Very few people in Russia and across the Global South are as qualified as Sergei Glazyev, the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Commission (EEC), the policy arm of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), to speak about the drive, the challenges and the pitfalls in the road towards de-dollarization.
As the Global South issues widespread calls for real financial stability; India inside the BRICS 10 makes it clear that everyone needs to think seriously about the toxic effects of unilateral sanctions; and Professor Michael Hudson keeps reiterating current policies are not sustainable anymore, Glazyev graciously received me at his office at the EEC for an exclusive, extensive conversation, including fascinating off the record odds and ends.
These are the highlights – as Glazyev’s ideas are being re-examined, and there’s huge expectation for the green light from the Russian government for a new trade settlement model – which for the moment is in the final stages of fine-tuning.
Glazyev explained how his main idea was “elaborated a long time ago. The basic idea is that a new currency should be first of all introduced on the basis of international law, signed by the countries which are interested in the production of this new currency. Not via some kind of conference, like Bretton Woods, with no legitimacy. At the first stage, not all countries would be included. BRICS nations will be enough – plus the SCO. In Russia, we already have our own SWIFT – the SPFS. We have our currency exchange, we have correspondent relations between banks, consultation between Central Banks, here we are absolutely self-sufficient.”
All that leads to adopting a new international currency: “We don’t really need to go large scale. BRICS is enough. The idea of the currency is that there are two baskets: one basket is national currencies of all countries involved in the process, like the SDR, but with more clear, understandable criteria. The second basket are commodities. If you have two baskets, and we create the new currency as an index of commodities and national currencies, and we have a mechanism for reserves, according to the mathematical model that will be very stable. Stable and convenient.”
Then it’s up to feasibility: “To introduce this currency as an instrument for transactions would not be too difficult. With good infrastructure, and all Central Banks approving it, then it’s up to businesses to use this currency. It should be in digital form – which means it can be used without the banking system, so it will be at least ten times cheaper than present transactions through banks and currency exchanges.”
That Thorny Central Bank Question
“Have you presented this idea to the Chinese?”
“We presented it to Chinese experts, our partners at Renmin University. We had good feedback – but I did not have the opportunity to present it on a political level. Here in Russia we promote the discussion via papers, conferences, seminars, but there’s still no political decision on introducing this mechanism even on the BRICS agenda. The proposal by our team of experts is to include it in the agenda of the BRICS summit next October in Kazan. The problem is the Russian Central Bank is not enthusiastic. The BRICS have only decided on an operating plan to use national currencies – which is also a quite clear idea, as national currencies are already used in our trade. Russian ruble is the main currency in the EAEU, trade with China is conducted in rubles and renminbi, trade with India and Iran and Turkiye also switched to national currencies. Each country has the infrastructure for it. If Central Banks introduce digital national currencies and allow them to be used in international trade, it’s also a good model. In this case crypto exchanges can easily balance payments – and it’s a very cheap mechanism. What is needed is an agreement from Central Banks to allow a certain amount of national currencies in digital form to participate in international transactions.”
“Would that be feasible already in 2024, if there is political will?”
“There are some start-ups already. By the way, they are in the West, and the digitalization is conducted by private companies, not Central Banks. So the demand is there. Our Central Bank needs to elaborate a proposal for the summit in Kazan. But this is only one part of the story. The second part is price. For the moment price is determined by Western speculation. We produce these commodities, we consume them, but we do not have our own price mechanism, which will balance supply and demand. During the Covid panic, the price for oil fell to nearly zero. It’s impossible to make any strategic planning for economic development if you do not control prices of basic commodities. Price formation with this new currency should get rid of Western exchanges of commodities. My idea is based on a mechanism that existed in the Soviet Union, in the Comecon. In that period we had long-term agreements not only with socialist countries, but also with Austria, and other Western countries, to supply gas for 10 years, 20 years, the basis of this price formula was the price for oil, and the price for gas.”
So what stands out is the effectiveness of a long-term, long view policy: “We did create a long-term pattern. Here in the EEC we are looking at the idea of a common exchange market. We already prepared a draft, with some experiments. The first step is the creation of an information network, exchanges in different countries. It was rather successful. The second step will be to set up online communication between exchanges, and finally we move to a common mechanism of price formation, and open this mechanism for all other countries. The main problem is that the major producers of commodities, first of all the oil companies, they don’t like to trade through exchanges. They like to trade personally, so you need a political decision to make sure that at least half of production of commodities should go through exchanges. A mechanism where supply and demand balance each other. For the moment the price of oil in foreign markets is ‘secret’. It’s some type of colonial times thinking. ‘How to cheat’. We must create legislation to open all this information to the public.”
The NDB in Need of a Shake-up
Glazyev offered an extensive analysis of the BRICS universe, based on how the BRICS Business Council had its first meeting on financial services in early February. They agreed on a working plan; there was a first session of fintech experts; and during this week a breakthrough meeting may lead to a new formulation – for the moment not made public – to be put into the BRICS agenda for the October summit.
“What are the main challenges within the BRICS structure in this next stage of trying to bypass the US dollar?”
“BRICS in fact is a club which doesn’t have a secretariat. I can tell it, from a person that has some experience in integration. We discussed the idea of a customs union here, on the post-Soviet territory, immediately after the collapse. We had a lot of declarations, even some agreements signed by heads of state, over a common economic space. But only after the establishment of a commission the real work stated, in the year 2008. After 20 years of papers, conferences, nothing was done. You need someone who’s responsible. In BRICS there is such an organization – the NDB [New Development Bank]. If the heads of state decide to appoint the NDB as an institution which will elaborate the new model, the new currency, organize an international conference with the draft of an international treaty, this can work. The problem is that the NDB works according to the dollar charter. They have to reorganize this institution in order to make it workable. Now it works like an ordinary international development bank under the American framework. The second option would be to do it without this bank, but that would be much more difficult. This bank has enough expertise.”
“Could an internal shake-up of the NDB be proposed by the Russian presidency of BRICS this year?”
“We are doing our best. I’m not sure the Ministry of Finance understands how serious this is. The President understands. I personally promoted this idea to him. But the chairman of the Central Bank, and ministers are still thinking in the old IMF paradigm.”
‘Religious Sects Don’t Create Innovation’
Glazyev had a serious discussion on sanctions with the NDB:
“I discussed this issue with Mrs. Rousseff [the former Brazilian President, currently presiding the NDB) at the St. Petersburg Forum. I gave her a paper about it. She was rather enthusiastic and invited us to come to the NDB. But afterwards there was no follow-up. Last year everything was very difficult.”
On BRICS, “the financial services working group is discussing reinsurance, credit rating, new currencies in fintech. That’s what should be in the agenda of the NDB. The best possibility would be a meeting in Moscow in March or April, to discuss in depth the whole range of issues of BRICS settlement mechanism, from most sophisticated to least sophisticated. It would be great if the NDB sign up for it, but as it stands there is a de facto gulf between the BRICS and the NDB.”
The key point, insists Glazyev, is that “Dilma should find time to organize these discussions at a high level. A political decision is needed.”
“But wouldn’t that decision have to come from Putin himself?”
“It’s not so easy. We heard statements by at least three heads of the state: Russia, South Africa and Brazil. They publicly said ‘this is a good idea’. The problem, once again, is there is no task force yet. My idea, which we proposed before the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, is to create an international working group – to prepare in the next sessions the model, or the draft, of the treaty. How to switch to national currencies. That’s the official agenda now. And they have to report about that in Kazan [for the BRICS annual summit]. There are some consultations between the Central Banks and Ministers of Finance.”
Glazyev cut to the chase when it comes to the inertia of the system: “The main problem for bureaucrats and experts is ‘why they don’t have ideas?’ Because they assume the current status quo is the best one. If there are no sanctions, everything will be good. The international financial architecture that was created by the United States and Europe is convenient. Everyone knows how to work in the system. So it’s impossible to move from this system to another system. For businesses it will be very difficult. For banks it will be difficult. People have been educated in the paradigm of financial equilibrium, totally libertarian. They don’t care that prices are manipulated by speculators, they don’t care about volatility of national currencies, They think it’s natural (…) It’s a kind of religious sect. Religious sects don’t create innovation.”
Now Get on That Hypersonic Bicycle
We’re back to the crucial issue of national currencies: “Even five years ago, when I spoke about national currencies in trade, everybody said it was completely impossible. We have long-term contracts in dollars and euro. We have an established culture of transactions. When I was Minister of Foreign Trade, 30 years ago, at the time I tried to push all our trade in commodities into rubles. I argued with Yeltsin and others, ‘we have to trade in rubles, not in dollars’. That would automatically make the ruble a reserve currency. When Europe moved to the euro, I had a meeting with Mr. Prodi, and we agreed, ‘we will use euro as your currency, and you will use rubles’. Then Prodi came to me after consultations and said, ‘I talked to Mr. Kudrin [former Russian Finance Minister, 2000-2011], he didn’t ask me to make the ruble a reserve currency’. That was sabotage. It was stupidity.”
The problems actually run deep – and keep running: “The problem was our regulators, educated by the IMF, and the second problem was corruption. If you trade oil and gas in dollars, a large part of profits is stolen, there are a lot of intermediate companies which manipulate prices. Prices are only the first step. The price for natural gas in the first deal is about 10 times less than the final demand. There are institutional barriers. A majority of countries do not allow our companies to sell oil and gas to the final customer. Like you cannot sell gas to households. Nevertheless, even in the open market, quite competitive, we have intermediates between producer and consumer – at least half of the revenues are stolen from government control. They don’t pay taxes.”
Yet fast solutions do exist: “When we were sanctioned two years ago, transfer from US dollar and euro to national currencies took only a few months. It was very quick.”
On investments, Glazyev stressed success in localized trade, but capital flows are still not there: “The Central Banks are not doing their job. The ruble-renminbi exchange is working well. But the ruble-rupee exchange doesn’t work. The banks that keep these rupees, they have a lot of money, accrue interest rates on these rupees, and they can play with them. I don’t know who’s responsible for this, our Central Bank or the Indian Central Bank.”
The succinct, key takeaway of Glazyev’s serious warnings is that it would be up to the NDB – prodded by the leadership of BRICS – to organize a conference of global experts and open it for public discussion. Glazyev evoked the metaphor of a bicycle that keeps rolling along – so why invent a new bicycle? Well, the – multipolar – time has come for a new hypersonic bicycle.
The rate at which a population replaces itself between generations without migration stands at around 2.1.
As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz reports, the following map with comparable data between countries from 2021, shows that even then South Korea was one of only a few places in the world with a fertility rate below 1.
In Japan, which on Tuesday announced a 5 percent decline in births to a record low of 758,631, the birth rate remained at 1.26. This places the country among the approximately 90 in the world where populations are not growing independent of immigration. Also in this group are many nations from Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia. Most of the countries losing fertility are better developed and reasons for the trend include greater access to contraception and more women being educated and heading to work.
The story is different in the developing world where higher rates of fertility are fueling continued global population growth. The West African country of Niger had a fertility rate of 6.8 in 2021, the highest in the world listed by the World Bank, followed by Somalia, Chad and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Out of the 33 countries in the world where women had 4 or more children on average, 31 were in Africa that year.
On average, women in 1963 were having 5.3 children in their lifetime and by 2021, that had more than halved to 2.3. During the same period, the global population rose by around 150 percent from 3.2 billion to 7.9 billion. The fact that populations kept (and keep) growing despite falling global fertility is tied to longer life expectancy and lower childhood mortality.
The UN expects global fertility to reach the minumum replacement level of 2.1 by the middle of the century while global population is expected to start falling towards the end of it.
This excellent presentation meticulously breaks down exactly what went awry throughout COVID-19. What everyone needs to know is summarized below…
Ron Johnson has gradually become one of my favorite senators in American history. In 2020, he repeatedly advocated for early COVID-19 treatments to be made available to Americans (which had they been made available would have ended the pandemic).
Throughout 2021, he spoke out against the vaccine mandates and in November hosted a panel at the Senate which scrutinized the federal vaccine mandates and exposed how poorly those who experienced severe COVID-19 vaccine injuries were being treated. In January 2022, he hosted a panel which scrutinized the entire COVID-19 response, and in December of 2022, he hosted a panel focusing on everything we now know about the vaccines.
Being one of the most outspoken critics of the vaccination program in American history got him a lot of pushback, and in 2022, he decided to postpone his retirement to go through a grueling re-election campaign so there would be someone in the government who could advocate for everyone whose lives had been ruined by the COVID vaccines.
Despite being public enemy number one of the pharmaceutical industry, Johnson narrowly won, becoming the first politician in America’s history to run on the vaccine safety issue and win. Since then Johnson has kept his promise and fought for the vaccine injured (along with taking a variety of other difficult but important positions such as giving one of the most poignant speeches I’ve heard on the Ukraine War when he tried to block the Senate from continuing to fund it).
A lot of work has gone into producing each of the vaccine panels he’s hosted. On Monday, he hosted “Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?” When it was all said and done, Ibelieve this panel was the most effective presentation I have seen for explaining what happened throughout COVID-19 and waking people up to how much they have been lied to. Because of this I strongly encourage you to watch or share his presentation with people who you think might be open to understanding exactly what was done to all of us. This article will begin with his entire panel:
Note: I have been struggling to find the best term for these criminals. The four I’ve used are listed below; I would appreciate knowing what you think is the best one.
What’s the best term for the COVID criminals?
The COVID Cartel
The Pandemic Profiteers
The Pandemic Industrial Complex
The Biosecurity Agenda
Lastly, for those who prefer to read, a transcript of Johnson’s symposium can be found here.
Note: for each of the videos embedded within this article, I (or the Vigilant Fox) edited them down to their most important parts.A lot of time was put into this article because of the importance of what was presented.
Federal Health Agencies and the COVID Cartel: What Are They Hiding?
Since the entire panel was 4 hours long, I recognize that many of you will not be able to watch all of it. For that reason, I tried to highlight what I felt were it’s most important parts.
First, in Johnson’s opening statement, he discusses just how hard it has been over the last three years to get any of the information his office is legally entitled to from the government. For example with (Fauci’s) NIH:
We are down to the last 50 pages [of the 4000 he originally requested]. They will not release these. It’s been now going close to 2 years. This is what has been provided to us. Do you think there might be some incriminating information in this?
Likewise, these agencies have completely brushed off all evidence something is wrong. For example, with the NIH:
Just like former NIH director Francis Collins Collins told me when I asked about all the deaths being reported on VAERS, [he said], “Senator, people die.” The fact that both of these statements are as true as they are callous highlights the challenge we face in exposing the truth.
While with the FDA:
I’ve written 4 [letters on hot-lots] starting in December of 2021. The first letter compared 25,000 lots of COVID vaccine to 22,000 lots of flu vaccine. One COVID lot had 5,297 adverse reactions associated with it. The worst flu lot had a 137. So 5,300 versus 137.
365 COVID lots had more than 100 adverse events. Only 10 flu lots had more than 100. And 80% of the serious adverse events, those with emergency room visits, hospitalization, or death were associated with only 5% of the lots. So, again, to me, I’m from manufacturing. That shows to me a manufacturing process out of control.
[It] took us a year to get some kind of response and, basically, response from the agencies was, “we don’t see any variation in lots.”
Johnson then illustrates how the current political climate has undermined everything science once stood for:
“Vaccine injuries are rare.” “The benefits outweigh the risk and that the science is clear and overwhelming.” “And anyone challenging this narrative is an is an anti science conspiracy theorist.” In other words, second opinions are not allowed. To me, this attitude is the antithesis of science.
I am amazed at the knowledge mankind has obtained over the millennia. But I would argue that what we don’t know vastly exceeds what we do know. So as we pursue truth, we must pursue it with the humility that that reality demands.
Johnson’s opening statement was then followed by Robert Malone:
I’ll be succinct. The SARS CoV 2 modified mRNA based vaccine products were deployed via emergency use authorization without adequate nonclinical and clinical testing and without full disclosure of known patient risk and efficacy data. This violated well established legislatively mandated patient informed consent requirements. The FDA and HHS justified these actions as necessary due to reliance on deeply flawed modeling data indicating that SARS CoV 2 was associated with an infection fatality rate of 3.4%.
Note: the IFR was subsequently shown to average between 0.018%-0.03% for everyone under 60 and was approximately 0.506% for those between 60-69 years of age.
Subsequent clinical research experience has revealed a number of problems with the genetic vaccine technology based SARS COV 2 products, which have been marketed as vaccines. In most cases, there has been an effort to obscure or deny facts in public communication by government and pharmaceutical industry representatives.
Malone then listed the key issues with the vaccines, to which Johnson replied:
Doctor Malone, I think one of the things that always bothers me is [that] so much of what we’re learning in terms of harms of these vaccine was clearly known before they were rolled out.
Jessica Rose spoke next. After concisely summarizing all of the issues that had been found within VAERS, she concluded with:
Standard operating procedures for analysis of safety signals emergent from VAERS when utilized reveal causal links between the COVID 19 injectable products and the adverse events investigated. Standard operating procedures are not being followed by the owners of the data, namely CDC, HHS, and FDA, and this equates to hiding the millions of people reporting not only adverse events but injuries in the context of the COVID 19 injectable products.
Note: Rose also reviews the science behind why vaccinated individuals keep on catching COVID-19.
Edward Dowd then concisely presented the years of work his team has done to quantify just how devastating the vaccines have been for the world.
“You Can’t Hide the Dead Bodies” – Edward Dowd Testifies on the COVID Jabs
“One America CEO Scott Davison, in a chamber of commerce meeting, revealed that he had seen 40% excess mortality … for 25 through 64. He said that a 10% increase would be once in a 200-year-flood or… pic.twitter.com/ssxEkIYcEQ
When analyzing the excess death human cost…in 2020, there were approximately 458,000 excess deaths, of which 73% were aged 65 and older and 15 to 64 comprising just 27%. However, in 2021, with the rollout of the “safe and effective vaccine,” there were approximately another 500,000 excess deaths, but a mix shift had occurred from older to younger. In 2021, the 65 plus age category was [only] 57…while the 15 to 64 cohort increased to 43%.
The absolute excess death increase from 2020 to 2021 for the productive working age 15 to 64 was 73% [124,000 to 215,000].
The total excess death since the rollout of the vaccine in the US, including 21, 22, and 23 is approximately 1,100,000. We estimate the economic cost, productive working age people dying at $15,600,000,000 When analyzing disabilities, it’s interesting to note that there were no excess disabilities in 2020.
Using the civilian labor force, we have calculated an increase of 2,300,000 individuals with disabilities costing the economy an estimated $77,000,000,000. When analyzing lost work time, which we call injuries, we estimate 28,400,000 individuals are chronically absent resulting in an estimated economic cost of a $135,000,000,000 since 2021…Obviously, the policy cure was undeniably worse than the illness.
Kevin McKernan then discussed his groundbreaking discovery that there was widespread DNA plasmid contamination of the COVID vaccines and how horrendously the drug regulators have responded to that discovery.
This work has been replicated by many labs around the world, and now the FDA, the EMA, and even Health Canada, have admitted to this. The regulatory agents have admitted that Pfizer also omitted the SV40 sequences that are in their vaccine. They’ve deemed this contamination to be of little consequence, claiming the DNA is of too little concentration to matter or to be containing DNA of no functional consequence. These statements are false and are not supported by any independent testing by these regulators.
After the regulators have admitted to being deceived, they asked the opinion of the party that deceived them how bad was the deception. They shockingly believe the answer they were given, which is that these sequences have no relevance to plasmid manufacturing. As someone who has worked on the Human Genome Project manufacturing millions of plasmids, I can assure you that this is an overt lie. DNA contamination can lead to insertional mutagenesis. This is actually declared in Moderna’s own patent regarding the mRNA vaccines.
This is also supported by Lim et al, which speaks to the rate of spontaneous integration in the genome during transfection. We are using transfection after all with LMPs. The SV40 DNA is in fact functional. It is published as a potent gene therapy tool in a nuclear targeting sequence as described by David Dean et al.
The SV40 promoter DNA is also known to bind to the tumor suppressor gene known as p53.
Note: p53 defects are commonly linked to cancers.
We’ve applied these vaccine system cancer cell lines and have evidence that it enters the cell and can survive several cell divisions. We have preliminary evidence, although this requires replication in other labs, that this DNA can integrate into the genome. We found 2 spike sequence integration events in ovarian cancer cell lines of CAR 3 into chromosome 12 and 19 very recently. Since these vaccines were expected to only contain mRNA, they were never assessed for genotoxicity studies. These studies were therefore being conducted as guinea pig US citizens as we witnessed an unprecedented rise in cancer drug sales since the vaccines rolled out.
It is time for our representatives to repeal or review the PDUFA Act of 1992. This act allows regulators to defray the cost of regulation by accepting payments directly from the companies they regulate. Over half of the FDA’s budget is sourced through this act.
Note: I discussed the significance of the vaccine plasmid contamination in more detail here.
Dr. David Gortler (who previously served as a senior advisor at the FDA) then explains why the contamination and widespread variability we are seeing in the vaccines (e.g., the hot lots) being completely ignored is so unprecedented:
Federal rules requiring ingredient transparency date all the way back, believe it or not, to 1862 [and] it’s the whole reason the FDA was started in 1906. Prior to COVIDsRNA injections, the FDA had approved 4 different RNA based products. Onpattro, shown here, was the 1st RNA product approved back in 2018…as you can see by looking at this label, Onpattro prominently details the exact structure, milligram strength, and molecular weight. Highlighted in green at the very top, you’ll see it specifies [what its] lipid nanoparticles are engineered for.
In contrast to the previous labels I’ve shown, here is the official FDA label for COVID RNA injections. As you can see just looking at it, it details a lot less information. We don’t [even] have the structure.
Of note, in pharmacology, even very minor deviations in any molecular structure can mean the difference between a drug and a poison…The lack of transparency means that scientists can’t use modeling to test lipid nanoparticles for safety receptor specificity or analyze inequality [in batches of those products].
Unfortunately, around 70% of the 127 page document that explains the methodology to perform quality control on RNA injections are redacted much like the document I’ve shown here.
Next Dr. Harvey Risch discusses the “crushingly obsessive push to COVID vaccinate every living person on the planet” and provides a concise overview of the horrific bioweapons industry which gave birth to COVID-19 and then tried to pivot to vaccinating everyone rather than accept responsibility for what it had done.
Dr. Harvey Risch makes a damning case that the global push to force vaccinate the world was a strategic move to protect the bioweapons industry from scrutiny and justify its existence.
“So my hypothesis, what I believe, is that both the virus origin cover-up and the forced… pic.twitter.com/7grdLjRh5U
Note: This catastrophic industry is discussed in more detail here (e.g., I highlighted how numerous modern diseases are the results of lab leaks).
Next, Barbara Loe Fisher, an activist who has spent decades fighting for vaccine safety shared the broader context of what we are now dealing with.
I worked with parents in congress to secure safety and informed consent provisions in the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986. It was an historic law, the first official acknowledgment by government that federally licensed and state mandated vaccines can and do injure and kill some children. In January, my eyewitness perspective of how and why child vaccine victims and their parents were betrayed after that law was passed 38 years ago, was featured in a 2 hour conversation I had on the Highwire.
I encourage everyone to watch it and learn how parents trusted that the 5 years of work we put into that 1986 act to successfully secure life saving, informing, recording, reporting, and research provisions in it, and to protect the legal right of vaccine victims to sue vaccine manufacturers for product design defects, and to sue negligent doctors for medical malpractice, and to create an expedited, more just, less traumatic federal vaccine injury compensation system alternative to a lawsuit were all destroyed by congressional amendments, by federal health agencies, and the US Supreme Court after that law was passed. Following that betrayal of trust, Congress directed federal agencies to create lucrative public private business partnerships with the pharmaceutical industry, a business deal that has broken America’s public health system.
Note: I previously wrote about how the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act forced the government to create VAERS (as parents had no way to report vaccine injuries) and ever since that time, the government has done everything it could to undermine VAERS.
Johnson then shares a poignant observation with Fisher that illustrates how effectively the pharmaceutical industry has bought out our media:
By the way,I became aware of you from that excellent documentary which I would also recommend. What struck me about [it] is back then in 1982 through 1986, you could talk about these things. You could advocate for your child who’s vaccine injured. You weren’t ostracized. You were actually welcomed here in the senate by people like Senator Hatch and Senator Kennedy and you got this [law] signed by Ronald Reagan.
To which Fisher replies:
I never imagined when I began this work in 1982 that the day would come when I would not be able to exercise freedom of thought and conscience in the country I love. And I thank you for allowing me to exercise that right today.
Next, Bryan Hooker, the parent of a severely vaccine injured adult son shares his 23 years of work (e.g., 15 peer-reviewed papers) to get the data on vaccine injury the CDC has been hiding for decades.
“For every one child that is saved from death from COVID-19, there are 30 child deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.”
Dr. Brian Hooker testifies against lack of oversight on ALL vaccines.
Study Comparing Vaccinated and Unvaccinated Children (2020):
In 1962, children received 5 vaccine doses, and in 1986, the schedule expanded to 25 doses of 5 different vaccine formulations. Shortly after the passage of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, the law was amended to essentially erect a liability shield protecting vaccine manufacturers, and the schedule expanded dramatically. By 2023, 73 doses of 16 different vaccine formulations were given to children up to age 18. [As we discovered through lawsuits] the FDA approved these formulations individually only with minimal and inadequate safety testing, and the CDC has never tested the cumulative effect of the vaccine schedule on childhood health outcomes.
Since [proper trials] are really the only way to establish that a pharmaceutical product is safe, it is misinformation to state that the vaccines are safe.
However, independent researchers have assessed the outcomes of vaccinated versus unvaccinated children.
This [study] demonstrates that vaccinated children were at least twice as likely to be diagnosed with developmental delays, ear infections, and gastrointestinal disorders.
[In this study] a control group of over 1800 unvaccinated children recruited from 46 different states in the US were compared to the national average rates of the listed disorders…For each of the autoimmune, neurodevelopmental, and other disorders considered, the unvaccinated group fares much better with incidence rates between 4-20 times lower than their vaccinated counterparts.
The CDC has a database called the vaccine safety data link. It’s over 10,000,000 individuals with 2,000,000 children from 10 participating HMOs. I would say that within that database, there were at least 10,000 unvaccinated children that can be studied.
Neither do they they publish the results [discovered from that data], nor do they let any independent scientist in to look at that information. [That’s] because [they know] the bloated vaccination schedule is responsible is in part responsible for the epidemic of chronic disorders that we see in children in the United States.
Note: Hooker also discusses the evidence the COVID-19 vaccine harms children (e.g., that it appears to kill 30 children for each child it saves from COVID and has given many of our children myocarditis).
Next, Del Bigtree discusses the decade of work he and the non-profit ICAN have conducted to get that data from the government:
In his talk, he puts the results of a recent study which monitored 99 million people for 45 days post vaccination into context. It found that their risk for a variety of severe conditions increased by 2-7 times, something which quickly adds up as you when consider how many of those “rare” conditions exist (that often take more than 45 days to appear) and how many vaccines they’ve received. These results is turn sheds a light on exactly what’s been happening to our children.
Every one of the childhood vaccines has a similar [lengthy] list of [severe] side effects. Though they are considered rare, how rare is it when you multiply roughly 50 potential side effects 72 times, which is the total number of doses given to a child by the time they’re 18. The revelations from the recent study of the COVID vaccine explains what we have been saying for years. Vaccines are not completely safe, and [though] those side effects are rare. What happens when you add them altogether?
Next, Dr. Sabine Hazan shared how her [self-funded] research to evaluate the use of existing therapies to treat COVID-19 was blocked by the FDA, her discovery that the severity of COVID-19 was directly linked to a loss of bifidobacteriain the gut and that the vaccine also caused a loss of bifidobacteria in the gut. She then contrasted this to how previous research she did (which supported the pharmaceutical industry) never ran into similar road blocks. Note: I synopsized that research here.
Pierre Kory then discussed the lengthy number of mechanisms which are in place to ensure that repurposed (off-patent) drugs can never have enough evidence to be acknowledged as treatments for a disease someone is profiting off of.
Ivermectin is often recognized–2nd to penicillin–for having the greatest impact on human health. Its discovery even won the Nobel Prize.
But propagandists told you it was “horse dewormer.”
Out of 43 effective medicines for COVID, the ones approved had something in common: They… pic.twitter.com/jhk0dV4WkY
Note: this talk has already been seen by over 1.6 million people on Twitter.
Next, Christian Perron MD PhD (former chairman of the WHO’s committee on vaccines and communicable diseases) recounted how early in the pandemic, he completed a study which showed hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin dramatically lowered the death rate from COVID-19. A political backlash forced the withdraw of his study and he was fired from his 26 year professorship.
Before long France then banned the use of hydroxychloroquine and began enacting harsher and harsher sanctions against French dissidents like Perron who tried to tell the truth—eventually forcing Perron to publish in a French newspaper which had originally been created to defy the Nazis (as every other publication censored him).
Perron was followed by Raphael Lataster PhD, who is one of the leading researchers working with the BMJ (one of the top 5 medical journals) to expose the fraud within the COVID vaccine trials:
These [abhorrent] policies [e.g., the vaccine mandates] were justified via claims about the vaccine’s effectiveness and safety. Now recent research published in major medical journals reveals that these claims were highly exaggerated…we have found in the studies varying definitions of fully vaccinated and unvaccinated. And, generally, what we find with the term fully vaccinated is that they are ignoring COVID cases, COVID infections, in the partially vaccinated…that effect was found to be up to 48% using data from Pfizer’s trial as an example.
We can’t be sure what the actual exaggeration is because we aren’t supplied with all the data. So it’s impossible to actually know. But it looks like there are huge exaggerations of effectiveness because of what you could call manipulation of the data. So if these [omitted COVID cases] were included, or if even just some of these were included, we could have an effectiveness of the vaccines of around 10%…[which]is well below the 50% required for approval. Furthermore, looking to safety in the clinical trials, adverse effect counting windows are again incredibly short.
Note: Lataster also discusses many of the safety issues with the vaccines that were demonstrated within the trial data but hidden from the public (e.g., that the vaccines have a significant risk of myocarditis) and states “now Pfizer also admits that they’re still trying, this is a quote ‘to determine if Cominati is safe and effective and if there is a myocarditispericarditis association that should be noted’. That’s on clinicaltrials.gov still right now. They’re trying to find out if it’s safe and effective right now.”
Award winning investigative journalist Lara Logan then provides a poignant summary of how her profession has been hijacked by the government and how a variety of shadowy organizations now enforce this vast propaganda apparatus. This was the most compelling part of her talk:
Lara Logan Highlights How Facebook and Google Are Not Too Dissimilar from Stalin and Hitler
“Companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Google, as you have heard many times today, have been allowed to amass monopoly power. And as a result, they not only reach billions of people… pic.twitter.com/4USaO29Bo9
Note: Her testimony was followed by one from Jason Christoff, a propaganda expert, who explained why flooding the population with a single narrative and way of thinking has caused many people to adopt completely dysfunctional beliefs at odds with everything they’d held dear
They were then followed by Rodney Palmer, who was a Canadian journalist for 20 years, sharing his perspectives on the current state of the media.
If the news reporters did their jobs instead of reporting propaganda, this fraud would have been exposed from the outset.
Censorship is what actually caused these deaths. It was the lie that assured us it was safe when it wasn’t, and it still isn’t
In America, it’s much worse. The vaccine companies are allowed to sponsor the news directly…To a visiting Canadian, the news here looks like one big ad for pharmaceutical products. It’s a bit of a culture shock when you turn on the TV. There wouldn’t even be a US newscast without Pharma ads. So the reporters on your newscasts are all conflicted.
They can’t bite the hand that feeds them. They can’t possibly investigate the most important stories of our time.
It appears that the reporters are actually colluding with their sponsors to break FDA advertising laws. FDA law requires them to conspicuously describe the known risks of any pharmaceutical product [which news anchors promoting vaccines never do.
The good news is no one believes the TV news anymore. Only 15% of Canadians, 15%, are getting the boosters.
[The media has] now canceled lunchtime news hours. It’s canceled weekend newscasts. After these reporters are laid off, we’ll only be left with the trusted favor of the trusted faces of our favorite news anchors, delivering the propaganda of the day, instead of the news of the day. But when those trusted faces are telling us lies, they’re like a super weapon aimed directly at us. The news anchors are now the finger on the trigger in that game of Russian roulette.
When the news is poisoned, so is Democracy…most every other country is letting this happen, but where goes America, so goes the world. You have a unique role in setting the moral tone for Western democracies.
So I respectfully recommend that the senate investigate the role of American television news networks, including with pharmaceutical advertisers to skirt the FDA laws that require them to declare the known risks of a pharmaceutical product. This investigation should extend to any reporters, news anchors, editors, and executives who lied to their audience about the safety of the COVID vaccines.
Note: Palmer also describes how he gradually saw the corrupting influence of the pharmaceutical industry enter Canada’s media over the last decade. One of the most compelling observations he shared was that during the pandemic, the doctors who spoke on television didn’t talk like doctors but instead appeared to have corporate media training, which he took as an early sign a lengthy PR campaign was being enacted to sell as many vaccines as possible.
Next, Matthias Desmet provided a concise summary of the crowd psychology which explained how it was possible for so many people to refuse to see what was being hidden from them, even thing after thing happened which made it clear we were all being lied to:
Note: I recently completed an article relating Desmet’s work on crowd psychology to how individuals commonly become trapped in cults and dangerous spiritual practices.
Brett Weinstein then describes the institutional breakdown gripping our society and the malicious forces which are taking away each thing we had previously depended upon for truth and justice (e.g., our premier scientific apparatus). I wanted to quote one exchange he had with Johnson:
[Johnson] Now I kind of want to ask you, I describe my eyes being opened up, certainly during COVID to a number of things…Can you just describe your [red pill] journey here?
[Weinstein] Well, I think we are all on a similar journey. I did not think that I was naive 7 years ago, and then I learned that I had been very naive and I keep learning that lesson. Each new discovery reveals that I was missing something that was right in front of me, and I think that’s actually the hallmark of the exact pattern I’m describing.
Canadian Randy Hillier served in Ontario’s parliament for 15 years and was the first member to publicly oppose his government’s response to COVID. Like Canada’s citizens, Hillier was targeted by the government for doing so, and argues we are at the tip of a slippery slope with this. In this part of his testimony, he shares how Ontario’s leadership told him they made the decision to continually coverup the damage of the COVID policies because they felt the political consequences would be too severe if they admitted their mistakes:
Next, Dr. Sorin Titus Muncaciu shared his experience as a Romanian member of parliament who watched the central authorities use every tool at their disposal to forcefully vaccinate Romania.
We are a party having probably 10% of the votes we got in the parliament in 2020, and we, from the very beginning of this pandemic, we decided that the rights of the people to decide if they accept, or [do not accept receiving] an experimental drug should be respected.
When the European Union started behaving like the USSR with those commissars coming to us and mister Barnier came to Romania. This gentleman was the commissioner for internal affairs of the European Union and pushed us, pushed the Romanian parliament to vote [for COVID vaccine mandates].
But in Romania the problem they face is that we are 40 years after a communist dictatorship, 30, 34 years after a communist dictatorship. And it’s in our genes to distrust the government because we knew every time a communist government is saying anything or is directing anything, we knew that’s a lie, that’s something that we should not trust or we should not follow.
We did everything in the book that we could to stop that and we stopped it. And, as a consequence to that, the Romanian rate of vaccination was probably less than half of what the other European countries experienced or United States, Canada and Australia [experienced]. And, therefore we can compare now the low rate and the excess mortality. And that’s the best proof I can bring to the table is the fact that having a relationship between a low rate of vaccination and low excess mortality, which is right there you see it on the, Romania is the last country on the right which means we have negative excess mortality while all the other countries in Europe have positive excess mortality.
Rob Roos (a European member of Parliament) and Phillip Kruse (a lawyer) then discussed who actually funds the WHO and the disastrous treaty it is trying to sneak through which will force everyone to comply with the pandemic cartel and silence anyone who challenges their next pandemic response.
Note: I discussed this treaty and the grass roots effort to stop it in more detail here. I consider that article to be one of the most important articles I’ve published on Substack.
Finally, Ryan Cole concluded the talk by discussing how he was punished for speaking out, how everything which happened throughout the pandemic has violated our fundamental constitutional rights and how critical it is for us to reclaim what our Founding Fathers fought for.
Dr. Ryan Cole Delivers Impassioned Testimony: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!”
🔥🔥🔥
“When I became a physician, I did not give up my constitutional rights, the right to freedom of speech enumerated in the First Amendment.”
Note: for anyone considering being a whistleblower, Johnson requested for you to contact his office here.
Conclusion
Since Johnson packed this presentation with so many impactful points, it was quite hard to decide which was the best one to conclude it with. Eventually however, I settled on this one, which while brief, I believe is the critically important message all Americans can agree with:
It is remarkable how much each successive panel Johnson has hosted has improved upon the one which preceded it. I consider this to be both a product of how dedicated each participant has been to fixing this mess and how much the alternative media has facilitated the production of high quality information that has rapidly unravelled the immensely complex web we were trapped within.
Without each of your supporting the wonderful community of dissident authors on Substack, much of this would likely have never happened, and I thank each of you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the opportunity to be part of it.
Lastly, if you have anyone close to you who is on the fence about the vaccines, please consider sharing this article or a video of Johnson’s panel with them; it’s something than can persuade people who are at last beginning to become open to hearing the truth and we have reached the moment where it is critical for the truth to reach as many people as possible.
Details Of ‘Sabotaged’ Russia-Ukraine Peace Deal In First Months Of War Revealed
The Wall Street says it has gotten its hands on a secretive document revealing the details of a failed Ukraine-Russia peace deal that was on the table within the opening months of the war. Since then there have been several reports, including from Foreign Affairs which said the UK at the time sought to sabotage the deal.
The draft peace treaty was drawn up by negotiators from both sides in April 2022, and reveals the thinking and objectives of Moscow at the time. The 17-page document has never been made public, with the WSJ for the first time on Friday divulging key sections and points.
Dated April 15, 2022, the document is said to lay out an agreement that turns Ukraine into a “permanently neutral state that doesn’t participate in military blocs”. It further stipulated that Ukraine must not build up its military using Western support and that Crimea must remain under Russian control.
Back when negotiations were taking place during the opening six weeks of the war, via AP
The WSJ analysis admits that there were some deep concessions on the table from the Ukraine side, and further underscores many of these things would likely remain in place in any future deal where Ukraine would no doubt be inflicted with even more compromises given its forces are currently being rolled back by superior Russian military might.
“The draft treaty states that Ukraine, while being allowed to pursue European Union membership, wouldn’t be allowed to join military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” according to the report. “No foreign weapons would be allowed on Ukrainian soil.”
And importantly, “Ukraine’s military would be pared down to a specific size.” The proposed deal even sought to impose permanent limitations on the Ukraine armed forces’ troop numbers: “Russia sought to limit everything from the number of troops and tanks to the maximum firing range of Ukrainian missiles.”
Another key point dealt with the role of the Russian language in Ukrainian society. Some two-thirds of the country at least knows Russian, while much of the eastern portion that includes the Donbas speaks Russian as their first language. The document reportedly sought to ensure the Russian language had an equal status in Ukrainian government ministries and in courts. The Zelensky government has since the war’s start sought to aggressively limit and even stamp out Russian in the public sphere.
According to more context of the draft deal from the WSJ:
The future of the area of eastern Ukraine covertly invaded and occupied by Russia in 2014, wasn’t included in the draft, leaving it up to Putin and Zelensky to complete in face-to-face talks. That meeting never took place.
The treaty was to be guaranteed by foreign powers, which are listed on the document as including the U.S., U.K, China, France and Russia. Those countries would be given the responsibility to defend Ukraine’s neutrality if the treaty were violated. But while the treaty held, guarantors would be required to “terminate international treaties and agreements incompatible with the permanent neutrality of Ukraine” including any promises of bilateral military aid. The international security guarantees wouldn’t apply to Crimea and Sevastopol.
Negotiations stopped completely by June of that year, and there were widespread reports months after indicating that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson encouraged Zelensky not to make a deal with Moscow.
Meanwhile, entering the third year of this horrific and tragic conflict which has taken countless lives:
“Ukraine will join NATO. It is not a question of if, but when,” Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of NATO, said. pic.twitter.com/WLbyNS8TL3
Hundreds of billions in arms and funding have since been poured into Kiev and its war effort, and tragically likely hundreds of thousands have died. So much death and destruction could have been averted if an early deal had been reached and held, and backed by external powers.
The WSJ gives specifics on troop limitations from the 17-page document in the following:
The draft treaty with Ukraine included banning foreign weapons, “including missile weapons of any type, armed forces and formations.” Moscow wanted Ukraine’s armed forces capped at 85,000 troops, 342 tanks and 519 artillery pieces. Ukrainian negotiators wanted 250,000 troops, 800 tanks and 1,900 artillery pieces, according to the document. Russia wanted to have the range of Ukrainian missiles capped at 40 kilometers (about 25 miles).
But Ukraine is now likely in for more severe restrictions on any future Ukrainian state and military, should there ever be a negotiation for the end of the war reached (assuming Moscow and NATO don’t stumble into direct war by then).
Bloomberg on Thursday issued a report predicting total collapse of the Ukrainian front lines by summer, as the headline suggests (Ukraine Sees Risk of Russia Breaking Through Defenses by Summer): “Ukrainian officials are concerned that Russian advances could gain significant momentum by the summer unless their allies can increase the supply of ammunition, according to a person familiar with their analysis,” the report said. Will peace settlement talks begin at that point, or will the West intervene even more forcefully?
Although my focus is on markets rather than politics, it’s impossible to forecast markets without understanding what’s going on in the political realm. While there are important Senate and House races this year, all eyes are focused on the presidential race likely (as of now) to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
A Trump vs. Biden (if he makes it) replay of the 2020 election could be close and is difficult to predict this far in advance. But we can say that the simple narrative of Trump vs. Biden does not come close to capturing the complexities of what’s ahead.
In the first place, Biden may not even be the Democratic nominee because of his obvious physical and mental disabilities. I’ll save the Biden story for another day. For now, let’s look at the other wild card affecting the 2024 election — the role of third parties.
Most observers disregard third-party candidates. They typically get 1–2% of the vote, don’t come close to winning individual states and have no impact on the final electoral results. That’s true, but there are some important historical exceptions.
To understand the potential impact of third parties and get a preview of what might happen this year, we need to look at three critical elections. In reverse chronological order, they are 1992, 1968 and 1912.
In 1992, Ross Perot won about 19% of the popular vote (that’s huge for a third-party candidate) but he won no states. Still, his impact on the final result was enormous. Perot was an early version of “America First.” He leaned conservative, although he had unconventional views on a number of policy issues. On balance, he took more votes from George H.W. Bush than he did from Bill Clinton.
In the end, Clinton won with 43% of the vote and carried 32 states (plus D.C.) compared to 37.5% of the vote and 18 states for George H.W. Bush. But if Perot’s 18.9% of the vote were divided two-thirds for Bush and one-third for Clinton (as some analysts suggest), Bush might easily have won several more states.
Moving those electoral votes from the Clinton column to the Bush column would have changed the outcome of the election. Perot marked the downfall of Bush’s chances for a second term.
In 1968, George Wallace as a third-party candidate actually did win five states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia) and got 46 electoral votes. But that was not enough to stop Nixon, who won 32 states and got 301 electoral votes.
The key to Nixon’s victory was the dismal performance of Hubert Humphrey, who won only 13 states (plus D.C.) and got 191 electoral votes. The popular vote was much closer, 43.4% for Nixon and 42.7% for Humphrey, but the popular vote doesn’t count; it’s the electoral vote that decides elections. The lesson of 1968 is that even when a third-party wins states, it does not necessarily stop a major party candidate from winning the election outright.
An even more interesting case is 1912. This election involved Woodrow Wilson (Democrat), William Taft (Republican) and Teddy Roosevelt (Bull Moose). Roosevelt had been president from 1901–1909 but stepped aside in 1909 to allow Taft to succeed him.
In 1912, Roosevelt challenged Taft for the Republican nomination but lost. At that point, Roosevelt formed his new Bull Moose third party and ran in the general election.
Wilson got 40 states and 435 electoral votes, a landslide. Roosevelt actually ran ahead of Taft. TR got six states and 88 electoral votes. Taft finished third with two states and 8 electoral votes. (A fourth candidate, Eugene V. Debs, got 6% of the vote and no states running as a socialist.)
The dynamic was also interesting. Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote about evenly, 27.4% for TR and 23.2% for Taft. Together, the Republicans had 50.6% of the vote, probably enough to win.
Wilson got only 41.8% of the popular vote, but that was way ahead of TR and Taft when taken individually, so he won 40 states. The lesson of that election is when a major party feuds with itself, the other party wins big.
So 1968 and 1912 are both cases in which a third party won a number of states (five for Wallace, six for Roosevelt), but still not enough to prevent a major party candidate from getting to 270 (depending on the year) electoral votes or much higher (Nixon was 301 and Wilson was 435). The 1992 election was one where the third party (Perot) won no states, but probably did change the outcome of the election in favor of Clinton.
The 2024 election with third-party candidates looks like a blend of all three elections: 1992, 1968 and 1912.
The third-party candidates running (so far) include Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein.
RFK Jr. is attempting to get on the ballot in key states on his own but may abandon that effort and become the Libertarian Party candidate. The Libertarian Party is already on the ballot in almost every state. The candidate and the party are in discussions and an announcement is expected in March.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being attacked by the media as a “fringe” candidate. In fact, he is one of the most thoughtful and truthful voices in politics today. Those qualities may transcend voter disagreement with particular policies.
Jill Stein is running as the Green Party candidate and will be on the ballot in almost every state. She is not expected to win more than about 2% of the vote, but in certain states, 2% is enough to tip the election if the Green vote comes from Biden. This happened in 2016 when the Jill Stein vote in Wisconsin may have cost Hillary Clinton that state in a contest decided by less than 1% of the vote.
Cornel West has not set up his own party yet but is endeavoring to get on the ballot in key states as RFK Jr. is. West is a socialist but is highly articulate and charismatic and will make a strong candidate. His efforts would also cost Biden votes in some key states.
Finally, there is the No Labels Party. They have been spending millions of dollars to get on the ballot in all 50 states. They have not announced a candidate yet, but they are in discussions about a fusion ticket that would include Democrat Joe Manchin and Republican Jon Huntsman (though Manchin has announced he won’t run).
The idea would be to run down the middle that considers Trump too radical and Biden too senile. I don’t expect No Labels to win any states, but they will peel votes away from Biden, handing states to Trump. That could form the basis for a Trump electoral vote landslide similar to Wilson’s in 1912.
The third parties combined — No Labels, RFK Jr., Libertarian, Cornel West and Jill Stein — could collectively take upwards of 20% of the vote like Perot in 1992. But they will principally take votes from the Democrats, the reverse of what TR did to Taft in 1912.
This would guarantee a landslide victory for Trump like Nixon in 1968.
It’s impossible to predict exactly how events will unfold. But it’s not difficult to see a wild election season with six credible parties fighting state-by-state and confounding the customary polls and pundits.
Prepare for electoral and market volatility ahead.
The reports out of China arrived just before Thanksgiving. A surge in respiratory infections among children in the northern part of the country triggered a sense of foreboding — and Deja-vu. Meetings between the World Health Organization and Chinese officials quickly followed.
The WHO’s conclusions brought some relief. The surge was caused by an “immunity gap” in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, wherein children had few defenses against influenza and other respiratory infections after years of quarantine.
This episode should be a wake-up call for the U.S. national security establishment. We remain reliant on other nations, including countries of concern, like China, for critical intelligence needed to defend against biological dangers — whether naturally occurring, mistakenly released, or purposefully engineered.
That needs to change. It starts with expanded investment in the technological infrastructure that can monitor for and detect dangerous pathogens that could devastate our nation and economy.
Since COVID-19, we’ve all become familiar with the risk posed by novel infectious diseases with pandemic potential. Just 30,000 base pairs of RNA — roughly one one-hundred-thousandth as many as the human genome contains — managed to shut down our planet.
And, as we know from our experience with the last pandemic, time is essential to stopping the spread and minimizing danger to people. We need a strategy for the rapid identification and understanding of emerging threats, as well as timely countermeasures once a threat has been intercepted.
A sophisticated bio surveillance or “bio radar” network would include collection points where pathogens are most at risk of emerging or being identified as threats — including airports, borders, conflict zones, labs, and farms. Once bio radar systems leveraging DNA sequencing have detected a threat, we can create a digital fingerprint of the suspect pathogen’s genetic material and begin analyzing the level of risk and mitigation options. This creates true bio intelligence, or BIOINT.
Artificial intelligence tuned to biological information like this can quickly begin analyzing the data collected from bio radar systems. And by learning to “speak DNA” the way chatbots can speak English, AI has the potential to identify anomalies and quickly inform development of genomic-informed countermeasures.
Today, nodes in this bio radar network are already at work. We just need to connect the dots of this biosecurity infrastructure and expand its scale.
Take the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Traveler-based Genomic Surveillance program, which swabs international travelers arriving at various international airports. In August 2023, the Dulles International Airport location outside Washington D.C. flagged a sample from a U.S. resident returning from a multi-week trip to Japan. Analysis revealed that the traveler was carrying a new SARS-CoV-2 variant. After sequencing the variant, American authorities notified their counterparts in Japan.
This same program identified the Omicron variant when it first arrived in the United States 43 days before it showed up in a clinical setting.
In other words, existing bio surveillance tools can find dangerous or novel pathogens before we would otherwise know they exist.
Acting on that information in a timely fashion could help save lives — or even eliminate outbreaks or biological threats. Despite the lag in receiving information on SARS-CoV-2 from China, it didn’t take long for scientists to develop mRNA vaccine candidates against COVID-19 that proved effective.
In its 2023 Biodefense Posture Review, the U.S. Department of Defense singles out four nations — North Korea, Russia, Iran, and the People’s Republic of China — as either having active offensive bioweapons programs or developing concerning dual-use capabilities in this area.
We should assume that countries the United States considers adversaries are already at work on genetically engineered pathogens and other violations of the Biological Weapons Convention.
And yet, public health experts have consistently downplayed biothreats. The United Nations characterizes COVID-19 as a “once-in-a-lifetime pandemic”and the New England Journal of Medicine labels it a “once-in-a-century” event.
Biothreats are a much more immediate danger. They’re potentially more catastrophic than most other risks. We build early-warning systems for hurricanes, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. We build them for missile launches and the transport of nuclear material. The public and private sectors spend billions each year on cybersecurity. Why isn’t there a similar urgency about biosecurity?
There’s no time to waste in addressing this truly neglected dimension of global security. We should be building a sophisticated bio radar, bio intelligence, and biosecurity system now before the next pandemic — engineered or otherwise — is at our doorstep.
Matthew Turpin is a senior counselor at Palantir Technologies and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution specializing in U.S. policy towards the People’s Republic of China. From 2018 to 2019, Turpin served as the U.S. National Security Council’s Director for China and the Senior Advisor on China to the Secretary of Commerce.
Biden Wants G7 To Give Russian Central Bank Funds To Ukraine, But France Resists
President Biden wants the G7 countries to develop a plan to eventually have Russia’s frozen sovereign assets handed over Ukraine in order to support the war effort, Bloomberg has reported. Bloomberg’s source have also said the US president has privately warned allies that Ukraine’s collapse, and a Russian victory, would signify the international order is effectively destroyed for at least the next half-century.
“G-7 officials have been discussing options to use the $280 billion of immobilized Russian Central Bank assets, including using the money as collateral to raise debt or issuing guarantees against the frozen funds, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,” according to the report. Biden reportedly wants a firm plan proposed by the time of the Italy G7 summit in June. The US has been working behind the scenes to build consensus.
Via AP
The UK and Canada are reportedly on board, but not Germany and France. Earlier this week France firmly voiced its rejection of seizing the frozen Russian bank funds.
“We don’t think this legal basis is sufficient,” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said after the G7 finance ministers meeting in Brazil on Wednesday.
“This legal basis must be accepted not only by the European countries, not only by the G7 countries, but by all the member states of the world community, and I mean by all the member states of the G20. We should not add any kind of division among the G20 countries.”
Opponents, including of course Russian officials themselves, have highlighted that such a act would be outright and brazen theft.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has warned in response, “We have ways to respond. We have also frozen sufficient volumes of financial assets and investments of foreign investors in our securities, all of which transfers we carry out for the owners of our securities.”
Europe has to agree to any US push to freeze banks funds, since the bulk of Russia’s money – about $200 billion – is being held by European banks. In such a scenario Moscow may consider the ‘theft’ to be tantamount to an act of war.
Still, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was undeterred when she was in Brazil this week. “It is necessary and urgent for our coalition to find a way to unlock the value of these immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction,” she had said from Sao Paulo, speaking to 20 finance ministers and central bank governors.
“I believe there is a strong international law, economic, and moral case for moving forward. This would be a decisive response to Russia’s unprecedented threat to global stability,” she added.
At Frontiers in Psychology, it seems that users on X are now part of the peer review process.
On January 4th, the paper “Meta-analysis: On average, undergraduate students’ intelligence is merely average,” was accepted to the journal. That same day, the abstract was published with the notice that the “final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.”
Soon thereafter, the paper went viral, quickly accruing over 54,000 views, wide discussion on X and Reddit, and coverage in popular media (including RCS). It garnered this attention for its intriguing yet simultaneously obvious finding: over the past 80 years, as a far greater proportion of North Americans attended college, the average IQ of college undergraduates dropped from around 120 to 102, just slightly above the average of 100.
As the authors, Bob Uttl, a psychologist and faculty member at Mount Royal University, and his students Victoria Violo and Lacey Gibson, noted, “The decline in students’ IQ is a necessary consequence of increasing educational attainment over the last 80 years. Today, graduating from university is more common than completing high school in the 1940s.” College students no longer come solely from the ranks of the highly intelligent and privileged, they come from all corners of society. Uttl and his colleagues noted that this has implications. For example, academic standards and curricula might have to be adjusted. Moreover, employers can’t assume that applicants with university degrees are more capable or smarter than those without degrees.
A little over a month after Uttl, Violo, and Gibson’s paper was accepted and the abstract published, they were abruptly notified by email that it was rejected. They were apprised that Specialty Chief Editor Eddy Davelaar, a Professor of Psychology and Applied Neuroscience at Birkbeck, University of London, overrode the three peer reviewers who approved the paper and even his own handling editor. His reasons were subsequently forwarded to Uttl and his colleagues.
While Davelaar raised a couple of issues with the paper’s methods, the vast majority of his focus was on its tone. He wrote that the use of the word “merely” in reference to college students’ just-above-average IQ was “demeaning.” He also noted that the authors’ critiques of other scientists’ works “could have been packaged more sensitively.” He also called unfounded the authors’ opinion that the widening participation policies of universities were the cause of undergraduates’ falling IQs.
In emails viewed by RealClearScience, Uttl extensively refuted Davelaar’s issues the same day the paper was rejected (Feb. 6), to which he received no reply from Davelaar or Frontiers for six days. On February 12, Frontiers replied saying that Davelaar’s concerns remained. If they were addressed, “the manuscript could be reconsidered for publication.”
Uttl subsequently published his refutations of Davelaar’s methodological criticisms online. Lending strength to his arguments is that fact that three peer reviewers and even Davelaar’s own handling editor did not find fault with Uttl’s paper.
Davelaar’s problems with the paper’s tone and conclusions were harder to address, because they were his opinions. It seemed strange that an editor’s opinions should supplant those of the paper’s authors. It’s not his paper, after all.
In response to a request for comment, Frontiers stated that an article can be rejected at any stage before official publication. A public relations manager then quoted their editorial process, “…if a manuscript does not meet our editorial criteria and standards for publication, or if peer-review or research integrity concerns are raised by any review participant or reader (abstracts are published online ahead of official publication), the journal’s chief editors and Frontiers’ Chief Executive Editor will investigate these concerns, regardless of peer review or acceptance stage.”
Frontiers added:
The Speciality Chief Editor (SCE) reviewed the paper in line with our clearly stated editorial process when concerns were raised about the abstract, particularly about underlying bias. The SCE assessment concurred with some reviewers’ judgements, identifying substantive flaws in the meta-analysis and bias in the tone of the paper. The authors were given further opportunities to revise the paper in line with reviewer and SCE comments. These requested revisions were not made but once again disputed.
RealClearScience reached out directly to Davelaar for comment, but he has not replied.
Uttl was curious what brought on the sudden rejection of his already accepted paper, so he asked representatives at Frontiers. He was told that “several posts” on X triggered Dr. Davelaar’s review. As readers were only able to view the abstract, and thus weren’t able to assess the authors’ methodology, it seems clear that they complained purely about the authors’ tone and provocative conclusions. Davelaar only found ‘problems’ with Uttl, Violo, and Gibson’s methods afterwards.
Uttl and his co-authors were not apprised of the content of the X posts.
“I think an editor or whoever owes it to us to tell us what the issues are, allows us to respond, before rejection,” he told RCS in an email.
Uttl, Violo, and Gibson have since had their publication fees refunded and have submitted the paper for publication at another journal.
The contract agreement reached this week between the Teamsters union and Anheuser-Busch, averting a strike that could have begun Friday, calls for wage increases of $8 an hour over the five years of the deal. A $4-per-hour raise kicks in immediately.
Anheuser-Busch announced the deal late Wednesday. It awaits ratification in the coming days by approximately 5,000 workers across the company’s U.S. operations.
The new contract also calls for a $2,500 ratification bonus.
As to whether ratification is likely, any worker dissatisfaction with Teamsters contracts generally shows up through the dissident Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), which is often critical of deals struck by the union’s negotiators. However, TDU notably was supportive of the union’s deal with UPS and more recently backed a new contract at U.S. Foods.
TDU comments on its website regarding the deal at Anheuser-Busch were noncommittal. It noted the length of the deal, the wage increases and other changes in benefits, and said only that Teamsters members at the brewery would “be able to review all contract changes before the ratification vote, which is expected to be held next week.”
The breakdown of how many of those 5,000 workers are truck drivers and warehouse employees was not immediately available from the union.
In its prepared statement announcing the contract agreement, Anheuser-Busch said the deal “builds even further upon our existing industry-leading package of wages, healthcare, and retirement benefits, and it includes significant commitments to job security.”
“At Anheuser-Busch, we have said time and again that our people are our greatest strength, and we are incredibly pleased to have reached a tentative agreement that continues to recognize the talent, dedication, and hard work of our teams, while also positioning the Company for long-term success,” Brendan Whitworth, CEO of Anheuser-Busch, said in the statement.
The Teamsters statement on the deal was more detailed. In its bullet point list of provisions in the contract, the union said that besides the hourly wage increases, the pact provides:
–“Significant job security for all 5,000 Teamsters at Anheuser-Busch, including brewers, packagers, and warehouse workers.”
–An average wage increase of 23% over the five years of the deal.
–“An end to two-tier health care, providing all workers with the same high-quality Teamsters health care coverage.”
–“Increased pension contributions and benefits nationwide.”
–“Increased maximum vacation accrual to 8 paid weeks.”
–“Restoration of retirement benefits for active and retired members.”
The Teamsters are on strike at a brewery operated by Molson Coors (NYSE: TAP) in Fort Worth, Texas. Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, celebrating the contract with Anheuser-Busch, noted that the union “continue[s] to hold the line at Molson Coors in Texas.” That company, O’Brien said, “should pay close attention to the bar we’ve set today for brewery workers across the country.”
Russia and Iran developed a way to avoid the US dollar routing system known as SWIFT, Trade between the nations is booming.
Image from US Institute for Peace – The Iran Primer.
What is the SWIFT Banking System?
Investopedia explains: The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system powers most international money and security transfers. SWIFT is a vast messaging network used by financial institutions to quickly, accurately, and securely send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions.
Most global transitions touch SWIFT in some way. The EU wanted to develop a way around SWIFT because the EU is sick (rightfully so) of the US setting sanction policy for the whole world.
Russia beat the China to secure SWIFT avoidance mechanism.
Business between the two most sanctioned countries in the world, Russia and Iran, is thriving. Iran’s exports to Russia have surpassed the $2bn mark last year according to Iran’s ambassador to Moscow. This is a considerable jump from the figures the previous years, and a 30% rise throughout the year, according to the Tehran Chamber of Commerce. The total value of bilateral trade between the two in volume reached $4.9bn in 2023 according to Iran’s official statistics. A Russian economic delegation with 170 representatives was in Tehran this week as the two countries held the 17th round of their joint economic commission. The two sides have pledged to increase trade tenfold over the coming years.
What facilitates their trade is their own banking solution, which the two countries set up last year to circumvent the dollar. The two central banks managed to connect Iran’s Sepam national financial messaging service to Russia’s SPFS messaging service, its equivalent to the Swift system. In connection with this new system, Russian banks started operating offices in Tehran, and offered credit lines to ease exports from Russia to Iran. There are similar plans in Iran for exports towards Russia. Intensifying trade with Russia is part of Iran’s Look to the East strategy that aims to neutralise the effects of US sanctions by expanding into new markets.
Lesson of the Day
Didn’t you declare victory on these sanctions?
Here’s the deal: China and India will always buy. And they should. It’s in their best interest.
Foreign Policy: “Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Greece’s mighty shipping sector has continued to earn good money shipping Russian oil. But Greek shipowners have discovered an apparently even more lucrative source of revenue: selling the ships themselves to mysterious buyers linked to Russia. One publication has declared that a “Great Greek Tanker Sale” is taking place, and no price seems too high for a secondhand tanker. But the formerly Greek ships are entering a Hades-like shadow economy.”
Lesson Number Two
Countries, political leaders, and market makers act in their best interest.
It is in the best interest of Greek shippers to sell ships so they do. It is in the best interest of India and China to buy Russian oil and Greek ships so they do. It is in the best interest of Dubai middlemen to make a market in ships so they do.
What this boils down to is simple: It is the best interest of middlemen in Greece, Russia, India, China, and Dubai to tell Biden to go to hell, so they do.
How Russia Makes a Mockery of US Sanctions in One Picture
Unprecedented US and EU sanctions against Russia have had no impact on Russia’s oil exports or revenue. Who’s the beneficiary?
Despite the obvious stupidity of the scheme, some prominent economists backed the idea.
How China Gets Around US Sanctions on Semiconductors
The largest source of rising Chinese semiconductor equipment imports comes from lithography machines used to print circuitry patterns onto silicon wafers, but purchases up and down the semiconductor manufacturing process have risen dramatically in 2023. pic.twitter.com/QV3vWC7JO5
If You Weaponize the Dollar and Confiscate Assets, Expect Retaliation
By weaponizing the banking system against enemies outside and within, advanced economies are losing their ‘risk free’ status. This may not change the global currency order for now, but could lead to a wild scramble for gold and other tangible assets.https://t.co/QFkdkBMnf4
At the onset of the war, the Fed, under direction of the Biden Administration, illegally seized Russia’s foreign reserves. Illegal is the correct word.
Nowhere does the act give the Fed the right or power to confiscate the reserves of sovereign nations. But that is exactly what the Fed did when it seized Russia’s US dollar reserves.
If the Fed can confiscate Russia’s reserves, who’s next?
The recent removal of Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system has highlighted the importance of payments in supporting economies. But the weaponization of SWIFT has also left some commentators worrying about the loss of the U.S. dollar’s dominance, as it might drive banks and firms to other substitutes. This Economic Brief discusses the economics of SWIFT and explains why emigrating from the U.S. dollar may be more difficult than we thought.
It appears to me Russia and Iran just succeeded.
US policy is to blame.
However, it’s easier for Russia than it will be for China because China is too dependent on exports to the US and EU. Regardless, more dollar and SWIFT avoidance is in the pipeline.
The BRICS are working on a similar idea. They will fail to achieve much traction except in one area, sanction avoidance.
None of the conditions for a meaningful launch of a BRIC-based currency are in place, at least on a dollar volume basis. Talk of dethroning the dollar is silly.
However, sanction avoidance is another matter. Coupled with central bank digital currencies, countries and individuals will have a clear means of sanction avoidance. US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and other nations and individuals are a tiny percent of global trade, but those sanctions are not trivial to the individuals and countries sanctions.
Colorado Democrats Block Legislation Punishing Child Sex Traffickers – Suggest Criminals Are Also Victims
While conservative states like Florida have passed legislation to institute the death penalty for criminals guilty of child sexual abuse and child trafficking, it’s becoming more and more difficult in blue states to punish pedophiles at all. No other issue so fully reflects the growing rift between the political left and everyone else in America today. If we can’t even agree that child sex abusers should face severe punishment, then how can we possibly agree on anything else?
Colorado Democrats have recently struck down House Bill 1092, a bill that would have instituted minimum sentencing for offenders convicted of selling or buying children for the purposes of exploitation. The bill was heard in the House State, Civic, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, which is also known as the “kill committee.” On Thursday, the panel lived up to its nickname, killing the bill on an 8-3 party-line vote. The eight Democrats who voted to stop HB 1092 were State Reps. Andrew Boesenecker, Kyle Brown, Elisabeth Epps, Jennifer Lea Parenti, Naquetta Ricks, Manny Rutinel, Jenny Wilford, and Steven Woodrow.
50 witnesses crowded into the state Capitol hearing room to testify on the bill’s passage, with 47 of them in favor of the legislation and only 3 people against. Some of the witnesses were themselves survivors of abuse and trafficking. Republicans who voted in favor of the bill noted that many child traffickers escape with light sentences or they are sometimes let back onto the streets within days of their arrest.
Sick! Democrats in Colorado shot down a bill that would’ve mandated harsher punishment for pedos who bought and sold children for s*x.
You might be wondering at this point whose side the Democrats are on? Colorado Democrats reportedly argued that they oppose the harsher minimum sentences in part because offenders might “also be victims,” a narrative which has been spreading among leftist activists often in relation to LGBT issues and trans rights issues. The purpose? They assert that pedophilia is a form of sexual orientation, and once something is labeled an orientation it suddenly becomes a protected group status.
But not all behaviors should be tolerated in a civilized society and just because someone might be a “victim” that does not justify their victimization of others. Leftist states have increasingly targeted children with sexualized propaganda including unproven gender fluid theories, to drag shows and trans indoctrination, to sex change hormones and operations on minors without parental consent, to pornographic content in school libraries.
Not long ago Democrats denied any of these activities were real and accused conservatives of “conspiracy theory.” Now that they have been thoroughly exposed, the leftist response is to defend the sexualization of children rather than admit they are wrong. One could chalk it all up to the progressive tendency to care more about “winning” than caring about what is actually right, or perhaps there is a more nefarious motive behind their consistent defense of such reprehensible criminal behaviors.
Colorado Democrats seemed to be more outraged by the social media response after they struck down Bill 1092, with some arguing that Republicans House members needed to self-censor. Online commenters posted pictures of wood chippers and nooses on the internet, which Democrats interpreted as a threat. Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie said her office has contacted Colorado State Patrol over online posts related to the child trafficking bill, as well as the trans rights legislation.
For decades, Israeli government officials — chief among them, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — have accused Iran of plotting a new Holocaust against the millions of Jews who call Israel home. Netanyahu has said Iran is “planning another genocide against our people,” and wants to “destroy another six million plus Jews.”
Western journalists are quick to quote these claims, yet slow to publicize contradictory evidence — such as the fact that Iran is home to the Middle East’s second-largest population of Jews, who freely practice their faith, peacefully coexist within the Islamic republic and even have a seat in the legislature.
It’s said that “charity begins at home.” If we’re to believe Netanyahu and his confederates in America, wouldn’t an Iranian genocide against Jews begin there too?
Iranian Jews at a Tehran synagogue (Reuters/Raheb Homavandi/TIMA)
Having long been subjected to the genocidal-Iran narrative, the average American probably assumes there’s no such thing as an Iranian Jew. However, according to varying estimates, there are 9,000 to 20,000 of them in a land where the Jewish presence goes back nearly 3,000 years.
That’s well lower than the 100,000 or more Jews who lived in Iran in the years leading up to the 1979 revolution. The uncertainty of what life would be like in an Islamic republic — culturally, economically and in terms of personal safety — prompted tens of thousands to leave for Israel, the United States and other countries.
Many of them were alarmed when Habib Elghanian, a prominent Iranian Jewish industrialist with ties to the deposed Shah, was arrested just a few weeks after the revolution and charged with corruption and spying for Israel. Prosecutors also accused him of soliciting money for the Israeli Defense Forces, and thus being complicit “in murderous air raids against innocent Palestinians.” In May 1979, he was executed by firing squad.
Though Elghanian’s execution shook Iranian Jews, it also precipitated a critical development that has helped assuage their fears ever since.
The day after the execution, two rabbis and four younger intellectual Jews arranged a visit with the Ayatollah Khomeini. By conveying that Iran’s Jews considered themselves Iranian first and would support their fellow citizen’s choice of a new system of government, they hoped to elicit a guarantee against Jews being targeted.
To their surprise, Khomeini welcomed the Jews as VIPs. After a literal standoff that saw the Jewish delegation and the ayatollah both deferentially waiting for the other to take a seat first, they all sat on the floor in a circle.
Khomeini lauded Moses as one of three prophets sent by God to guide humanity. Then, to the great relief of his guests, he drew a sharp distinction between the Israeli government and Iran’s Jews, declaring:
“Moses would have nothing to do with these pharaoh-like Zionists who run Israel. And our Jews, the descendants of Moses, have nothing to do with them either. We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless, bloodsucking Zionists.”
Khomeini then issued a fatwa — an Islamic religious leader’s formal decree — asserting that Jews are a protected minority and forbidding violence against them.
Jews do not, however, hold a fully equal place in Iranian society. Most notably, they may not hold senior government posts or become judges. Jews serve in the Iranian military, but cannot do so as officers. They can’t inherit property from Muslims, but if a member of a Jewish family converts to Islam, that person inherits everything.
Iranian dignitaries at the dedication of a monument to Jewish soldiers who died for Iran in its 8-year war to repel a 1980 invasion by US-backed Iraq (IRNA)
To a great extent, however, Iran’s Jews live much like anyone else in the country, a reality sharply at odds with Western assumptions.
While promoting Zionism or the Israeli government is illegal for anyone, Jews openly display their identity and practice their faith. Iranian Jews wear yarmulkes and prayer shawls in public. Muslims pass by without giving a second glance — after all, Jews’ presence in Iran and Persia goes back nearly three millennia, and the country is home to many important Jewish religious sites.
There are 13 synagogues in Tehran alone. Tourists are surprised to find that, unlike in Europe and elsewhere, Iran’s synagogue don’t have locked doors, metal detectors or security guards. Tehran also has a Jewish seminary and a mikveh ritual bath facility.
In 2015, President Hassan Rouhani officially recognized Saturday as the Jewish day of religious observance, freeing Jews to observe their Sabbath (the typical Iranian workweek and school week goes from Saturday to Wednesday with a half-day on Thursday).
An Iranian Jewish woman prays at the Abrishami Synagogue in Tehran (Behrouz Mehri/AFP)
Jews send their kids to Jewish schools, enjoy kosher restaurants and operate Tehran’s oldest charity hospital, where 96% of patients are Muslims. “When I am sick, I go across the street [to the Jewish-run hospital],” a Muslim seminary student told the New York Times. “They might have a different religion, but they are fellow Iranians.”
That sentiment is widely embraced in Iran. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League’s 2014 Global Index of antisemitism (its most recent) found Iranians to be the least antisemitic of any population in the Middle East.
By some indications, Iranian Jews are more accepted by Muslims in Iran than by Jews in Israel. As a third-generation Iranian-Israeli explained to Radio Free Europe, “In Israel, we have racism towards people that came from Islamic states. As a child, I suffered a lot because I’m Persian.”
When wealthy Jewish expatriates in 2007 offered cash rewards of $60,000 per family to entice Iranian Jews to emigrate to Israel, few signed up. The Society of Iranian Jews scoffed, saying “the identity of Iranian Jews is not tradable for any amount of money.”
Jews are guaranteed one of five seats in the Iranian parliament reserved for religious minorities; three more are reserved on behalf of Iran’s hundreds of thousands of Assyrian-Chaldean and Armenian Christians. The government has tolerated public rebukes issued by the Jewish representative and other Jews. For example, in 2006, Jewish MP Maurice Motamed and other Jewish leaders criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Jews “have created a myth in the name of Holocaust, and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets.”
On the other hand, Iranian Jews’ political stances frequently align with the government’s. When anti-regime protests erupted in 2022, the Tehran Jewish Committee, an umbrella group of organizations, issued a statement condemning them, adding that its members have “always obeyed the position of the Supreme Leader, like our compatriots.”
In October, Jews in five cities participated in rallies against Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza. Some held a sign reading, “Do not commit crimes in the name of Judaism.”
Outsiders reasonably wonder if Jews feel compelled to take such stances to maintain their safe place in society. The Israeli and US governments go a step further, accusing Iran of actively coercing such speech, but they offer nothing to substantiate those allegations.
A New Political Order, Not A New Holocaust
While the existence of Iran’s unmolested Jewish population belies claims that their government is bent on eliminating Jews, any thorough evaluation of those claims must also confront Tehran’s sharply-worded statements against the State of Israel.
Iran doesn’t recognize Israel as a state and, ever since 1979, Iranian ayatollahs, presidents and generals have called for Israel to be “destroyed,” “wiped off the map” or “eliminated.”
While that language can sound like threats of physical destruction, scrutiny of the full quotes almost invariably confirms the speakers are referring to the elimination of the State of Israel as a political entity. Western news outlets, politicians and propagandists, however, often omit the context that makes this distinction clear — if not misquoting the speaker altogether.
Among those opposing Zionism are some ultra-orthodox Jews (Andy Solomon via Middle East Monitor)
Anti-Iran propagandists’ all-time favorite citation springs from a 2005 speech by then-president Ahmadinejad, who was said to have declared that “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” The quote became a staple of Iran-hawk rhetoric that’s still employed more than 18 years later — despite the fact that he actually said something quite different: “[Ayatollah Khomeini] said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”
In that same speech, titled “The World Without Zionism,” Ahmadinejad listed three other regimes that have ceased to exist — Iran’s own monarchy, the Soviet Union, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq government. As I wrote in 2012:
He wasn’t calling for the annihilation of a population, but for the dismantling of a governing entity. That’s highly antagonistic language, to be sure, but it’s not genocidal—any more than Ronald Reagan’s assertion that “freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history” was a pledge to incinerate the Soviet, Chinese or Cuban people.
Even when current-day news reports include accurate quotes about Iranian bluster, the headlines and leads frequently use shortened quotes that leave a false impression, as was the case with an Associated Pressarticle titled, “Iran leader says Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’ to be destroyed.”
The great many who only scan the headline or first few paragraphs would reasonably think Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was threatening to blast the entire country to smithereens. Only those who dive deeper into the article would find Khamenei actually said, “The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth and a detriment to this region. It will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”
When the Iranian government has explicitly threatened a physical attack, look closely and you’re almost certain to find the threat was not to initiate war but to retaliate if Israel strikes first. For example, consider a 2022 Times of Israel article titled, “Iranian general threatens to ‘raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground’.”
You wouldn’t know it from the headline, but the commander of the Iranian ground forces, Kiumars Heydari, was warning against Israeli aggression. He said, “For any mistake made by the enemy, we will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground by the order of the Supreme Leader.” The Times included that quote, but didn’t include another that reinforces the contingent nature of Heydari’s threat. Referring to the upgrading of Iran’s arsenal, he said, “All this equipment is to respond to the stupid aggressions of the enemies of the Islamic revolution.”
Heydari’s remarks came days after an Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps colonel was shot to death in his car outside his Tehran home. Israel told U.S. officials it had assassinated him, according to an intelligence source cited by the New York Times.
Eliminating Israel: Khamenei Gets Specific
In a 2014 Q&A posted to social media, Ayatollah Khamenei elaborated on his vision of the State of Israel’s elimination. Here are some key excerpts:
“The only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime. And of course the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in this region.”
“The proper way of eliminating Israel: The original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians and Jews, wherever they are…take part in a public and organized referendum…Jewish immigrants who’ve been persuaded into emigration to Palestine do not have the right to take part.”
“The ensuing government…will decide whether non-Palestinian emigrants…can continue living in Palestine or should return to their home countries.”
Until the referendum, Khamenei calls for “resolute and armed resistance,” to be facilitated in part by arming the Israeli-occupied West Bank “like Gaza.”
“Unacceptable” solutions include “a classical war by the army of Muslim countries” or “throw[ing] migrated Jews [to the] sea.”
Khamenei’s agenda is undoubtedly hostile to Israel as a governing entity, includes a call for revolutionary violence, and raises the specter of a potential mass expulsion of Jews who migrated to Israel after some unspecified date. However, it isn’t remotely a blueprint for killing “another 6 million” Jews, as Netanyahu and others would have you believe.
It should be noted that many of the world’s Jews —who, like the Iranian government, say the creation of a Jewish ethno-state has victimized Palestinians — also call for an entirely new political order in the land currently controlled by the State of Israel.
Defenders of the status quo in Greater Israel say peaceful coexistence of Muslims and Jews would be impossible in a successor state to Israel. In addition to undermining claims that Iran is genocidal, the enduring, peaceful coexistence of Jews and Muslims in Iran is problematic for that narrative as well — which may help explain why wealthy Israelis tried bribing Iranian Jews into leaving the country behind.
“Death to Israel” and “Death to Traffic”
At Iranian demonstrations and even in parliament, it’s common to hear chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” the latter phrase originating during the 1979 revolution. These slogans are seized upon by anti-Iran hawks who say it would be foolish not to take Iranians at their word — meaning Iranians want all Israeli and American people to die.
However, when you’re crossing cultural lines, discerning meaning isn’t always so simple.
Travel guru Rick Steves learned this firsthand as he was being driven to the Tehran airport at the end of a 12-day stay. When his car encountered heavy traffic, his driver spontaneously exclaimed, “Death to traffic!”
A perplexed Steves said, “What? I thought it was ‘Death to America’.” His driver explained, “Here in Iran, when something frustrates us and is out of our control, we say ‘death’ to that.” Upon reflection, Steves likened it to an American saying “damn those teenagers,” without really wanting them to burn in eternal hellfire.
That explains the seeming paradox of Iranians chanting “Death to America” while holding a reputation for being extraordinarily welcoming and hospitable to American tourists, or “Death to Israel” while peacefully coexisting with Jews. “Once, a group of [Iranian] women embraced and kissed my American colleague on both cheeks, proudly announcing ‘we love American people,’ before turning around to chant ‘Death to America’,” writes Nazila Fathi.
“When we do use this phrase, it strictly refers to governments, not people,” explains Pontia at My Persian Corner. “Iranians are much better when it comes to differentiating between people and their governments…it’s very clear to us that when we say ‘death to America or ‘down with America’ (or anyplace else), we are solely talking about the government.”
Khamenei has offered his own clarification: “Obviously, by ‘death to America,’ we don’t mean death to the American people…it means death to US policies and its arrogance.”
In Iran’s official English-language statements, “death to” is frequently translated as “down with.” However, the Iranian expression is the gift that keeps on giving to Iran hawks from Tel Aviv to Washington, DC.
Israel and US flags burn at an annual Quds Day protest in Iran held to demonstrate solidarity with Palestinians (AP)
None of this is to say that the Iranian government is virtuous, or that it isn’t a major adversary of Israel. Iran calls for the State of Israel’s violent overthrow. It supports Hamas and other organizations that advance that goal. It has praised violent attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians, from shootings in the West Bank to the Oct. 7 Hamas invasion.
However, claims of genocidal intent by the Iranian government are contradicted by the treatment of the country’s own Jews and by close scrutiny of Iran’s supposedly genocidal rhetoric.
As with other geopolitical myths — Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi soldiers removing Kuwaiti infants from incubators, Gadhafi dispensing rape-drugs to soldiers — the myth of a genocidal Iranian government is purposefully cultivated: Americans who believe 6 million Israeli Jews are at risk of an Iranian-inflicted genocide are more likely to support the ongoing redistribution of billions of dollars of American wealth and weapons to Israel —despite that aid’s little-known illegality under US law.
Americans persuaded to believe the worst about Iran are also more likely to support hostile policies toward the country, including economic sanctions that, like terrorism, intentionally inflict suffering on innocents.
Those prone to accepting at face value the claims of the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should consider that it was Netanyahu who, thirty-two years ago, first claimed Iran was “three to five years” from having a nuclear weapon.
Having helped “move” America to throw away the lives of more than 4,500 service members in an invasion of Iraq that destabilized the region and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, Netanyahu, his government and Israel’s fellow travelers inside the United States have long sought to nudge America into a war with Iran too.
If we’re to avoid another catastrophe triggered on false pretenses, take care that your perception of the Iranian menace isn’t moved too easily.
Stark Realities undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum. Read more and subscribe at starkrealities.substack.com
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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
With estimated sales of more than $22 billion last year, the United States is by far the largest sneaker market in the world. According to estimates from Statista Market Insights, roughly 380 million pairs of sneakers were sold in the U.S. last year alone, as athletic footwear has long transcended its utilitarian roots and become an essential piece of everyday wear for Americans from all age groups and backgrounds.
The German brand with the three stripes is the second most popular choice for U.S. sneaker owners, followed at some distance by New Balance, Converse, Skechers and Nike’s Jordan brand, which is likely higher up the list among die-hard sneakerheads.
With global footwear sales of $33 billion in the fiscal year ended May 31, 2023, Nike is not only the most popular but also by far the biggest seller of athletic footwear in the world.
The company’s chief rival Adidas recorded roughly $13 billion in footwear sales in 2022, illustrating how far ahead of the competition Nike really is.
The year 1957 is memorable for at least two historic launches. The launch by the Soviet Socialist Union of the Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, prompted the U.S. to create the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) the very next year.
Eleven years later, Neil Armstrong stepped out of Apollo 11 and famously proclaimed, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Barely three years later, Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene Cernan announced the end of the manned space flight experiment: “We shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”
Many believe that the Challenger launch failure in 1986, with teacher Christa McAuliffe one of the seven dead, and the disintegration of Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, in which another seven astronauts died, ended the U.S. dream of manned space flight.
Former NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory systems engineer Mark Adler spilled the beans in 2015. “The bottom-line answer is that it was … way too expensive. The shuttle never met its promise for low-cost access to space.” [Well, it was a government program!]
Cost-cutting and bureaucratic overkill were behind the Challenger (whose politically correct O-rings failed) and Columbia disasters. As chief NASA historian Bill Barry told Newsweek, “People realized that [Columbia] was a lot more risky than generally thought [mostly] because of [design] compromises … due to cutbacks in the budget [emphasis added].“
The other historic 1957 launch was Ford Motor Company’s much-heralded Edsel. Ten years in the making, at a development cost of $250 million ($2.78 billion in 2024 dollars), Ford dealers saw thousands lining up to buy the new dream car that September, but by yearend monthly sales had fallen by a third.
Two years later, Ford ceased production of the Edsel and revamped its production lines to build compact cars. According to Time reporter Lily Rothman, “As it turned out, the Edsel was a classic case of the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.”
Ford had relied on market research showing that within a decade half of U.S. families could buy then-popular medium-priced vehicles. Further studies led Ford to design “the smart car for the younger executive or professional family on its way up.”
To Ford’s sad surprise, by 1957 the lust for medium-priced cars was usurped by a new boom in the compact field, an area the Edsel research had overlooked completely, said Rothman.
Much as with the space program, the federal government has spent huge sums subsidizing the construction and purchase of electric vehicles, including 18-wheelers, airplanes, and tanks. All of this has been driven, ostensibly, by the perceived threat posed by the plant food carbon dioxide.
Much as with the Edsel, the electric vehicles that European, American, and other Western governments have been subsidizing are “the wrong car for the wrong market at the wrong time.”
Around the planet, individuals, automakers, and even policy advisors are waking up to this gross miscalculation.
Meanwhile, the Chinese, who long ago cornered the market on the primary raw materials and technologies needed for producing EVs in quantity, stand to be the primary sellers of vehicles Western governments have mandated that the hoi polloi purchase.
The largest Chinese automaker, Biyadi (BYD), uses the slogan “Build Your Dream” to lure buyers into even greater reliance on Chinese technology that will erase tens of thousands of American jobs.
BYD sells battery-electric vehicles in China for US$26,000. BYD makes its own batteries, semiconductors, and seal upholstery, and its nearly 30,000 patents owned or filed puts BYD light years ahead of any Western automaker.
The only brakes on China destroying the world auto market are tariffs and other import restrictions – or ending the EV mandates. But the tariffs would likely be passed onto customers, forcing Americans to pay double if Washington forces Chinese EVs down their throats.
And, as noted, without the tariffs, Ford, General Motors, and every other non-Chinese automaker could quickly be forced into bankruptcy. The United Auto Workers know this and hedged their bets for 2024 by throwing money in both directions. Western automakers, joining Toyota, have already pulled back from their EV production commitments.
Ford, which has been losing $60,000 – more than the selling price – on every EV it sells, saw sales of its Lightning F-150 fall 46% in third quarter 2023. Mercedes downsized its EV sales projections by 2030 by 50% and announced it will update its petrol-fueled fleet engines into the next decade. Now Ford has halted all shipments of the Lightning F-150.
Rivian, too, has fallen on hard times, laying off 10% of its workforce, signaling a significant decline in demand. With prices starting at $70,000 for its pickup and $75,000 for its SUV, the sales downturn led to a corporate loss of $1.52 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2023.
Slackening demand for EVs has even led to entire mines shutting down as the supply of rare-earth minerals now exceeds demand. Albemarle announced it was deferring spending on a planned $1.3 billion plant in North Carolina. The price of lithium has shrunk by 90%, and the price of nickel has been cut in half. As a result, a nickel mine in New Caledonia recently suspended operations.
In the UK, auto dealers are offering discounts of up to 25% on EVs sitting idle on their lots. The Lords Committee says British drivers are “giving the cold shoulder” to the electric transition despite dramatic drops in finance rates for EVs in an effort to boost flagging sales. Non-fleet EV purchases in the UK fell by 25% from the prior year, with yet another reason being much higher auto insurance rates.
The obvious ability of China to dominate the EV market, coupled with increasing public resistance to EV mandates, has put pressure on the European Union and its member states. A year ago, the EU took a baby step backward, agreeing to allow sales and registration of internal combustion engine vehicles after the 2035 deadline if they operate only on carbon-neutral fuels.
In the U.S., President Biden had until very recently doubled down on his EV demands, ignoring the concerns of automakers, auto unions, and the auto buying public. Just a week ago, the EPA indicated it was “considering” delaying EV mandates beyond 2030, an election-year concession that could quickly be reversed.
A 2023 Gallup poll showed that only 16% of Americans with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 either own or are “seriously” considering purchasing an electric vehicle. The most likely EV buyer is a Democrat who lives in a Pacific Coast state, but only 28% of U.S. Democrats and 25% on the West Coast either own or are “seriously” considering an EV.
As Mark Knopfler’s Romeo said to Juliet, “the timing was all wrong,” perhaps the only real flaw with the current EV mandates is that the supply chain – especially in the West – is just not ready for prime time.
But in another few years, things could change. After all, the privately funded Odysseus Moon lander just became the first new U.S. presence on the lunar surface in 55 years.
On the other hand, unless the West cedes EV manufacturing to China, the EV may soon become so unpopular it will go the way of the Edsel.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of p
Great News Gen-Zers: “Silver Tsunami” Will Trigger Housing Supply As Baby Boomers Die
Millennials and Generation Z have been battered by a persistent housing shortage, with the US market currently short 7.2 million homes. However, there may be light at the end of the tunnel for those struggling to afford or even find a home, thanks to an emerging trend known as the “silver tsunami.”
A new report from Freddie Mac estimates homeowners aged 60-plus years (baby boomers) increasingly put their homes on the market as they enter retirement facilities, downsize, and/or estates sell off assets after death. This means the cohort, comprised of about 29% of the adult population and 44% of homeowners, could free up a whopping 9.2 million homes by 2035.
“Over the next five years, the decline is more modest, and we only see a reduction of 2.7 million households by 2028. In this sense, the silver tsunami is more like a tide, with a gradual reduction phasing in over several years. While the number of people aging out of homeownership will increase in the coming years, it is more of an upward sloping trend than a disruptive spike,” Freddie Mac economists wrote in the report.
Freddie Mac estimates the silver tsunami will only begin to accelerate by the end of the decade. In 2029, they expect 3.4 million net decline in the number of baby boomer homeowner households. By 2035, the figure could reach well over 9 million.
The report noted: “Given that the housing market is facing a shortage of available single-family homes, the housing decisions Boomers will make in the coming years will have an outsized impact.”
Authorities in California seized enough lethal doses of fentanyl last year to kill the entire global population “nearly twice over,” according to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.
Heroin and fentanyl pressed into pill form. (Courtesy of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration)
In a statement on Feb. 27, the Democrat governor said operations supported by the state’s National Guard, or CalGuard, led to the seizure of a record 62,224 pounds of fentanyl in the state and at ports of entry in 2023, marking a 1,066 percent increase since 2021.
The street price for the intercepted fentanyl would be about $670 million, according to calculations using the Los Angeles High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area price sheet for that year.
According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, two milligrams of fentanyl is considered a potentially lethal dose, and one kilogram of the drug has the potential to kill 500,000 people.
“Fentanyl is a poison, and it does not belong in our communities,” Mr. Newsom said. “California is cracking down, increasing seizures, expanding access to substance abuse treatment, and holding drug traffickers accountable to combat the immeasurable harm opioids have caused our communities.”
In 2022, authorities in the Golden State seized 28,765 pounds of fentanyl, up from 5,334 pounds in 2021.
To tackle the evolving opioid addiction crisis in California, Mr. Newsom allocated $1 billion to law enforcement agencies and other public entities across the state to combat overdoses and raise awareness about the dangers of opioids such as fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is a major contributor to drug overdose deaths in the United States.
The state’s billion-dollar plan included a multi-million dollar effort to boost CalGuard’s work in preventing drug-trafficking transnational criminal organizations. Since it was launched last year, more than 140 new CalGuard members have been hired, trained, and embedded to reduce fentanyl use in communities.
“The California National Guard is committed to combatting the scourge of fentanyl,” CalGuard’s Maj. Gen. Matthew Beevers said in a statement. “These extraordinary seizure statistics are a direct reflection of the tireless efforts of the highly trained CalGuard Service Members supporting law enforcement agencies statewide.”
Overdose Deaths
Fentanyl, an opioid approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat severe pain, is the leading cause of drug overdose deaths in the United States.
According to the California Overdose Surveillance Dashboard, there were 7,385 opioid-related deaths in California in 2022, of which 6,473 were fentanyl-related.
San Francisco is one of the communities most acutely affected by drug overdoses, with 813 fatalities in 2023, of which 657 were attributed to fentanyl, according to data released by the San Francisco Department of Public Health.
“Fentanyl is deadlier than any drug we’ve ever seen on our streets,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a statement on Oct. 27. “We must treat the trafficking and sale of fentanyl more severely and people must be put on notice that pushing this drug could lead to homicide charges.”
Drug deaths in the United States hit a new record nationwide in 2022, with nearly 110,000 people dying as a result of the opioid crisis, according to data released by the National Center for Health Statistics which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Washington and Wyoming saw the biggest increases in drug fatalities, according to the agency. Both states suffered a 22 percent increase in deaths linked to overdose.
Eye-Catching Jump In Inflation Expectations Threatens Bonds
By Wes Goodman, Bloomberg Markets Live reporter and strategist
The US two-year breakeven rate is showing an eye-popping increase and will put upward pressure on yields.
Inflation expectations are climbing as the Fed’s fight against rising prices seems to be sputtering. The latest warning for bond investors came from Apollo Management Chief Economist Torsten Slok, who said that a re-accelerating US economy, coupled with a rise in underlying inflation, will prevent the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates in 2024.
The numbers tell the tale of a Fed battle against inflation that has yet to be won. Core PCE is the highest in almost a year. CPI and PPI both beat expectations.
All of this comes at a time when breakeven rates and yields are moving together more. This signals breakevens are asserting more influence on yields. The chart below shows the 30-day correlation between two-year breakeven rates and two-year yields is rising.
Bloomberg’s Correlation Finder shows that two-year breakeven rates are also moving largely in line with five- and 10-year yields, suggesting rising inflation expectations have the potential to buoy yields across maturities.
My theory is being put to the test today because Treasury yields are falling. Still, it’s worth keeping these risks in mind. The most potent warning from these breakevens came after they rose in 2019, 2020 and 2021. The Bloomberg US Treasury Total Return Index went on to tumble a stunning 12% in 2022, its biggest loss based on Bloomberg data going back to 1974 –- the year President Richard Nixon resigned and I turned 10 years old.
A recent study found that the majority of patients who suffered from long COVID during a time when vaccines and antiviral treatments were widely available were vaccinated.
(SARMDY/Shutterstock)
The observational study published in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, researchers interviewed 390 people in Thailand who contracted COVID-19 during the “fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic” when the omicron variant was dominant. Patients were followed by phone from three months after their diagnosis for a year to monitor their physical condition, mental health, sleep disturbances, and quality of life.
Out of 390 people with COVID-19, 377 (97 percent) were vaccinated, 383 (98 percent) underwent antiviral treatment, and 330 (78 percent) developed long COVID syndrome. The most frequently reported symptoms were fatigue and cough. Other reported symptoms included depression, anxiety, and poor sleep quality. The study found that patients under age 60 with a cough as an initial symptom were more likely to develop the condition. In a subset of patients with long COVID, researchers found a notable correlation in females with headaches, dizziness, and brain fog.
“Despite the extensive distribution of vaccines and antiviral therapies, the prevalence of long COVID remains high,” the authors of the paper wrote.
Although definitions of long COVID differ, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) broadly defines long COVID as “signs, symptoms, and conditions that continue to develop after acute COVID-19 infection” that can last for “weeks, months, or years.” The term “long COVID” also includes post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection, long-haul COVID, and post-acute COVID-19.
According to the World Health Organization, while most people with COVID-19 recover and return to normal health, some patients, including those with mild illness, have symptoms that persist for weeks or months after recovering from acute illness.
Nearly 7 percent of U.S. adults surveyed by the CDC in 2022 said they’ve experienced long COVID. Although U.S. regulatory agencies claim vaccinating against COVID-19 can reduce the risk of developing long COVID, the current paper did not find a significant link between the presence of comorbidities or infection severity and the emergence of long COVID symptoms.
Studies Link Long COVID to Vaccination
A February report published by the CDC found that more than 8 percent of participants in seven U.S. states reported having experienced long COVID symptoms. In West Virginia, almost 11 percent of survey participants reported long COVID symptoms. However, the agency did not disclose whether survey respondents were vaccinated.
Some research suggests long COVID may be caused by an immune overreaction to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that COVID-19 vaccines use to induce antibodies and that vaccination causes some people to generate a second round of antibodies that target the first.
In a February 2023 study published in the Journal of Medical Virology, researchers analyzed the levels of spike protein and viral RNA in patients hospitalized for COVID-19 with and without long COVID. They found that spike protein and viral RNA were more likely to be present in patients with long COVID.
In an August 2023 study published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers found the risk of long COVID was lower in those who had previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, and the risk of getting long COVID did not differ by vaccination status. Researchers found that unvaccinated people infected with omicron had the lowest risk of long COVID.
In a 2023 study in the European Review for Medical and Pharmacological Sciences, researchers studied the serum of 81 individuals with long COVID. They found viral spike protein in one patient after the infection had cleared despite having a negative COVID-19 test, and vaccine spike protein in two patients two months after vaccination.
In a December 2022 study published in PLoS One, researchers found patients were more likely to experience long COVID if they had preexisting medical conditions, a higher number of symptoms during the acute phase of COVID-19 illness, if their infection was more severe or resulted in hospitalization, or if they had received two doses of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fed-Up San Fran Voters Set To Expand Police Power, Drug-Screen Welfare Recipients
Fed up with a city ravaged by crime and drug addiction and shedding theft-plagued businesses weekly, voters in ultra-liberal San Francisco are poised to approve a ballot measure that would require illegal-drug screening for recipients of city benefits, and another that would give police more power and less oversight.
That’s the finding of a San Francisco Chamber of Commerce poll, in which 61% of likely voters said they back both measures on the March 5 ballot. It’s a population that’s increasingly aware of its trajectory: 71% say the city is on the wrong track.
“The pendulum is swinging,” 41-year-old resident Malcolm Weitz tells the Wall Street Journal. “It’s coming hard-core back to the center.” He says he he’ll vote yes on both propositions, completing a major philosophical u-turn. Weitz voted for progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2019, only to vote to kick him out in the successful 2022 recall drive.
MEANWHILE IN SAN FRANCISCO — A shoplifter hoards goods into a massive trash bag and BIKES out of a store in a video filmed by Lyanne Melendez, one incident among many that have become a pattern due to the city’s decriminalization of thefts under $950. pic.twitter.com/aWvii3JGHR
Now, he and other residents are ready to sic the cops on the criminals.Proposition E would remove several shackles from law enforcers, authorizing them to:
Engage in more high-speed chases
Use drones during pursuits
Install more cameras in public places and test electronic surveillance methods — with less oversight
File fewer reports about their use of force
Substitute body-camera footage for other types of documentation
Little of that would address the scourge of increasingly brazen shoplifters, which is encouraged by 2014’s Prop 47, which turned thefts valued under $950 into mere misdemeanors. In an eye-rollingly limp-wristed effort to impose more accountability, state legislators in January proposed making jail time mandatory after a THIRD theft conviction.
New normal. They exit with an entire clothing rack from a store in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It’s this type of situation that’s become a debate – should an employee intervene if they encounter a shoplifter or a robber? The employee in this case tells KRON4 she stepped in… pic.twitter.com/9VHYRVyqdc
Proposition F endeavors to cut off city handouts to people likely to take the money and shoot it into their veins. It doesn’t cover everyone, however, and the wording of the measure doesn’t imply it will precipitate universal drug-testing:
Shall the City require single adults age 65and under with no dependent children who receive City public assistance benefits and whom the City reasonably suspects are dependent on illegal drugs to participate in screening, evaluation and treatment for drug dependency for those adults to be eligible for most of those benefits?
People who decline the screening, evaluation and treatment would be terminated and, depending on whether they’re homeless, would receive a final 30 days of shelter access or rent paid direct to the landlord, according to San Francisco Public Press.
Embattled San Francisco Mayor London Breed backs two ballot measures intended to pull the city out of the abyss (Eric Risberg/AP via Politico)
San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who’s under fire as the city collapses and is facing multiple primary challengers to her 2024 reelection bid, is backing both measures. Striking a decidedly un-progressive tone in September, Breed said of the drug-screening requirement, “No more handouts without accountability. People are not accepting help. Now, it’s time to make sure that we are cutting off resources that continue to allow this behavior.”
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