-children-under-16-off-of-social-media-back-door-to-digital-id-requirements-for-everyone/

The failure of COP29: Does the “Green Agenda” have a future?

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COP29 deal not to everyone's liking - Vietnam Economic Times | VnEconomy
Raphael Machado

Some countries still seem unaware that this entire agenda has never been more than a new strategy by global elites to accumulate capital and impose new forms of social control.

Following the conclusion of the multilateral climate conference COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, the atmosphere is one of defeat. Nearly an entire week of speeches and endless meetings did not suffice to reach a reasonable consensus on a series of practical measures that had been anticipated.

Specifically, the debate on funding climate policies sank. The so-called “developing countries” had expected an annual grant policy exceeding $1 trillion for energy transition and climate change mitigation policies, but only $300 billion per year will be allocated—optimistically. Moreover, this sum will not necessarily be in the form of grants but may include loans and other financing mechanisms that bring interest and debt.

India denounced the final result of COP29, supported by Bolivia, Cuba, and Nigeria, as a farce and an insult from developed countries to developing nations.

This financing debate will now be deferred to COP30, scheduled to take place in Brazil in 2025. However, the chances of COP30 succeeding where COP29 failed seem very slim.

While climate alarmism and eco-globalism are now part of Brazil’s official ideology, in the rest of the world, these postmodern beliefs are losing momentum.

Take, for example, the reasons why expanding funding for the “Green Agenda” has been impossible in “developed countries.” Observing European governments’ behavior since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, one can see increasing difficulty in advancing energy transition and net-zero carbon policies.

Germany, for instance, was once one of the main drivers of climate alarmism worldwide, even closing its nuclear power plants “for the environment” (despite nuclear plants being far less polluting than most other energy sources). Yet today, facing an energy crisis caused by the NordStream’s destruction, Germany is reopening its coal-fired power plants.

Sweden, long a leader in international climate activism, has reversed many of its previous environmental measures. The Ministry of the Environment has been dismantled, and the government now prioritizes ensuring cheap fuel.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the previous administration of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suspended the ban on diesel car sales and decided to stop promoting the replacement of gas heaters. Similar examples can be found in several other countries.

Clearly, sanctions and the NordStream’s destruction have made Europe’s energy situation difficult enough to raise living costs, convincing European governments to roll back at least some environmental measures and dampen their enthusiasm for promoting global climate alarmism.

This retreat by European nations will be compounded by the fact that, starting in 2025, the United States will likely be governed by Donald Trump, who holds a critical stance toward climate alarmism and promises to intensify fracking for hydrocarbon extraction in the country. This is corroborated by the nominations of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy and Lee Zeldin to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In Brazil, the media has revealed that Lula’s administration fears a lackluster COP30 in the Amazon region in 2025, with the U.S. under Trump’s administration. Naturally, for Brazilian patriots focused on safeguarding national sovereignty over the Amazon and exploring oil in the Equatorial Margin, this is good news.

Indeed, Brazil’s insistence on adhering to the “Green Agenda” is puzzling, considering it often serves as a geopolitical control tool favoring major powers at the expense of developing nations. The climate agenda frequently imposes disproportionate obligations on Brazil relative to its actual contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions, which are significantly lower than those of more industrialized economies.

With a predominantly renewable energy matrix, Brazil is already an example of sustainability and energy efficiency worldwide. Approximately 84% of Brazil’s electricity is generated from clean sources, such as hydropower, wind, solar, and biomass—a level that countries like the United States and Germany have yet to achieve, despite leading global climate discourse.

Meanwhile, developed countries that built their wealth through the indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution now advocate environmental restrictions designed to limit the growth of emerging economies like Brazil. These impositions often harm strategic sectors such as oil and gas exploration, mining, and agribusiness, which are vital to national development and sovereignty.

In practice, we appear to be witnessing the crisis of the “Green Agenda” that has dominated global politics for years. Yet some countries still seem unaware that this entire agenda has never been more than a new strategy by global elites to accumulate capital and impose new forms of social control.

[…]

Via https://straightlinelogic.com/2024/12/01/the-failure-of-cop29-does-the-green-agenda-have-a-future-by-raphael-machado/

Mass Desertions Could End War in Ukraine

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U.S. Medevac helicopter at An Khe, South Vietnam, 1970. Photo: Mike Hastie, Medic, Vietnam

Barbara G Ellis

NATO leaders have been dithering about Russia’s recent retaliation against Ukraine’s lofting one of Lockheed’s long-range missiles deep into its interior. Their emergency huddle was about Putin’s new multi-missile (“Oreshnik “) which traveled 10 times the speed of sound (range: 310-3,400 miles) to hit a former ICBM factory . So far, either side seems to have considered the one factor that could end their planet-destroying, nuclear game of chicken.

It’s the real possibility of monumental mutiny and desertions by those boots-on-the-ground that both sides count on to do the heavy lifting in WWIII.

Most soldiers may be willing to risk death by bullets and bombs, but not radiation exposure. Despite recent official assurances by U.S. war planners that nuclear weapons would be used only on battlefields, radiation drifts for thousands of miles. It ignores borders and body protections—as proved by Hiroshima in 1945 and the Chernobyl disaster of 1986.

Russian president Putin claimed Oreshnik’s speed makes NATO’s current defense systems powerless and said its production was imminent. But while the West’s missile designers set up a crash program to counter this latest escalation, these warhawks and their counterparts evidently still ignore the ever-expanding deserter numbers or silent mutinies abuilding in Ukraine and Russia. However, troops usually know military officials traditionally underestimate or conceal death rates lest it demoralize both them and the public to begin questioning the worth of continuing a war.

Current desertion rates in Russia by August were 18,000 and increasing daily, Newsweek reported. Russia’s death rate by September was said to be 71,000 by its independent media outlet Mediazona. The Economist in July put total casualties—dead/wounded/ captured—at between 462,000 and 728,000.

Small wonder then why Putin “borrowed” nearly 12,000 combat troops from North Korea in October for front-line duty. Equally, NATO members have promised troops as well. Many now on site as “advisors” for their equipment—tanks and munitions to aircraft—and infantry training.

Ukrainian desertions have now become legendary, along with increasing populations of neighboring Romania, Poland, and Germany. The Kyiv Post just reported some 60,000 alone are facing criminal charges of desertion since the war’s start in 2022. Thousands of others have not been caught nor wooed or forced back to the ranks. The Eurasian Review also noted Ukrainians on the 629-mile frontline were poorly armed and often out of ammunition. It commented:

“Ukraine’s military is now ‘Outgunned and Outnumbered’, struggling with low morale and high rate of desertions….This prolonged war nearing three years have near

decimated many Ukrainian infantry battalions, making the situation grim on the battle limes. Reinforcements are few and difficult to be created, leaving soldiers exhausted, demoralized and desert [ing].”

Not to mention the 44,000 draft-age Ukainian males who by August had slipped through border-police lines of other nations. The Wall Street Journal says 15,000 fled to mountainous Romania in particular.

[…]

Mutiny and desertions are ancient. Never say soldiers lack courage in confronting officialdom over orders or a war’s justification. They risk certain death. But if a mutiny is successful, a “cause” has been won. So there’s much to be said for it.

Indeed, our country was founded by a nationwide mutiny against Britain’s King George III. The eight-year (1775-83) war’s costs in blood (25,000 to 70,000 dead), disease and treasure ($1.141 billion in 2024 dollars ) from both the wealthy rebels who signed the Declaration of Independence—and most anti-British colonists. The situation is almost the same when other countries’ nationalists attempt to wrest national independance from foreign occupiers and exploiters.

[…]

Few Americans may know that by late 1780 George Washington’s bedraggled army of 26,000 suffered “desertions” by 11,000 tired of fights over pay, enlistment contracts, no clothing, and little food.

After three years of war, the fiery cause of independence could not keep them from going home or, worse, joining the British army for far better living and pay conditions. In early January 1781, Pennsylvania regiments led other states’ mutinous legions in a march to army headquarters in Princeton for redress about broken contracts, back pay, clothing—and immunity from court-martials.

They won by dint of numbers, leadership, organization, persistence, and the advantage of General George Washington’s desperate manpower needs and his fears of wholesale defections. That successful lesson also was learned in France through it took a blood-drenched revolution of 1793 to found a republic after centuries of kings.

Another great mutiny was equally bloody, but because of political differences among the rebels, it led to a civil war over leadership.

At WWI’s start in 1914, the long-brewing Russian revolution was quietly growing with both the war-weary, disheartened public and the army. Mutinous soldiers were committing large-scale internal sabotage: massive desertions, fraternization with

Germans and Austrians, theft of military and civilian supplies, drunkenness, and especially self-inflicted wounds. Some 350,000 were “finger-injured” out of the 2.6 million wounded.

Finally, in 1917 the revolution erupted March 8 with a great strike in Petrograd. Ordered to suppress strikers, the army refused and, instead, quickly joined them. That was the last straw for those on the Russian battle lines and trenches. They abruptly quit the war en masse and left for home, leaving the revolutionaries to liquidate the Romanoff rulers and replace them with a dictatorship of the Communists.

The greatest army mutiny in U.S history to date involved the 1955-75 Vietnam war. The troops and the American public were told repeatedly that the cause was to prevent a “domino effect” of Chinese Communism’s spread to Asia’s vast populations. “Better fight them there than here” was the government’s war cry to prop up Vietnam’s rulers and business leaders. But once the advance troops arrived, even buck privates could see an impoverished population ruled by a corrupt government in league with foreigners to export its rich natural resources .

Asians had been exploited for years by European colonialists. Vietnam’s rubber trees for France’s Michelin tires, for example, as well as rice, sugar cane, coal, iron ore, and tin. Mutiny by the Vietnamese against French control succeeded in May 1954, partitioning the country into north (Communist) and south (national) states. To “protect” the South’s resources from the North’s “reunion” plans, the U.S. intervened. It used over 543,000 troops by 1968 in the subsequent war that was to cost the U.S. 58,220 lives and a major defeat—all to retain business as usual in world markets.

Aside from opposing intervention in Asia after the Korean war—and with a draft—the basic cause of the army mutiny was the unfairness that always accompanies conscription even for a one-year “tour.” Exemptions went to students (especially divinity and medical), vital professions, conscientious-objectors, family men, the National Guard, and the physically and mentally unfit.

Add the traditional class separations of the privileged becoming officers; the poor, the uneducated, and minorities becoming infantry “cannon-fodder.” And race. Some 300,000 Blacks served (31% of ground troops), so that by 1965, thousands were militant and vocal against discrimination and their menial duties.

The huge anti-war movement in the States was more than matched by mutinous deeds of combat troops, marines, sailors, and airmen in Vietnam and U.S. bases around the world. Galvanized by those demonstrations and teach-ins at home, GIs organized informally to do the same, but at barrack conspiracies, discussions at nearby activist coffeehouses about resistance, and by hundreds of defiant underground newspapers (Fort Polk Puke, Semper Fi, A’bout Face, RITA Notes, The Bond, P.E.A.C.E., Duck Power, Aerospaced, etc.).

Overt actions ranged from thousands of combat refusals and do-nothing night patrols (“search and avoid”), incapacitation from narcotics and alcohol, and stockade riots to fraternizing with the enemy, disabling a ship by fire and dropping nuts, bolts, and chains into another’s main gear shaft. But above all—and viewed as the most effective—was “fragging” hated officers with fragmentation grenades. Secret warnings led to undermining their confidence and to field incompetence. Historically, wars have always had soldiers murdering officers perceived as endangering their comrades by incompetence or recklessness, as ISR associate editor Joel Grier points out.

Statistics on fragging incidents were not kept before 1969 and apparently it’s still difficult to pry any Pentagon forensics data about whether a shot in the back was from “friendly fire” or the Viet-Cong. And for good reason: low morale leads to depression and suicide or to mutiny and desertions. Hence, army fragging casualty numbers (incidents: 1,017; deaths: 86; wounded: 714) are still under dispute, though obviously undercounted by the Pentagon. After all, the unofficial rate was said to be at least one fragging per week.

The overall result of fragging was lax discipline by frightened officers and enraged and exhausted troops refusing to die—or suffer lifetime disabilities— for a cause few soldiers understood or believed in. Nor did most Americans at home. The choice troops made to mutiny de-escalated combat, and finally stopped the Vietnam War.

David Cortright, is a Vietnam veteran who authored perhaps the seminal book on the army’s resistance to that war (Soldiers in Revolt, 2005, Haymarket Books). He makes the timeless point to soldiers, civilians, Congressional warhawks, military officials—and particularly presidents, prime ministers and generals that:

“[The] central lesson of the GI movement…is that people need not be helpless before the power of illegitimate authority, that by getting together and acting upon their convictions people can change society and, in effect, make their own history” (243).

[…]

Via https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/11/29/mass-desertions-over-radiation-could-end-the-war-in-ukraine/

Combination Routine Childhood Vaccination Associated with Development of Asthma and Eczema

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By Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH

The University of Nottingham published a study from the West Midlands General Practice Database (n=29,238) and gave a the world a rare look at how unvaccinated children compared to those who received combinations of vaccines DPPT (Diphtheria, Polio, Pertussis, Tetanus) at months 2, 3, 4 and MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) at 12 and 15 months.

The authors reported hazard ratios far in excess of two and attempted to adjust them by frequency of visits. I can tell you as an epidemiologist that the crude measures of association are far more important. For example, if an unvaccinated child is perfectly healthy without problems, then the visit rate to the clinic will be very low. In this group, there was a more than 10-fold increased risk with vaccination. Conversely vaccinated with asthma or eczema the visit rates will be higher.

As you can see from the table, both DPPT and MMR were significantly associated with the later development of asthma and eczema. These data suggest that children who undergo routine combination vaccination face higher risks of childhood allergic diseases. Conversely the unvaccinated have low or negligible risks. Going natural appears to be a healthier way to have a young child remain free of these common allergic diseases.

[…]

Via https://petermcculloughmd.substack.com/p/combination-routine-vaccination-associated

Sleepy Joe’s Hunter Pardon Is About Biolabs, Not Gun & Tax Charges

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It’s The Biolabs Stupid! Sleepy Joe’s Hunter Pardon Is Not About Gun & Tax Charges

By Kelen McBreen

If Joe Biden wanted to clear his son Hunter from being convicted of lying on a background check while purchasing a gun and evading taxes, he could have done just that.

However, Sleepy Joe suspiciously cleared Hunter of ANY CRIMES he committed “or may have committed or taken part in between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.”

As popular 𝕏 account @WarClandestine noted, the pardon covers the time period when the CIA and U.S. State Department began their 2014 coup in Ukraine, the same year the Hunter Biden-funded biolab company Metabiota started working with the Department of Defense to do coronavirus research in Ukraine.

Clandestine also suggested the pardon is meant to cover up more than just Hunter’s involvement in the bizarre biolab network, as the operation is tied to the American and Chinese governments and the release of the COVID-19 bioweapon.

[…]

Via https://hellboundanddown.com/2024/12/02/its-the-biolabs-stupid-sleepy-joes-hunter-pardon-is-not-about-gun-tax-charges/

Languages of the Silk Road and Beyond

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Language Family Map - Kenjutaku

Episode 14 Languages of the Silk Road and Beyond

Language Families of the World

Dr John McWhorter

Film Review

Regions involved in the ancient Silk Road trade developed their own discrete languages belonging to the Altaic family (with Turkic, Mongolian and Tungasic being the main subfamilies). At some point, all three have been the official languages (employing Chinese script) of China.

All Altaic languages put the verb at the end of sentences and use suffixes more commonly than prefixes.

Genghis Khan used Turkic languages in the countries he conquered and ruled.

The Turkic language began in Mongolia and spread east and west with the Mongolian conquests. The Huns spoke Turkic, and the Mughals who conquered India spoke Turkic in preference to Persian.

The people of the Anatolian peninsula initially spoke Hittite, then Greek, then Seljik Turkic, then Ottoman Turkish. Turkic has many different dialects that shade into one another, with even more word similarities than the Romance languages.

Sekiz, the Turish word for 8 is

  • səkkis in Azerbaijani
  • sekis in Turkman
  • sakkis in Uzbek
  • segrz in Kazak
  • säkkiz in Uighur

Altaic languages incorporate “vowel harmony” which means the vowel suffix for plurals changes depending on where the main vowel is formed in in the mouth. They also have “suffix sandwiches,” in which suffixes are combined to make a sentence out of a single long word.

They also have many loan words from Persian and Arabic. For example Altaic speakers often use Persian expressions in complex academic writing (eg mathematical principles).

In 1920, the founder of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk took steps to solidify Turkey’s Western identity by switching Turkish script from the Arabic to the Roman alphabet and by purging Turkish (and substituting Turkish of all its Arabic and Persian words.

Mongolian – Mongolian didn’t spread beyond the homeland despite all the Mongol conquests because Genghis Khan and his successors used Turkic languages to rule the territories they conquered.

  • Kalmyk – Turkic language spoken in Russia. Ewak, the invented language used in Return of the Jedi is based on Kalmyk. Has verb variations for hypothetical actions similar to the Indo-European subjunctive.
  • Tungasic languages – found in small scattered groups in Eastern China and Siberia. Manchu, the language of China’s ruling elite* for 300 years (until 1912) is a Tungasic language. Three hundred thousand residents of Xinjiang province still speak Manchu as a result of a Manchu garrison stationed there.

*Rather than requiring their Chinese subjects to learn Manchu, the Manchu dynasty made extensive use of interpreters.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/6120000/6120030

Lost Kingdoms of Africa: Great Zimbabwe

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Lost Kingdoms of Africa: The Great Zimbabwe

BBC (2013)

Film Review

Art historian Dr Gus Casely-Hayford begins his investigation of the Great Zimbabwe on the site of the ancient Swahili Coast, which in the 13th and 14th century was the world’s most foremost gold trading market.

Trade on the Swahili Coast was well established by the first century AD, long before the discovery of gold in the Great Zimbabwe. Pottery shards over 2000 years old and Greek historical texts indicate traders from India and Arabia* visited the coastal city of Rhapta prior to 100 AD – seeking ivory, rhinoceros horn and fine tortoiseshell, in return for spears, daggers and glass. The Arab chronicler Ibn bin Tuta visited the city-state of Kilwa-Kisiwan on an island off the Swahili in 1331 and described the presence of “black” Muslims and a palace full of gold, silver and precious stones. A 14th century Kilwa coin found in Great Zimbabwe indicates the two cultures were linked in a trade network.

Manyikeni (Bantu word meaning place where people can give to each other) south of Great Zimbabwe, was also part of this trade network. In the 1970s, archeologists found gold ornaments, copper wire and glass beads in burial sites, along with exquisitely designed mosques and palaces built of coral and finished with soft lime plaster made of powdered coral. The architecture features the same style of (mortar-less) stone walls found in Great Zimbabwe.

Many similar artifacts are found in Macungupwe (currently part of South Africa’s national park system) and a historical museum in Pretoria. The intricacy of some of the gold sculptures and ceramic pots suggests Macungupwe collapsed just before the rise of Great Zimbabwe, which was likely founded by Macungupwe survivors).

Casely-Hayford visits Zimbabwe last, the first BBC presenter to be allowed in the country for nine years. Between the 13th and 15th century, Great Zimbabwe, a city of 250,000 people and encompassing 720 hectares, controlled a kingdom encompassing much of modern Zimbabwe and parts of Mozambique and ran a trade network extending between the Limpopo and Zambezi River. They left behind stunning mortarless brick walls and palaces, gold bracelets, ceramics and glass beads from China and the Middle East

Both Great Zimbabwe and Kilwa collapsed in the 15th century.

*Swahili is the Arab word for coast.

https://91b6be3bd2294a24b7b5-da4c182123f5956a3d22aa43eb816232.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/contentItem-8482084-74225851-al0vskol4251j-or.jpg

CDC Escalates Childhood Hyper-Vaccination Agenda for 2025

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By Nicolas Hulscher, MPH | Courageous Discourse | November 30, 2024

The 2025 Immunization Schedule was approved by ACIP and adopted by CDC Director Mandy Cohen on October 24, 2024:

Children are now recommended to be exposed to 36 vaccine doses from in-utero to age 2 (4 doses in the pregnant mother, 32 doses in the child from birth to age 2). By age 18, the CDC now advises over 70 doses when taking into account routine COVID-19 and flu injections. This represents a massive increase in recommended vaccine doses since the inception of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act giving vaccine makers full liability protection:

Since they enjoy full liability protection, pharmaceutical companies currently get their injections approved with no long-term, placebo-controlled trials. Follow-up periods range from just 3 days to 6 months, with most studies lacking a placebo group entirely. It’s evident that our regulatory agencies are compromised and are not prioritizing the public’s best interests:

Childhood hyper-vaccination is likely contributing to the skyrocketing autism rates:

The vast majority of American’s have clearly demonstrated their rejection of unnecessary and unsafe vaccines and likely won’t comply with the absurd ACIP schedule. A recent CDC report found that the vast majority of adults refuse COVID-19 genetic booster shots with no human data, as well as flu and RSV vaccines:

The ill-advised federal vaccine racket needs to be re-assessed based on proper scientific studies and restructured to protect the health of America’s children.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

http://www.mcculloughfnd.org

Trump’s Picks for Surgeon General and Top Posts at FDA, CDC Earn Mixed Reviews

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dr. makary, dr. weldon and dr. nesheiwat

Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead three key federal public health agencies “would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health” — but they’re also “controversial,” according to NPR.

President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to lead three key federal public health agencies “would help the incoming president shift the priorities of agencies that are linchpins in public health” — but they’re also “controversial,” according to NPR.

Trump tapped Dr. Marty Makary to head the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Dr. Dave Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for surgeon general.

“The roles will be key to helping to enact Trump’s second term health agenda, which could include agency reform and changes to public health policies,” Axios reported.

The three agencies report to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Earlier this month, Trump nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), to lead HHS.

Weldon previously criticized COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions. Makary and Nesheiwat first expressed support for vaccines and other pandemic-related policies but have become more critical in recent years.

Kim Witczak, a drug safety advocate who has worked with the FDA as a consumer representative, addressed mainstream criticism of the nominations. She told The Defender that “the pharmaceutical and medical-industrial complex is very worried.”

She added:

“The pharmaceutical and food industries have faced little resistance from regulators and Congress. The strong pushback we’re seeing now suggests they fear what might happen under an administration willing to challenge the status quo.”

Dr. Joseph Varon, president of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, told The Defender, “Leadership in these agencies is critical for fostering trust in public health and ensuring evidence-based policies. We hope the nominees are committed to transparency, innovation and addressing the ongoing challenges in healthcare, particularly the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Makary: U.S. government the ‘greatest perpetrator of misinformation’

Makary, a public health researcher and surgeon at Johns Hopkins University, developed the surgical safety checklist, adopted by the World Health Organization and credited with saving many lives. Makary worked with the first Trump administration, including on surprise medical billing, NPR reported.

Earlier this year, Makary published “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets it Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.” The book highlighted evidence that many modern-day health crises in the U.S. were caused or hastened by the medical establishment.

According to The Gateway Pundit, “Makary was initially an advocate for the COVID vaccine but changed his perspective as more data became available.” NPR noted that Makary “voiced support for lockdowns early in the pandemic and encouraged universal masking” but later “became increasingly outspoken” against such policies.

In 2021, Makary called the Biden administration’s CDC “the most political CDC in history” for not being forthcoming with the public about COVID-19 and the vaccines. According to the New York Post, he criticized the CDC and Biden administration for their “unsupported claims” about COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness.

Makary has also been vocal about the potency of natural immunity to COVID-19, criticizing the medical establishment’s “complete dismissal of natural immunity.”

In May, he criticized The New York Times for being slow to report on the thousands of people injured by the COVID-19 vaccines.

Last year, Makary said during congressional testimony that “public health officials have made many tragic mistakes during the pandemic.” Those mistakes included ignoring natural immunity, dismissing the possibility of COVID-19 originating from a lab leak, closing schools, masking toddlers and “pushing boosters for young people.”

In September, Makary appeared alongside Kennedy at a congressional roundtable hosted by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on the chronic disease epidemic. During the roundtable, Makary said, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation has been the United States government.”

In his announcement, Trump said Makary would work with Kennedy to “properly evaluate harmful chemicals poisoning our Nation’s food supply and drugs and biologics being given to our Nation’s youth, so that we can finally address the Childhood Chronic Disease Epidemic.”

Brian Hooker, Ph.D., CHD’s chief scientific officer, told The Defender Makary has a “steep learning curve regarding vaccines in general” but has taken “encouraging stances late in the pandemic about the COVID vaccine and countermeasures.”

Scott C. Tips, president of the National Health Federation, said Makary represents “a mixed bag of mainstream medicine and outside-the-box thinking.” He credited Makary for opposing “mandatory COVID-19 injection boosters” and criticizing the FDA’s rejection of natural immunity.

Epidemiologist and public health research scientist M. Nathaniel Mead praised Makary’s nomination. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a physician with a deeper understanding of what ails our healthcare system and what’s needed to restore integrity to the FDA after six decades of regulatory capture.”

“Makary seems uniquely positioned to bring meaningful change,” Witczak said. “He understands the systemic harm caused by overmedicalization and the corporate capture of healthcare. His history of challenging mainstream narratives during COVID shows he isn’t afraid to speak out.”

Weldon sponsored bill to ban mercury from vaccines

Dr. Dave Weldon is an Army veteran who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives between 1995 and 2009.

In a statement, Kennedy praised Weldon’s experience, saying he “will bring the truth and transparency needed to restore the public’s confidence” in the CDC.

In 2007, Weldon sponsored a bill that would have banned mercury from vaccines, expressing concern about “an enormous inherent conflict of interest within the CDC,” because the agency promotes vaccination while assessing their safety.

According to Politico, Weldon also “raised concerns about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and Gardasil, Merck’s papillomavirus virus, or HPV vaccine.

While in Congress, Weldon also introduced legislation outlawing human cloning and helped secure a deal that banned patents on human organisms, including genetically engineered embryos, according to The Associated Press.

According to NPR, Trump said Weldon would “proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic,” and “prioritize Transparency, Competence, and High Standards.”

John Gilmore, executive director of the Autism Action Network, said Weldon “was sounding the alarm on failures in the vaccine system 20 years ago.” He said Weldon attended conferences like Defeat Autism Now and listened to mothers of vaccine-injured children, which is “not a behavior many doctors are inclined to do.”

Hooker said he was “very encouraged” by Weldon’s nomination, and that he’d like to know more about Weldon’s position on “the bloated vaccine schedule as well as COVID-19 countermeasures.”

He credited Weldon with helping independent thimerosal researchers gain access to the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a collaborative project that monitors vaccine safety and conducts studies on vaccine side effects.

Hooker, who participated in that project, said “Our access to the VSD was rescinded months later because [the CDC] didn’t like our results, which included a definitive link between thimerosal and autism. Weldon indeed will need to implement myriad changes to the flawed and fraudulent process.”

Weldon is the first nominee for CDC director who will face a Senate confirmation process, due to legislation passed in 2022, NPR reported.

Nesheiwat: ‘egregious unethical & harmful’ to add COVID shots to childhood schedule

Nesheiwat, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, is a medical contributor to Fox News and medical director at CityMD, a network of urgent care centers in New York and New Jersey.

Nesheiwat previously promoted the benefits of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, NPR reported. According to The Gateway Pundit, Nesheiwat has since changed her position and her “recent statements indicate a significant shift in her perspective.”

In October 2022, Nesheiwat tweeted, “If CDC approves a COVID vaccine addition to the routine schedule of vax for kids, it will mark the most egregious unethical & harmful decision to children. No mandates. Especially for a vax that can’t prevent disease.”

Nesheiwat has also questioned the efficacy of the COVID shots, tweeting in February 2023, “Covid vax does not prevent disease like we once thought it did per the cdc /Pfizer etc.,” and has tweeted in support of natural immunity.

In a statement, Trump called Nesheiwat an advocate for preventive medicine and praised her “commitment to saving and treating thousands of American lives.”

Mead said Nesheiwat’s about-face on vaccines “shows she has the ability to think critically,” which could help her “serve as a bridge builder at a time of deep division.”

A ‘historic opportunity to shake up the establishment’

Calling healthcare in the U.S. “horribly broken,” Hooker said the three nominees will face several challenges if confirmed because federal public health agencies require reforms.

Hooker said:

“Corporate influence, including the corporate capture of these agencies, is the biggest problem to be tackled. First and foremost, we need to protect children … from the highly flawed policies of these agencies.

“All influences from Big Pharma, Big Food and Big Ag need to be completely rooted out and the whole edifice should be rebuilt brick-by-brick to include only those policies that help and never harm children.”

Gilmore said public health agencies should publicize “all the data they have available.” He also called for a ban on vaccine mandates. “We have to be able to sue in a real court for vaccine injuries,” he added.

Varon called for independent clinical trials and for “independent scientific inquiry and reducing undue influence from corporate or political pressures.” He also called for promoting early treatment protocols for emerging diseases and giving physicians “the flexibility to treat patients with evidence-based approaches.”

“This moment represents a historic opportunity to shake up the establishment,” Witczak said. “After years of feeling like leaders were paying lip service — or working against the public — I finally see hope for meaningful reform. It’s time to restore these agencies’ missions to serve the public, prioritize safety, and act with integrity.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/trump-picks-surgeon-general-fda-cdc-makary-nesheiwat-weldon/

Justice Department Orders DEA to Halt Airport Searches Because of ‘Significant Issues’ With Cash Seizures

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close up of chest of DEA agent with DEA logo and badge | Stringer/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

(Stringer/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

The DEA paid one airline employee tens of thousands of dollars to snoop on travel itineraries and flag passengers for searches.

The Justice Department has ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to suspend most searches of passengers at airports and other mass transit hubs after an independent investigation found DEA task forces weren’t documenting searches and weren’t properly trained, creating a significant risk of constitutional violations and lawsuits.

The deputy attorney general directed the DEA on November 12 to halt what are known as “consensual encounter” searches at airports—unless they’re part of an existing investigation into a criminal network—after seeing the draft of a Justice Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) memorandum that outlined a decade’s worth of “significant concerns” about how the DEA uses paid airline informants and loose criteria to flag passengers to search for drugs and cash.

OIG Investigators found that the DEA paid one airline employee tens of thousands of dollars over the past several years in proceeds from cash seized as a result of their tips. However, the vast majority of those airport seizures aren’t accompanied by criminal prosecutions. This has led to years of complaints from civil liberties groups that the DEA is abusing civil asset forfeiture—a practice that allows police to seize cash and other property suspected of being connected to criminal activity such as drug trafficking, even if the owner is never arrested or charged with a crime.

The memo, released publicly today by the OIG, found that failures to properly train agents and document searches “​​creates substantial risks that DEA Special Agents (SA) and Task Force Officers (TFO) will conduct these activities improperly; impose unwarranted burdens on, and violate the legal rights of, innocent travelers; imperil the Department’s asset forfeiture and seizure activities; and waste law enforcement resources on ineffective interdiction actions.”

The OIG memo and directive is a victory for advocacy groups that oppose civil asset forfeiture, such as the Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that is currently litigating a class action lawsuit challenging the DEA’s airport forfeiture practices.

Dan Alban, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, says the OIG memo “confirms what we’ve been saying for years, and it confirms the allegations in our ongoing class action lawsuit against DEA over precisely these sorts of abusive practices, where they target travelers based on innocuous information about their travel plans, and then interrogate them and search their bags in what they call a ‘consensual encounter’ that is really anything but consensual in the high security environment of an airport.”

The OIG launched an investigation earlier this year following the Institute for Justice’s release of a video taken by an airline passenger who was detained and had his bags searched by the DEA at the airport. The passenger, identified only as David C., had already passed through a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoint and was boarding his flight when he was approached by a DEA officer who demanded to search his carry-on. When David refused to give permission, the agent declared he was detaining the carry-on bag, and David could either board his flight or consent to a search.

David missed his flight entirely and eventually consented to a search of his carry-on, which revealed no drugs or cash.

[…]

Via https://reason.com/2024/11/21/justice-department-orders-dea-to-halt-airport-searches-because-of-significant-issues-with-cash-seizures/