Dmitry Orlov

A lot of chattering heads are currently chattering about a great many things, such as:

• Trump said something about holding elections in the former Ukraine. Zelensky said something about that too, but nothing too important. He wants to hold on to his job for as long as possible and will say random things hoping that this will prolong the former Ukraine’s agony.

• Some congresscritter filed a bill for the US to leave NATO, which is 70% US money, 80% US technology and 100% US-controlled, so the word “disband” would be more appropriate. US defense contractors, who would have to approve this bill using their congressional hand puppets, will have none of it, of course, as long as there is any chance of milking that NATO job some more.

• A new National Security Strategy document has been accidentally located on the White House web server, according which Europe is an enemy, Russia is a friend and the US is a pumpkin. Its author seems to have been an AI engine that’s been force-fed Russian political talk shows and Putin’s speeches. Lots of people reacted in shock, as if this is something real. But strategy needs to become policy and that policy then has to be followed, so let’s not hold our breath.

• The EU has a strategy too. It is to wait and to stall. They want to wait until Trump gets impeached or croaks or his term runs out and he’s replaced with the usual sort of globalist warmongering stooge. It’s only a hope but at this point that is all they have.

• In the UK, fake news outlets are once again yammering about the Skripal/Novichok nonsense and trying to scare everyone about Russian spies/drones/whatever in a desperate effort to distract the populace from the fact that the UK is bloody broke, run by idiots and generally falling apart.

• Various EU-critters are still circling frozen Russian funds stuck at Euroclear in Belgium like a pack of hungry hyenas, stupidly oblivious (or pretending to be) that there is no money there, just debt — Europe’s own debt to Russia.

• Off the coast of Venezuela, the US fleet tired of sinking fishing boats (the fish are on drugs, you see!) and have instead resorted to piracy. They hijacked an oil tanker and intend to steal its oil. Americans will pay for that stolen oil through higher prices at the gas pumps, of course.

• The latest bit of fake news is a leaked plan: Americans are considering organizing something called C5: five core nations that include Russia, China, India, Japan and, of course, the United States. Little do they know that there is already an organization of five core nations: BRICS. The US would be the 6th but it won’t be invited.

This is all fake news, of course. And now for some real news:

Servicemen from the 123rd and 6th Guards Separate Motorized Rifle Brigades of the 3rd Combined Arms Army of the “Southern” Group of Forces liberated the town of Seversk, completing the clearing of Ukrainian Armed Forces units from the city’s neighborhoods. Servicemen from the “Southern” Group of Forces unfurled the Russian Federation National Flag near the Seversk City Administration building, the Memorial to the Heroes of the Great Patriotic War, and the monument to the legendary Soviet T-34 tank in Victory Park, as well as on the streets and rooftops of the city, which has come under the control of the Russian Armed Forces.

Why is this important? Because Seversk was the last Ukrainian fortress, built up since 2022, and now it has fallen. It has been a long, hard slog blasting apart a series hardened concrete bunkers using rockets, artillery and air bombardment, but now it is over. For the Russian army, the path is now open to Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, the last two large cities left under Ukrainian occupation in the Donbas. The Russian forces are moving faster than ever and are very much enthused by the idea of an outright victory.

That is all that matters: victory. Victory will bring peace. Everything else is just noise.
change.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/1b3e6b05-a2ac-4f3b-890a-70c98c49b2d3

Children who have their own cellphone by age 12 are at greater risk of obesity, depression and insufficient sleep than kids who don’t — and the younger they are when they get the phone, the greater risk they’ll be obese and have trouble sleeping, according to research published Monday in Pediatrics.

Ran Barzilay, M.D., Ph.D., the study’s lead author and a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Defender he hopes parents will consider how their decision to hand their kid a cellphone may affect their child’s health.

“It should not be something that you do and forget about it,” Barzilay said. “Rather, parents should communicate this to their kids and work together to see how smartphone ownership affects their lifestyle and wellbeing.”

The study authors conducted statistical analyses of data on more than 10,000 U.S. 12-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, described as the “largest long-term look at children’s brain development in the United States to date.”

Barzilay’s team brought together researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Penn Medicine, the University of California, Berkeley, and Columbia University.

In addition to looking at 12-year-olds who already had cellphones, they also tracked 12-year-olds who didn’t have a cellphone at the beginning of the year but were given one by age 13.

“By the time they turned 13,” Barzilay said, “the ones who had gotten a smartphone in that year were struggling more with mental health and sleep compared to kids who still didn’t have one.”

That was true even when the authors took into account the children’s mental health and sleep problems from the year before, he added.

Parents need to talk with their kids about cellphone use

Barzilay emphasized that cellphones aren’t inherently bad. They “offer significant benefits, connecting people and providing access to information and knowledge,” he said.

He empathized with parents who have to decide how long to hold off on giving their kid a cellphone, and who must set time limits once they do.

Parents can be sure that cellphones aren’t allowed in the kids’ room at night and build in non-cellphone socializing time and physical activity, he said.

Barzilay also encouraged parents to help their kids develop “healthy technology habits” by regularly talking with them about cellphone use and how it makes them feel.

“When teens understand that these conversations stem from a genuine commitment to their health, they are more likely to engage collaboratively with their parents, recognizing that both parties share the common goal of supporting their overall wellbeing,” he said.

Social media is just part of the problem

The Pediatrics study focused on cellphone ownership, not on the kind of content kids accessed when using a cellphone.

However, part of the controversy around children using a cellphone has to do with social media’s negative impact on them. For instance, The Defender recently reported on a 12-year-old girl who took her own life just three weeks after starting Prozac, following years of social media addiction that her parents said contributed to her depression.

Her mother is now part of a lawsuit accusing TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube of targeting vulnerable children with harmful content.

Researchers with the nonprofit Sapien Labs in January reported that feelings of aggression, anger and hallucinations were rising sharply among adolescents in the U.S. and India — and the increase was linked to the progressively younger age at which children are acquiring cellphones.

This month, Australia is preparing to implement the world’s first nationwide social media ban for teens. Starting Dec. 10, social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that kids and teens under 16 in Australia cannot set up accounts on their platforms.

The companies also must remove or deactivate Australian youths’ accounts by that time.

But cellphones aren’t just harmful to kids because of social media, according to Dr. Robert Brown, a diagnostic radiologist with more than 30 years of experience and the vice president of Scientific Research and Clinical Affairs for the Environmental Health Trust.

Earlier this year, Brown published research showing that just 5 minutes of cellphone exposure caused a healthy woman’s blood cells to abnormally clump up, even when the cellphone was an inch away from her skin.

Brown told The Defender he was encouraged to see high-ranking institutions like the University of Pennsylvania paying attention to the health consequences of cellphones on kids.

However, he would also like to see research focused on how the radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by the phones harms kids’ health. “It is not just the early age of ownership that is responsible,” he said.

Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, agreed.

“The Pediatrics study adds to the mountain of evidence that smartphones are problematic and parents need to protect their children. Aside from the content, the RF radiation is also harmful.”

Even the World Health Organization has now acknowledged that there is “high certainty” evidence that cellphone radiation exposure causes two types of cancer in animals, she said.

“Parents and the public need to engage in a sensible conversation about technology when it comes to our children and stop assuming that any of these technologies are harmless,” Eckenfels said.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/kids-cellphones-before-age-12-higher-risk-obesity-depression-poor-sleep-study/?utm_id=20251207

And critically, these associations persisted even after adjusting for an unusually wide range of potential confounders, including age, sex, socioeconomic status, BMI, smoking, alcohol-related disorders, hypertension, atrial fibrillation, heart failure, coronary artery disease, stroke/TIA, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, chronic kidney and liver disease, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, cancer, traumatic brain injury, hypothyroidism, osteoporosis, and dozens of medications ranging from NSAIDs and opioids to statins, antiplatelets, immunosuppressants, and antidepressants.

Even after controlling for this extensive list, the elevated risks remained strong and remarkably stable.

The primary adjusted model showed that adults receiving common adult vaccines (influenza, pneumococcal, shingles, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis) had a 38% increased risk of developing dementia (OR 1.38)

This alone dismantles the narrative of “vaccines protect the brain,” but the deeper findings are far worse.

Buried in the supplemental tables is a more shocking result: when the authors restricted analyses to Alzheimer’s disease specifically, the association grew even stronger: 50% increased risk of Alzheimer’s (Adjusted OR 1.50)

This indicates the effect is not random. The association intensifies for the most devastating subtype of dementia.

The authors ran multiple dose–response models, and every one of them shows the same pattern:

Dementia (all types)

From eTable 2:

• 1 vaccine dose → Adjusted OR 1.26 (26% higher risk)
• 2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
• 4–7 doses → Adjusted OR 1.42 (42% higher risk)
• 8–12 doses → Adjusted OR 1.50 (50% higher risk)
• ≥13 doses → Adjusted OR 1.55 (55% higher risk)

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) Shows the Same—and Even Stronger—Trend

From eTable 7:

• 1 dose → Adjusted OR 1.32 (32% higher risk)
• 2–3 doses → Adjusted OR 1.41 (41% higher risk)
• ≥4 doses → Adjusted OR 1.61 (61% higher risk)

This is one of the most powerful and unmistakable signals in epidemiology.

The highest dementia risk occurs 2–4.9 years after vaccination (Adjusted OR 1.56). The risk then slowly attenuates but never returns to baseline, remaining elevated across all time windows.

After 12.5 years, the risk is still meaningfully elevated (Adjusted OR 1.28) — a persistence incompatible with short-term “detection bias” and suggestive of a long-lasting biological impact.

This pattern is what you expect from a biological trigger with long-latency neuroinflammatory or neurodegenerative consequences.

When the authors apply a long 10-year lag — meant to eliminate early detection bias — the elevated risk persists:

• Dementia: OR 1.20
• Alzheimer’s: OR 1.26

If this were simply “people who see doctors more often get diagnosed earlier,” the association should disappear under long lag correction.

Influenza and Pneumococcal Vaccines Drive the Signal

Two vaccines show particularly strong associations:

Influenza vaccine

• Dementia: OR 1.39 → 39% higher risk
• Alzheimer’s: OR 1.49 → 49% higher risk

Pneumococcal vaccine

• Dementia: OR 1.12 → 12% higher risk
• Alzheimer’s: OR 1.15 → 15% higher risk

And again, both exhibit dose–response escalation — the hallmark pattern of a genuine exposure–outcome relationship.

• A consistent association between cumulative vaccination and increased dementia risk

• A stronger association for Alzheimer’s than for general dementia

• A dose–response effect — more vaccines, higher risk

• A time–response effect — risk peaks after exposure and persists long-term

• Influenza and pneumococcal vaccines strongly drive the signal

• The association remains after 10-year lag correction and active comparator controls

This is what a robust epidemiologic signal looks like.

[…]

Via https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/study-common-vaccines-linked-to-38