Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 398

Russia Confirms BRICS+ Nations Will Launch New Joint Gold-Backed Currency to Counter US Dollar Dominance

Jim Hoft

Gateway Pundit

In an unprecedented move that threatens to redefine the dynamics of international trade and economic stability, the BRICS nations reportedly plan to launch a new trading currency, backed by gold, at their upcoming summit in August in Johannesburg, South Africa, according to Russia’s Foreign Ministry.

The decision, reported by RT News, marks a bold move away from the US dollar, the world’s current global reserve currency.

The BRICS group, an association of five major emerging national economies comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has captured the world’s attention with this plan. Over forty-one countries have expressed interest in joining the BRICS initiative and adopting the new currency, highlighting the growing discontent with the US dollar’s global dominance, thanks to Joe Biden.

According to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, if African nations also show enthusiasm for this gold-backed currency, BRICS membership expansion could be a key discussion point at the upcoming Russia-Africa summit this year.

Russia’s embassy in Kenya posted the following statement on Twitter:

“The BRICS countries are planning to introduce a new trading currency, which will be backed by gold. More and more counties recently express desire to join BRICS,” the embassy wrote.

The BRICS countries are planning to introduce a new trading currency, which will be backed by gold.
More and more counties recently express desire to join BRICS.https://t.co/lMKTd4FlnT

— Russian Embassy in Kenya/Посольство России в Кении (@russembkenya) July 3, 2023

This move towards de-dollarization symbolizes a potential end to the US dollar’s reign as the global reserve currency. The impacts of this shift will undoubtedly unfold in the coming months, hinting at the end of an era of US dominance and the beginning of a new era of economic stability and prosperity for BRICS nations.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07/russia-confirms-brics-nations-will-launch-new-joint/

Pfizer, AstraZeneca and others ask US Supreme Court to bar Iraq terrorism funding claims

The Pfizer logo is seen at their world headquarters in New York April 28, 2014. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly (UNITED STATES – Tags: BUSINESS LOGO HEALTH)By Mike Scarcella

July 5 (Reuters) – More than 20 U.S. and European pharmaceutical and medical-device makers have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to bar claims that the companies helped to fund terrorism that killed or injured hundreds of American service members during the war in Iraq.

The companies, part of five corporate families — AstraZeneca (AZN.L), Pfizer (PFE.N), GE Healthcare USA, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and F. Hoffmann-La Roche — are challenging a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The petition at the high court was added on Wednesday to the court’s public docket.

The D.C. Circuit order from last year at the center of the case reinstated a lawsuit alleging that 21 U.S. and European medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies made corrupt payments to the Hezbollah-sponsored militia group Jaysh al-Mahdi in order to obtain medical-supply contracts. The plaintiffs’ complaint said Jaysh al-Mahdi controlled Iraq’s health ministry.

Attorneys for the companies contend in their petition that a Supreme Court ruling in May shielding Twitter from liability under the federal Anti-Terrorism Act should bar the service members’ allegations.

That ruling said aiding-and-abetting liability under the Anti-Terrorism Act, the same law at issue in the Iraq terror case, requires that a defendant “consciously and culpably” participated in a terror act to help it succeed.

The pharmaceutical and device companies asked the justices to vacate the D.C. Circuit’s ruling and to send the case back to the lower courts for further analysis. The service members sued under the Anti-Terrorism Act.

An attorney for the plaintiffs at law firm Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. The firm represents hundreds of victims of Americans who said they were harmed in Iraq between 2005 and 2011.

The plaintiffs, according to their 588-page complaint, argue they “were attacked by a terrorist group funded in part by defendants’ corrupt sales practices.”

In a joint statement, the companies said they “vigorously dispute the plaintiffs’ allegations in this case and are not responsible in any way for the tragic events that were caused and carried out by Iraqi militia groups.”

The case is AstraZeneca UK Ltd et al v Joshua Atchley, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 23-9.

[…]
Via https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/pfizer-astrazeneca-others-ask-us-supreme-court-bar-iraq-terrorism-funding-claims-2023-07-05/

How FDA Spins the Science on Cellphone Radiation and Human Health Risks

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Despite a $30-million “gold standard” study demonstrating clear cancer risks from cellphone radiation, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the telecom industry continue to spin the science and create doubt.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims there’s not enough scientific evidence to link cellphone use to health problems — but according to Devra Davis, Ph.D., MPH, a toxicologist and epidemiologist, the FDA’s claim is untrue and misleading.

Davis spoke with The Defender about the important backstory leading up to the FDA’s position on cellphone radiation as it relates to human health.

To support its statement — that “the weight of scientific evidence has not linked exposure to radio frequency energy from cell phone use with any health problems” — the FDA references a 2008-2018 literature review it conducted on radiofrequency (RF) radiation and cancer.

After completing the review, the FDA stated: “To date, there is no consistent or credible scientific evidence of health problems caused by the exposure to radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones.”

However, Davis said the FDA’s review was never signed. In other words, the names of the individuals who authored the report were never publicly released.

Davis has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications in books and journals, ranging from the Lancet to the Journal of the American Medical Association. She is the founding director of the Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology of the U.S. National Research Council at the National Academy of Sciences and the founder and president of Environmental Health Trust.

Davis, who worked as a scientific adviser under multiple presidential administrations said, “Normally, when you have a review at that high level it’s quite consequential and it’s always signed.”

“The reason it was unsigned, I believe,” Davis told The Defender, “is because no one in the FDA was willing to put their name behind such a piece of junk. It was absolute nonsense,” she said. “It ignored many publications and only relied on an incredibly skewed interpretation of the literature — and I’m being generous when I say it like that.”

Davis pointed out that the FDA issued the review shortly after the National Toxicology Program (NTP) completed its multi-year $30 million study on cellphone radiation.

In that study, NTP researchers concluded there was “clear evidence” that male rats exposed to high levels of RF like that used in 2G and 3G cellphones developed cancerous heart tumors, and “some evidence” of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats.

The NTP for decades has been the premier governmental testing program for pharmaceuticals, chemicals and radiation, said Davis, who served on the board of scientific counselors for the NTP when it was first started in the 1980s.

‘Gold Standard’ NTP study findings suppressed 

Davis told The Defender that the government had access to a “gold standard program testing with positive results” that were consistent with and corroborated dozens of other studies. “It wasn’t like it [the NTP study] was a one-off study,” she said.

Once the word got out that the findings of the NTP study were positive — meaning the government researchers had found an association between cellphone radiation and the growth of cancerous tumors — the telecommunication industry “started its tactics” to suppress the findings, Davis said.

Davis has been researching such tactics for more than a decade. This fall she plans to release a new edition of her 2010 book, “Disconnect: The Truth About Cell Phone Radiation, What the Industry Is Doing to Hide It, and How to Protect Your Family.”

Instead of the NTP study report being released in 2016 when it was first ready, she said, the telecom industry exerted pressure to subject the study’s conclusions to an unprecedented level of scrutiny.

“When the first drafts began to circulate internally, it was elevated for a peer review unlike any that has ever been conducted in the history of the entire program — and I can say that with great certainty. No other compound or substance [studied by the NTP] has ever been subject to this level of peer review,” Davis said.

A panel of external scientific experts convened for a three-day review of the study and its conclusions in March 2018.

However, rather than downplaying the study’s conclusions, the experts concluded that the scientific evidence in the study was so strong that they recommended the NTP reclassify some of its conclusions from “some evidence” to “clear evidence” of carcinogenic activity.

Davis — who attended the three-day review — said, “The reviewers that had been picked were people who were top-of-the-game toxicologists from Proctor and Gamble, from [Nokia] Bell Labs. [They were] industry toxicologists, but they were straight-up people.”

Davis said many of the experts spoke with her privately. “The woman from Proctor and Gamble was concerned about her kids. She said, ‘This [cellphone radiation] is not appropriate.’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s what we’ve been trying to say for some time.’”

More than 250 scientists — who together have published over 2,000 papers and letters on the biologic and health effects of non-ionizing electromagnetic fields (EMFs) produced by wireless devices, including cellphones — signed the International EMF Scientist Appeal, which calls for health warnings and stronger exposure limits.

FDA rejects study it solicited, ‘spins’ it as faulty 

When the experts’ review of the NTP study was released, the FDA — which in 1999 requested the study and reviewed all its protocols, interim reports and final reports — the agency in November 2018, repudiated the study and in February 2020, released the unsigned literature review that criticized the study.

“They [the FDA] suddenly said, ‘Well, the exposure chambers [used in the study] are not relevant to humans. The [radiation] levels were too high,’” Davis said. “They were not.”

Davis was not alone in disagreeing with the FDA’s rejection of the NTP study. More than 20 scientists, including Davis, wrote a letter calling on the FDA to retract the literature review. Many scientists individually wrote to the FDA as well.

Moreover, the Environmental Health Trust wrote a 188-page report on the FDA’s inaccuracies in its research review and safety determinations about cellphone radiation.

Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley, who has researched cellphone radiation for over a decade, identified nine “biased statements” made about the NTP study that “tend to create doubt about data quality and implications.”

In “SPIN vs FACT: National Toxicology Program report on cancer risk from cellphone radiation,” Moskowitz lists and counters each statement. For example, Moskowitz noted that the claim the study’s conclusions were faulty was rebutted by the study report itself.

Moskowitz also pointed out that Christopher Portier, Ph.D., a retired head of the NTP who helped launch the study and still sometimes works for the federal government as a consultant scientist, told Scientific American, “This is by far — far and away — the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment.”

How telecom industry war-gamed study’s results to manufacture doubt

According to Davis, the telecom industry has for decades influenced governmental agencies such as the FDA to “manufacture doubt” about scientific studies — such as the NTP study — that do not benefit it.

She pointed out that in the early 1990s, Motorola launched a “disinformation campaign to confuse the public.” According to the Environmental Health Trust:

“When first reports that cell phone radiation could damage DNA emerged from the laboratory of Henry Lai and N.P. Singh [both researchers at the University of Washington, Seattle] in the 90’s, a memo written by Motorola to their media advisors in 1994 announced the clear strategy that remains alive and well: war-game the science.”

The “wargame” memo — first released by Microwave News (see page 13) — showed that Norman Sandler of Motorola’s corporate communications department on Dec. 13, 1994, wrote to Michael Kehs of the Burson-Marsteller public relations firm in Washington to plan how Motorola would respond to Lai and Singh’s findings.

Sandler and Kehs had a three-point plan to impede further scientific research on how cellphone radiation might cause DNA damage and to create public doubt in such studies. The plan involved:

Delaying — or halting — Lai and Singh from continuing their DNA research.Preventing other scientists from replicating the study, or carefully selecting scientists who would.Convincing the press and the public using industry-selected scientists that the Lai-Singh DNA study results were of marginal importance and with questionable relevance in regard to the question of whether cellphones are safe for humans.

“I think we have sufficiently war-gamed the Lai-Singh issue, assuming SAG [the Scientific Advisory Group] and CTIA [the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association] have done their homework,” Sandler said.

Sandler said Motorola’s executive vice president was “adamant” that the industry come up with a “forceful one- or two-sentence portion of our standby statement that puts a damper on speculation arising from this research.”

Sandler proposed the industry say:

“While this work raises some interesting questions about possible biological effects, it is our understanding that there are too many uncertainties — related to the methodology employed, the findings that have been reported and the science that underlies them — to draw any conclusions about its significance at this time.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/fda-cellphone-radiation-human-health-risks/

Damaged People, Rotten Standards: Anatomy of Decline

Analysis by Tessa LenaDr MercolaStory at-a-glanceIf we look around, we’ll see many working-age people struggling with basic tasks, and a great decline in standardsThe MSM is suggesting that one in every ten people who’s had “Omicron” ends up with “long COVID,” which nowadays seems to be the establishment term to describe all chronic illness, as well as injury from “vaccines”The official rates of autism and dementia are also growing at a pace that is incompatible with a functioning society, and so the “great resetters” are in a great hurry to replace us with bots and “save the day”The suffering and the decline in health are very real and heartbreakingThe mainstream medicine, on the other hand, is in decline — preoccupied mostly with selling establishment talking points and pharma drugsDefining the Problem

The “new normal” has snuck up on us. No, there are no big screens broadcasting the babble of Klaus Schwab, dressed up as Ze Big Bro. There is no CBDC for the peasants and no climate lockdowns — not yet. But the “new normal” is here because the people have been eaten into. You can see it in their faces.

Many of the less resilient ones have checked out. The so called “new normal” is, in fact, a lack of any kind of a rational or honorable baseline in people’s heads. There are no standards, no accountability, just a Kafkaesque free fall, wrapped in politically correct words.

After a very long time of physical poisoning, soul stomping, social decline, and erosion of standards — followed by three years of deliberate torment — many people have just shut down. Gone inside. Brought their baseline to a very low level so as to feel “normal” in a world that is anything but.

On my end, I’ve been noticing signs of decline and Soviet-like absurdity in the U.S. ever since 2001. But before 2020 it was subtler: TSA (okay, maybe not so subtle when it comes to the TSA), a rude customer service representative here and there, dirty public bathrooms, paranoia-installing announcements on the train to “see something, say something,” and so on. But today, the “glitter curtain” is off, and the subtlety is all but gone!

Social engineering takes time. It takes at least a full generation to create a solid shift toward a new psychological mode. And that is what happened. Today, the people who were born after 2001 are no longer kids but young adults. The aspirating masters have been working on shifting people’s values from “proud consumer individualism” to “fear-driven subservience” for at least two decades — and the result of their trickery is here.

Not Being Able to Work

In addition to the psychological shift, there is also a visible shift in people’s ability to work:

[….]

Redefining Chronic Disease

[…]

My personal theory is that at least a part of what’s filed under “long COVID” could be a result of brazen behavior of undiagnosed fungi and parasites, taking over the bodies of people who have been poisoned way too much (and, perhaps, injected with contaminated “vaccines.”)

Our “western pride” prevents us from exploring that route but I believe that 20-30 years from now, “everyone will know” that there is an epidemic of undiagnosed and debilitating toxoplasmosis, for example — but they won’t tell us that until they have a golden goose set up and a useless vaccine to sell.

By the way, “long COVID” is not the first umbrella term for chronic disease. Here is “post-polio syndrome“:

“Post-polio syndrome is a group of potentially disabling signs and symptoms that appear decades after the initial polio illness. These signs and symptoms usually appear between 30 to 40 years after having polio.”

And of course, the “polio epidemic” was most likely connected to the use of arsenic and DDT and ended with the ban of DDT. I wrote about it here. And here is Time Magazine’s take on the “long flu”:

“In what is now Tanzania, to the north, post-viral syndrome has been blamed for triggering the worst famine in a century — the so-called “famine of corms” — after debilitating lethargy prevented flu survivors from planting when the rains came at the end of 1918.”

But even Time Magazine admits that the definition of long COVID is “wooly” as it is defined as “not recovering [for] several weeks or months following the start of symptoms that were suggestive of Covid, whether you were tested or not.”

Wooly, indeed! Like I said in my recent article, “when it comes to the decline in health, the problem is real. The suffering is real. The terminology is a little shady. Why shady? Blaming the suffering on loosely defined ‘long COVID’ is a gimmick because how do they know that it is ‘COVID’ if nobody can define ‘COVID’ to begin with, other than a positive — fraudulent — PCR test?

As far as I am concerned, the basics of epistemology need to be addressed before building a tower. That is how it works in a sane word. And yes, some of it could be related to whatever ‘COVID’ ends up being — the spike protein and what not — but I ask for an epistemological foundation first, please.”

Rockefeller Medicine, “Sleeper” Doctors

It sucks for everyone when the people providing medical care are “sleepers.” We usually visit doctors hoping to get help, and when instead of help, we receive “zombie treatment” — rooted in prejudice and ideological addiction to the trend of the day, as opposed to an honest analysis of how things work in the real world — it’s a big letdown.

For the record, I grew up in a medical family in Moscow, and I have the greatest respect for the medical profession as such. I think that most doctors, even the brainwashed sleepers of today, go into medicine because they want to help. Furthermore, as a person who’s lived in America for the most of my adult life, I am grateful to being here, and I think that the American medicine is amazing when it comes to acute care, emergency medicine, surgeries, and so on.

However, when it comes to anything more complex, such as chronic disease, many doctors’ heads seem to be firmly planted in fiction — and the reason is because they are kept in the land of fiction by powerful financial interests such as the Rockefellers, by the aspiring masters in high chairs.

And so it goes. We live in a beautiful world but also inside a toxic, upside-down bubble — an artificial reality created by the psychopaths and installed by them inside our beautiful and generous world.

It is as if the ones in high chairs have installed an “energy stealing” filter all around the society, a filer that corrupts and poisons everything that the Creator made available to us directly — so that we don’t have anything good unless we buy it from them, on their terms.

Their mindset is the mindset of a criminal who would happily poison a clear pond in order to sell water filters to the locals. In fact, they are exactly that.

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/07/07/anatomy-of-decline.aspx

 

By 2030 You Will Not East Meat

Cities Race to Zero: Who’s in Cities Race to Zero? retrieved 17 June 2023

A report published in 2019 and re-emphasised in 2023 recommends that by 2030 we will not be permitted to eat meat or dairy products, we will be limited to three items of new clothing per year and one aeroplane flight every three years.  It will start in countries that “consume the most.” 

Published in 2019, ‘The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World’ report sets out targets for cities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as consistent with the 2015 Paris Agreement ambitions.  What this report aims to do is quantify and then suggest ways for city “leaders” to reduce consumption-based emissions.  In other words, reduce what you and I consume be it food, clothes or travel etc.

The place to start, a press release stated, is with those who consume the most and “consumption-based emissions must be cut by at least 50% by 2030.”

The report outlines six sectors where the world’s cities can take “rapid action to address consumption-based emissions”: food, construction, clothing, vehicles, aviation, and electronics.

The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World was co-created and co-delivered by C40, Arup and the University of Leeds with funding from Arup, University of Leeds and Citi Foundation.   It claims to be an analysis and not a plan but the tone of the report, from the outset, reads like a plan.  The foreword stated:

“The report demonstrates that mayors have an even bigger role and opportunity to help avert climate emergency than previously thought … While the analysis addresses big global questions, its purpose is to inspire practical action … average consumption-based emissions in C40 cities must halve within the next 10 years. In our wealthiest and highest consuming cities that means a reduction of two thirds or more by 2030.” – Mark Watts, Executive Director of C40

“It is now clear that action to reduce consumption will be necessary as part of the global effort to mitigate climate change … The actions set out in the report are challenging and they will be confronting for many, but we think they are necessary … City Mayors can set a vision and convene actors to bring about the changes we describe … The work reported here forces a focus on what a sustainable urban future might look like and helps us to consider what policies, regulations, incentives and behavioural changes will be necessary to transition to a zero-carbon world.” – Gregory Hodkinson, Former Chairman of Arup

The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World, 2019

C40 is a global network of mayors representing one-quarter of the global economy.  It includes almost 100 cities plus 1,143 cities and local governments that have joined C40’s ‘Cities Race to Zero’.  The cities that sign up for the ‘Cities Race to Zero’ commit, among others, to keeping global heating below the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.

Without reading the numerous reports and recommendations thrown at the ‘Cities Race to Zero’ signatories, it’s not possible to establish if the actions set out in The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World report are specifically included in the action plan.  Why does it matter?  Because if they are, it is not only the 100 or so C40 Cities but more than 1,000 cities that are committing to the report’s reductions in consumer-based emissions. Additionally, we can assume Arup’s network is committing the same.

Arup works as a global network of “experts” and boasts that it “shapes cities in a thousand ways.” It has more than 17,000 members and offices in 46 of the 97 cities that make up C40’s global network. C40 and Arup have worked together since 2009 and have collaborated on dystopian publications such as Deadline 2020, Green and Thriving Neighbourhoods and a guide for creating net-zero neighbourhoods. But these collaborations have not come about without money changing hands.

The first C40/Arup report titled ‘Powering Climate Action: Cities as Global Changemakers’ was published in 2015.   That same year Arup committed to investing $1 million over three years into a research partnership with C40.

In 2019, the year the C40/Arup consumer-based emissions report The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World was published, Arup trebled its advisory support to C40 to $3 million over 3 three years.

In 2023, Arup continued its investment in C40 with up to US$300,000 a year to help C40 drive resilience and decarbonisation in cities around the world. Unsurprisingly, in March 2023, C40 Cities re-highlighted the 2019 C40/Arup consumer-based emissions report in an article titled ‘A spotlight on consumption-based emissions’. “Since our report was published, cities around the world have begun to map consumption-based emissions and explore ways to reduce them,” C40 said.

So, what does the 2019 report that Arup has so heavily invested in say?

Below we have picked out a few highlights.  You can download and read the full report HERE.  Because it provides damning evidence against its collaborators, we have also attached a copy below should it disappear from public view at any time in the future.

Starting on page 66, the report summarises what they hope to impose on us.  Below are images of their “ambitions” which require no further comment, except to say that all these plans are being made and agreed upon outside the democratic process and in a classic dictatorial manner under false pretences.

[…]

Via https://expose-news.com/2023/06/18/by-2030-you-will-be-allowed-only-three/

Russia and China Reject Deployment of Foreign Force in Haiti

File photo of street riots in Haiti. | Photo: Twitter/ @anadoluagency

Newsletter

“History shows that these foreign interventions have done more harm than good in Haiti,” Russian Ambassador Polianski stressed.

During the last session of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), Russia and China were skeptical about sending a multinational military force into Haiti.

Earlier, Haitian Foreign Affairs Minister Jean Victor Geneus renewed the request for a “robust international force,” which was supported by almost all UNSC members and by guests from Caribbean countries at the session.

Taking the floor, Russian Ambassador Dmitri Polianski stressed that “although some consider a multinational force a panacea, history shows that these foreign interventions have done more harm than good in Haiti.”

He also requested that UNSC members listen to other Haitian voices that are completely against foreign interventions in this Caribbean nation.

Deuxième commémoration de l'assassinat de l'ancien Président, Jovenel Moïse, le drapeau de L'OFATMA est mis en berne ce vendredi 7 juillet 2023. pic.twitter.com/CBfwVBFC4x

— OFATMA (@OFATMA_haiti) July 7, 2023

The tweet reads, “Second anniversary of the assassination of President Jovenel Moise. The OFATMA flag is halfway up on Friday, July 7, 2023.”

Given the veto power that Russia has, it is unlikely that the UNSC will approve the sending of a military force, which has not taken much form as no country has offered to lead it.

Chinese ambassador Zhang Jun was also very skeptical about the appropriateness of sending a military force to Haiti.

“We have heard many speeches in support of this force, but no country announcing concrete actions. For this reason, it seems that more in-depth studies are going to be necessary before arriving at a viable proposal,” he said, emphasizing that Haitians must decide on their own destiny.

Previously, after returning from a short trip to Haiti, United Nations Secretary Antonio Guterres was shocked by the level of insecurity in that Caribbean country and asked the international community to act “immediately” to form a multinational force.

He said that this force would not have a political or military mission like the Blue Helmets, but would be at the service of the Haitian Police in order to restore order.

[…]

Via https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Russia-and-China-Reject-Deployment-of-Foreign-Force-in-Haiti-20230707-0014.html

Ancient History of India: Origins and Rise of Buddhism

Episode 10 Origins and Rise of Buddhism

A History of India

Michael Fisher (2016)

Film Review

According to Fisher, initial support for Buddhism arose from an increasingly powerful merchant class who were excluded from political power by the Kshatrya varna.*

Born the heir to a small Kshatryan kingdom, Siddharta Gautama (who became known as the Buddha) was stil a teenager when he left his wife and son to join a band of ascetics. After six years he renounced asceticism, gaining enlightenment through meditating under a famous fig tree in the city of Gaya (in modern Bahar).

As he and his disciples began preaching they taught four noble truths:

Suffering is inevitableSuffering stems from sensual desire and attachment to this worldSuffering stops when desire stops.The Middle Way (ie rejecting extremes of asceticism and pleasure) is the path to enlightenment.

He taught 7 steps towards achieving the Middle Way:

Right intentionRight speechRight actionRight livelihoodRight effortRight mindfulnessRight concentration

Buddha and his disciples also referred to the Middle Way as Damma, the equivalent of the Sanskrit Dharma.**

Buddha and his disciples established sanga (monasteries), where monks lived four months of the year during monsoon season. They spent the other eight months as wandering teachers. Buddha initial banned women from monastic life but relented following intervention by his foster mother and aunt. Buddhist numbers produced the first record writings by women.

After 537 rebirths, Buddha finally achieved Nirvana when he died at age 80 in 480 BC.

As with Jainism, a religion where a person’s worth was independent of their birth was extremely attractive to increasingly wealthy Vaishya merchants. Thanks to their generous donations, many Buddhist monasteries became important centers of learning.

in the 3rd century BC, Buddhist missionaries went to Sri Lanka, where the vast majority of the population remains Buddhist. From Sri Lanka the religion spread to Southeast Asia (Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia), where it remains the predominant religion. Hindusim spread along the same route.

In the first century AD, Mahayan Buddhism emerged and spread to Afghanistan, China, Vietnam and Japan.

In the 7th century AD, Vajrayan (thunderbolt or sudden enlightenment) Buddhism emerged and spread to Nepal and Tibet.

Ironically by the 7th century AD, the religion had died out in India. Fisher blamed this partly on fabulously wealthy Buddhist monasteries that lost touch with the common people and partly on the adoption of Buddhist principles by Hinduism and Jainism.

In the mid-20th century Dalit (Untouchable) activist B R Ambedkar coverted to Buddhism shortly before his death in 1956 and persuaded many of his Dalit followers to convert. At present, there 8 million Buddhists (mainly Dalits) in India. Although they have used the courts to reclaim sacred Buddhist sites (from the Hindu religion), they account for less than 1% of the population.

*See The Vedic Origin of India’s Castes

**Buddha’s followers wrote in the Pali language spoken by north Indian people (not Sanskrit).

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/366254/366191

Spies Buying Americans’ Private Data. Congress Has New Chance to Stop It

Photograph: John Lund/Getty Images An amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act would forbid government entities from buying Americans’ search histories, location data, and more.

A “must-pass” defense bill wending its way through the United States House of Representatives may be amended to abolish the government practice of buying information on Americans that the country’s highest court has said police need a warrant to seize. Though it’s far too early to assess the odds of the legislation surviving the coming months of debate, it’s currently one of the relatively few amendments to garner support from both Republican and Democratic members.

Introduction of the amendment follows a report declassified by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence—the nation’s top spy—which last month revealed that intelligence and law enforcement agencies have been buying up data on Americans that the government’s own experts described as “the same type” of information the US Supreme Court in 2018 sought to shield against warrantless searches and seizures.

A handful of House lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, have declared support for the amendment submitted late last week by representatives Warren Davidson, a Republican from Ohio, and Sara Jacobs, a California Democrat. The bipartisan duo is seeking stronger warrant requirements for the surveillant data constantly accumulated by people’s cellphones. They argue that it shouldn’t matter whether a company is willing to accept payment from the government in lieu of a judge’s permission.

“Warrantless mass surveillance infringes the Constitutionally protected right to privacy,” says Davidson. The amendment, he says, is aimed chiefly at preventing the government from “circumventing the Fourth Amendment” by purchasing “your location data, browsing history, or what you look at online.”

A copy of the Davidson-Jacobs amendment reviewed by WIRED shows that the warrant requirements it aims to bolster focus specifically on people’s web browsing and internet search history, along with GPS coordinates and other location information derived primarily from cellphones. It further encapsulates “Fourth Amendment protected information” and would bar law enforcement agencies of all levels of jurisdiction from exchanging “anything of value” for information about people that would typically require a “warrant, court order, or subpoena under law.”

The amendment contains an exception for anonymous information that it describes as “reasonably” immune to being de-anonymized; a legal term of art that would defer to a court’s analysis of a case’s more fluid technicalities. A judge might, for instance, find it unreasonable to assume a data set is well obscured based simply on the word of a data broker. The Federal Trade Commission’s Privacy and Identity Protection Division noted last year that claims that data is anonymized “are often deceptive,” adding that “significant research” reflects how trivial it often is to reidentify “anonymized data.”

The amendment was introduced Friday to defense legislation that will ultimately authorize a range of policies and programs consuming much of the Pentagon’s nearly $890 billion budget next year. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress is required to pass annually, is typically pieced together from hundreds, if not thousands, of amendments.

This year negotiations are particularly contentious, given the split chamber and a mess of interparty strife, and only one in six NDAA amendments introduced so far have apparent bipartisan support.

Republican members Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, and Ben Cline of Virginia have backed the Davidson-Jacobs amendment, according to the House Rules Committee website. They’re joined by Democrats Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Zoe Lofgren of California, and Veronica Escobar of Texas.

Jacobs previously coauthored a related amendment with Davidson that attempted to compel the US military to disclose annually how often its various spy agencies purchase Americans’ smartphone and web-browsing data. The amendment was stripped from the final version of last year’s NDAA.

The data broker report declassified last month by the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, stressed that neither presently, nor at any point in the past, would the government be permitted to force “billions of people to carry location-tracking devices on their persons at all times.” That is, nevertheless, what is happening today, independent of the government’s actions. The unceasing explosions of new technologies are clashing more and more frequently with the nation’s antiquated privacy laws, giving the Department of Homeland Security, Defense Intelligence Agency, and others like them an unmistakable loophole through which virtually anyone can be surveilled without a reason.

Demand Progress senior policy counsel Sean Vitka, whose group has spent years lobbying for privacy reform in the face of the government’s growing and often secret reliance on data brokers, says the relatively untracked purchases—up to and including “turnkey lists of everyone who has gone to an abortion clinic, a place of worship, a rehab facility, or a protest”—represent an “existential threat” to the right to privacy. The Davidson-Jacobs amendment marks a “critical opportunity to get [federal lawmakers] on the record,” adds Vitka.

The American Civil Liberties Union intends to score how lawmakers vote on the amendment, WIRED has learned. The lawmakers’ effort is also being supported by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, FreedomWorks, and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, among dozens of similar civil society organizations.

Congressional staffers and others privy to ongoing conferencing over privacy matters on Capitol Hill say that regardless of whether the amendment succeeds, the focus on data brokers is just a prelude to a bigger fight coming this fall over the potential sunsetting of one of the spy community’s powerful tools, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the survivability of which is anything but assured.

[…]

Via https://www.wired.com/story/ndaa-2023-davidson-jacobs-fourth-amendment/

‘Uncontrolled Experiment’: How Smart Devices Are Damaging Kids’ Brains

By  Dr. Joseph Mercola

As little as two hours of screen time per day can impair a child’s thinking and language skills, interfere with sleep, and increase anxiety and depression.

Story at a glance:

Children ages 9 to 10 who use electronic devices for seven hours or more per day exhibit premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outer brain layer that processes information from the five physical senses.As little as two hours of screen time per day may impact cognition, resulting in lower scores on thinking and language tests.Infants under the age of 2 do not effectively learn language from videos; they need live interaction.Babies do not transfer what they learn from the iPad to the real world. For example, the ability to play with virtual Legos does not transfer over to the skill of manipulating real Lego blocks.Apps and social media are designed to be addictive, and young children are far more susceptible to addiction than adults.

Most people today live in a sea of radio frequencies emitted from wireless technologies of all kinds, from routers to smartphones, tablets, baby monitors, TVs, appliances, smart meters and many more.

According to many experts, chronic, heavy exposure could have severe repercussions for our health, especially that of children, who are now exposed even before birth.

Research also suggests interaction with social media, games and apps online produces a number of effects, both physical and psychological.

Heavy use of wireless devices changes kids’ brain structure

In the largest long-term study of brain development and youth health in the U.S., the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, reveals the brains of the most prolific users of electronic devices look different compared to those who use smartphones, tablets and video games less frequently.

[…]

These preliminary findings, based on the brain scans of 4,500 9- to 10-year-olds, reveal children who use electronic devices for seven hours or more each day have premature thinning of the brain cortex, the outer brain layer that processes information from the five physical senses (taste, touch, sight, smell and sound).

The exact ramifications of this anomaly are still unknown.

According to Dr. Gaya Dowling, a researcher with the National Institutes of Health, which is sponsoring the $300 million study, thinning of the cortex is thought to be part of the brain maturation process, so what these scans are showing is that this process is being sped up in children who get a lot of screen time (7-plus hours a day).

They cannot prove that the changes are definitively caused by screen time, and the full effects won’t be known until years from now, as the emotional and mental health outcomes of these children are evaluated.

Still, preliminary results suggest as little as two hours of screen time per day may impact cognition, resulting in lower scores on thinking and language tests.

American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for screen time

The “Growing Up Digital” report by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), published in October 2015 . . .  cites data from research showing infants under the age of 1 do not effectively learn language from videos, whereas they do learn language from live interactions. Up to age 2, live presentations are far superior for language processing and learning compared to video presentations.

[…]

This is also noted in the “60 Minutes” report (see video below).

Research shows that babies do not transfer what they learn from the iPad to the real world, or from two-dimensional interaction to three-dimensional reality. For example, the ability to play with virtual Legos does not transfer over to the skill of manipulating real Lego blocks.

[…]

Digital media are designed to be addictive

While the AAP’s guidelines may be based on what seems to be a common sense of good parenting, the reality is that many parents have just as much trouble moderating their usage as their children.

What’s worse, young children, especially those under the age of 2, are far more susceptible to addictive behavior than older children and adults.

The fact that apps and social media are designed to be addictive adds to the challenge.

[…]

In the video below, Harris describes the process, known in programming circles as “brain hacking,” as they incorporate knowledge of neuropsychology into the development of digital interfaces that boost interaction.

[…]

The research discussed in the featured 60 Minute segment reveals that addiction to smartphones and social media is indeed a reality, triggering the release of dopamine — a neurochemical involved in cravings and desire that promotes impulsive and compulsive behavior.

[…]

Screen time linked to sleep deprivation

The radiation alone is a significant hazard and is known to disrupt sleep, but the blue light from the screen, plus the beeping and pinging when messages and other notifications come in are bound to interrupt sleep as well.

This does not even factor in the influence of microwave radiation from cellphones influencing melatonin, which regulates your sleep-wake cycle.

When your melatonin production is disrupted, it can have long-term health effects, as shown in a 2013 animal study, which assessed the effects of cellphone radiation on the central nervous system.

Exposure to cellphone radiation for just one hour a day for one month caused rats to experience a period of delay before entering rapid eye movement deep sleep — a phase necessary for restorative sleep.

Another study published in 2015 found that 1.8 GHz frequencies affected rats’ circadian rhythm and decreased their daily production of melatonin. Superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase (which help prevent cellular damage) were also decreased.

Low melatonin is used as a marker for disturbed sleep. It comes as no great surprise then that sleep deprivation among teenagers rose by 57% between 1991 and 2015.

Many do not even get seven hours of sleep on a regular basis, while science reveals they need a minimum of eight and as many as 10 hours to maintain their health.

The research clearly shows that heavy computer and cellphone users are more prone to insomnia. For example, one 2008 study revealed that people exposed to radiation from their mobile phones for three hours before bedtime had more trouble falling asleep and staying in a deep sleep.

[…

Data from the annual Monitoring the Future survey reveals the more time teens spend online, the unhappier they are, and those who spend more time than average on in-person relations and activities that do not involve their smartphone are far more likely to report being “happy.”

Results such as these really should come as no surprise. Spending time outdoors has been scientifically shown to dramatically improve people’s moods and significantly reduce symptoms of depression.

Interestingly, it doesn’t matter what type of screen activity is involved. They’re all equally likely to cause psychological distress.

Between 2012 and 2015, depressive symptoms among boys rose by 21%. Among girls, the rise during that same time was a whopping 50% — a truly remarkable increase in just three years’ time.

Rates of teen depression, self-harm and suicide have also dramatically risen.

Emergency room visits for self-harming behavior such as cutting have tripled among girls ages 10 to 14, and data suggest spending three hours or more each day on electronic devices raises a teen’s suicide risk by 35%.

Between 2007 and 2015, the suicide rate for 12- to 14-year-old girls rose threefold — a gender trend that can in part be blamed on a rise in cyberbullying, which is more common among girls. The suicide rate among boys doubled in that same time frame.

[…]

How electronics trigger anxiety, depression, memory problems

Aside from purely psychological factors, one of the reasons why social media use tends to raise a child’s risk for anxiety and depression has to do with the fact that smartphones emit electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

Research by professor Martin Pall, Ph.D., reveals EMFs activate voltage-gated calcium channels embedded in your cell membranes. This releases a flood of calcium ions which, through a cascade of effects, result in the creation of hydroxyl free radicals — some of the most destructive free radicals known to man.

In turn, this decimates mitochondrial and nuclear DNA, their membranes and proteins, ultimately resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction.

Your brain has the highest density of voltage-gated calcium channels in your body, which is why excessive EMF exposure is associated with depression and neurological dysfunction, including dementia.

According to Nicholas Carr, author of the book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” millennials are experiencing greater problems with forgetfulness than seniors.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/smart-devices-kids-brains-cola/

After Long Silence on ‘Long Vax,’ Science Magazine Links Autoimmune Disorders to COVID Shots

By  Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

After years of organizing and advocacy by people suffering autoimmune injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine, one of the world’s top scientific journals reports on the existence of “Long Vax.”

Mainstream publications and regulatory agencies have buckled to public pressure to admit the COVID-19 vaccine can cause injuries such as myocarditis and pericarditis — but until recently, they’ve published little or nothing about the substantial number of people suffering from autoimmune disease after vaccination.

However, on Tuesday, the journal Science published an article confirming that COVID-19 vaccines are linked to autoimmune disorders, such as small fiber neuropathy and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).

“We’ve been screaming from the top of our lungs about these things happening,” Agnieszka Wilson, founder of #CanWeTalkAboutIt told The Defender. “And finally, slowly, it’s being acknowledged.”

The #CanWeTalkAboutIt campaign is a global effort to break the silence around injuries from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Suzanna Newell, board member of the vaccine-injured patient advocacy group React19, told The Defender:

“I am extremely grateful that doctors and medical institutions are now willing to talk about adverse reactions. [They] should have been listening to the injured. We even have many injured medical professionals among the injured who have had trouble being heard.”

Science reported that in addition to abnormal blood clotting and heart inflammation, the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines give rise to “another apparent complication”:

“[This] debilitating suite of symptoms that resembles Long Covid, has been more elusive, its link to vaccination unclear and its diagnostic features ill-defined.

“But in recent months, what some call Long Vax has gained wider acceptance among doctors and scientists, and some are now working to better understand and treat its symptoms.”

According to Science, Long Vax cases “seem very rare.” They include a wide range of symptoms such as persistent headaches, severe fatigue and abnormal heart rate and blood pressure.

The symptoms can begin to appear within hours or weeks after vaccination and are difficult to study, the authors of the article said.

Science reported that increasing numbers of researchers are making diagnoses that include small fiber sensory neuropathy, which causes tingling or electric shock-like sensations, burning pain and blood circulation problems, and POTS — a condition that affects blood flow and can result in symptoms such as lightheadedness, fainting and increased heartbeat — that appear when standing up from a reclined position.

Post-vaccination symptoms could have features of one or both conditions. People with long COVID can suffer similar symptoms, according to the article.

Small sensory fiber neuropathy and POTS also are associated with other vaccines such as Gardasil, Merck’s human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

Commenting on the article, Substacker Igor Chudov wrote that the authors acknowledge the suffering, but also minimize it, falsely asserting that it is rare. “It goes on and on about how ‘rare’ vaccine injuries are.”

Brianne Dressen, founder of React19, said that despite the fact the article qualifies some of its key claims, she sees it as an important step toward getting these conditions more widely recognized.

Dressen told The Defender:

“Science Magazine is speaking to an audience that the rest of us who have been pigeonholed into this corner can’t speak to because they don’t even know we exist. We’ve all been censored to no end. So how are we going to reach those people?

“They’ve been hammered over and over again in outlets like Science Magazine — which is kind of ironic — with the idea that the vaccines are wonderful and there’s no possible way that anything bad can happen …

“So if we ever get an opportunity to put a little bit of content out there in their lane for them to question even just a little bit what’s going on around them, then we’ll be able to pull them back over to, you know, to the truth.”

Vaccine-related autoimmune disorders are underreported 

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) were attempting to study and treat patients with Long Vax symptoms in 2021. They published a preprint report on their work, but the study was abruptly halted without explanation and the NIH has stonewalled attempts to discover details about what the agency knew early on.

Science also cited previous and forthcoming research by Sujana Reddy identifying post-vaccine POTS, and a study published in Nature Cardiovascular Research by researchers from Cedars Sinai Medical Center last year that linked COVID-19 and the vaccine to POTS.

Other peer-reviewed research reported similar links and has revealed a wide range of immune system and neurological effects from the COVID-19 vaccine.

Numerous people with autoimmune disorders from the COVID-19 vaccine have also shared their stories with The Defender. Some reported difficulties in submitting their health information to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

A total of 1,569,668 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and June 23, 2023, to VAERS.

The latest available data from VAERS show 770 reports of POTS with 578 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine, 160 reports attributed to Moderna’s and 31 reports to Johnson & Johnson’s.

“Under-reporting is a known and serious disadvantage of the VAERS system,” according to VAERs expert Jessica Rose, Ph.D.

Rose wrote, “Unfortunately, we can never really know how many people are suffering from adverse events. Reports can go missing, reports can remain in temporary VAERS ID limbo or never get filed in the first place.”

Scientists hesitantly speak out

“You see one or two patients and you wonder if it’s a coincidence,” Anne Louise Oaklander, M.D. Ph.D., a neurologist and researcher at Harvard Medical School, told Science. “But by the time you’ve seen 10, 20,” she continued, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

In addition to Oaklander, a top researcher on small fiber neuropathy, Harlan Krumholz, M.D., a Yale cardiologist, Sujana Reddy, D.O., an internal medicine resident physician at East Alabama Health, Tae Chung, M.D., a neuromuscular physiatrist who runs a POTS clinic at Johns Hopkins, Matthew Schelke, M.D., a neurologist at Columbia University and Lawrence Purpura, M.D., MPH, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University, and William Murphy, Ph.D., an immunologist at the University of California, Davis all commented on their ongoing research on autoimmune illness associated with COVID-19 vaccination.

The article also reports that “regulators in the US and Europe say they have not found a connection between COVID-19 vaccines and small fiber neuropathy or POTS.”

But even Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which has denied and downplayed the existence of vaccine autoimmune side effects, conceded to Science, “If a provider has somebody in front of them, they may want to take seriously the concept [of] a vaccine side effect.”

German Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach has “acknowledged that Long Covid-like symptoms after vaccination are a real phenomenon,” Science also reported.

Marks told Science he worried “the sensational headline” about vaccine side effects could “mislead” the public. And several other researchers quoted in the article also expressed concern that their research could “undermine trust in COVID-19 vaccines.”

Dressen said researchers are hesitant to speak out because it carries great risk.

“There is not a single person, whether they are new to the game or whether they’ve been in this for decades, there’s not a single person that when they do step across that line and they do speak out, that they don’t get punished,” Dressen said.

She added, “There’s not a single person that gets hailed a hero and money flows and their research happens. There’s always repercussions. And these researchers knew that, right? Which is why they came out together and they came out in force.”

[…]

Immune overreaction to spike protein

The article hypothesizes that the Long Vax symptoms might be caused by an immune overreaction to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

[…]

Rose told The Defender that “molecular mimicry” is a possible action for spike-induced autoimmunity. Molecular mimicry refers to a significant similarity between pathogenic elements contained in a vaccine and some human proteins.

According to Nature, this similarity may lead to immune cross reactivity, where the reaction of the immune system toward the pathogenic antigens may harm the similar human proteins, essentially causing autoimmune disease.

[…]

Science reported that a few university-sponsored research projects are moving forward. Yale’s LISTEN study will examine both long COVID and Long Vax cases.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/long-vax-science-magazine-autoimmune-disorders-covid-shots/