Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 459

Earliest Human Migrations to North America

Episode 2 The First Migrations to the Americas

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

According to Barnhart, most DNA (both Y chromosome and mitochondrial DNA) evidence indicates that ancient humans migrated from Siberia following across a Bering Strait land bridge (when sea levels were lower) as they pursued mega fauna (eg mammoths and mastodons driven by drought and population pressure). Thus far, all DNA studies are positive for specific haplogroups that are are only found in North America and parts of Asia.

There is no evidence that either Neanderthals or homo erectus species migrated to North America.

Archeologists believes the first wave of human beings most likely crossed the Bering Strait into Alaska 30,000 years ago, migrating as far south as Texas and northern Mexico. The second wave, which arrived 16,500 years ago, migrated as far south as South America. The third arrived around 10,000 years ago.

Most prehistoric North Americans left behind artifacts (tools and plant and animal remains) without any skeletal remains. Exceptions include human remains dating from 16,000 BP (before present) in South Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania, from 13,000 BP near Santa Rosa California and 11,000 years BP in Texas. Human coproliths (fossilized feces) have ben discovered in Oregon dating from 14,300 .

In Buttermillk Creek, the oldest Texas site, archeologists have discovered 16,000 tools and other human artifacts dating from 15,500 BP.

Butchered mammoth remains have been discovered from 18,000 BP in La Sena, Nebraska and from 21,000 – 18,000 BP in Lawrence Kansas.

Barnhart speaks briefly about the Solutrean hypothesis that East coast indigenous humans traveled by boat from Europe between 21,000 – 17,000. This hypothesis relates to the discovery of Solutrean blades (in the absence of human remains) in both Europe and the eastern US.

Human migrants reached Japan around 30,000 BP and Australia around 50,000 BP.

Film can be viewed free on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5713021/5712740

House Republicans Grill Top U.S. Health Officials Over ‘Mishandling’ of COVID Response

Photo credit: House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

In the first of what is expected to be multiple hearings on the Biden administration’s response to COVID-19, Republicans on Wednesday peppered top U.S. health officials with questions about masking and social distancing, vaccine mandates, vaccine safety and the National Institutes of Health funding of gain-of-function research.

Top Biden officials from federal health agencies faced tough questioning about their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on Wednesday in a joint congressional hearing of the Oversight and Investigations and Health subcommittees.

Republican lawmakers indicated this will be the first of many hearings into the administration’s handling of the pandemic. A separate committee will investigate questions around the potentially fraudulent mishandling of $5 trillion in COVID-19 relief funds.

“President Biden’s public health leaders are here today because they have broken the American people’s trust,” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) said in her opening remarks.

“My message today to all the administration public health officials is that this is going to be a long road. Trust is broken a lot faster than it is built. And many will say that the American people deserve an apology, but they deserve much more,” she added.

Chair @cathymcmorris to @CDCDirector, @FDACommissioner, and @NIHDirector:

“My message today to all of the administration’s public health officials is this is going to be a long road. Many will say that the American people deserve an apology but they deserve much more.” pic.twitter.com/6IpMC1EScR

— Energy and Commerce Committee (@HouseCommerce) February 8, 2023

Dr. Lawrence Tabak, acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Dr. Robert Califf, commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA); and Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) responded to four hours of questioning.

Committee Republicans pressed the officials on their failed oversight of gain-of-function research, challenged the agencies’ rationale for vaccine mandates, mask mandates and school closures, and interrogated them on their role in suppressing information on social media, all of which they said have caused a loss of faith in public institutions during the pandemic.

Committee Democrats largely praised the officials.

[…]

Republicans are pursuing investigations into the virus’ origins.

Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chair Griffith (R-Va.), Health Subcommittee Chair Guthrie (R-Ky.), and Reps. Burgess (R-Texas), Carter (R-Texas), Duncan (R-S.C.), McMoriss Rogers and Lesko (R-Ariz.) raised questions about the NIH’s lack of oversight into funding for EcoHealth Alliance, an NIH grant recipient that funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where the virus may have originated.

Late last month, an internal federal watchdog agency found the NIH had made significant errors in its oversight of EcoHealth Alliance grants. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report outlining missed deadlines, confusing protocols and misspent funds — raising and reinforcing concerns about the government’s system for monitoring research on potentially risky pathogens.

Republican committee members made several requests to the NIH for documents relating to EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan lab. The requests were ignored until the night before the hearing.

Griffith accused Tabak of stonewalling the committee and pressed him on why, after EcoHealth Alliance failed to comply with NIH documentation requirements, the NIH continued to fund it.

Carter asked whether NIH was funding, or had ever funded, gain-of-function research, which is banned from funding by HHS.

Tabak said they had brought EcoHealth Alliance into compliance and that the NIH did not now, and had never, funded the type of gain-of-function research people were concerned with, except for once, in the Netherlands in research on influenza.

But Republican committee members were not convinced. Lesko asked Tabak how he could be certain the NIH wasn’t funding gain-of-function research given that they didn’t have the reports from their subgrantees, as indicated in the OIG report.

The NIH Director claims the NIH do NOT fund COVID-19 gain-of-function research. How do they know if they don’t have the full report?

WATCH my remarks in the @HouseCommerce: pic.twitter.com/BCDcQFYaRZ

— Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (@RepDLesko) February 8, 2023

Duncan directed Tabak to check with his staff and amend his definitive responses on gain-of-function research.

Several Republicans on the committee who are medical professionals said they were frustrated with federal officials over their use of faulty science for determining mitigation strategies like masking, vaccine mandates and school closures, which they said led to loss of public trust in their institutions.

“It’s demoralizing, and it is depressing that agencies that were once held in such esteem cannot translate and transfer research and evidence and respond to real-world evidence when they come up with strategies and policies,” said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), a physician.

“It’s not just a messaging problem, it was a problem of bias within the agencies,” Miller-Meeks said.

As the only committee member to comment on vaccine injury, Miller-Meeks also expressed frustration with “the failure of the CDC to acknowledge myocarditis, pericarditis and young people and still advocate for vaccines in young men.”

Miller-Meeks said:

“Despite that risk, which we talked about finally last year, there’s a risk-benefit that has to be considered, but was not considered in these mandates — menstrual irregularities and young women …

“The failure of the FDA to utilize their own advisory boards when approving vaccines in certain age groups and rushing approval in these age groups, and then their slowness to advance any therapeutics.

“And what evidence can you tell me, what evidence-based research that shows 6-ft. distancing is appropriate?”

Walensky on multiple occasions throughout the hearing emphasized the evidence-based nature of all CDC recommendations and said the CDC will continue to support vaccination.

She also said the CDC will continue masking when “community levels” of COVID-19 are high, despite the recent Cochrane review that found little-to-no evidence for the effectiveness of masking to prevent COVID-19 transmission. She disagreed with the review’s findings.

[…]

Many people were alarmed last month when it was revealed that the CDC had established codes for tracking COVID-19 vaccination status, particularly given the restrictions placed on, and stigma associated with, being unvaccinated, despite widespread concerns about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines.

Reps. Harshbarger (R-Tenn.) and Cammack (R-Fla.) asked officials about the agencies’ role in defining “misinformation” and collaborating with other officials or with Twitter to discredit dissent.

Walensky and Tabak both said they couldn’t comment because of ongoing litigation.

The hearing is expected to be the first of many on the pandemic response and the origins of COVID-19. A separate committee plans to investigate how “hundreds of billions of dollars” in COVID-19 relief funds were lost to fraud during both the Trump and Biden administrations, NBC News reported.

Watch here:

[…]Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/health-officials-hearing-covid-respons

Questions for a Congressional Inquiry

Steve Templeton
Brownstone Institute

Other than a few dead-end doom addicts on social media, most people agree that the COVID-19 pandemic is over. SARS-CoV-2 has entered a stage of endemicity, similar to that of common cold coronaviruses, where there will be sporadic, seasonal outbreaks of cold and flu-like illness as immunity wanes in recovered and vaccinated individuals.

The pandemic was a worldwide disaster, claiming the lives of millions of people. It wasn’t a war against an enemy, as the virus didn’t surrender or sign any peace agreements. SARS-CoV-2 was contained by population immunity, just as similar pandemic viruses have been in the past.

The origin of the virus is still in dispute. Some virologists have tried to shut down any debate while pushing a zoonotic origin as the only possibility. However, a lab leak is no longer a wild theory, it’s a plausible explanation based on evidence from a variety of independent sources.

Yet there was another parallel disaster that was certainly man-made, and that was the US pandemic response. Panicked health officials and politicians failed to implement measures that would protect those most vulnerable to severe COVID-19, including elderly in assisted living facilities, which comprised one-third of all COVID deaths. Instead, leaders insisted on harmful and unfocused measures such as shutdowns, school closures, and universal masking, with little evidence of their benefit.

Attention to other medical issues, such as cancer screenings and diagnosis and treatment of other diseases, as well as childhood vaccinations, all disappeared in a wave of COVID monomania. The consequences of this ill-advised singular focus will be with us for many years. It is of paramount importance that the mistakes that led to this man-made disaster are not repeated.

The governments of European countries have begun to conduct public inquiries into their COVID responses, including Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. It is past time for the United States to join this list, and critical given the worldwide influence of the CDC, FDA, and NIH/NIAID.

Members of the US Congress are conducting such an inquiry, and their efforts require the help of physicians, scientists and public health policy experts to identify key policy decisions and provide a rationale for investigating those policies and the officials and government agencies that devised and implemented them, with the ultimate goal of meaningful reform.

With help from Brownstone Institute, the Norfolk Group was organized in May, 2022, with the goal of providing a blueprint containing key questions for a congressional inquiry into the public health aspects of the US response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The group consists of eight scientists, physicians and policy experts, and seven of us met in person in Norfolk, Connecticut over Memorial Day weekend. All eight members continued to meet virtually over the summer, fall, and winter as the document was written and continuously revised.

Because the group was comprised of individuals from diverse backgrounds, without oversight from any public or private institutions (including Brownstone), we chose to name ourselves The Norfolk Group, and publish our document independently on the website www.NorfolkGroup.org.

The eight members of the Norfolk Group are:

Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD; epidemiologist, health economist, and professor at Stanford University School of Medicine; founding fellow of the Academy of Science and Freedom.Leslie Bienen, MFA, DVM; veterinarian, zoonotic disease researcher, and faculty member at Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health (through December 31st 2022). She left in January 2023 to work in healthcare policy.Ram Duriseti, MD, PhD; emergency room physician and computational engineer for medical decision making; associate professor at Stanford School of Medicine.Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD; physician and PhD epidemiologist in the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California-San Francisco, clinical researcher in healthcare policy and practicing Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation physician.Martin Kulldorff, PhD, FDhc; epidemiologist and biostatistician; professor of medicine at Harvard University (on leave); founding fellow of the Academy of Science and Freedom.Marty Makary, MD, MPH; surgeon and healthcare policy scientist; professor at Johns Hopkins University.Margery Smelkinson, PhD; infectious disease scientist and microscopist whose research predominantly focuses on host/pathogen interactions.Steven Templeton, PhD; immunologist; associate professor at Indiana University School of Medicine.

The document provides questions and supporting information regarding ten areas of the US pandemic response, including:

Protecting High Risk AmericansInfection Acquired ImmunitySchool ClosuresCollateral Lockdown HarmsPublic Health Data and Risk CommunicationEpidemiologic ModelingTherapeutics and Clinical InterventionsVaccinesTesting and Contact TracingMasks

In preparing this document, we did not conduct any interviews or unearth any previously unseen documents. All the information contained in the document was and is publicly available, and we have provided links to each source throughout.

We have detailed evidence that was available at each time point during the pandemic, and have documented instances where the US health agencies, officials, and politicians ignored or suppressed discussion of that evidence. We ask questions that attempt to discover why key individuals failed to consider all aspects of public health instead of engaging in a damaging singular focus on community-wide suppression of an age-stratified and comorbidity-amplified infectious disease. Why was the uncertainty of evidence supporting the effectiveness of mitigation measures not acknowledged? How was pressure from pharmaceutical companies, teachers’ unions, and other special interests related to the abandonment of evidence-based policies? These questions broadly apply to all of the ten areas covered in our document, and together with specific questions and supporting data, resulted in eighty pages. This was no small effort, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.

Our document focuses solely on the public health-related aspects of the US pandemic response. Although the origin of SARS-CoV-2 may be in dispute, our document does not ask questions related to this active area of investigation. Separate committees have been and will be organized to address that issue. We have also avoided the topics of economic mismanagement and the role of media in creating or exacerbating pandemic response crises. A media-focused document was released in July, 2022, and an economics-related document was released in December.

Critics will no doubt reflexively label our document as a partisan effort funded with a secret pile of Koch money. Other than the initial efforts of Brownstone Institute to bring us together, there was no outside influence. Our website is self-funded. Understandably, many of our questions and supporting evidence could and likely will be used for partisan purposes, as one party will lead any COVID-19 response commission while the other may be reluctant to cooperate. It is our hope that despite this messy and partisan process, the truth will emerge, individuals will be held accountable, and an opportunity will emerge for serious reform of dysfunctional government agencies.

An inquiry into the US COVID-19 pandemic response cannot be avoided, and we are trailing other countries in efforts to identify mistakes, demand accountability, and propose solutions. It might be an ugly process, but it is a necessary one. We hope our document will move US leaders and policymakers toward the goal of ensuring that the mistakes of our pandemic response are never repeated.

[…]

Via https://brownstone.org/articles/questions-for-a-congressional-inquiry/

Fauci paper suggests feds knew COVID vaccines were doomed from the start: ‘Decidedly suboptimal’

Greg Piper

Just the News

“Systemic immunity” through intramuscular injection has never worked for respiratory viruses, ex-NIAID chief admits after stepping down, promoting “mucosal immunization” long advocated by critics.

Anthony Fauci knows why COVID-19 vaccines have been so unreliable at halting infection and transmission beyond a few months. He waited until he stepped down as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to publicly explain it.

Elsevier’s medical journal Cell Host and Microbe published a “perspective” led by Fauci’s office last month that shows NIAID had good reason to believe COVID vaccines would fail even before they were authorized, based on research spanning Fauci’s 38-year tenure leading NIAID.

U.S.-authorized COVID vaccines, overwhelmingly built on the novel mRNA platform, were designed to provide systemic rather than mucosal immunity, administered in arms rather than noses.

Critics of U.S. policy, including law professor Todd Zywicki, who secured a vaccine mandate exemption after suing George Mason University, have long emphasized that mucosal immunity — naturally prompted by infection — is the key to broad protection against COVID.

“I still run into people — even law professors who publish articles on Covid vaccines — who still know nothing about mucosal immunity,” Zywicki wrote in sharing a November study in The Lancet that found natural infection far more protective against reinfection than Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

The researchers speculated that “different roles of mucosal immunity” might explain the widening gap in protection after the second vaccine dose, given that vaccination “induces systemic immunity that might not be retained in the upper respiratory tracts.”

About a third of respondents had never heard of mucosal immunity in Zywicki’s Twitter poll in January.

The law professor shared his research-packed presentation on natural immunity versus vaccination, which covers mucosal immunity. Zywicki also filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of an Air Force service member challenging the military’s COVID vaccine mandates. Navy service members’ legal challenge to the COVID vaccine mandate cites similar mucosal-immunity research.

The NIAID paper affirms the importance of mucosal immunity while laying out the historic challenges to developing such vaccines and suggestions for next-generation vaccines.

If written by anyone other than federal public health officials, the paper could credibly trigger “misinformation” interventions by Big Tech, though Twitter actually did throttle a CDC-authored paper on plunging vaccine efficacy.

File: zywicki-mucosal-immunity-covid-presentation.pdf

SARS-CoV-2 is among viruses that “replicate in the human respiratory mucosa without infecting systemically, along with influenza A, RSV and common colds, and “have not to date been effectively controlled by licensed or experimental vaccines.”

The paper is especially hard on flu vaccines, which have a “decidedly suboptimal” track record and the best of which “would be inadequate for licensure for most other vaccine-preventable diseases,” they wrote. COVID vaccines are developing the same “deficiencies” as variants evolve around them.

“It is increasingly accepted that route of vaccine administration (e.g., intramuscular, intranasal, conjunctival, or aerosol routes) is a key determinant of mucosal respiratory response,” the authors wrote. “In general, and when feasible, mucosal immunization seems the optimal approach for respiratory viruses.”

Fauci’s belated admission on mucosal immunity spurred indignation on Twitter. “After 3 years he just announces this obvious point?” GMU’s Zywicki wrote.

“Fauci facing the music on Intramuscular [sic] injections don’t provide mucosal immunity,” wrote genomics researcher Kevin McKernan, a repeat target of Twitter sanctions.

“Wherein Fauci explains that a vaccine for Covid could never work to stop infection, spread, or end the pandemic” or even pass “normal trials,” wrote Jeffrey Tucker, whose Brownstone Institute challenges the scientific basis for mainstream COVID narratives.

Fauci was less bearish on the mRNA vaccine platform when asked point blank by WebMD in an interview last week. He said it was “still uncertain” whether the problem is the platform itself or that “the response against coronaviruses [is] not a durable response,” floating the possibility of a nasal vaccine “in addition to a systemic vaccine.”

COVID vaccines funder Bill Gates floated a similar option in a talk at Australia’s Lowy Institute last month that built on his earlier criticism of the vaccines’ shortcomings.

He called for “an inhaled blocker” that stops infection early in a pandemic, and predicted that within a decade “we will have a toolset for respiratory pandemics that will be excellent.” For now, his foundation is “sitting on millions of doses” of Pfizer’s oral antiviral Paxlovid that can’t be deployed because it only works in early intervention.

COVID vaccines funder Bill Gates floated a similar option in a talk at Australia’s Lowy Institute last month that built on his earlier criticism of the vaccines’ shortcomings.

He called for “an inhaled blocker” that stops infection early in a pandemic, and predicted that within a decade “we will have a toolset for respiratory pandemics that will be excellent.” For now, his foundation is “sitting on millions of doses” of Pfizer’s oral antiviral Paxlovid that can’t be deployed because it only works in early intervention.

[…]Via https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/decidedly-suboptimal-fauci-paper-suggests-feds-knew-covid-vaccines-were

 

Lords’ success on right to protest

House of Lords

The Lords has defeated the government a total of six times during the Public Order Report Stage. We voted:

·       to introduce protections for journalists, legal observers and others monitoring protests from the police’s use of powers related to protests.

·       to remove expansion of suspicion less stop and search

The Lords rarely has the chance to delete laws completely, but because this government is so chaotic they introduced late amendments, it means that peers have the final say. To overrule us, the government has to bring an entirely new Bill. These two draconian laws were rejected.

·       government amendments that would have removed the reasonable excuse (a topical debate or issue) defence from the offences of wilful obstruction of the highway and public nuisance.

·       government amendments that would have given police powers to pre-emptively restrict protests, such as blocking roads and slow marching, or where individual protests were seen as linked (pre-crime).

Last week, the Lords voted to:

·       raise the threshold before police can intervene in protests. So, it means a stricter definition of “serious disruption” will be required to prevent protests

·       allow defendants to use “an issue of current debate” as a reasonable defence in court when charged with offences such as locking-on, tunnelling and blocking roads

. removed a clause allowing a magistrates court to issue a serious disruption order in cases other than as part of a conviction.

The Public Order Bill remains a horrendous piece of legislation and the government will seek to overturn the Lords’  amendments where it can. However, it shows the importance of a second chamber and the need for a new democratically elected body that has a stronger say in reviewing and revising laws.

Via https://jennyjones.org/2023/02/09/lords-success-on-right-to-protest/

Suppressing Debate on COVID Policies Leads to Mistrust in Public Health

A person walks past a ginseng trading market in Baishan in China’s Jilin province in 2021. A Chinese official last month encouraged people to take ginseng for severe COVID-19. (Getty-AFP)

Dr Cory Franklin

Chicago Tribune

China has abandoned its zero-COVID-19 campaign, and with the loosening of social restrictions, the country has shifted its focus from preventing COVID-19 infections to managing them. As part of that program, Li Guangxi, with China’s State Council Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, gave an interview last month encouraging people to take Chinese medicine for severe COVID-19, specifically ginger and Chinese ginseng, “the best ginseng in the world.”

Are ginger and Chinese ginseng effective in fighting COVID-19? Who knows? There must be some studies out there somewhere. But that brief interview touting unproven medicines was startling. Think about what may have happened if an American scientist or official had given the same advice publicly. Hearing those recommendations, our medical influencers might have gone nuclear. A high public official in totalitarian China basically said things that conceivably could get a U.S. speaker censored or canceled by the American scientific establishment.

That’s not such a stretch considering the case of Dr. Jay Bhattacharya. Bhattacharya, a tenured Stanford University professor, was one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, a proposal to protect high-risk populations rather than impose strict lockdowns during COVID-19. One of its points was keeping schools open during the pandemic.

Thanks to Twitter CEO Elon Musk’s release of internal communications from the previous regime overseeing the social media platform, we learned that Twitter secretly censored and shadow-banned Bhattacharya. (Shadow-banning is an internal mechanism that makes it hard to read what someone posts on Twitter.)

Upon learning of what Twitter had done, Bhattacharya tweeted, “The thought that will keep me up tonight: censorship of scientific discussion permitted policies like school closures & a generation of children were hurt.”

Like the efficacy of ginger and Chinese ginseng, the Great Barrington Declaration approach can be called into question — some parts may have been right; others may have been wrong. But the fallout from the dissent was clear. While he did not lose his tenure at Stanford, Bhattacharya was vilified and shunned by colleagues and many in the Stanford community. He received virtually no support from the Stanford administration.

It is discouraging to witness the extreme tactics the medical community has used to keep its members in line during the pandemic. Public intimidation, harassment, personal attacks, retraction of scientific papers after publication and career sabotage have been carried out with an eye toward bringing any dissenters in line, making sure they self-censor and refrain from expressing their views on controversial subjects such as the origin of COVID-19. Reader beware: It’s as much what you don’t read as what you do.

The medical community can enforce dogma internally, but rigorous censorship of dissenting scientific views can be effective only with the assistance of other powerful actors. As the Twitter experience demonstrated, the role of tech companies, especially Facebook and Google, cannot be discounted. Their reliance on internal fact-checkers and confidential editorial policies are often used as a means of controlling public discourse, and they have shown they favor a particular political vantage point.

Big Pharma has interests worth billions of dollars in the COVID-19 discussion, including vaccine development, emergency use authorization of drugs and future drug development. Questions that might adversely affect the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry concerning any of these subjects are not especially welcome — but are necessary.

The real force multiplier for censorship of science is the government. The government must align closely with respected scientists and protect the public, but there is a fine line between that and reinforcing rigid scientific orthodoxy. By withholding National Institutes of Health grants, which some universities require a candidate to have before receiving tenure, the government can chill scientific opinions from academia it doesn’t like.

Critics will point out that scientists must be vigilant against frauds and hucksters. True enough — there will always be charlatans and flimflammery ready to exploit the public. There will also be crackpots who deliberately disseminate false information along with the well-intentioned who unknowingly spout untruths. The best remedy is not to shut those opinions down, but to explain to the public clearly and consistently why they are wrong.

COVID-19 is a lesson in how censoring opinion and suppressing debate stifles the approach to difficult scientific issues and creates mistrust in scientists and public health officials. In any scientific issue, impartial and open discussion is eminently preferable to “trust the consensus.”

To make informed decisions, the public must have access to many voices.

Dr. Cory Franklin is a retired intensive care physician.

The 15-Minute City: A Climate Solution? Or Just an ‘Excuse for More Control’?

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

Proponents of the “15-minute city” say it will reduce emissions and improve residents’ quality of life, but critics say the concept, supported by the World Economic Forum, is discriminatory and will lead to “climate lockdowns.”

The “15-minute city” made headlines this month, spurred by controversy over plans by the U.K.’s Oxfordshire County Council to pilot “traffic filters” to reduce car use as part of the city of Oxford’s 2040 development strategy.

Under the filter plan, Oxfordshire will be divided into six districts. Beginning in 2024, residents will be able to drive within their neighborhoods, but license plate recognition cameras will fine private cars £70 for passing a filter without a permit. Vehicles such as bikes and public transportation will be exempt.

Residents can apply for a permit to drive through the filters up to 100 days per year, and residents living outside the zones can apply for a permit for up to 25 times per year. The filters will be in effect daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The county council said the plan is not meant to coerce residents into staying in their neighborhoods, but rather to address traffic congestion by “making walking, cycling, public and shared transport the natural first choice.”

Critics of the plan garnered thousands of signatures on petitions opposing it. The plan also sparked several protests, with local workers speaking out in the press.

For concerned workers who pass through several districts daily to get to work, the council suggested they use a less central route such as the ring roads outside of the city center.

Community critics pointed out that this solution would add time and pollution, contrary to the plan’s goal to tackle climate change.

Conflict over the plan went international. Polarizing figures like bestselling author Jordan B. Peterson tweeted that the plan was the “worst imaginable perversion” of the idea that cities should be walkable, and Piers Corbyn went to an Oxford City Council meeting to protest. City council members reported being harassed.

Major media organizations, including The Guardian, Reuters, PolitiFact, USA Today, The Times and the BBC weighed in to support the local policy and discredit dissent as “conspiracy theory,” by pointing to some exaggerated online claims that people would be confined to their districts by force.

But the 15-minute city concept has sparked widespread public concern beyond Oxford, particularly among the growing number of people concerned by policy proposals promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) that involve widespread implementation of top-down environmental and urban policies, as seen on Twitter, in numerous articles and in videos.

[…]

What is the 15-minute city?

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, mainstream media, urban planners, the U.N. and developers — many with ties to the WEF — began promoting the 15-minute city — a new urbanist proposal that cities be redesigned into decentralized microcities where people could meet their needs for living, working and playing within 15 minutes of their home.Fifteen-minute city advocates say the self-sufficient neighborhood concept is an old one and is how cities were imagined before cars.

[…]

Building [cities] back better? 

[…]

Dave Reay, Ph.D., chair in Carbon Management & Education, School of Geosciences, at the University of Edinburgh, told The Guardian it was incumbent upon countries to “build back better” — a WEF slogan.

Different global actors began to hold up the 15-minute city as the way to do that — “to reduce emissions and improve residents’ quality of life,” as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) put it.

[…]

Mike Haigh, then-chief executive of the Mott McDonald consulting company and now chair of the WEF Infrastructure Industries Governors Group, spoke on a September 2021 WEF panel about the 15-minute city:

[…]

And in March 2022, the WEF published an article arguing the model would be critical for dealing with shocks caused by “climate change and global conflict.”

The pandemic gave the idea new relevance, WEF author Lisa Chamberlain said, referring to the lockdowns.

She cautioned that implementing the idea would require sacrifice, or “creative destruction brought on by a technical revolution,” but cities that don’t redesign themselves in this way will “struggle mightily.”

[…]

Who’s behind the push for the 15-minute city?

[…]

Efforts to pilot the 15-minute city in practice are largely driven by C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, made up of 96 mayors of cities from around the world, funded by major corporations and philanthropic foundations and focused on urban activism for climate change.

The group was founded in 2005, by the mayor of London, and in 2006, it merged with the Clinton Climate Initiative.

C40 Cities also works closely with developer Arup Group, a WEF-affiliated organization, to create development plans to redevelop “sustainable” or “net zero” buildings to address the problem of climate change.

In July 2020, the group published a framework for cities to “build back better.” The organization promotes the 15-minute city model as a new roadmap for a post-pandemic world.

C40 Cities in September 2022 announced it is partnering with a developer, Nordic Real Estate Partners — a Danish development firm with 18 billion euros in assets — and UN-Habitat to deliver proof-of-concept for “15-minute city” policies by implementing neighborhood pilot projects in at least five cities.

Cities such as Paris, Madrid, Milan, Ottawa, Seattle, Milan and Vancouver are among those that have declared plans to transform their cities into a 15-minute city model.

Melbourne has adopted a long-term strategic plan for 20-minute neighborhoods. 

Recently Cleveland, Ohio’s new mayor announced, with the support of the city development department, a bike advocacy group and real estate developers, that the city is “working toward being the first city in North America to implement a 15-minute city planning framework where people — not developers, but people — are at the center of urban revitalization.”

More city councils throughout the U.K. also announced they will investigate or implement 15-minute city plans.

A walkable city with amenities close to home, what could be the problem?

[…]

Some planners, even within the new urbanist school of thought, link the concept to the history of top-down urban planning approaches that exclude the marginalized.

At the CityLab 2021 conference, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Aspen Institute, Jay Pitter, a Toronto-based urban . . . said many marginalized communities are opposed to ideas like this because they lead to further displacement.

[…]

Politico reported that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has been internationally lauded, winning prizes for her leadership in fighting climate change and landing herself on Time’s list of 100 most influential people in 2020.

But she faced backlash from Parisians who charge her with destroying the city’s heritage and disrupting their lives by supporting the 15-minute city concept.

Analysts critical of the program in Oxford raised concerns about the concept more generally. They cautioned that the inspiration for the concept in the lockdowns, which were responsible for widespread social and economic devastation and new forms of social control, ought to be concerning.

They point out that while the concept of, “climate lockdown” sounds “ridiculous,” articles in publications like the BBC’s “How ’15-minute cities’ will change the way we socialise,”

[…]

Several organizations, including the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), have circulated the idea that “climate lockdown” might be necessary for several years.

They promoted an article written by University College of London professor and WEF contributor Marian Mazzucato, Ph.D. suggesting that “climate lockdowns” might become necessary to address the looming “climate emergency.”

The WBCSD is a partner of and supported by the WEF-affiliated Arup Group. Arup and C40 have been partners for over a decade in their project to redesign cities. The 15-minute city is part of that project.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/15-minute-city-climate-solution-control/

US-China Trade Hits Record Despite Decoupling Rhetoric

Image representing U.S.-China trade. | Photo: Twitter/ @SundayMailZim

Telesur

Decoupling isn’t yet happening in any significant way, not by a long shot, and isn’t likely to, Foreign Policy magazine said.

Newly released U.S. official data showed that goods trade between the United States and China hit a record US$690.6 billion in 2022, indicating robust trade growth amid bilateral tensions and decoupling rhetoric.

The U.S. Commerce Department data, which are not adjusted for inflation, showed that goods exports to China increased by US$2.4 billion to US$153.8 billion and imports increased by US$31.8 billion to US$536.8 billion.

The data showed that despite U.S. government’s decisions to impose tariffs and export controls and some politicians’ rhetoric to decouple from China, trade growth between the two major economies remains robust.

Bilateral trade relations have reached a low point since 2018, when former U.S. President Donald Trump launched a trade war with China, unilaterally imposing tariffs on over US$300 billion worth of Chinese goods. Since taking office, current President Joe Biden has not yet made a decision to scrap any Trump-era tariffs.

William Reinsch, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the latest data showed that “consumers have minds of their own.”

One country prints money & buys goods from the rest of the world, racking up debt every year.

Another country works hard, manufactures goods & makes profits every year.

Which economic model is sustainable & will lead to prosperity?

US-China trade balance. Deficit v. Surplus. pic.twitter.com/jC8bgL4Fs2

— S.L. Kanthan (@Kanthan2030) February 2, 2023

“At the market level, we’re still doing a lot of business… The macro relationship hasn’t changed that much; we’re still trading a lot,” said Reinsch, who also served as the under-secretary of commerce for export administration during the Clinton administration.

Decoupling isn’t yet happening in any significant way, not by a long shot, and isn’t likely to, Foreign Policy magazine said. It quoted U.S. business insiders as saying that the U.S.-China economic relationship remains profound and is growing deeper in many sectors, and that a decoupling will undercut U.S. global competitiveness.

“The bottom line is that exports to China help a range of industries across the United States stay profitable and competitive… They also support American jobs, from the tourism industry, to farmers and ranchers in Iowa, to chipmakers in Oregon, and to innovative drugmakers in North Carolina,” said Craig Allen, the president of the U.S.-China Business Council (USCBC).

Via https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/US-China-Trade-Hits-Record-Despite-Decoupling-Rhetoric-20230208-0002.html

Unknown Story of Ancient North America

World’s largest pyramid hidden under a mountain in North America

Episode 1: Unknown Story of Ancient North America

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

Contrary to popular belief, there were several prehistoric civilizations in North America prior to the arrival of Europeans. According to Barnhart, there is good archeological evidence for:

Cities of thousands of peoplePalacesRoads connecting citiesKingsCouncilsAstronomersArchitectsArtistsMusicians

Owing to the absence of writing, tendency to build primitive cultures on top of early cities and massive die-offs and displacements following colonization, early North American civilizations are less well known than those found on other continents.

Recent DNA technology has been essential in our understanding of pre-European North American settlers. Barnhart divides prehistoric North American civilizations into two major groups: the Mississippian mound builders of eastern North America and the desert dwellers of the Southwest.

The Mississippians built pyramids the size of mountains. Though they look like mounds now, at the time they were angular structures covered with painted hard packed plastic covers, terraced with frontal ramps or staircases and topped with lavish palaces or temples. The Spanish explorer Henrando De Soto wrote about sleeping in several of these palaces.

The Louisiana pyramids, dating back 5,000 years, are as old as those in Egypt. The cities surrounding the pyramids housed thousands of residents, as well as hundreds of acres of public plazas, sports courts, and protected themselves with fortified walls.

Master architects, engineers and masons, the Southwest desert dwellers built apartment complexes housing more than a thousand people, as well as thousands of miles of complex hydraulic irrigation systems. They also built astronomically aligned great houses and roads extending hundreds of miles in all directions.

The Hohokam in Arizona designed an irrigation system that turned hundreds of acres of desert green with corn and cotton. This civilization faded away in the 1300s, leaving behind hundreds of miles of irrigation canals.

In total, there were five Southwest civilizations at different times. Only the Ancestral Pueblo survives European contact.

In addition to the Mississippian and Southwest desert dwellers, North America hosted hundreds of complex hunter-gatherer cultures that were just as nuanced as medieval Europe.

The last third of Barnhart’s lecture covers the various dating methods that help archeologists determine the age of human remains and artifacts. The oldest, Carbon 14 dating, is becoming less reliable as our background radiation levels rise. Tree ring dating is extremely reliable in dry areas where wood is less likely to decay. Optically stimulated luminescence uses a variety of radioactive isotopes to date quartz, feldspar and other mineral grains that have been heated by the sun.

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

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5712738

Seed Oils: A Dangerous ‘Global Human Experiment Without Informed Consent’

By  Dr. Joseph Mercola

Most chronic diseases can be linked to the consumption of processed seed oils, according to ophthalmologist Dr. Chris Knobbe, who called consumption of the oils in Western diets so dangerous it is “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”

Story at a glance:

Ophthalmologist Dr. Chris Knobbe says most chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease and macular degeneration are linked to the consumption of processed seed oils.Knobbe says the large consumption of omega-6 seed oil in everyday Western diets is so dangerous it is “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”Polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils, trans fat and plant oils, owe their existence to “roller mill technology,” which replaced stone mill technology and removed their nutrients.Many people now consume 80 grams of PUFAs a day, which amounts to 720 calories and one-third of their caloric intake.Results from studies of tribal peoples and animals have demonstrated the deleterious effects of PUFAs in the diet.

What do heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, obesity, metabolic syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration and other chronic health conditions of modern society have in common?

They all have increased by shocking amounts in the last decades. And, they are all linked to the consumption of seed oils.

In a recent speech at the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, titled “Diseases of Civilization: Are Seed Oil Excesses the Unifying Mechanism?,” Dr. Chris Knobbe reveals startling evidence that seed oils, so prevalent in modern diets, are the reason for most of today’s chronic diseases.

Knobbe, an ophthalmologist, is the founder of the nonprofit Cure AMD Foundation, dedicated to the prevention of vision loss from age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

He is a former associate clinical professor emeritus of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

His research indicts the high consumption of omega-6 seed oil in everyday diets as the major unifying driver of the chronic degenerative diseases of modern civilization.

He calls the inundation of Western diets with harmful seeds oils “a global human experiment … without informed consent.”

The rise of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs)

Trans fats and polyunsaturated fatty acids, also called PUFAs, found in vegetable oils, edible oils, seed oils and plant oils, are a fairly recent invention and include cottonseed, rapeseed, sunflower, safflower, rice bran, soybean, corn and other popular oils.

PUFAs owe their existence to “roller mill technology,” which around 1880 replaced stone mill technology that was used to grind wheat into flour.

Roller mill technology facilitated the entire removal of the bran and the germ of a grain, leaving only the endosperm, a refined product with its nutrients removed.

According to Knobbe, writing on the Cure AMD Foundation website:

“The first of these [PUFAs] was cottonseed oil. This was soon followed by the hydrogenation and partial hydrogenation of cottonseed oil, producing the first ever artificially created trans-fat. The latter was introduced by Proctor & Gamble in 1911 under the name ‘Crisco,’ which was marketed as ‘the healthier alternative to lard … and more economical than butter.’”

Crisco, the grandfather of commercially produced PUFAs or trans fats, is still widely sold today. The plan of vegetable oil producers, says Knobbe, was to undersell and therefore replace animal fats, which were priced higher. The plan was successful.

PUFAs became so popular that they now make up 63% of the American diet, form the basis of U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, food recommendations and are found in 600,000 processed foods sold in the U.S. today.

[…]

Chronic diseases rose with PUFAs

Many people are aware that diabetes, obesity, cancer, heart disease, metabolic syndrome and other conditions were less common in the first part of the 20th century than they are today. But the rise in the incidence of these conditions is more dramatic than many realize.

According to Knobbe:

In 1900, 12.5% of the U.S. population died of heart-related disease; in 2010, that figure was 32%.In 1811, 1 person in 118 died of cancer; in 2010, 1 in 3 died of cancer.In 80 years, the incidence of Type 2 diabetes has increased 25-fold.In the 19th century, 1.2% of Americans were obese; in 2015, 39.8% were obese.In 1930, there were no more than 50 cases of macular degeneration; in 2020, there are 196 million cases.

Are the rises in these chronic conditions correlated with the rise in the dietary consumption of PUFAs? Absolutely, says Knobbe in his lecture.

He gives the following explanation:

“These disorders from heart disease to atherosclerosis to type-2 diabetes to macular degeneration and cancer all have the same thing. They all have mitochondrial dysfunction … The very first thing that happens when the electron transport chain fails … is that it starts shooting out reactive oxygen species — these are hydroxyl radicals and superoxide …

“These free radicals lead to nuclear mitochondrial DNA mutations … which contribute to heart failure … macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s … a catastrophic lipid peroxidation cascade [that] leads to toxic aldehydes.”

At the root of the harmful biochemical reactions enacted by seed oils is linoleic acid, says Knobbe, which is an 18-carbon omega-6 fat. Linoleic acid is the primary fatty acid found in PUFAs and accounts for about 80% of total vegetable oils. Omega-6 fats must be balanced with omega-3 fats in order not to be harmful.

[…]

PUFAs create insulin resistance

Diabetes, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome have become epidemic since the U.S. diet has been based on PUFAs. It is estimated that nearly 70% of Americans are now overweight or obese and a substantial amount are metabolically unhealthy.

This puts people at risk for Type 2 diabetes as well as the many chronic diseases associated with insulin resistance, from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.

In his lecture, Knobbe explains how these conditions develop:

“When you consume omega-6 to excess … it combines with reactive oxygen species like hydroxyl radicals … so this begins catastrophic lipid peroxidation cascade — these polyunsaturated fats are accumulating [in] your cells, accumulate in your membranes, accumulate in your mitochondria and they cause a peroxidation reaction.”

Because there’s so many reactive oxygen species it leads to developing insulin resistance at the cellular level and the production of lipid droplets in your liver, continues Knobbe:

“… that creates a catastrophic lipid part or it feeds back to the lipid peroxidation … so now you’re not burning fat for fuel properly so the person gaining weight and getting sick in this regard is now carb dependent — their glycolysis is working but … [they] start storing the fat … so this leads to obesity.”

[…]

Rat studies and indigenous people show PUFA harm

Animal studies have dramatically demonstrated the deleterious effects of PUFAs. In one study Knobbe cites, two sets of rats were put on identical diets except one group received 5% cottonseed oil and the other received 1.5% butterfat.

The result of the study was that:

“… the rats on the cottonseed oil grow to sixty percent of normal size and live[d] 555 days on average; they’re, weak, fragile, sickly little rats. The rats on the butterfat they are healthy; they grow to normal size and they live 1020 days so they grow to almost twice the size [of the cottonseed oil-fed rats], live twice as long and are infinitely more healthy.”

[…]

For example, the Tokelau people who live on islands in the South Pacific between Hawaii and Australia eat a diet almost exclusively of coconut, fish, starchy tubers and fruit.

Between 54% and 62% of their calories come from coconut oil, which contains saturated fat, Knobbe points out.

Nevertheless, a study of Tokelau men between 40 and 69 years found that they had no heart attacks, no obesity and no diabetes. They were “fantastically healthy,” says Knobbe.

Whether we’re talking about animal studies or studies of non-Westernized people, at least 80% of obesity and chronic diseases in Westernized countries come from processed foods, Knobbe concludes.

“It is driven by vegetable oils and trans-fats … fast food restaurants almost all cook in soybean oil and canola oil.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/processed-seed-oils-cola/