Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 455
February 20, 2023
Oakland goes dark as fire rips through California substation following series of targeted attacks across US
By
Flights are grounded and 9,000 residents are plunged into darkness as officials launch investigationThe Oakland Airport in Northern California lost power Sunday evening An outage in the area impacted roughly 50,000 customers after a fire at an electrical substation in Alameda County Pacific Gas and Electric officials are investigating the incident, which comes after a series of attacks on substations across the U.S. in recent weeksA major power outage caused by a fire at an electrical substation shut down the Oakland Airport in Northern California Sunday evening.
More than 9,000 customers in the Bay Area are still impacted and flights out of the area were halted after a fire broke out at a Pacific Gas and Electric substation around 1pm.
Photos and videos posted on social media show stranded passengers at the airport waiting at their gates and to get through security which was shut down for hours.
A representative for PG&E confirmed the widespread outage on Twitter just after 2.50pm Pacific Standard Time and say they are ‘currently investigating the details.’
The cause of the outage is unknown at this time. The incident comes as a series of substations across the United States have been targeted by individuals looking to wreak havoc on the power system.
Just after 3pm, a battalion chief with the Oakland Fire Department confirmed the blaze had been put out and that PG&E officials are working to determine a cause.
‘Approximately about one o’clock this afternoon we were called for a fire coming from inside the PG&E yard,’ the battalion chief said while speaking with local media.
‘We were able to gain access into the PG&E yard and found that there was a transformer actively burning,’ the Oakland Fire official said.
PG&E officials will have ‘to really look at all the equipment’ before a cause can be determined.
The damage had already been done, however, as hundreds of passengers were stuck at their gates and waiting in the security line due to the outage.
One video shared by a Twitter user named Matt Ashlock shows passengers at a standstill as security lines remain all but bare.
Incoming passengers also arrived to find that baggage claim was unavailable, resulting in even more hold ups inside the Northern California airport.
Just before 3pm, Ashlock tweeted that machines at security appeared to be back up and running and the line had begun moving again.
It’s unclear at this time how many flights were impacted by the outage.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit also cut down service to and from the airport Sunday due to the outage but resumed several hours later.
[…]It’s still unclear if Sunday’s incident was a targeted attack however there have been multiple substation attacks in recent months across the entire U.S.
Over the last three months, at least nine substations spanning North Carolina, Washington, and Oregon have cut power to thousands of customers.
The attacks are worrisome for those in states and areas where a lack of power could turn deadly.
In December, unidentified individuals attacked two power substations in Moore County, North Carolina, where some 45,000 people lost power.
Some customers were without power for up to five days.
Just weeks later, another attack occurred in Randolph County, North Carolina.
Eight attacks targeting power plants have been recorded in Washington and nearby Oregon in recent weeks, leading to them coming under scrutiny by the FBI
[…]In Washington state, two men were charged just after New Year’s Day for attacking four power stations on Christmas, leaving thousands in the dark and cold for the holidays.
The two men planned the attacks as a red herring so they could burglarize a local business, law enforcement officials said after the fact.
Between Washington and Oregon, there were six attacks on substations between mid-November and December in 2022.
The increasing number of attacks has caused some legislators to ring the alarm over the safety and security of substations across the country.
Bills have been proposed in states like North Carolina, South Carolina, and Arizona in recent weeks that would require 24-hour security at the power stations, or harsh penalties for attacks.
[…]
How China Banned Soros in 1989
Matt Ehret
Do you think that both George Soros and China represent threats to your freedom and democratic values?
Do you think that the US government suffered a regime change in 2020, but don’t understand how Anglo-American intelligence agencies orchestrated it?
Did you know that China kicked out George Soros in 1989 and purged his minions of CIA-connected fifth columnists over the ensuing decades?
Why do George Soros and Steve Bannon sound so different on so many points, except when it comes to China which both representatives of the “left” and “right” agree must be put through a regime change in order to preserve “democratic liberal values”?
In this Canadian Patriot Press documentary produced by Jason Dahl, written by Matthew Ehret and narrated by Cynthia Chung, you will be introduced to the deeper reasons for Trump’s overthrow in 2020 and the broader strategic alliance of a US-Russia-China partnership against globalism which Donald Trump was bringing into reality.
Before you find yourself supporting a program of anti-China or anti-Russia hysteria which may quickly slide into a new world war, take a deep breath, re-evaluate what power structure oversaw the murder of eight American presidents during the past two centuries and come to a deeper understanding of the CIA-rebranding and Trilateral Commission takeover of the US government over 50 years ago.
Click below to watch the full documentary on Rumble or Bitchute.
To watch on Bitchute click hereVia https://matthewehret.substack.com/p/how-china-banned-soros-in-1989-a/
Poverty Point: North America’s 3,500 Year Old City
Episode 6 Poverty Point America’s Oldest City
Ancient Civilizations of North America
Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)
Film Review
North America’s first city at Poverty Point (in modern northeast Louisiana) had a population of four to five thousand people. Dating from 3500 BP (Before Present), it demonstrates a clear knowledge of geometry and surveying skills and was clearly master planned by a centralized authority. Built by a large organized workforce, it featured a wide central plaza at the focus of six concentric semicircular embankments, each with hundreds of houses. Five causeways were cut through the embankments leading to the central plaza.
This first North American city also had a number of earthen pyramids located behind the semicircular embankments. Three were built along a perfect North-South axis, indicating a knowledge of astronomy. Archeologists have also found the remains of woodhenges,* in the form of wide post holes arranged in a circle.
Archeological evidence indicates the central plaza (encompassing hundreds of acres) excavated first and covered with a cap of cay to prevent erosion.
No actual houses have survived from Poverty Point, though many post holes and occasional wattle and daub** remain, as well as large mud-carrying baskets used to construct the semi-circular embankments.
Despite millions of artifacts found at Poverty Points, there are no human remains. Large middens found near the embankments suggests its residents were affluent hunter gatherers. In other words, food was so abundant they lived in permanent dwellings year round. Their diet mainly consisted of fish and reptiles, pecans, acorns and walnuts, cooked in simple pits with heated clay cooking balls.
The residents of Poverty Point had a vast trade network involving six major water ways including the Mississippi river. They imported hematite and magnetite (to weight their fishing nets), as well as soapstone bowls from Alabama and Georgia and harder minerals (such as quartz, chert and flint which they carved into jewelry and charms) from Tennessee, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Arkansas and Oklahoma and copper and pottery from the Great Lakes.
Archeologists have also discovered numerous smaller population centers from 3500 BP scattered around Louisiana. All left behind similar cultural artifacts (pyramids, large central plazas, pottery, cooking balls and precious stone jewelry and charms).
The city at Poverty Point survived over 1000 years.
*A woodhenge is a Stone Age henge (ring shaped bank and ditch) and timber monument.
**Wattle and daub is a composite building method in which woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung and straw.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
February 19, 2023
Zelensky Literally Selling Ukraine to Corporations on Wall Street
Zelensky Rings Opening Bell at New York Stock Exchange
Ben Norton
Geopolitical Economy
In a speech launching the neoliberal selloff program Advantage Ukraine, Zelensky offered Wall Street “a chance for you to invest now in projects worth of hundreds of billions of dollars.”
The financial news service Business Wire published a press release from the Ukrainian government in which Zelensky boasted:
The $400+ [billion] in investment options featured on AdvantageUkraine.com span public private partnerships, privatization and private ventures. A USAID-supported project team of investment bankers and researchers appointed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy will work with businesses interested in investing.
It also quoted the president of NYSE Group, Lynn Martin, who said:
As the largest exchange globally, we stand for freedom, investor protection and unfettered access to capital. We are pleased to welcome President Zelenskyy virtually to the NYSE bell podium, a symbol of the freedom and opportunity our U.S. capital markets have enabled around the globe. We are honored the President has chosen the NYSE to mark the kickoff of Advantage Ukraine and engage with the world’s business community.
The press release cited executives of US corporate giants Google, Alphabet, and Microsoft, who salivated over the economic possibilities offered by Ukraine.
Reuters noted that the Ukrainian government hired British public relations firm WPP to run the marketing operation for Advantage Ukraine.
Zelensky coordinated his New York Stock Exchange publicity stunt with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal imploring US capitalists to “Invest in the Future of Ukraine.”
“I committed my administration to creating a favorable environment for investment that would make Ukraine the greatest growth opportunity in Europe since the end of World War II,” Zelensky wrote.
He continued:
To create a safe, transparent environment for business engagement, Ukraine is pursuing investment guarantees from both the Group of Seven and the European Union, reforming the country’s tax system, and establishing a strong new legal framework. Our country has already adopted rules and laws to allow companies to build transparent corporate structures, attract foreign investment more easily, and use additional mechanisms to protect intangible assets. Favorable conditions will allow us to establish Ukraine as a powerful IT hub and implement innovative business ideas quickly and effectively.
Ukraine is a land of surprising opportunity. I personally invite you to be surprised by our potential and to invest in the future of Ukraine, writes @ZelenskyyUa https://t.co/sWGpAyQhKq
— Wall Street Journal Opinion (@WSJopinion) September 7, 2022
Multipolarista previously reported on a meeting by Western governments and corporations in Switzerland in July in which they planned harsh neoliberal economic policies to impose on Ukraine.
The Western participants published documents calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”
Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland to plan harsh neoliberal economic policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”https://t.co/J0n8db8ZLr
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 29, 2022
In an interview with Multipolarista, economist Michael Hudson compared the new emergency anti-labor laws imposed by the Ukrainian government to the brutal neoliberal policies implemented by Chile’s far-right Pinochet dictatorship after a CIA-backed coup in 1973.
“It’s jaw dropping,” Hudson said of Zelensky’s Wall Street Journal op-ed. “It’s like a parody of what a socialist would have written about how the class war would be put in into action by a fascist government.”
“So of course he was welcomed on the stock exchange for abolishing labor’s rights,” Hudson added. “You could not have a more black-and-white example” of class war.
“This is exactly what [French President] Macron said when he said the ‘end of abundance.’ The Ukrainian labor force has just experienced the end of affluence, neoliberal style.
“And as Mr. Zelensky said, it may be the end of affluence for the labor force, but it’s going to be a bonanza for you investors in the New York Stock Exchange. Come on in and join the party!”
“Somebody’s loss is turned into somebody else’s game. And that’s what happens in a class war. It’s a zero-sum game. There is no attempt at all to raise living standards.”
“Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe – but Zelensky said it’s not poor enough. He said, you think this is something, wait until our new law takes effect. That’ll really show you what it means to be the poorest country in Europe.”
“But it’ll also be the richest country in Europe for the 1%,” Hudson concluded.
Via https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/09/zelensky-selling-ukraine-wall-street/Unimaginable Catastrophe on New Zealand’s East Coast
By Seemorerocks
The catastrophe from Cyclone Gabrielle in Hawkes Bay and the Bay of Plenty seems to be beyond anything one could imagine. For one, The devastation has all but destroyed from what we hear 50% or more of Hawkes Bay’s horticulture. They are not telling us any of that in the media. You can expect food shortages that may last years
GISBORNE & HAWKES BAY CRIPPLED
We are getting reports MSM are ignoring the worst stories.
There are 5,600 registered as missing.
From https://t.me/CounterspinMediaNZ/65
“Dead animals are building up and rotting & Napier residents have been without power, hot water, internet & phone signal since Mon night/Tues morning.”
“A lot of people have lost their houses, everything.”
“We were totally cut off from Napier in Hastings with many people being turned away from the only crossing available even though they were essential.”
“Looting, shooting, stabbing, killing, stealing, and hostage situations are going on. Gangs are out of control, holding people hostage and at gun point for their supplies.”
“The devastation has all but destroyed from what we hear 50% or more of Hawkes Bay’s horticulture.”
Comment on Telegram:
I have a friend in Napier.. she says as follows…. Napier has been devastated. The search and rescue teams have been working tirelessly, we know, our place is in the centre of the worst hit areas. Our impassable road plus others in the area have already been cleared so rescue teams can get in and residents get out. No small feat, you know how far we are from town and the road was blocked almost the entire length. That’s just our road. Power is slowly being restored, honestly that’s the least of people’s worries. Navy ships have bought in food and supplies as there was no road access into Napier. There is now road access via Palmerston North. Please squash the rumours, the police, ambulance,rescue teams and everyone helping have been doing an amazing job.
Such total carnage here, you have to see it to believe it,however, the most urgent matters have definately been taken care of in the appropriate order. I don’t believe for a second that we have been forgotten about, it’s just some people’s needs are far greater than others, and those people are the priority.
[…]
Cyclone Gabrielle crime: Hawke’s Bay village Puketapu forms blockades; gunshots reported in MaraenuiSeveral roadblocks have been in place around a rural Hawke’s Bay village under threat from looters – and residents manning them appear to have the blessing of police and the Defence Force.
There are rising tensions in some parts of Hawke’s Bay as police send in reinforcements amid fears that opportunist criminals could take advantage of power-less suburbs and empty homes. In one incident last night, three people, including an 18-year-old, were arrested after police responded to reports of gunshots in Kelvin Rd, Maraenui. There were no injuries and police say inquiries are continuing.
In the village of Puketapu, it is understood two police officers came to speak with residents after the Herald revealed locals were planning to install roadblocks or checkpoints overnight to deter looters.
Hundreds of police officers drafted into Eastern District after looting incidents, Vodafone generators stolenIt comes after Hastings police said they’re taking a “very hard line” on criminal behaviour in the region after “unfair” burglaries on Thursday morning of flood victims.
Police said they arrested five people following a burglary at a commercial building on Thursday.
Vodafone confirmed on Saturday evening generators had been stolen from their mobile sites, which had cut phone coverage in storm-affected areas. Vodafone chief executive Jason Paris said police are now patrolling the sites and most other generators are GPS tracked. “We know who the perpetrators are… Times are tough, but don’t be a d***,” he said.
Police Eastern District commander superintendent Jeanette Park said officers will be carrying out patrols night and day in flood-affected areas of the Eastern District.
[…]
Via https://seemorerocks.is/unimaginable-catastrophe-in-hawkes-bay-and-the-bay-of-plenty/
Doctors Refuse to Listen to Vaccine-Injured Patients
Posted BY: Kara | NwoReport
A California physician sounded the alarm about doctors routinely ignoring their patients who’ve experienced vaccine injuries, claiming he’s treated hundreds as a result.
Dr. Michael Huang explained on “The Ingraham Angle” Friday how he’s seen a major uptick in vaccine injuries and treated hundreds of vaccine-injured patients since the COVID jab rollout in 2021.
“Before the COVID vaccination program, I’ve seen maybe one or two adult vaccine-related injuries, and they were mild,” Huang said.
The vaccine injuries he now sees include chest pains, menstrual irregularities, and pregnancy loss.
Doctor: Covid vax injuries I’ve treated include menstrual irregularity, pregnancy loss and chest pain pic.twitter.com/ua7V1jkEUB
— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) February 18, 2023
Huang, a 20-year practitioner in Roseville, went on to suggest that the establishment narrative about COVID has skewed the medical community’s judgment about the experimental mRNA jab and its risks.
“I have to apologize on behalf of my profession. Physicians have really fallen on their face and they have refused to listen to patients coming in with vaccine injury symptoms and basically assume it doesn’t exist,” he said.
Huang cited VAERS data recently released by the Florida Surgeon General showing a 1700% increase in vaccine injuries since the mRNA jab was introduced to argue that the government should no longer recommend it.
“Governments should let doctors practice medicine,” he said.
Breaking: Today Florida Surgeon General issued an official “Health Alert on mRNA COVID Vaccine Safety”:
“In Florida alone there was a 1,700% increase in VAERS reports after the release of the COVID vaccine. The reporting of life-threatening conditions increased over 4,400%.” pic.twitter.com/gowRhmYHWb
— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) February 16, 2023
February 18, 2023
Youtube Bans Expose on US Bombing of Nordstream Pipeline
>
The Unz Review
In an unprecedented step, Youtube has severely restricted as “inappropriate or offensive” Seymour Hersh’s blockbuster Nord Stream Pipelines interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
Hersh won his Pulitzer Prize more than a half-century ago in 1970 as the fiercely independent reporter who uncovered America’s My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War. During his following decades at the New York Times and the New Yorker he broke some of the biggest stories in journalistic history, including the domestic spying activities of the CIA, the Abu Ghraib prison abuses of the Iraq War, and the killing of Osama bin Laden, while being honored with two National Magazine Awards, five George Polk Awards, and numerous other accolades.
Hersh’s long career arguably ranks him as the most renowned living American journalist, and indeed Prof. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University described him as such in a recent interview.
Then late last week, Hersh dropped a bombshell as big as anything in his career, revealing on his Substack platform the exact details of how the Biden Administration had secretly destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines, an attack on $30 billion of vital European energy infrastructure that constituted an act of war against Germany, one of our closest NATO allies.
As I discussed in my own column, despite Hersh’s stellar career and the massive implications of his remarkable story, almost all our mainstream media outlets boycotted it, ensuring that it received minimal attention.
Hersh said he wanted his story to stand on its own, and was only willing to do a very limited number of interviews, with the first of these being with a small radio podcaster:
He soon followed this up with a half-hour appearance on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, a leading left-liberal news program broadcast on more than 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide, many of them PBS and NPR affiliates.
During that interview, Hersh responded to criticisms and explained that Ukraine’s war with Russia was going far worse than reported by the American media. According to Hersh and some of his government sources, the American attack on the pipelines may have been a disastrous mistake that could result in the collapse of NATO once most Europeans became aware of what had happened.
Democracy Now! has 1.3 million subscribers on its large Youtube channel, and immediately released Hersh’s important interview on that platform. Within hours the segment was approaching 250,000 views on its way to a likely total of many millions, becoming one of the channel’s most popular videos. I naturally linked it in several comments on our website.
But the same day it was released, Youtube suddenly censored Hersh’s Democracy Now! appearance, claiming that it represented “a violation of community standards” and was “offensive”:
As a result, Hersh’s Democracy Now! segment can no longer be viewed anywhere except on the Youtube site itself, and then only after clicking through two layers of warnings. The obvious intent was to drastically reduce Hersh’s potential audience and this will surely succeed. I assume that these restrictions have been combined with the most severe sort of shadow-banning. So a segment that would have probably been seen by many millions will only get a small fraction of that total.
Such Youtube censorship of a top mainstream journalist on a leading mainstream channel seems completely unprecedented, a massive escalation of the previous measures directed against the political fringe.
[…]
Via https://www.unz.com/runz/banning-seymour-hershs-offensive-ideas/
Strikes Bring Air Traffic to Standstill in Germany
NewsletterAround 2,340 flights were to be canceled, affecting almost 300,000 passengers, said the German Airports Association.
Collective bargaining strikes of public sector employees, as well as ground staff and flight control at seven German airports, have brought air traffic in the country to a virtual standstill on Friday.
Around 2,340 flights were to be canceled, affecting almost 300,000 passengers, the German Airports Association (ADV) said, urging that “solutions must be found at the negotiating table and not on the backs of passengers.”
Germany’s flag carrier Lufthansa alone had to cancel more than 1,300 flights. There are no departures from Frankfurt and Munich on Friday at all.
“There is still a catastrophic labor shortage among ground handling workers — travelers clearly felt that last summer,” Christine Behle, deputy chairwoman of the trade union Verdi, said on Wednesday when announcing the strikes. “To change this situation, they must be given an attractive wage increase.”
Staff shortages caused by job cuts during the pandemic and various strike actions affected Europe’s entire aviation industry last summer and led to an international travel chaos with thousands of cancellations. At many airports, queues reached lengths of a kilometer or more.
As air traffic is recovering from the pandemic, the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) warned that this summer could get even worse. “2023 will pose the biggest challenge in terms of coping with capacity issues and keeping delays down that the network has faced in over a decade,” Director General Eamonn Brennan said.
It was not a good week for German air travelers. On Wednesday, a company-wide information technology outage at Lufthansa caused by damaged fiber optic cables during road construction work already led to numerous flight cancellations.
[…]
Permanent Villages, Innovation and Trade in Prehistoric North America
Episode 5 Late Archaic Innovations
Ancient Civilizations of North America
Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)
Film Review
In North America, the late Archaic period dated roughly between 4000 and 2000 BP. There were fewest changes along the Pacific coast, where food was most abundant. Here population increased ten times over the Paleoindian period. One new late Achaic innovation was leeching acorns to remove bitter and harmful tannins. After leeching, late Archaic humans pounded them into powder, which they cooked in large pots. There is evidence they traded with inland peoples.
Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest gave rise to the the first permanent villages in North America. Living in multiple family groups in long rectangular houses, these late Archaic humans fished for salmon and buried their men with projectile points and their women with grinding stones. Their remains reflect a high proportion of violent deaths, suggesting they began living in villages for mutual protection. Moreover long standing feuds between villages led an “us vs them” mentality and a drive cultivate and exploit cultural distinctions. Totem poles are the Pacific Northwest’s best known cultural innovation from this period.
Southwest
In the Southwest (Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada), the late Archaic period dates from 4100 BP, triggered by the arrival of corn agriculture, learned from incoming migrants from Mesoamerica (where it was first domesticated). From 3500 BP on, Southwest peoples were also growing beans, squash and sunflowers.
With the arrival of agriculture, these peoples began living in permanent settlements and left behind artifacts (such as baskets) related to foodstuffs cultivation, as well as elaborate rock petroglyphs depicting animals and geometric shapes.
North Florida/Georgia
In the north Florida/Georgia, the late Archaic period starts around 3,000 BP as sea levels fall and indigenous humans migrate to the coast. Here an abundance of shellfish fosters the development of permanent settlements and the use of giant shell middens* for burials.
This would be the first North American culture to make ceramic bowls and plates, which they tempered with grass and Spanish and traded with other regions.
Northeast Woodlands (includes eastern Canada)
Northeast Woodlands culture is found in five distinct regions east of the Mississippi, which coalesced when the Archaic period ended. All five regions saw an increase in cemeteries and bodies buried with axes and art objects painted with red ochre. In coastal areas, these peoples used canoes in summer to hunt ted sea mammals and swordfish. They hunted caribou in winter and fished for salmon in spring. Towards the end of the late Archaic period, villages with round pit houses began to appear.
Great Lakes area
Around the Great Lakes, which were rich in copper ore, the Archaic period saw the emergence of metallurgy and the bow and arrow. Collecting copper deposits they found lying on the ground, around 4000 BP, Great Lakes peoples pounded them into spearhead, axes and fishhooks. This technology slowly spread down the Mississippi to the Gulf Coast.
The first use of the bow and arrow in North America dates from 2500 BP in Canada, where it was used to kill moose, muskrats and other game. Globally bow and arrow originated in South Africa in 71,000 BP. It arrived in Europe around 9000 BP and in Siberia in 5000 BP. It most likely arrived in North America via the Bering Strait.
South of the Great Lakes, populations remained low during the late Archaic period, as people lived in semi permanent villages near shell middens, buried their dead portion of violent deaths) with their tools and other possessions. These indigenous American relied more on nuts and acorns than game for food.
*Midden – old dump for food waste and other domestic garbage.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
February 17, 2023
NFL Players Association Urged to Screen for Heart Issues Over Vaccine Side Effects
Zachary Stieber
The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) is being urged to offer players cardiac screening in light of the growing concern over COVID-19 vaccines causing heart inflammation.
The Health Freedom Defense Fund urged the association in a recent letter to implement screening because the vaccines can cause myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation. Young males are the most at risk.
Most NFL players received a COVID-19 vaccine under pressure from teams and the league.
“Safety signals illustrate that the near and long-term health outcomes of the COVID-19 vaccines remain uncertain,” Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the fund, told DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the players association, in the letter.
“A multitude of adverse reactions to these injections, including myocarditis, are wide-ranging and confirmed, and as such, prudence dictates that the NFLPA investigate the extent to which the COVID-19 shots may have resulted in injury, compromised health or death of players,” Manookian said.
She pointed out that Damar Hamlin, a safety for the Buffalo Bills, suffered a cardiac arrest on the field during a Monday Night Football game in January. The reason for the incident remains unknown; Hamlin declined to convey during a recent televised interview what his doctors told him about the incident. Former NFL players also have suffered heart attacks and strokes following vaccination.
The NFLPA should introduce “a testing and screening program to determine whether players have been adversely affected by the injections and to develop a set of functional medical protocols and treatments in order to address and heal any deleterious effects of the vaccines,” Manookian said.
The NFLPA declined to comment to The Epoch Times.
The association hasn’t responded to the letter, which was sent via email and regular mail, Manookian told The Epoch Times.
Former NFL player Ken Ruettgers, who started the Voices for Medical Freedom podcast, previously warned an associate who works for the NFLPA of post-vaccination cardiac events and offered to connect the group with doctors with knowledge of the issues.
The associate thanked Reuttgers but didn’t accept the offer, he told The Epoch Times.
“The challenge is, it’s almost like a fighter pilot that, ‘I don’t want to be tested because if I come up positive, I don’t want to be grounded,’” he said.
Studies CitedManookian informed the NFLPA that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration placed a warning regarding myocarditis and a related condition, pericarditis, on the labels for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. She also pointed to research papers on post-vaccination myocarditis.
Among them were a study by Florida authorities that found a jump in cardiac-related deaths among the vaccinated; a study that found an increased risk of myocarditis and myopericarditis after a second dose of Pfizer’s vaccine and the first and second doses of Moderna’s vaccine, with the highest risk in young males; a reanalysis of the original clinical trials that found a higher number of serious adverse events of special interest among the vaccinated; and experts in Germany reporting, after analyzing autopsies, that some of the deceased likely died from vaccine-induced myocarditis.
“We have a growing body of scientific evidence showing that there is a risk to young males in particular, and many of them have some critical cardiac problems,” Manookian said.
The NFLPA did the right thing when it comes to concussions, supporting stronger protections for players, she said.
“I think that we should be doing the same thing with respect to these COVID injections and the potential for subclinical cardiac issues,” Manookian said.
‘Not Unreasonable’Dr. Anish Koka, a cardiologist based in Philadelphia, reviewed the letter.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the NFL Players Association to at least consider the fact that young healthy men now are at such low risk of COVID, do you want to take the risk of myocarditis related to the vaccine?” Koka told The Epoch Times.
Still, he advised against screening all players.
“If you randomly screen a bunch of NFL players with an MRI, you’re going to see some bright spots show up and you’re not going to have any real hard idea whether or not this is something real. And it could affect the career in terms of, does a team want to sign this player who has some questionable abnormality on a cardiac MRI? That would be terrible. So you don’t want to do that,” Koka said. “So you have to be really, really careful about how you screen these folks and make sure that you don’t end people’s careers for no reason.”
COVID-19 can also lead to myocarditis and heart issues, according to some research. Other papers indicate that COVID-19 infection doesn’t lead to an increase in myocarditis or pericarditis. Autopsy data haven’t supported the idea that COVID-19 heightens the risk, according to Koka.
Screening can lead to an increase in myocarditis detection. MRI screening led to a 7.4-fold increase in detection among college athletes over symptom-based screening, according to one study.
Manookian said it’s important to discover whether players have myocarditis but said the screening should be voluntary, not mandatory.
“This is about raising awareness about a potential health problem and providing the opportunity for the players to have access to testing and screening. And if a problem is determined, then some kind of healing protocol for them,” she said.
Rest is generally the main component of myocarditis recovery. Medicine is typically prescribed for recovery from cardiac arrest.
If an athlete with myocarditis passes certain cardiac tests and doesn’t have arrhythmias after six months, then they could potentially play again, according to Koka. Five athletes for whom suggestions of myocarditis or pericarditis were found returned to play without cardiac injury, researchers reported in 2021. It’s unclear whether Hamlin will return. He told ABC that’s his goal.
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act
- Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's profile
- 11 followers
