Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 522
August 26, 2022
When Billionaires And The Government Work Together To Control Information
By Caitlin Johnstone
Facebook restricted visibility of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in the lead-up to the 2020 election after receiving counsel from the FBI, according to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“So we took a different path than Twitter,” Zuckerberg said during a Thursday appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “Basically the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us — some folks on our team and was like, ‘Hey, um, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert. There was the — we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump of — that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
Zuckerberg said a decision was made to restrict that information on Facebook’s multibillion-user platform. He said that unlike Twitter, which banned the sharing of the article entirely, Facebook opted for the somewhat subtler option of censorship by algorithm.
“The distribution on Facebook was decreased,” he said, adding when pressed by Rogan that the decreased visibility of the article happened to a “meaningful” extent.
As we’ve discussed previously, censorship by algorithm is becoming the preferred censorship method on large Silicon Valley platforms because it can be done to far more people with far less objection than outright de-platforming and bans.
BREAKING: Mark Zuckerberg tells Joe Rogan that Facebook algorithmically censored the Hunter Biden laptop story for 7 days based on a general request from the FBI to restrict election misinformation. pic.twitter.com/llTA7IqGa1
— Minds
(@minds) August 25, 2022
In addition to being censored across social media platforms, the Hunter Biden laptop story was first ignored and dismissed by the mainstream news media, then spun as a Russian disinfo operation. Those media outlets eventually came around to admitting that the leaked emails were probably authentic, and Hunter Biden tacitly authenticated them himself when he acknowledged that the information “could” have come from his laptop. Nothing that came from that laptop was anywhere near as scandalous as the unified front presented by the news media and Silicon Valley in reducing the political impact of an October surprise before a presidential election.
And now we know that the reason the world’s largest social media platform censored that particular story was because they were cautioned by the FBI against allowing such information to circulate. How many of those other institutions suppressed that news story because they were told to by the FBI or other government agencies? How often are US government agencies involving themselves in the act of censorship? What other information is being suppressed in this or similar ways? What other information will be suppressed in the future?
Because of the veils of government and corporate secrecy which obscure our view of the behaviors of power, we don’t get to have answers to these questions. All we get to have is what oligarchs like Mark Zuckerberg choose to tell us, in whatever way and to whatever extent they choose to tell us about them.
But even what we’ve been told is pretty ugly. A government agency and a social media platform of unprecedented influence teaming up together to silence impactful political speech is censorship by any sane definition. Mainstream liberals can come up with all kinds of arguments for why the continually expanding justifications for online censorship are fine and normal and not really censorship, but are they able to maintain those justifications when government agencies are actively involved? Is it really better when political speech is being censored by a collaboration of government operatives and billionaires than censored directly by the government alone?
Thread
Twitter is hiring a TON of FBI agents. Searching employment websites, it is clear Twitter has been extensively recruiting from the FBI, employing a dozen former feds.
My new @mintpressnews investigation explores why and what this means for us.https://t.co/15hZwFz8X8
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) June 21, 2022
Alan MacLeod has been putting out a number of reports with Mintpress News documenting the way many veterans from the FBI, CIA, NSA and other government agencies have been recruited to work for tech companies like Google/YouTube, Facebook/Meta, and Twitter. The intimacy with which these government and corporate entities are working together is growing closer and closer, and they’re making less and less effort to conceal it.
In a power structure without clear boundaries separating corporations from the government, corporate censorship is state censorship. The mightiest power structure on earth is growing more and more brazen and shameless about this reality.
You know you are living in an oligarchy when Mark Zuckerberg has more political influence over your country than any elected official. Democracy is an illusion. Those who live under the US empire are a propagandized and politically impotent population who only think they are free because they’ve been given the illusion of freedom, and less and less effort is being made to sustain that illusion.
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August 25, 2022
No Clinical Trials. No Advisory Committee. Newly formulated boosters to be injected starting in 10-12 days !?!
FDA Plans to Approve Omicron-Targeting Booster Vaccines
Remember the movie, “The Gods Must Be Crazy.” Well, the Biden administration and its FDA and CDC regulators must feel like Gods to do this, and they must be crazy. And so are you, if you go along with this plan. Three days ago, Pfizer asked for permission to inject these shots into people for the first time to perform a clinical trial. YES! Before two days ago, no human being had received even one dose of this vaccine.
And now, before 2 weeks goes by, our federal government will try to pull out all the stops and inject all of us with this experimental potion without a single clinical trial. The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee will not be allowed to weigh in on how crazy this is. THEY WILL INJECT YOU–IF YOU LET THEM. THIS IS THE TIME TO SAY NO. This is not science, this is not medicine, this is reckless endangerment.
https://www.contagionlive.com/view/fda-plans-to-approve-omicron-targeting-booster-vaccines
August 25, 2022
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have developed new booster shots optimized for Omicron. They could be approved as soon as Labor Day.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will likely authorize new Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccine boosters, updated to combat the emerging COVID-19 variants.
Both mRNA vaccine manufacturers submitted their bivalent booster vaccine candidates to the FDA for Emergency Use Authorization (EUA). The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent boosters are both designed to target the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 and original wild-type COVID-19 strains.
As COVID-19 mutates, it has become more resistant to the vaccines intended to combat its earliest iteration. Additionally, the COVID-19 vaccines naturally wane over time. The highly infectious BA.5 variant is now responsible for an estimated 90% of COVID-19 cases in the United States. This has motivated Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna to rapidly produce “new and improved” boosters; the BA.5 variant only emerged in June 2022.
Moderna’s EUA seeks approval to administer the updated booster to adults 18 years and older. Pfizer-BioNTech filed their EUA for persons 12 years and older.
Notably, the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is not expected to convene and offer a recommendation on the EUAs. If the FDA authorizes these boosters, as the agency is expected to do, the decision will then go to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will convene on September 1 and 2, after which CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH, must sign off on the updated boosters.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna have presented positive data of these new boosters in animal models, human studies have not been completed. [Have they even started yet?]
If Walensky does approve the new Omicron boosters after next week’s meeting, the shots could be rolled out within a couple days of Labor Day.
[…]
Via https://merylnass.substack.com/p/no-clinical-trials-no-advisory-committee
Fauci Not ‘Telling It Like It Is, According to Covid19 Commission Chair
In an interview on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D.,* chair of the COVID-19 Commission, explains why he changed his mind about the possibility SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a lab, and why he believes Dr. Anthony Fauci is not being honest with the public.
The most scientific, plausible origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is “very worrisome,” according to Jeffrey Sachs, Ph.D., chair of the COVID-19 Commission for the Lancet, one of the most prestigious and oldest peer-reviewed general medical journals.Sachs — who twice was named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders — is a professor of economics at Columbia University, a senior advisor to the United Nations and a bestselling author.
In an interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Sachs told Kennedy that initially, he didn’t think COVID-19 was likely a laboratory creation.
“I remember explaining in a very learned way to a good friend of mine [who thought a lab leak was possible], ‘No, no, no, that’s not right,’” Sachs said.
“But I watched very closely … and I’ve been an avid reader of the drip, drip, drip of information that has been pried out of the hands of the NIH [National Institutes of Health],” he said, “because they’re not talking. They’re [the NIH officials] not forthcoming. They’re not being honest. Fauci is not telling it like it is.”
“By drip, the story’s coming out,” Sachs said. “And it’s a very worrisome one.”
The Lancet COVID-19 Commission was created to help speed up global, equitable and lasting solutions to the pandemic. As commission chair, Sachs established 11 task forces of international experts to work on addressing various aspects of the pandemic.
One of those task forces was charged with looking into the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The task force was not a “setup,” Sachs said. From the first moment, he wanted only to “know what happened,” Sachs said. “I only want to know the truth.”
Sachs named Peter Daszak to head the task force and organize a group of independent scholars to investigate the origin of the virus.
However, Sachs later removed Daszak for not being forthright about his research and his financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Unfortunately, said Sachs, Daszak wasn’t the only task force member who lied about their potential conflicts of interest.
Sachs told Kennedy:
“The task force members were dishonest to me after I was completely clear with them [by asking], ‘I want to know what your potential conflicts of interest are. Are you involved with EcoHealth Alliance with Daszak? Are you involved with Wuhan Institute of Virology? Are you involved with NIH in a way that we should understand that there may be a potential conflict for you?’
“None of them told the truth. Maybe that’s not shocking, but it was surprising to me because these are, some of them, people that I’ve known — I would say personal friends, in some cases — for 20 years.
“They absolutely did not tell the truth when I asked them clearly and explicitly.”
Sachs explained how his continued investigations led him to sense, “Something is really, really wrong about this.”
In May 2022, Sachs and co-author Neil Harrison, Ph.D., a molecular biologist at Columbia University, published an influential article that called for an “independent inquiry into the origin” of COVID-19.
The article included evidence of a possible lab origin.
Kennedy told Sachs he admired his integrity and his willingness to “publicly change your mind,” sharing one of his father’s favorite quotes about how it’s not a crime to make a mistake and that the only crime is not admitting that you made one.
“The great sin is pride,” Kennedy said. “That gets us in so much trouble when people are unwilling to change their minds.”
He added: “Most people who come from your and my background assume that the government and the pharmaceutical industry were kind of doing their best,” Kennedy said, and that it “was hard to believe” otherwise.
Kennedy and Sachs discussed U.S. government history that allowed for the funding of biomedical and biowarfare research.
“NIH has done everything to keep it hidden from view,” Sachs said, “And we should thank groups — like U.S. Right to Know and The Intercept — which have done fantastic work to let us see what that’s all about.”
They also discussed the scientific details surrounding a “proteolytic cleavage site” that can be attached to SARS-CoV viruses to make them “very dangerous,” and the evidence that this may have been done.
“It’s dismaying to see it come out,” Sachs said.
On early efforts by some to deflect opinion away from the possibility of a lab leak by citing a five-year-old study, Sachs said:
“A real scientist would say, ‘Gee, we don’t know what’s going on here. Could it have been from a lab? Yeah, it’s absolutely possible.’
“No serious scientist could say, ‘No, it’s not out of a lab because I cite a 2014 paper.’ It’s almost a joke.”
[…]Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/jeffrey-sachs-fauci-covid-rfk-jr-podcast/
*Jeffrey Sachs was the Harvard economist reportedly appointed by George Soros to oversee the systematic stripping of Russian assets (to Russian and US oligarchs) under Boris Yeltsin. This process came to be known as “shock therapy.” See
Who Financed Bolshevik Revolution?
This cartoon by Robert Minor appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1911. It shows Karl Marx surrounded by enthusiastic Wall Street financiers: Morgan partner George Perkins, J.P. Morgan, John Ryan of National City Bank, John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Immediately behind Marx is Teddy Roosevelt, leader of the Progressive Party.
[…]
Myth of the Bolshevik RevolutionOne of the greatest myths of contemporary history is that the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia was a popular uprising of the downtrodden masses against the hated ruling class of the Tsars. However, the planning, the leadership and especially the financing came entirely from outside Russia, mostly from financiers in Germany, Britain and the United States. Furthermore, the Rothschild Formula played a major role in shaping these events.
Jacob Schiff – the FinancierJacob Schiff was head of the New York investment firm Kuhn, Loeb and Co. He was one of the principal backers of the Bolshevik revolution and personally financed Trotsky’s trip from New York to Russia. He was a major contributor to Woodrow Wilson’s presidential campaign and an advocate for passage of the Federal Reserve Act.
The Russo-Japanese WarThis amazing story begins with the war between Russia and Japan in 1904. Jacob Schiff, who was head of the New York investment firm Kuhn, Loeb and Company, had raised the capital for large war loans to Japan. It was due to this funding that the Japanese were able to launch a stunning attack against the Russians at Port Arthur and the following year to virtually decimate the Russian fleet.
[…]
The Manufactured RevolutionariesDuring the two years of hostilities thousands of Russian soldiers and sailors were taken as prisoners. Sources outside of Russia, which were hostile to the Tsarist regime, paid for the printing of Marxist propaganda and had it delivered to the prison camps. Russian-speaking revolutionaries were trained in New York and sent to distribute the pamphlets among the prisoners and to indoctrinate them into rebellion against their own government.
[…]
Leon Trotsky – the Triple AgentOne of the best known Russian revolutionaries at that time was Leon Trotsky. In January of 1916 Trotsky was expelled from France and came to the United States. It has been claimed that his expenses were paid by Jacob Schiff.
[…]
He remained for several months, while writing for a Russian socialist paper, the Novy Mir (New World) and giving revolutionary speeches at mass meetings in New York City. According to Trotsky himself, on many occasions a chauffeured limousine was placed at his service by a wealthy friend, identified as Dr. M.
[…]
It must have been a curious sight to see the family of the great socialist radical, defender of the working class, enemy of capitalism, enjoying the pleasures of tea rooms and chauffeurs, the very symbols of capitalist luxury.
Overthrow of the Tsarist RegimeOn March 23, 1917 a mass meeting was held at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the abdication of Nicolas II, which meant the overthrow of Tsarist rule in Russia. Thousands of socialists, Marxists, nihilists and anarchists attended to cheer the event. The following day there was published on page two of the New York Times a telegram from Jacob Schiff, which had been read to this audience. He expressed regrets, that he could not attend and then described the successful Russian revolution as “…what we had hoped and striven for these long years”. (Mayor Calls Pacifists Traitors, The New York Times, March 24, 1917, p. 2)
In the February 3, 1949 issue of the New York Journal American Schiff’s grandson, John, was quoted by columnist Cholly Knickerbocker as saying that his grandfather had given about $20 million for the triumph of Communism in Russia. . . [T]here were also strong financial incentives for Wall Street firms, such as Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which Schiff was a senior partner, to see the old regime fall into the hands of revolutionaries, who would agree to grant lucrative business concessions in the future in return for financial support today.
Trotsky’s arrestWhen Trotsky returned to Petrograd in May of 1917 to organize the Bolshevik phase of the Russian Revolution, he carried $10,000 for travel expenses, a generously ample fund considering the value of the dollar at that time. Trotsky was arrested by Canadian and British naval intelligence, when the ship, on which he was traveling, the S.S. Kristianiafjord, put in at Halifax. The money in his possession is now a matter of official record.
[…]
Trotsky’s mysterious releaseWith this in mind we can appreciate the great strength of those mysterious forces both in England and the United States, that intervened on Trotsky’s behalf. Immediately telegrams began to come into Halifax from such divergent sources, as an obscure attorney in New York City, from the Canadian Deputy Postmaster-General and even from a high-ranking British military officer, all inquiring into Trotsky’s situation and urging his immediate release.
The head of the British Secret Service in America at the time was Sir William Wiseman, who, as fate would have it, occupied the apartment directly above the apartment of Edward Mandell House and who had become fast friends with him. House advised Wiseman, that President Wilson wished to have Trotsky released.
[…]
President Woodrow Wilson – the Fairy GodmotherIt would be a mistake to conclude, that Jacob Schiff and Germany were the only players in this drama. Trotsky could not have gone even as far as Halifax without having been granted an American passport and this was accomplished by the personal intervention of President Wilson.
[…]
What emerges from this sampling of events is a clear pattern of strong support for Bolshevism coming from the highest financial and political power centers in the United States; from men, who supposedly were “capitalists” and who according to conventional wisdom should have been the mortal enemies of socialism and communism. Nor was this phenomenon confined to the United States.
The British BetrayalTrotsky in his book My Life tells of a British financier, who in 1907 gave him a “large loan” to be repaid after the overthrow of the Tsar. Arsene de Goulevitch, who witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution firsthand, has identified both the name of the financier and the amount of the loan.
“In private interviews”, he said, “I have been told that over 21 million rubles were spent by Lord Alfred Milner in financing the Russian Revolution… The financier just mentioned was by no means alone among the British to support the Russian revolution with large financial donations.” Another name specifically mentioned by de Goulevitch was that of Sir George Buchanan, the British Ambassador to Russia at the time. (See Arsene de Goulevitch: Czarism and Revolution, published by Omni Publications in Hawthorne, California, no date; rpt. from 1962 French edition, pp. 224, 230)
[…]
The Round Table AgentsIn Russia prior to and during the revolution there were many local observers, tourists and newsmen, who reported, that British and American agents were everywhere, particularly in Petrograd, providing money for insurrection. One report said, for example, that British agents were seen handing out 25-rouble notes to the men at the Pavlovski Regiment just a few hours, before it mutinied against its officers and sided with the revolution. The subsequent publication of various memoirs and documents made it clear, that this funding was provided by Lord Alfred Milner and channeled through Sir George Buchanan, who was the British Ambassador to Russia at the time.
[…]
The Red Cross’s Military MissionThe Round Table Agents from America did not have the advantage of using the diplomatic service as cover and therefore had to be considerably more ingenious. They came not as diplomats or even as interested businessmen, but disguised as Red Cross officials on a humanitarian mission. The group consisted almost entirely of financiers, lawyers and accountants from New York banks and investment houses. They simply had overpowered the American Red Cross organization with large contributions and in effect purchased a franchise to operate in its name.
[…]
The entire expense of the Red Cross Mission in Russia, including the purchase of uniforms, was paid for by the man, who was appointed by President Wilson to become its head, “Colonel” William Boyce Thompson.
William Boyce Thompson – the American Tsar[…]
It is now a matter of record, that Thompson syndicated the purchase on Wall Street of Russian bonds in the amount of ten million roubles. In addition, he gave over two million roubles to Aleksandr Kerensky for propaganda purposes inside Russia and with J.P. Morgan gave the rouble equivalent of one million dollars to the Bolsheviks for the spreading of revolutionary propaganda outside of Russia, particularly in Germany and Austria. It was the agitation made possible by this funding, that led to the abortive German Spartacus Revolt of 1918.
[…]
Excerpts from GreatGameIndia‘s exclusive book India in Cognitive Dissonance.
Via
Whistleblower Disputes Data Glitch Explanation Behind Drastic Increase in Non-Infectious Diseases in Military
By Ella Kietlinska and Joshua PhilippEpoch Times
Whistleblower faces involuntary separation from Army
A medical Army officer who discovered a sudden increase in disease coinciding with reports of side effects alongside COVID-19 vaccines—which the Army has dismissed as a data glitch—said he faces involuntary separation after being convicted but not punished for disobeying COVID-19 protocol.
In January 2022, First Lt. Mark Bashaw, a preventive medicine officer at the Army, started noticing some “alarming signals” within the defense epidemiological database.
The Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), which tracks disease and injuries of 1.3 million active component service members, showed during the pandemic a significant increase in reports of cancers, myocarditis, and pericarditis; as well as some other diseases like male infertility, tumors, a lung disease caused by blood clots, and HIV, Bashaw said.
Several of these illnesses are listed in FDA documentation as potential adverse reactions associated with COVID-19 vaccines, Bashaw told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program in an interview on Aug. 1.
Seeing increases in cases of these illnesses as high as 50 percent or 100 percent in some situations, Bashaw stepped forward as a whistleblower to raise concerns about his findings.
Bashaw’s whistleblower declaration, submitted to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) who is facilitating the sharing of information from early investigations of COVID-19 products with Congress, said he saw the increasing incidence of these disorders observed in DMED as “very troubling.”
Specifically, the number of cancer cases among active service members in 2021 nearly tripled in comparison with the average number of cancer instances per year from 2016 to 2020, Bashaw said in his declaration.
Bashaw’s responsibilities as a preventive medicine officer, with a specialty in entomology, include “participating in fact-finding inquiries and investigations to determine potential public health risk to DoD [Department of Defense] personnel from diseases caused by insects and other non-battle related injuries.”
Glitch in DMEDA week after this information was brought out in January in a “COVID-19: Second Opinion” roundtable organized by Johnson, the data in DMED changed, Bashaw said, and all of these troubling spikes in diseases and injuries “seemed to have disappeared and been realigned with previous years.”
Curiously, the glitch didn’t affect the data from 2021, which remained the same. Instead, the corrected data saw the data for prior years increased, which made the 2021 data look normal and in line with the running average, Bashaw explained.
In response to the whistleblower claims, spokesperson for the health agency of the Department of Defense Peter Graves told The Epoch Times that the data in DMED “was incorrect for the years 2016-2020,” so the system was taken offline to correct the root cause of the data corruption, which didn’t impact data from 2021.
After the roundtable, Johnson sent three letters to the Department of Defense (DoD) requesting an explanation of the sudden increase in medical diagnosis and the changes in the DMED data.
“The concern is that these increases may be related to the COVID-19 vaccines that our servicemen and women have been mandated to take,” Johnson said in one of his letters.
The senator also sent a letter to the technology company that manages DMED asking for clarification of all data integrity issues uncovered in the database.
Although Johnson received some responses from the tech company, there has not been still a “solid, rational explanation” as to why a glitch occurred in the database and what it was, Bashaw said.
After the glitch, Bashaw pulled out data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) for injuries related to viral vaccines to compare to his findings on DMED. He compared the average of the last 24 years to data for 2021 and found an eleven-fold increase in the number of suspected adverse incidents reported in 2021.
“I compared it to the average of the last 24 years, it’s a 1,100 percent increase in 2021. And the only difference we had in 2021 was the rollout of these experimental emergency use authorized COVID-19 vaccines,” Bashaw said.
VAERS is managed by agencies of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and serves as “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines,” according to HHS’s website.
Though reporting to VAERS is voluntary for individuals, “healthcare professionals are required to report certain adverse events, and vaccine manufacturers are required to report all adverse events that come to their attention,” the website says. However, non-professionals are also able to make entries.
Emergency Use Authorized ProductsBashaw tried to raise his concerns regarding COVID-19 vaccines to his leadership at the army through the proper channels, recommending that it change its risk communication strategy for the vaccine from ”safe and effective “ to “there might be some problems.”
However, his concerns were not addressed, Bashaw said. “And then, later, I was targeted due to my own [COVID-19] vaccination status.”
Bashaw said he was “forced into an experimental emergency use authorized testing protocol, which was only for the unvaccinated.”
He questioned the policy, saying that forcing unvaccinated individuals into such a testing regimen seems “coercive” and “kind of punitive.”
Bashaw invoked the provisions of the United States Code, which gives liability protection for epidemic products authorized for emergency use to manufacturers and distributors of the product, the government, and medical personnel who administer the product.
However, the perspective of the individual who chooses to use these products or to whom the product is administered is not considered by this law despite their taking on all the burden of risk. “For this reason, [they should have] the ability to accept or refuse these products,” Bashaw said.
“It’s my job as a medical officer in general, to warn individuals, or at least try to communicate [to them] what they might be getting themselves into with these products.”
Bashaw pointed out that the individual’s right to accept or refuse administration of these products and to informed consent has also been written down in the United States Code, specifically 21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3.
Individuals to whom the product is authorized for emergency use should be informed “of the significant known and potential benefits and risks of such use, and of the extent to which such benefits and risks are unknown,” the said law stipulates.
[…]
Great Ideas of the Zhou – Legalism
Episode 9: Great Ideas of the Zhou: Legalism
Foundations of Eastern Civilization
Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)
Film Review
In this lecture, Benjamin explores how the Qin Dynasty unified China at the end of the Warring States Period (480-256 BC) and used Legalism. A system of very strict legal codes, they imposed it not only in their own state of Qi, but also in the states they conquered.
The third major philosophy to come out of the Warring States Period,* Legalism taught that human beings were born evil and would only behave ethically if forced to by the state. Harsh Legalist punishments included enslavement, mutilation, branding the face, amputation of hands or feet, exile to the steppes, castration, strangulation, beheading and slow slicing (death by 1,000 cuts).
The Legalists also imposed collective punishment on villages, neighborhoods and families, although individuals could escape punishment (and be rewarded) if they informed on their neighbors.
The Legalist system calls for these punishments to be implemented by the state, rather than the ruler (who is subject to the same laws as his subjects). This system initially proved extremely effective in crushing dissent under the Qin Dynasty.
The Confucians rejected Legalism, arguing it was better to achieve ethically appropriate behavior by reaching collective agreement of what was socially appropriate.
Legalism influenced governance into other Asian societies, with Singapore continuing to run a quasi-legalistic society into modern times.**
The two main political advisors who helped implement Legalism were Shang Yan (390-338 BC) and Han Feizi (280-233 BC). The Qin nobility despised Shang (in part owing to his insistence that bureaucrats be subject to the same laws as commoners) and eventually had him executed.
Han Feizi served as advisor to Qin Shi Huang, who would become China’s first emperor. Owing to Han’s tendency to favor brutal suppression of dissent over ethics, he is frequently compared to Machiavelli. He was eventually imprisoned and poisoned by a rival.
Legalism, along with Confucianism and Daoism eventually made their way to Europe via Jesuit priests during the Renaissance. The Western emphasis on individualism contrasts sharply with the Eastern emphasis on collective welfare and limited the impact of Chinese philosophies in the West.
*The other two were Confucianism and Daoism. See Great Ideas of the Zhou: Confucianism and Great Ideas of the Zhou: Daosim
**Caning is still used as criminal punishment in Singapore.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
August 24, 2022
Research Reveals Chitin in Insects Harmful to Human Health
The Blogging Hounds
The globalist World Economic Forum’s (WEF) goal seeks to one day rid humans of nutrient-dense meat proteins and shift them onto insect and plant-based diets. The WEF claims these novel types of diets are needed to control carbon emissions and to address exploding human population growth.
See below a video from the WEF – “You Will Eat Insects and Be Happy ” – learn more here.
The big push for us to start eating bugs is to save the planet. The table below shows how insects produce fewer greenhouse gases, use a lower amount of feedstock, require less land to produce, and have less water usage per unit of protein food produced.
Some companies taking the cue from the WEF are starting to add insects to their food products. See some of these products in the feature photo of this post. This could be a new growth industry – there are many new online businesses promoting insect food that are popping up – see one here. The following is one of my favorites. ()
Another is Entomo Farms. They boast that it’s on a mission “to make cricket-based foods the first choice for individuals interested in high-quality, sustainable protein,” and they actually produce whole roasted crickets in a variety of flavors, in addition to cricket protein powder. Check out the video below that gives insight into their production facilities.
All this sounds so wonderful – except then there is this report. Twitter users weighing in on the bug snacks highlighted claims that insects contain a substance called “chitin” which cannot be properly digested by the human gut but can possibly contribute to illnesses including cancer. Huh?
Is the above report true? Well, out come the fact checkers – see here – as more bug food is produced, there will be more. Here are other articles on the risks and rewards – see here, here, and here.
If the WEF and the WHO and the UN say it’s ok – it’s ok. They have our best interest at heart. I am sure it is as safe as Covid vaccines. Soon, any commentary to the contrary will be banned from all social media platforms as “misinformation,” … and you know the rest of the story.
[…]
Via https://theblogginghounds.com/2022/08/23/chart-of-the-day-wef-bug-food-as-safe-as-covid-vaccines/
Rand Paul Warns National Institutes of Health Not to Destroy Evidence As Fauci Exits
NWO Report
Posted BY: Steve Watson
Senator Rand Paul has told the National Institutes of Health that it should not attempt to destroy any documents relating to or in the possession of Anthony Fauci as he retires.
Paul sent a letter to the NIH stating that “all records, e-mails, electronic documents, and data created by or shared with Dr. Fauci” must be preserved for investigation.
As Fauci announced he is retiring conveniently just before the mid-term elections, Paul wrote “In light of this announcement, I formally request you ensure the preservation of all documents and communications within Dr. Fauci’s possession related to his tenure at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”
Paul continued, “This information is critical to ensure that Congress has access to information necessary to conduct proper oversight regarding events that took place during Dr. Fauci’s tenure with the agency.”
Paul said that all information “including, but not limited to, NIAID-funded coronavirus research,” should be protected and “This preservation request also includes all records of official business conducted on non official accounts.”
As we highlighted yesterday, Republicans responded to Fauci’s retirement announcement by asserting that his stepping down will not deter them from investigating his role in gain of function research that potentially led to the global COVID pandemic.
[…]
https://nworeport.me/2022/08/24/rand-paul-warns-national-institutes-of-health-not-to-try-and-destroy-evidence-as-fauci-exits/Monkeypox Vax: Here’s What Happened the Last Time the US Tried to Give the ACAM-2000 to Americans
By Meryl Nass
The program quickly fizzled due to the info getting out it caused heart attacks and myocarditis. 1 in 175 recipients gets myocarditis
Both FDA and CDC tell you it is a very dangerous vaccine. 1 in 175 recipients getting heart damage is more than ten times more often than it occurs after COVID vaccines—in the highest risk group—and this is after the single dose in those who have not received it previously. Below is a slide from CDC’s June 24 briefing to its ACIP advisory committee on the two monkeypox vaccines.*
Now read about how the campaign to vaccinate at least 10 million Americans (against the backdrop of invading Iraq) resulted in only 38,000 taking the shot. That was less than 1% the amount of vaccinations the USG was aiming for.
Americans understood then that if they got injured or died, they were on their own—no benefits existed, there was no ability to sue—just like today—and they were smart enough, 19 years ago, to say no.
What is the difference? Today, the media have covered up the injuries and don’t allow Americans to learn they have no access to benefits if injured of killed by these vaccines.
Source: Boston Globe, August 23, 2003
With demand lacking, smallpox vaccine expiring
By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff
The Bush administration’s campaign to vaccinate health workers against smallpox has proved so unpopular that state health departments across the nation have destroyed an estimated 61,000 doses of expired vaccine — substantially more than what has actually been administered.
In New England’s six states alone, public health agencies expect by mid-September to have incinerated more than 1,000 doses, as immunization drives that once aimed to vaccinate thousands of doctors, nurses, and paramedics instead settle for a few hundred. The vaccine expires after 90 days.
Meanwhile, New Jersey authorities announced they are ending their vaccination initiative, disappointed by the reception it received among health professionals. In fact, while authorities once spoke optimistically of inoculating as many as 500,000 medical personnel nationally, the latest federal figures show that only 38,297 vaccinations have been given since January.
“The war came, the war left, things happened, and we weren’t using vaccine as quickly as we had hoped to use it,” said Dr. Alfred DeMaria, the Massachusetts director of communicable disease control. “And that’s when we got to the 90-day expiration, and we had to throw it away.”
In Maine, the state’s public health chief recalls one immunization clinic where a vial was opened containing enough vaccine for 100 people. Only five showed up, so the rest of the vaccine was destroyed.
“But it wasn’t just the resources in the vials we had to throw away,” said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, public health director for Maine. “It was the time and energy we had to throw away on this. We really had to put on hold virtually all our other public health emergency preparedness.”
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that it shipped 291,400 doses of smallpox vaccine to states, with vials carrying freeze-dried vaccine that is mixed before injection with a liquid largely constituted of glycerin. That liquid mixture must be injected within 90 days.
Last week, authorities at the CDC said they had no figures on the cost of a single dose of vaccine or even for the entire smallpox vaccination campaign, in part because stockpiles of vaccine were purchased years ago, making price estimates almost impossible.
But Dr. Anthony Robbins, a public health specialist at the Tufts University School of Medicine who oversaw all national vaccine programs during the Clinton administration, estimated that “it cost nickels” to buy a dose of the smallpox vaccine, which had been in storage for at least two decades. The vastly larger cost, Robbins said, is the infrastructure needed to deliver the vaccine.
For example, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health received about $1 million to run its smallpox campaign, although that did not include the cost of vaccine, which was given directly by the federal government to the state.
Dr. Raymond Strikas, who coordinated the CDC smallpox initiative, said last week that the agency gave state public health directors as much flexibility as possible in when and where they would immunize health workers, which meant that sometimes vials were tapped to inoculate relatively few medical personnel.
“We wished to assure that states had maximum opportunity to get as many people vaccinated as possible. They were able to offer vaccine in a wide variety of ways,” Strikas said. “It is not surprising that some vaccine did not get used . . . We accept that as the cost of doing business.”
The recent destruction of about 61,000 doses has no impact on the nation’s ability to vaccinate Americans in the event of an emergency, CDC authorities said. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases testified before a Senate panel earlier this year that the nation had 15 million doses in reserve, and that testing showed the available vaccine would retain its potency even if it was diluted to create as many as 75 million doses.
While vaccine prepared for injection faces an ironclad 90-day deadline for use, expiration dates are also assigned to unopened vials of freeze-dried vaccine as soon as they are transferred out of their long-term storage freezers. In fact, 3.2 million doses — some of which sits in state health departments — were scheduled to expire on either Aug. 31 or Sept. 30.
[…]
Via https://merylnass.substack.com/p/heres-what-happened-the-last-time
*The vaccine being offered for monkeypox in 2022 is virtually the same one the Bush administration tried to give troops and health workers for smallpox in 2003
August 23, 2022
Wall Street Journal Tries to Save Face on Failed Covid Policies
Now that our public health agencies’ leaders have admitted failure when it comes to their COVID-19 policies, the Wall Street Journal suddenly has the “courage” to offer a stiff critique.
The Wall Street Journal last week published an opinion piece, “Fauci and Walensky Double Down on Failed Covid Response,” with this subhead: “Lockdowns were oppressive and deadly. But U.S. and WHO officials plan worse for the next pandemic.”The article begins:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] belatedly admitted failure this week. ‘For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,’ Director Rochelle Walensky said. She vowed to establish an ‘action-oriented culture.’”
Yes, you read that correctly. Dr. Anthony Fauci and Walensky admitted they failed. They learned their lesson.
As John Tierney, author of the op-ed, wrote:
“Lockdowns and mask mandates were the most radical experiment in the history of public health, but Dr. Walensky isn’t alone in thinking they failed because they didn’t go far enough. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to the president, recently said there should have been ‘much, much more stringent restrictions’ early in the pandemic.”
They believe that they didn’t go far enough? There should have been “much, much more stringent restrictions?”
That’s what they learned from the destruction their public health policies wreaked upon this nation and the others that followed their lead?
To his credit, Tierney pointed out the absurdity of Walensky’s and Fauci’s stance on their own incompetence.
Tierney also dropped a series of “truth bombs,” including:
“Their oppressive measures were taken against the longstanding advice of public-health experts, who warned that they would lead to catastrophe and were proved right.”“For all the talk from officials like Dr. Fauci about following ‘the science,’ these leaders ignored decades of research — as well as fresh data from the pandemic — when they set strict Covid regulations.”“The burden of proof was on them to justify their dangerous experiment, yet they failed to conduct rigorous analyses, preferring to tout badly flawed studies while refusing to confront obvious evidence of the policies’ failure.”“U.S. states with more-restrictive policies fared no better, on average, than states with less-restrictive policies.”“When case rates throughout the pandemic are plotted on a graph, the trajectory in states with mask mandates is virtually identical to the trajectory in states without mandates. (The states without mandates actually had slightly fewer COVID deaths per capita.)”A Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of studies around the world concluded that lockdown and mask restrictions have had “little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.”Florida’s and Sweden’s open policies have been vindicated based upon their lower levels of excess mortality compared to other regions.“It was bad enough that Fauci, the CDC and the World Health Organization ignored the best scientific advice at the start of this pandemic. It’s sociopathic for them to promote a worse catastrophe for future outbreaks.”I take no issue with Tierney’s list. The problem here is with the Wall Street Journal.
Every single point this opinion piece offered could — and should — have been made months or years ago.
There was longstanding advice from public health experts that predicted Fauci and Walensky’s failures? Why didn’t you say so in 2020?
Fauci and Walensky ignored decades of research? They touted flawed studies while ignoring the obvious failures unfolding in front of them, month after month?
The successes of Sweden and Florida were apparent in 2020.
Where were the articles in your publication that could have brought light to these issues over the last two years?
The Johns Hopkins University analysis on mask restrictions was published nearly nine months ago. Why didn’t you cover it?
Why did it take so long to run this kind of piece when the evidence was around for so long?
Do you really expect us to look the other way because you now have the temerity to call Anthony Fauci sociopathic?
You had ample opportunity to give voice to the dissenters who were pleading for a voice, a conversation and a debate based on the very same evidence you are mentioning now.
You failed your readership. You failed the public.
The CDC’s policies were so devastating because you did not challenge them. Not once.
As a media platform, you were no less negligent than the public health officials you see fit to denigrate now — after untold damage has occurred, at their hands and yours.
Perhaps you’ve caused your loyal readers to finally scratch their heads and reconsider their perspective after 28 months of mercilessly attacking those of us who were asking you and other mainstream platforms to do your job.
Why are you holding Fauci and Walensky accountable now? Is it because they are finally admitting they blew it?
They are not the only galactically incompetent parties in this global tragedy. You are, too. And we all know it.
Interestingly, your scathing attack on our public health agencies still hasn’t gone nearly far enough.
One of their biggest “blunders” was not around lockdown measures. It was the dismissal of powerful, early treatment regimens, including ivermectin, that could have saved thousands of lives or more.
Instead, the public was forced to wait for a largely ineffective and harmful vaccine that has since exacted an incalculable level of damage on humanity.
Nevertheless, more than a year after Dr. Pierre Kory gave impassioned congressional testimony demanding that an official expert panel be convened to examine the mountains of evidence coming from all corners of the globe demonstrating the significant benefits of ivermectin in treating and preventing COVID-19, you had the audacity to print this hit piece on the safe and effective medicine that would have obviated the need to inject poorly tested mRNA technology into the bodies of several billion human beings.
Beyond being irresponsible, the article was silly, citing a single, small and yet-to-be-published study (at the time) that purportedly showed no benefit as proof that ivermectin cannot prevent COVID-19 hospitalizations.
The study underdosed the participants and was too small to detect statistically significant benefits, despite reduced incidence of hospitalization in most cohorts that got the medicine. (Read a full critique of the study here).
The study didn’t prove anything — other than that it was designed to fail from its inception.
Talk about touting a “badly flawed” study.
More importantly, your article on the study missed the real story: the scuttling of ivermectin by an unseen hand that was, it seems, in the pockets of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through Unitaid, a quasi-governmental advocacy organization the foundation funds (full story here).
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/wall-street-journal-wsj-covid-policies/
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