Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 462

New bill would ban anyone under 16 from using social media

Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) is proposing a bill banning users under 16 from accessing social media. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

By Christiano Lima

Washington Post

A growing number of U.S. policymakers and federal officials are angling to keep children and young teenagers off social media entirely, citing mounting concerns that the platforms may harm their well-being and mental health. It’s a notable escalation in the rhetoric around keeping kids safe online, which has largely focused on setting new digital protections.

The push gained traction after the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told CNN on Sunday that he believes 13 is “too early” for kids to be joining apps like Instagram and TikTok, which he said can create a “distorted environment” that “often does a disservice” to kids.

Since then, other officials including Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and the Federal Trade Commission’s Alvaro Bedoya have either voiced support or shared the remarks on Twitter. Jim Steyer, a prominent children’s safety advocate, called the comments “a huge deal.”

“This is exactly the kind of leadership we need from our Federal government when it comes to educating the public about technology’s impact on society,” Steyer, whose advocacy group Common Sense Media has close ties to the White House, said in an emailed statement.

Now the movement is fueling legislation on Capitol Hill: A House Republican on Thursday is introducing a bill to ban kids and teens under 16 from using social media.

The bill represents one of the most stringent efforts yet to keep kids off major platforms, going far beyond more narrow bipartisan proposals to set up guardrails for kids online.

The measure, led by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), would require companies to verify users’ ages and allow parents to sue them if they fail to keep those under 16 off their sites. It would also empower federal and state agencies to enforce the standards.

The proposal sets a high bar: While lawmakers have introduced bills to expand restrictions on practices like targeting ads to users up to 18, few have called for outright bans.

Stewart likened the effect social media can have on children and teens to that of drugs, a refrain that’s becoming increasingly common in Washington.

“We protect our children from drinking, from smoking, from driving. They can’t drive when they’re 12,” he said in an interview. “We should protect them from the impacts of social media.”

Many social media platforms, including TikTok and Twitter, already prohibit users under 13 from joining, but some such as YouTube offer a separate service designed for kids, while others like Instagram have mulled launching their own .

Those plans have faced intense scrutiny from children’s safety advocates and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, who have said they don’t trust the companies to safeguard their children.

Stewart’s proposal would open companies up to liability if they fail to adequately vet users’ ages and likely pose significant compliance challenges for companies, who have poured major funds into developing verification tools they acknowledge can fall short.

Many kids and teens don’t have identification, while others find workarounds to join platforms. In turn, a number of platforms have resorted to asking users to provide their birthdays.

Tech industry leaders have urged lawmakers to help those efforts by crafting legislation to set up standards or best practices for age verification. Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of U.S. public policy, told Senate lawmakers at a hearing in 2021 that any effort to update children’s privacy protections should include “a better way to verify age across the internet.”

NetChoice, a trade group representing social networks including TikTok and Twitter, pushed back on the surgeon general’s comment that 13 is “too early” for kids to be on social media, arguing such decisions should be left to parents. 

[…]

Via https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/02/new-bill-would-ban-anyone-under-16-using-social-media/

Why Smart Meters Are Good for Utility Companies, Bad for Consumers

By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Proponents of smart meters say the devices promote energy conservation by providing detailed feedback to consumers about their habits, but critics say the technology can be harmful to health and it poses real privacy concerns.

Smart meters — or “advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) installations” — are wireless devices that use radiofrequency (RF) radiation to transmit information about how much water, gas and electricity consumers use to utility companies.

The U.S. rolled out its first smart meters in 2009 when Congress introduced the Smart Grid Investment Grant (SGIG) program as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

According to the SGIG website, the program “aimed to accelerate the modernization of the nation’s electric transmission and distribution systems.”

In 2015, smart meters got a big push from the Obama administration, which funded the rollout of about 18 million smart meters.

In 2021, U.S. electric utility companies installed more than 111 million smart meters — roughly 88% of the meters were installed in personal residences.

Promoters of the technology argue the meters promote energy conservation because they measure and record electricity usage frequently and provide the data to the utility company and consumer at least once a day, allowing the consumer to get detailed feedback on their energy habits.

However, critics say the technology can be harmful to health, especially for those who experience electromagnetic sensitivity — and especially for children.

They also cite privacy and personal liberty concerns about how utility companies use the data collected by smart meters — and who they share that data with.

‘People unwittingly sleep … on the other side of the wall and get very, very ill’

“Smart meters are a bad idea because they use two-way radiofrequency microwave radiation to send your usage data for electric, gas, water, solar and propane energy,” said Cecelia Doucette, a technology safety educator and the director of Massachusetts for Safe Technology.

Doucette told The Defender that doctors at the 2021 EMF Medical Conference — where healthcare practitioners earned continuing education units on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illness associated with electromagnetic fields (EMF) — underscored that “smart meters, close-range cell towers and 5G small cells are primary triggers of microwave sickness.”

“These meters are installed directly on our homes and elsewhere with no informed consent, and people unwittingly sleep or spend time on the other side of the wall and get very, very ill,” she added.

Richard Conrad, Ph.D., principal of the consulting service Conrad BioLogic, in 2013 published a study based on a survey of 210 individuals who considered themselves affected by smart meters.

The results showed “a full 97.6% of the 210 respondents were either very sure or fairly sure that their smart meter caused new or worsened symptoms.”

About 45% of the respondents believed the smart meters caused them to become electrically sensitive.

In 2018, the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) — part of the National Institutes of Health — determined from a $30 million study that there was “clear evidence” that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is associated with cancer and DNA damage.

Since then, more studies have linked EMR — including the RF radiation portion of the EMR spectrum — to many adverse health effects including tinnitus, fatigue, headaches, dizziness and disorientation and nausea and vomiting.

Children especially at risk

In 2021, researchers — including Beverly Rubik, Ph.D., founder and director of the Institute for Frontier Science — reviewed more than 250 peer-reviewed research reports on the detrimental bioeffects of wireless communication radiation and concluded RF radiation may:

cause morphologic changes in erythrocytes including echinocyte and rouleaux formation that can contribute to hypercoagulation;impair microcirculation and reduce erythrocyte and hemoglobin levels exacerbating hypoxia;amplify immune system dysfunction, including immunosuppression, autoimmunity, and hyperinflammation;increase cellular oxidative stress and the production of free radicals resulting in vascular injury and organ damage;increase intracellular Ca2+ essential for viral entry, replication, and release, in addition to promoting pro-inflammatory pathways; andworsen heart arrhythmias and cardiac disorders.

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies everything on the RF-EMF spectrum as a 2B “possible human” carcinogen.

Children may be especially at risk, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

The authors of a 2005 article published in the AAP’s journal, Pediatrics, wrote:

“Concerns about the potential vulnerability of children to RF fields have been raised because of the potentially greater susceptibility of their developing nervous systems; in addition, their brain tissue is more conductive, RF penetration is greater relative to head size, and they will have a longer lifetime of exposure than adults.”

In their executive summary on wireless technology and public health, Physicians for Safe Technology state:

“The abundance of peer-reviewed science showing harm coupled with obsolete radiofrequency safety guidelines that fail to address long-term health effects and non-thermal biological effects indicate that a precautionary approach is essential to reduce potential harm to the public and the environment.”

Even after NTP researchers in 2018 alerted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to its findings, the FCC went ahead and granted approval for 5G wireless technology.

The FCC’s actions came as no surprise to Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics which, in 2015, published a 56-page investigative report titled, “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission Is Dominated by the Industries It Presumably Regulates.”

[…]

“The wireless industry will deploy delay tactics by saying we need more than one study to prove harm,” Doucette said, “and right on the heels of our $30M study, Italy’s Ramazzini Institute published another large study that corroborated the NTP findings.”

[…]

Smart meters expose people to continuous RF radiation by emitting a “sharp” electromagnetic pulse.

[…]

A California investigation for the utility company PG&E determined smart meters could pulse up to 192,000 times a day, Bathgate noted.

Additionally, he said, most smart meters don’t have a surge suppression mechanism [present in old analog meters] and thus pose a fire risk.

In March 2015, a dump truck hit a PG&E power pole in Stockton, California, causing about 5,000 meters that had been placed on residents’ homes to instantly explode due to overvoltage.

[…]

According to EMF Safety Network, there have been at least 10 incidences in the U.S. similar in nature to the Stockton incident — and others in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

[…]

Attorney: “yet another invasion of individual liberty, autonomy and privacy’

Smart meters capture and disclose an extraordinary amount of information about what people are doing inside their homes, W. Scott McCollough, lead litigator on behalf of Children’s Health Defense’s EMR-related legal work, told The Defender.

[…]

McCollough, a former Texas assistant attorney general and telecom and administrative law attorney, said this invasion of privacy is even worse when smart meters are combined with other Internet of Things devices like “smart” thermostats, refrigerators and washing machines.

“The utility can discern what appliances are being used and even when individual lights are turned on or off,” McCollough said. “It can develop a fine-grained ‘home’ profile that it can then sell to data brokers without user consent using a ‘surveillance capitalism’ model. There are also, of course, surveillance state implications.”

Smart meters also can “restrict people’s ability to use electricity as they wish by allowing the utility to remotely turn off heating and cooling without user consent — even if the user has medical needs requiring heating or cooling to maintain a prescribed temperature inside the home,” McCollough said.ii, where customers of Maui Utility can choose to opt in — rather than opt out — of having a smart meter installed.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/smart-meters-health-privacy/

Amazon Nightmare Reminiscent of Dotcom Collapse

The e-commerce giant is having one of its worst years in the stock market since the bursting of the internet bubble in 2000.

It’s a dark year for Amazon.

A year to forget.

The e-commerce giant undoubtedly wants to put 2022 behind it and get out of what appears to be a real stock market nightmare.

The numbers speak for themselves: The Amazon stock closed the December 22 trading session at $83.79, which represents a 49.7% drop compared to December 31, 2021. This is the lowest closing level for the Amazon stock since March 12, 2019. Basically, the group, founded by Jeff Bezos, has completely erased all the gains during the two years when strict restrictions were put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.

During these two years, the economy more or less migrated online to the delight of Amazon  (AMZN) – Get Free Report, a juggernaut targeting both consumers and businesses, ranging from the sale of groceries to cloud computing services.

Out of the $1 Trillion Club

But the removal of the various anti-Covid-19 measures in 2022 coincided with a stock market rout of the group. Amazon was kicked out of the trillion club last month, the inner circle of companies with a market value of at least $1 trillion. In this selective club, there are only four companies left: Apple  (AAPL) – Get Free Report, Saudi Aramco, Microsoft  (MSFT) – Get Free Report and Alphabet  (GOOGL) – Get Free Report.

The Seattle, Washington-based firm’s market capitalization is nearly $855 billion at the time of this writing versus $2.1 trillion for the iPhone maker, $1.82 trillion for the Saudi oil giant, $1.78 trillion for the software juggernaut and $1.14 trillion for the parent company of Google.

The Amazon stock is thus about to experience the second bad year in its history after the year 2000, during which it had fallen by 79.6%. It was the bursting of the dot-com bubble and many experts, at the time, were predicting the bankruptcy of the group. Today things have changed and Amazon is seen as a titan.

To properly assess the group’s stock market setbacks this year, one has to put it into perspective. The S&P 500 stock market index only lost 19.1% at last check, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down by only 8.1%. The Nasdaq 100 index, which consists primarily of technology stocks, is certainly down sharply by 33%, but still much less than Amazon.

Amazon is impacted by the economic slowdown which affects most of the tech companies, considered to be growth stocks. Price increases for goods and services are at their highest in 40 years in many Western countries, forcing central banks to raise interest rates, which makes access to credit expensive.

In the United States, many economists believe that the aggressive rise in interest rates will cause the economy’s so-called hard landing, aka a recession. The tech sector tends to perform well when the economy is healthy and confidence is high.

Consumers tend to spend on tech products and services when things are going well. But as soon as the economic situation deteriorates, they begin to be cautious, favoring necessary purchases, often to the detriment of tech.

Revenue Slowdown + Rivian

“There is obviously a lot happening in the macroeconomic environment,” Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, said last month. “We’ll balance our investments to be more streamlined without compromising our key long-term, strategic bets.”

The company, which is in the process of drastically reducing costs through job cuts and the cancellation of projects, expects a slowdown in its revenues in almost all its sectors of activity, even from the Amazon Web Services division, or AWS, which used to be a growth engine.

Amazon announced on October 27 that it expects fourth-quarter revenue between $140 billion and $148 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 2% to 8%. This was below analysts’ expectations of $155 billion.

This forecast was particularly disappointing to investors, because it focused on the end-of-year holiday period, which is supposed to be a time when consumers tend to increase their spending.

Moreover, the big investment in the manufacturer of electric vehicles Rivian  (RIVN) – Get Free Report is turning into a nightmare. Rivian’s stock is down 81% this year. Amazon held a 17.34% stake in Rivian as of September 29. Rivian’s stock market crash likely translates into asset write-downs in Amazon’s financials.

[…]

Via https://lordrakim.wordpress.com/2023/02/02/amazon-nightmare-is-reminiscent-of-the-dotcom-collapse-thestreet/

Hunter Biden’s Biolab Firm Metabiota Linked to EcoHealth, World Economic Forum

Hunter Biden’s firm invested $500,000 in Ukrainian biolab operator Metabiota, which then received a $23.9 million contact from the Pentagon for bioresearch. Metabiota head Nathan Wolfe worked together with EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak on SARS-based coronavirus research. The Russian  Defence Ministry claims to have over 20,000 documents on the US biolab project in Ukraine.

On Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ordered the destruction of all documents related to Hunter Biden’s partner firm Metabiota, blogger Jacob Creech AKA @WarClandestine reported in June 2022 and again yesterday on Twitter after he was reinstated.

Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in the San Francisco bioresearch firm Metabiota and raised millions more through firms that included Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, according to e-mails on Hunter Biden’s laptop, as the New York Post reported March 26, 2022.

On April 4, 2014 Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote to Hunter Biden: “As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society.”

[…]

On April 8, 2014, Burisma manager Vadym Pozharshki wrote to Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer, inquiring about a proposed deal with Biotech firm Metabiota. “As I understand Metabiota was a subcontractor to principal contractor of the DoD B&V (Black & Veatch)… What kind of partnership Metabiota is loooking for in Ukraine? … The principal contractor B&V (Black & Veatch) seems to be also the party that operates in Ukraine on similar or the same projects. There is no competition here?”

 

Vadym Pozharshki met with Hunter Biden and Joe Biden in Café Milano in Washington, DC on April 16, 2015, as e-mails on the Hunter Biden laptop show. “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together,” Pozharskyi wrote on April 17, 2015. “It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”

On May 12, 2014, Hunter Biden joined the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, according to its press release, where he earned $1 million a year for inclear services.

Metabiota was spun off from San Francisco not-for-profit organization Global Viral 2014, previously known as Global Viral Forecasting Institute (GVFI), according to the Global Viral website. Neil Callahan and John DeLoche, employees of Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca Partners, were appointed to the board of Metabiota.

Metabiota head Nathan Wolfe is an expert on Viral Pandemics who serves on the editorial board of EcoHealth and is a member of DARPA’s Defense Science Research Council. Wolfe co-authored a paper 2017 on “Global patterns in coronavirus diversity” with Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and the EcoHealth PREDICT Consortium. GVFI Vice President Joseph Fair appeared at the Wuhan Institute of Vorology with Dr. Shi Zhengli 2013.

And here is GVFI’s Dr. Joseph Fair meeting with Shi Zhengli, researcher at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013https://t.co/UeIYWcu1G7 pic.twitter.com/DkJUXHS4tW

— HashTigreDayLite (@hash_tigre) May 26, 2021

On Oct. 3, 2014, Rosemont Seneca Technologies Partners (RSTP) Managing Director John DeLoche wrote to Hunter Biden that RSTP would “increase our investment in Metabiota by 250 k … They raised about $2.4 mm of which we represent $500 k (250 k from the first investment plus this one). They intended to raise a max. of $1,6 mm but it was oversubscribed. The way to think about this one is that Palantir is to the CIA what Metabiota is to the USDA. … They hope to raise another $15 mm at least $80 mm pre which would be a nice 5x mark-up to our investment.”

[…]

On Oct. 9, 2014, John DeLoche wrote to Hunter Biden, Devon Archer, and RSTP manager Rob Walker: “Is there anyone we can call in DC to get a sense of how legit Metabiota is viewed within the various government agencies? We want to make sure we thoroughly do our diligence here, especially as Goldman and now Morgan Stanley will be doing diligence on the fund and Metabiota towards investing in both.

Additionally, who have we introduced them to in DC? Can you please provide a list of the various folks within Cornerstone as well as outside the firm where we have made intros? This data will go in our investment memo which we are trying to compplete and get to potential LPs by Tuesday.”

Rob Walker answered on Oct. 9, 2014: “I am going to have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low.”

[…]

Metabiota received a $23.9M contract from the DoD in 2014 after $340k from DHS 2013, writes Rogan O’Handley AKA “DC Draino”:

Whoa – 2 months after receiving a $500k investment from Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca in 2014, Ukrainian biolab Metabiota receives $23.9M contract from DOD

MB only received ~$340k from DHS prior yr

Is this why Zelensky ordered all Metabiota files destroyed?
: @TruthNinja316 pic.twitter.com/fVzK6V2wlQ

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) January 31, 2023

Metabiota was selected as a World Economic Forum TechPioneer 2021.

(Twitter)

We are thrilled to announce that Metabiota has been selected as a 2021 World Economic Forum TechPioneer!
We look forward to collaborating to build a world that is more resilient to epidemics.
Read more here:https://t.co/GeeV97m3yr @wef #techpioneers21

— Metabiota (@metabiota) June 15, 2021

Writing on Twitter, Jacob Creech claimed that “Biden was trying to cover his tracks in Ukraine, because he was afraid Trump was going to look into the dealings there.”

(Twitter)

1) Now I’m really gonna blow your mind.

Remember the leaked phone call from Biden to Poroshenko in November 2016?

Right after Trump was elected. Biden was trying to cover his tracks in Ukraine, because he was afraid Trump was going to look into the dealings there.

From @OANN pic.twitter.com/iz8PmXZuzT

— Clandestine (@WarClandestine) February 1, 2023

Lawyer Tom Renz claimed the US embassy “just removed all their Ukraine bioweapons lab documents from the web.”

(Twitter)

US embassy just REMOVED all their #Ukraine #BIOWEAPON LAB DOCUMENTS from the web. Why hide things if there’s nothing to hide? #WEF #DOD #truth #diedsuddenly #Pfizer #Moderna https://t.co/0Y2Oh1VlEE

— Tom Renz (@RenzTom) January 30, 2023

The Russian Ministry of Defence claims to be in possession of more than 20,000 documents that supposedly expose the USA’s bio-warfare programs in Ukraine. In a tweet on Monday 1/30, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) alleged, “The materials confirm that the Pentagon aimed at creating elements of a biological weapon, & testing it on the population of Ukraine.”

[…]

Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2023/02/02/more-hunter-bidens-biolab-firm-metabiota-linked-to-ecohealth-world-economic-forum-russia-claims-it-has-20-000-biolab-documents/

Shipbuilding in Ancient Greece and Rome

Lecture 22: Machines at Sea – Ancient Ships

Understanding Greek and Roman Technology: From the Catapult to the Pantheon

Dr Stephen Ressler (2013)

Film Review

Romans

As Romans weren’t a seafaring people, this lecture mainly focuses on Greek technology.  To build a naval fleet during the first Punic War (264-241), the Romans merely copied the technology used by their Carthaginian enemies. By 200 BC, they had already abandoned it, relying on allies (mainly Persia) to defend their maritime interests. Once Augustus came to power (27 BC – 14 AD) he built the empire’s first commercial fleet to import wheat from Egypt.

Roman cargo ships were up to 60 feet long and 20 feet wide. Some carried 400 -1,000 tons of cargoes that included grain, wine, building stone, metal ingots, oil and looted art treasures. In their heyday, the Romans had a fleet of several hundred.

Grain ships to the Roman province of Egypt took 20 days to reach Alexandria. Owing to unfavorable winds, the return trip to 45-60 days. To avoid Mediterranean winter storms, they only sailed between April and September, which mean each ship took two trips a year.

Greeks

By the 3rd millennium BC, the Minoans and early Greeks had developed two major sea goingl prototypes: the roundship and the longship. Both remained in use throughout the classical era and into the Middle Ages.

Roundships were merchant vessels powered mainly by sails though the sometimes carried supplemental oars. They had broad, rounded hulls (with a 4:1 length to width ratio) to maximize cargo capacity.

Longships were either naval or pirate vessels with a large crew of oarsmen that were built for speed. Most had one supplemental sail.

All classical ships used shell-first hull construction. More recent plank-on-frame construction originated in late antiquity in northern Europe and is still used today. With the latter approach, the inner skeleton is built first and the planks (connected to the shell rather than each other) are added later.

With early shell-first construction, the outer shell segments were sewn together with linen cord. This technology was eventually replaced with mortise and tenon joints along the length of each plank.

Because buoyancy* is distributed unequally in rough water, both the hull and the keel (the ship’s backbone) had to be reinforced to prevent sagging. Most keels required at least two lengths of timber connected by a locking scarf joint.

The square sail used by the Greeks required a sophisticated system of support and control. Mounted into a socket in the ship’s keel, the mast was held in place by standing (stationary) rigging: stays (ropes extending fore) and shrouds (ropes extending aft).

Running rigging (used to adjust the sail) consisted of a halyards that would raise or lower the yardarm, lifters that would move it from side to side and braces that would rotate it horizontally. Brails  would rotate it horizontally.

The sail itself was controlled by sheets. The helmsman adjusted the leeward (downwind) sheet to control the speed of the vessel. Pulled taught, the sail caught the full force of the wind.

An extremely flexible steering system (based on two steering oars) combined with precise sail adjustment allowed Greek ships to tack 11 1/4% (ie sail against the the wind) for the first time in human history. The Greeks added a small sail in the front of the boat to prevent the ship listing to leeward when it tacked. This eventually led to the emergence of three masted Greek and Roman freighters.

*Discovered by Archimedes in his bathtub around 246 BC.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/146722

‘Obscene’: Exxon Posts Record $56 Billion in Profits — But Keeps Gouging Consumers

.By Brett Wilkins

Common Dreams

ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, sparking renewed calls by consumer and climate advocates for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.

As ExxonMobil on Tuesday joined other U.S. oil companies in reporting record 2022 earnings amid rising gas prices, consumer and climate advocates renewed calls for a Big Oil windfall profits tax.

Texas-based ExxonMobil posted a $55.7 billion profit last year, breaking not only its own previous company record — $45 billion in 2008 — but setting a historic high for the Western oil industry, according to Reuters.

The company’s profit is a 144% increase from 2021 and, as Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn noted, “enough money to send every person in the U.S. $178 to help offset the costs of high fossil fuel costs and gas bills.”

Marathon Petroleum — the top U.S. refiner — said Tuesday that it raked in $16.4 billion last year while approving a $5 billion stock buyback, and Phillips 66 reported $8.9 billion in adjusted 2022 profit, a 253% increase from 2021.

Tuesday’s earnings reports came just days after Chevron announced a $35.5 billion 2022 profit, a company record, and days before Shell, BP and Total are all expected to follow suit on the strength of profits related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the European energy crisis.

Exxon clearly knows that their profits are obscene and a political liability. That’s why they’re coming out so hard against a windfall profits tax. https://t.co/68OaayFheJ

— Jamie Henn (@jamieclimate) January 31, 2023

Meanwhile, the average U.S. price of a gallon of gasoline crept up to over $3.50 on Tuesday, with average prices by state ranging from $3.40 in Nebraska to $4.93 in Hawaii, according to the American Automobile Association.

Last year, “families across Pennsylvania paid $5 a gallon for gas while Exxon made profits that ‘smashed earnings records’ and Chevron posted ‘record earnings,” said U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), responding to recent Big Oil profit reports. “This price gouging is simply disgusting, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”

Cassidy DiPaola, spokesperson for Stop the Oil Profiteering, lamented that “while we’re getting robbed at the pump, Big Oil’s obscene profits are out of control and billionaire fossil fuel CEOs are getting richer and richer.”

DiPaola continued:

“Big Oil is shattering records precisely because of the pain the public is feeling at the pump. We’re paying more for gas and electricity because Big Oil companies are gouging Americans and benefiting from a rigged system that keeps prices high in times of war and crisis. And on top of that, Big Oil CEOs are making massive bonuses and rewarding big Wall Street investors while families are having to decide between filling up their gas tanks or paying for medication and childcare.”

“Enough is enough,” she added. “It’s time to fight back against the politicians and Big Oil CEOs who put their billions before the health and safety of our families, our communities, and our climate. We need to hold them accountable now with solutions like a windfall profits tax, and invest in clean energy solutions that can free us from expensive fossil fuels.”

Fossil Free Memo: Big Oil’s Obscene Windfall Profits https://t.co/zOXXbzm6yw

— Stop The Oil Profiteering (@StopBigOil) January 31, 2023

Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that “Big Oil has imposed a private tax on the American people — to the tune of more than $90 billion from just two companies alone.”

“It’s past time for the American people to take that money back,” he added. “A windfall profits tax would tax Big Oil on its inflated revenues — due only to the rising global price of oil and having nothing to do with Big Oil’s costs or investments — and return the money to American consumers.”

You can’t make this stuff up…

Chevron just posted their 2022 profits and they DOUBLED what they made in 2021.

$36.5 BILLION in profits.

These profits are coming right out of your pockets.

It’s time for a gas price gouging penalty to keep greedy oil companies in check.

— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) January 27, 2023

Last March, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced a bill to tax excess oil company profits and use the proceeds to pay American households a quarterly refund. That same month, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced the Ending Corporate Greed Act, which would tax windfall profits of major corporations at a rate of 95%.

While President Joe Biden has threatened to support a windfall profits tax on oil companies if they don’t ramp up production, he has not yet done so.

Responding to the increasing calls for taxing excess Big Oil earnings, ExxonMobil chief financial officer Kathryn Mikells told Reuters that windfall profits taxes are “unlawful and bad policy,” and would have “the opposite effect of what you are trying to achieve.”

Exxon made $6.3 million PER HOUR last year, while our communities paid the price for costly climate disasters the company continues to fuel. #MakePollutersPay https://t.co/WOAEWON5SH

— Mike Meno (@_MikeMeno) January 31, 2023

In a Reuters opinion piece published Tuesday, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, co-president of the Club of Rome and project lead for Earth4All initiative, wrote that “oil and gas companies are perhaps the most flagrant example of our upside-down world.”

“Despite being responsible for the majority of the emissions that cause climate change, they continue to make higher and higher profits,” she explained. “At the same time, vulnerable people in the lowest-income countries, who have done the least to cause climate change and are most impacted by the extreme weather events caused by a warming world, are getting poorer.”

“There is absolutely no reason not to tax windfall profits in all sectors, in particular when they have been made during periods of scarcity and speculation when the rest of the world is worse off,” Dixson-Declève added. “Ending tax incentives and subsidies for fossil fuels is simply a no-brainer in a world where climate change is already costing untold financial and human losses every year.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/exxon-record-profits-gouging-consumers-cd/

Swedish prosecutors joined Starmer’s CPS in destroying huge evidence in Assange case

Investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, centre, at last weekend’s Media Freedom event in London

Sqwawkbox

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) under Keir Starmer and the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) destroyed or hid thousands of pages of evidence showing their correspondence in pursuit of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, an author and investigative journalist has found after years of legal action to enforce Swedish Freedom of Information Requests. The UN’s body on arbitrary detention has ruled Assange’s captivity wrongful.

Stefania Maurizi first published revelations six years ago of the extent of evidence destroyed – without proper explanation and outside normal procedure – by the CPS. Now, after eight years of ‘trench warfare’ with the authorities to uncover the truth, she writes that:

It is now clear that both of the authorities handling the Swedish case, the SPA and the CPS, destroyed a large part of their email exchanges. Why? What did those documents contain and on whose instructions were those materials destroyed? Now more than ever some sort of explanation is urgently needed, considering that the United States is currently acting through the Crown Prosecution Service itself in the extradition proceeding against Julian Assange.

The pages of correspondence between the two authorities that have disappeared appear to amount to thousands of pages. What is on record is that the CPS was very keen for Sweden to pursue its extradition of Assange, with a CPS official telling the Swedes not to ‘dare get cold feet’, even though they could have easily come to the UK to question Assange in now-dropped rape allegations that the supposed victims reportedly did not want to pursue anyway.

Maurizi writes that the allegations were used to undermine the left’s empathy for Assange, as a means of reducing opposition to the extradition to Sweden, from where Assange would almost certainly have been sent to the US, whose government wants to jail him for up to 175 years for revealing US war crimes.

The case against Assange should have been thrown out of court summarily last year when the US government’s main witness, an Icelandic hacker who had said Assange incited him to access US systems to obtain documents, admitted that he had been lying all along. Instead, the court rubber-stamped the extradition request and Assange is currently being held in Belmarsh high-security prison pending the exhaustion of all appeals.

The eagerness of the CPS to extradite Assange is not the first such case associated with Keir Starmer. The ‘Labour’ leader was Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), as he never tires of mentioning – but he was revealed to have flown personally to make a grovelling apology to the US government when then-PM Theresa May quashed the extradition of autistic hacker Gary McKinnon, which Starmer had personally guaranteed to his US counterpart.

The Assange case is also not the first time Starmer has been associated with destroyed or disappeared CPS documents. Starmer’s supporters have claimed that he played no role in the CPS’s decision, during his tenure as DPP, to ignore allegations against serial rapist Jimmy Savile.

However, the CPS said that documents relating to the decision not to pursue Savile were ‘not kept’ and claimed this was in line with its ‘data retention policy’. However, as Maurizi notes, the CPS has never produced any policy mandating such destruction of documents.

Starmer – who has been described as a ‘long-time servant of the British security state’ and is currently sheltering at least two alleged sex pests in his Shadow Cabinet – has himself declined to respond to requests to either deny or admit that he was involved.

[…]

Via https://skwawkbox.org/2023/02/01/swedish-prosecutors-joined-starmers-cps-in-destroying-huge-evidence-in-assange-case/

 

Negligent Hospitals: Untold Ventilator Scandal

Dr Mercola

Story at-a-glanceBy May 2020, it had become apparent that the standard practice of putting COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation with ventilators was a death sentenceBetween 50% and 86% of COVID patients placed on life support ended up dyingBy May 2020, doctors had also found that high-flow nasal cannulas and proning led to better outcomes than ventilatorsThe World Health Organization promoted the use of ventilators as a way to purportedly curtail the spread of virus-laden aerosols, thereby protecting other patients and hospital staff. In other words, suspected COVID patients were sacrificed to “protect” othersThe matter becomes even more perverse when you consider the fact that many “COVID cases” were patients who merely tested positive using faulty PCR testing. Hospitals also received massive incentives to diagnose patients with COVID and put them on a vent

By May 2020, it had become apparent that the standard practice of putting COVID-19 patients on mechanical ventilation with ventilators was a death sentence.1 As early as April 9, 2020, Business Insider reported2 that 80% of COVID-19 patients in New York City who were placed on ventilators died, which caused a number of doctors to question their use.

The Associated Press3 also publicized similar reports from China and the U.K. A U.K. report put the figure at 66%, while a small study from Wuhan, China, put the ratio of deaths at 86%. Data presented by attorney Thomas Renz in 2021 showed that in Texas hospitals, 84.9% of patients died after more than 96 hours on a ventilator.4

The lowest figure I’ve seen is 50%.5 So, somewhere between 50% and 86% of all ventilated COVID patients died. Compare that to historical prepandemic ratios, where 30% to 40% of ventilated patients died.

High-Flow Cannulas and Proning Were Always More Effective

Meanwhile, doctors at UChicago Medicine reported6 getting “truly remarkable” results using high-flow nasal cannulas in lieu of ventilators.

[…]

The UChicago team also endorsed proning, meaning lying in the face-down position, which automatically improves oxygenation and helps alleviate shortness of breath.

Yet despite these early indications that mechanical ventilation was as unnecessary as it was disastrous, placing COVID patients on life support is standard of care to this day, more than three years later. How could that be?

How China and the WHO Created Ventilator Hysteria

In a September 30, 2020, Substack article,8 journalist Jordan Schachtel described how China and the World Health Organization came up with and nurtured the idea that mechanical ventilation was the correct and necessary first-line response to COVID:

[…]

The WHO further justified this approach by claiming that the less invasive positive air pressure machines could result in the spread of aerosols, potentially infecting health care workers with the virus.”

That last paragraph is perhaps the most shocking reason for why millions of COVID patients were sacrificed. They wanted to isolate the virus inside the mechanical vent machine rather than risk aerosol transmission.

In other words, they put patients to death in order to “save” staff and other, presumably non-COVID, patients. If you missed this news back in 2020, you’re not alone. In the flurry of daily reporting, it escaped many of us. Here’s the description given in the WHO’s guidance document.

[…]COVID Patients Effectively Euthanized

That ventilation and sedation were used to protect hospital staff was also highlighted by The Wall Street Journal in a December 20, 2020, article,12 which noted:

“Last spring, with less known about the disease, doctors often pre-emptively put patients on ventilators or gave powerful sedatives largely abandoned in recent years. The aim was to save the seriously ill and protect hospital staff from COVID-19 …

Last spring, doctors put patients on ventilators partly to limit contagion at a time when it was less clear how the virus spread, when protective masks and gowns were in short supply.

Doctors could have employed other kinds of breathing support devices that don’t require risky sedation, but early reports suggested patients using them could spray dangerous amounts of virus into the air, said Theodore Iwashyna, a critical-care physician at University of Michigan and Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in Ann Arbor, Mich.

At the time, he said, doctors and nurses feared the virus would spread through hospitals. “We were intubating sick patients very early. Not for the patients’ benefit, but in order to control the epidemic and to save other patients,” Dr. Iwashyna said ‘That felt awful.'”

As noted in a January 23, 2023, Substack article,13 in which James Lyons-Weiler revisits the ventilator issue and the shocking reason behind it, “euthanizing humans is illegal. Especially for the benefit of other patients. It should feel awful.”

The matter becomes even more perverse when you consider the fact that many “COVID cases” were patients who merely tested positive using faulty PCR testing.

They didn’t have COVID but were vented anyway, thanks to the baseless theory that you could have COVID-19 and be infectious without symptoms. Hospitals also received massive incentives to diagnose patients with COVID — whether they actually had it or not — and to put them on a vent.

Frontline Nurse Blew the Whistle on Vent MisuseDownload Interview Transcript | Video Link

Some of you may remember Erin Olszewski, a retired Army sergeant and frontline nurse who blew the whistle on the horrific mistreatment of COVID patients at Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens, New York, which was “the epicenter of the epicenter” of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

She described14 a number of problems at Elmhurst, including the disproportionate mortality rate among people of color, the controversial rule surrounding Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) orders, lax personal protective equipment (PPE) standards, and the failure to segregate COVID-positive and COVID-negative patients, thereby ensuring maximum spread of the disease among noninfected patients coming in with other health problems.

Olszewski also highlighted the fact that COVID-negative patients were being listed as confirmed positive and placed on mechanical ventilation, thus artificially inflating the numbers while more or less condemning the patient to death from lung injury.

Making matters worse, many of the doctors treating these patients were not trained in critical care. One of the “doctors” on the COVID floor was a dentist. Residents (medical students) were also relied on, even though they were not properly trained in how to safely ventilate, and were unfamiliar with the potent drugs used.

At the time, Olszewski blamed financial incentives for turning the hospital into a killing field. Elmhurst, a public hospital, received $29,000 extra for a COVID-19 patient receiving ventilation, over and above other treatments, she said.

If Elmhurst had infection control in mind when ventilating patients, they certainly didn’t follow through, as COVID-positive and negative patients were comingled — a strategy Olszewski suspected was intended to drive up the COVID case and mortality numbers.

Killing for Profit

Others have also highlighted the role of financial incentives. In early April 2020, Minnesota family physician and state Sen. Scott Jensen explained:15

“Medicare has determined that if you have a COVID-19 admission to the hospital you’ll get paid $13,000. If that COVID-19 patient goes on a ventilator, you get $39,000; three times as much.”

[…]

Via https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/02/01/how-covid-patients-died-for-profit.aspx/

Australian Health Authorities Call For More COVID Boosters – Public Says No

Zero Hedge

Australia and New Zealand suffered some of the worst pandemic mandate conditions of any country in the western world, crossing the line into totalitarianism on a number of occasions.  Australian authorities restricted residents of larger cities to near house arrest, with people not being allowed to go more than 3 miles from their homes.  Citizens were given curfew hours between 9pm and 5am.   They were banned from public parks and beaches without a mask, even though it is nearly impossible to transmit a virus outdoors and UV light from the sun acts as a natural disinfectant.

In the worst examples, Australian citizens received visits from police and government officials for posting critical opinions about the mandates on social media.  Some were even arrested for calling for protests against the lockdowns. In Australia and New Zealand, covid were built to detain people infected with covid.  Some facilities were meant for those who had recently traveled, others were meant for anyone who stepped out of line. [Not true – there were no camps in NZ for infected people – foreign visitors and returning residents from overseas were detained for 2 weeks in sealed off Auckland hotels under military supervision – Ed]

As the fears over covid wane and the populace realizes that the true Infection Fatality Rate of the virus is incredibly small, restrictions are being abandoned and things seems to be going back to normal.  It’s important, however, to never forget what happened and how many countries faced potentially permanent authoritarianism under the shadow of vaccine passports.  If the passports rules had been successfully enforced, we would be living in a very different world today in the west.

Luckily, the passports were never implemented widely.  Australian health authorities are once again calling for the public to take a fourth covid booster shot, but with very little response.  Only 40% of citizens took the third booster, and new polling data shows that 30% are taking the fourth booster.

A large amount of Australians are still not getting their COVID-19 booster shot, despite calls from health authorities to roll up our sleeves for a fifth dose.@eddy_meyer explains. #9News pic.twitter.com/rsjfi4xrFA

— 9News Australia (@9NewsAUS) January 30, 2023

With an astonishing rise in excess deaths by heart failure in Australia coinciding exactly with the introduction of the covid mRNA vaccines, perhaps people are deciding to finally er on the side of caution.  Why take the risk of an experimental vaccine over a virus that 99.8% of the population will easily survive?

[…]

Via https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/australian-health-authorities-call-more-covid-boosters-public-says-no

Industry Promotes Lead as ‘Safe and Effective’ Despite Known Health Risks as Heavy Metal Production Grows

By Perry Gottesfeld
Undark

The effects of lead on human health are well-documented — we now know that even low-level lead exposures can diminish children’s learning and impact behavior.

Given the negative publicity about the lead paint in our homes poisoning children and lead pipes contaminating our water, most people might assume that the lead industry is suffering a slow death.

But even as our understanding of low-level lead exposure hazards has grown, global lead production actually increased by 75% between 2001 and 2017.

In the U.S., according to the most recent federal data, lead usage grew 26% over this same period, largely due to a rise in ammunition production and lead battery manufacturing.

Despite advances in lithium-ion and other competing battery chemistries, lead battery production is expected to continue to grow to meet demands for transportation and so-called “clean” energy storage.

In fact, almost every electric vehicle comes equipped with an even larger lead battery than used in an equivalent size conventional vehicle.

In the face of more stringent regulation in the U.S., the industry has shifted production to countries with weaker standards and few resources for enforcement.

At the same time, the world’s largest lead battery company, Clarios, recently established a foundation that launched a major public relations effort to gloss over the industry’s own responsibility.

It’s time we push back to protect public health.

The effects of lead on people’s health are well-documented. Historically, physicians generally believed that children had to ingest paint chips to become severely poisoned, but we now know that even low-level lead exposures can diminish children’s learning and impact behavior.

Those effects not only cause individual harm, but they can also ripple throughout the economy. According to a 2010 report from the Pew Center on the States, the resulting loss of earnings totals more than $190 billion in the U.S. alone.

Less well-known is that lead accounts for more deaths among adults than any other chemical exposure, as it increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.

In 2021, a viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Heart Association declared that the burden of proof had been unequivocally met that lead is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease based on the “clinical, toxicological, and experimental evidence.”

And a study published in The Lancet Public Health in 2018 estimated that each year in the U.S., more than 400,000 deaths can be attributed to environmental lead exposure.

That’s nearly three times the number of people who die annually from excessive alcohol use.

These health effects are increasingly impacting low- and middle-income countries as lead production and recycling get exported to places with weaker regulations.

Studies from Mexico, China, Peru and other countries have demonstrated a higher concentration of children with elevated blood lead levels in communities closer to such facilities.

The lead industry has a long history of actively promoting the use of lead for water pipes, paint and other applications. Today, the International Lead Association, an industry trade group representing lead producers, continues to promote the “safe and responsible use of lead,” which it claims is “critical to achieving a sustainable and low-carbon future.”

At the same time, the industry has raised doubt on scientific studies showing the impacts of low-level lead exposures and is actively working to forestall regulations.

In 2006, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was updating the ambient air lead standard for the first time in nearly 30 years, the lead battery industry association even attempted to have lead removed as one of six criteria air pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act.

In 2022, industry associations pushed back on U.S. and European efforts to update environmental and occupational lead regulations.

The last primary lead smelter in the U.S. shut down in 2013, but domestic mined ore is now exported to other countries for processing where these smelters are known to be significant sources of contamination.

Used lead batteries are also often exported for recycling, to take advantage of weaker environmental controls abroad. For example, Mexico saw a 23% increase in used lead batteries imported from the U.S. from 2017 to 2021; Mexico’s air standard for lead is 10 times greater than that of the U.S.

In 2021, Clarios, formerly known as Johnson Controls, shut down a lead battery recycling plant it had opened less than a decade earlier in favor of exporting used lead batteries to recycling facilities in Mexico.

The year prior, the company’s foundation embarked on a public relations campaign billed as “Protecting Every Child’s Potential,” or PECP, in partnership with UNICEF and the nonprofit Pure Earth. The foundation has given both organizations millions of dollars. (The PECP project includes the International Lead Association and other industry associations as technical partners.)

That same year, UNICEF and Pure Earth produced a report that placed blame on others for “unsound recycling” while downplaying the need for regulation and improved pollution controls in the largest lead battery manufacturing and recycling plants. Pure Earth published articles advancing the same narrative in scientific journals.

In this way, the lead industry has been successful at placing blame on informal sector recyclers who melt batteries down on the side of the road to sell for scrap in many low-income countries. These efforts distract regulators away from focusing on emissions from larger licensed facilities.

Lead industry associations consistently work to discredit science and raise doubt by hiring firms to reanalyze the data from key studies. They fund academics and organizations that favor industry positions. The intent of these lead industry actions is to delay regulatory action and maintain the status quo.

These tactics are not unlike what we have seen from the tobacco industry, which has fought to exempt e-cigarettes from government regulation, funded scientists to publish favorable research and attempted to influence and fund U.N. agencies.

To counter these efforts, we must recognize the continuing influence of the lead industry and insist on greater transparency. Nonprofit organizations and governments must adopt comprehensive disclosure requirements and ensure that public health recommendations and policies are free from industry financial or other influences.

UNICEF and other U.N. agencies must stop accepting funding and collaborating with the lead industry, just as some U.N. agencies have established policies against tobacco industry interference.

In recent years, global public health organizations have called for an end to collaboration with the tobacco industry and all organizations that they fund. Now it is time for environmental organizations and international aid agencies to take the same action against lead industry funding.

Environmental justice, a key focus of the Biden administration, should not stop at the U.S. border. We must stop exporting hazardous waste and our most polluting industries that shift the burden of these exposures on countries with few resources to regulate or enforce standards.

At the same time, we should encourage all countries to put in place minimum environmental and occupational standards for smelters and lead-using industries to protect public health and the environment.

The U.S. has committed billions of dollars to eliminate lead water pipes, clean up lead-contaminated soil, and abate lead paint from housing. While addressing the legacy of lead pollution, we must recognize the role of industry influence in growing the lead market and keeping regulators at bay.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/lead-health-risks-heavy-metal-production/