Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 529
August 8, 2022
US and Australia to launch second joint spy satellite from New Zealand Site
Antinuclear
Guardian, Tory Shepherd, Tue 2 Aug 2022
Some in space industry bewildered by Australia’s lack of fanfare about the launch of the satellites, which will be used to collect intelligence for allied nations
A second spy satellite built by Australia and the United States is scheduled for liftoff on Tuesday from a launch site in New Zealand.
The first of the two satellites, which will be used to collect intelligence for the allied nations, launched two weeks ago.
The Australian Department of Defence did not announce the successful launch of the first satellite or the launch date of the second.
US spy agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, has been celebrating the “Antipodean Adventure”, which features a crocodile, a rocket and an eagle on its logo.
Some in the space industry are bewildered by the lack of information and fanfare on the Australian side.
Malcolm Davis, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s senior analyst and resident space expert, said there is a “very different culture” in the US military, which actively promotes its work, and the Australian military, which is “closed off”.
“It’s not just these particular satellites, it’s an attitude within Defence that they’re very closed off,” he said.
“The Americans are very forward. You only need to look at how they support movies like Top Gun: Maverick. It’s a very different culture, and it’s a frustrating one down here.”
New Zealand’s Rocket Lab is providing the rockets to deliver the classified payloads into orbit from the launch site on the Māhia Peninsula.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/maps/embed/aug/2022-08-01T01:42:57.html
Lawmaker: Most Ukraine Aid is a ‘Scam’
Twisted Times
Two GOP congresswomen have cited a CBS news report showing that 70% of weapons shipped to Kiev aren’t making it to the front lines. Likely being sold on the black market, sold in the Middle East, stored for later use by nationalists in a civil war (i.e. think IS or the Taliban rising), or given to criminal gangs who’ll eventually move into Europe in a few years’ time, turning Ukraine into another Mexico.
Republican lawmakers are feeling vindicated for opposing a $40 billion Ukraine aid package after a CBS News report showed that only 30% of the Western weapons flooding into the country are actually making it to the front lines in Kiev’s conflict with Russia.
“This [is] one of the reasons I voted ‘no,’” US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) said on Twitter in a retweet of the CBS News post. Greene was among 57 House Republicans who voted against the massive aid bill, which passed overwhelmingly in May with the support of all Democrats and most GOP lawmakers. Eleven Republicans opposed the bill in the Senate, where it passed by an 86-11 margin.
The CBS story noted that with nearly $60 billion in US and Western European aid approved for Ukraine since Russia’s military offensive began in February, most of the weaponry has failed to get through to Ukrainian fighters. Getting weapons to the troops involves navigating a complex network of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players,” the outlet cited Lithuanian aid group founder Jonas Ohman as saying. Amnesty International senior crisis adviser Donatella Rovera told CBS that “there is really no information” on where the weapons are going.
READ MORE: 70% of Western weapons sent to Ukraine don’t reach troops – CBSRepresentative Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) said such scrutiny had been dismissed prior to the CBS report. “How many people were called Russian bots for saying this exact same thing since March? Now, when CBS says it, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever the case, glad the facts are out now. The majority of the Ukraine aid is a scam.”
US Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) delayed the Senate’s vote on the Ukraine aid bill by insisting on adding a provision appointing an inspector general to monitor how the money was being spent. His colleagues refused to include the oversight requirement and passed the massive package a few days later. A US intelligence official told CNN in April that arms shipments were dropping “into a big black hole” once they reached Ukraine.
Greene, Boebert and other lawmakers who voted against the aid bill were pilloried by critics for failing to support Ukraine. After Greene argued that the US government was focused on sending billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine at a time when American mothers couldn’t even buy formula for their babies, Democrats accused her of standing “with President Putin in the face of Russian aggression.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) said she was “repeating Putin’s propaganda and disinformation” and “appeasing imperialist assaults on sovereign nations.”
The Georgia lawmaker also tussled with a fellow Republican after Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) defended the Ukraine aid package by saying “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea.” Greene replied, “So you think we are funding a proxy war with Russia? You speak as if Ukrainian lives should be thrown away, as if they have no value. Just used and thrown away.”
With the US and its allies pledging unprecedented levels of military support to Ukraine, a recent CBS News report suggested that only around 30% of the weapons sent by the West actually make it to the front lines. The report adds to ongoing rumors of waste, corruption, and black market profiteering.
The US has approved more than $54 billion of economic and military aid to Ukraine since February, while the UK has committed nearly $3 billion in military aid alone, and the EU has spent another $2.5 billion on arms for Kiev. An entire spectrum of equipment, from rifles and grenades to anti-tank missiles and multiple launch rocket systems have left the West’s armories for Ukraine, with most entering the country through Poland.
However, this rarely goes smoothly, CBS News revealed this week.
“All of this stuff goes across the border, and then something happens, kind of like 30% of it reaches its final destination,” Jonas Ohman, the founder of a Lithuania-based organization supplying the Ukrainian military, told the American network. Ohman said that getting the weapons to the troops involves navigating a complex network of “power lords, oligarchs [and] political players.”
The new CBS Reports documentary, “Arming Ukraine,” explores why much of the billions of dollars of military aid that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine doesn’t make it to the front lines: “Like 30% of it reaches its final destination.” Stream now: https://t.co/Ob7Y3EsWknpic.twitter.com/YgVbpYZkHn
— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 5, 2022
“There is really no information as to where they’re going at all,” Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis adviser with Amnesty International, told CBS. “What is really worrying is that some countries that are sending weapons do not seem to think that it is their responsibility to put in place a very robust oversight mechanism.”
Back in mid-May Republicans in the US House of Representatives were divided over Washington’s aid pipeline to Ukraine, with establishment politicians touting a “proxy war” with Russia while members of the populist Freedom Caucus argue that Congress is neglecting domestic priorities while provoking a nuclear-armed adversary.
The infighting escalated as the House passed a $39.8 billion military and economic aid package for Kiev. While Democrats voted in lockstep to support the spending binge, 57 Republicans gave the plan a thumbs-down. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who was among the 149 GOP members who voted yes, followed up on Wednesday by saying that “Investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military without losing a single American troop strikes me as a good idea.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) shot back that Crenshaw was pushing a “proxy war.” She added, “You speak as if Ukrainian lives should be thrown away, as if they have no value, just used and thrown away. For your proxy war? How does that help Americans? How does any of this help?”
[…]Via https://twistedtimes.org/2022/08/08/most-ukraine-aid-is-a-scam-says-us-lawmaker/
The ‘Great Vaccine Scare’ — When Politics Take Priority Over Public Health
The topic of vaccines has always been controversial, but it reached a fever pitch during the COVID-19 pandemic when it became sacrilegious to speak out against vaccines, or even question their safety and efficacy.
Story at a glance:In 2021, investigative journalist Paul Thacker became a target of what he calls “the Great Vaccine Scare — hysteria about any and all vaccine criticism.”Thacker wrote an article published in The BMJ titled “COVID-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.”The article was thorough and accurate, but labeled as “misinformation” by a Facebook fact checker anyway.Dr. Aseem Malhotra was also harassed for sharing science relating to COVID-19 shot side effects.Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson was also a victim of vaccine hysteria; his Twitter account was suspended when he posted scientifically accurate information that cast a negative light on COVID-19 shots.[…]
In 2021, investigative journalist Paul Thacker became a target of what he calls “the Great Vaccine Scare — hysteria about any and all vaccine criticism,” after he wrote an article published in The BMJ titled “COVID-19: Researcher Blows the Whistle on Data Integrity Issues in Pfizer’s Vaccine Trial.”
The article, it should be noted, was thorough, accurate and “based on dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings and emails.”
It was so well done that it earned Thacker a nomination as a finalist for the Steve Connor Award for Investigative Science Journalism, presented by the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW).
An ABSW judge described the article as, “A very good story on a sensitive issue that was reported responsibly, it very clearly spells out why the story mattered.”
Fact-checkers pounce, label factual info ‘misinformation’
Thacker’s investigation details a series of problems with laboratory management and quality control checks by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Regional director Brook Jackson, formerly employed by Ventavia, said she witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported.
After notifying Ventavia about her concerns repeatedly, she made a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — and was fired the same day. Other former Ventavia employees spoke of similar issues.
[…]
Soon after Thacker’s investigative piece was published in BMJ, it was “fact checked” by a group called Lead Stories, which referred to the investigation as a “hoax alert” in the related URL.
Along with “correcting” statements that Thacker did not make, Lead Stories disparaged the investigation for “missing context,” but as investigative reporter Matt Taibbi explained, “‘Missing context’ has become a term to disparage reporting that is true but inconvenient.”
[…]
Harassment for voicing vaccine concerns now commonplace
Anyone who dares to question or criticize vaccinations is at risk of being harassed in today’s climate. Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a consultant cardiologist and chairman of public health collaboration in the U.K., is among those targeted for sharing science relating to COVID-19 shot side effects.
Malhotra has earned some notoriety for speaking about the underlying factors that make certain people more vulnerable to COVID-19 — namely lifestyle-related diseases driven by poor diet.
This aspect of prevention via a long-term healthy lifestyle, which could save lives in future pandemics, is another tenet that’s ignored by the dominant narrative. However, in June, Malhotra was invited to speak at a “side event during a meeting of the British Medical Association.”
[…]
The talk was based on the importance of evidence-based medicine and included information about historical corruption in the pharmaceutical industry.
The talk was not about vaccine side effects, per se, but Malhotra did mention a preprint article that found Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 shots are associated with an increased risk of serious adverse events of special interest.
The excess risk of these adverse events exceeded the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization compared to the placebo group.
Malhotra received praise for his talk, and the next day was presented with a Champion of Preventive Medicine award by the chair of the BMA, who had also attended Malhotra’s talk. Soon after, the harassment started.
[…]
Inconvenient science silenced by Twitter
Former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson was also a victim of vaccine hysteria.
His Twitter account was suspended when he posted this scientifically accurate information:
“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it — at best — as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”
Berenson filed a lawsuit against Twitter for labeling the tweet as misleading and canceling his account. The case has since been resolved, with Twitter acknowledging that the tweets should not have led to a suspension.
[…]
Dr. Meryl Nass was similarly censored by Twitter after she tweeted the findings of a preprint study by Israeli scientists, which looked into the immunogenicity and efficacy of a fourth COVID-19 mRNA shot.
It showed that while antibody titers were high, efficacy was low — “strong evidence,” she tweeted, “that titers are useless at predicting efficacy.”
[…]
“Oddly enough, former CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] Director Tom Frieden made this exact same point last September to The BMJ, ‘We don’t know that antibody level is what determines protection.’”
Politics put ahead of science in booster rollout
In another disturbing example of the narrative taking priority over science, Dr. Marion Gruber, director of the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research & Review and deputy director Dr. Philip Krause both left their positions near the end of 2021, citing frustration that the CDC is involved in decisions that should be left up to the FDA, and that the White House announced booster shots were coming before the FDA had finished its reviews of the booster shots.
Both Gruber and Krause were authors of an article published in The Lancet, which stated, “the currently available evidence does not show the need for widespread use of booster vaccination in populations that have received an effective primary vaccination regimen.”
Harvard professor Martin Kulldorff, a member of the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee, was also punished by the CDC — which removed him from its advisory committee on vaccines — when he stated a COVID-19 clinical trial should not have been paused.
Twitter then censored him when he tweeted that people with prior natural COVID-19 infection and children do not need COVID-19 shots.
Steve Kirsch, executive director of the Vaccine Safety Research Foundation, has also been vilified for speaking out against vaccines, and he has proof, in the form of a timeline of changes made to his Wikipedia page, which went from describing him as a “good guy,” including his 2003 humanitarian award, to painting him as a “menace to society.”
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/politics-covid-policy-vaccines-public-health-cola/
August 7, 2022
Japanese Surgeon Calls for Suspension of COVID Boosters
American Buddhist Net
In a letter to the peer-reviewed journal Virology, a Japanese cardiovascular surgeon, Dr. Kenji Yamamoto, has called for the discontinuation of COVID-19 booster shots. “As a safety measure, further booster vaccinations should be discontinued,” Yamamoto wrote. Among his urgent concerns are the fact that the COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia, which, in some cases, has been lethal to patients.
Yamamoto works at Okamura Memorial Hospital in Shizuoka, Japan. In the letter he explains that he and his colleagues have “encountered cases of infections that are difficult to control,” including some that occurred after open-heart surgery and were still not under control after several weeks of treatment with multiple antibiotics.
These patients, says Yamamoto, showed signs of being immunocompromised, and some of them died.
Yamamoto believes their suppressed immune function is likely to have been caused by COVID-19 vaccination.
Via https://americanbuddhist.net/2022/08/07/japanese-surgeon-calls-for-suspension-of-covid-boosters/
STUDY: Closing Bars, Restaurants Did NOT Suppress COVID-19
Natalie Winters
The National Pulse
A study on the efficacy of shutting down bars and restaurants to stop the spread of COVID-19 found that the restrictions were “not an efficient way” to decrease virus transmission, concluding that it “does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2.”
The study – SARS-CoV-2 Suppression and Early Closure of Bars and Restaurants: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment – was conducted by researchers in Japan and published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports.
Researchers used Japan as a case study because during the first two months of 2021, the early closure of restaurants and bars was the only mitigation strategy adopted by officials. This gave researchers the unique opportunity to isolate the closure of restaurants and bars as variables they could assess the efficacy of.
Data for the study was provided through a large-scale nationally representative survey.
“From the perspective of public policy implications, our study suggests that the early closure of full-service restaurants and bars, without any other concurrent policies, is not an efficient way to suppress SARS-CoV-2. Given the large detrimental effects on employment, alternative measures for full-service restaurants and bars should be considered before they are closed completely,” summarized the paper.
Despite the data showing a reduction in the use rate of restaurants and bars among Japanese people, researchers found “no discernible decrease in the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 except the reduction of “cough” among college graduates.”
The other symptoms tracked by researchers included high fever, sore throat, headache, and smell and taste disorder.
“These results suggest that the early closure of restaurants and bars without any other concurrent measures does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2,” posit researchers.
The study follows months of mandated closures of restaurants and businesses throughout the world, with health officials floating the measure as a potential solution to combat supposedly new variants of COVID-19. Dr. Birx, in her book Silent Invasion, professes to be the leader of the mass lockdown measures in the United States. She claims to have been supported by President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Vice President Mike Pence.
[…]
Understanding Chinese History Through Its Geography
Part 1: Yin and Yang: Geography of China
Foundations of Eastern Civilization
Dr Craig Benjamin (2013)
Film Review
In his introduction to the course Foundations of Eastern Civilization, Benjamin devotes an entire lecture to the impact of China’s unique geographical features on Chinese civilization.
The third largest country in area, after Russian and Canada, China is only slightly bigger than the US. The two countries also share a number of geographical features (northern hemisphere, roughly same size, extensive coastlines, diverse geography and history of uncivilized Wild West).
China’s Yangtze and Yellow Rivers clearly had a major impact on economic development, owing to devastating floods occurring on both during monsoon season. The Yangtze is the third longest river in the world after the Amazon and Nile.
China has four distinct geographic regions:
The eastern alluvial plains (at the mouth of the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers) – featuring extremely rich river sediment, these plains have been farmed (with wheat, millet and sorghum) and densely settled for many thousands of years. This region has consistently sustained the densest populations in human history.The southern hills – enjoy much more temperate weather (subtropical in places). It was here wild rice was domesticated.The western mountains – consisting of mountain ranges interspersed with harsh deserts, this region protected China from Western expansionist empires prior to the European Age of Exploration. Comprises two-thirds of China’s land mass.The northern grasslands – for thousands of hears, homeland to thousands of nomadic steppes warriors with enormous influence on the direction of Chinese civilization.According to Benjamin, China’s relative isolation from the outside world forced early Chinese emperors to focus on the internal integration of 56 different ethnic groups.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
August 6, 2022
Red states booming while blue states have yet to recover post-pandemic.
By Max Keating
True North Reports
Red states have fared better economically than blue states post-pandemic thanks to an influx of new businesses and growing populations of remote workers from other parts of the country, economists told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Republican-led states have added 341,000 jobs and grown economically compared to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, while blue states are still short 1.3 million jobs, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing statistics from the Brookings Institution. Interstate migration inflows have fueled disparities in economic growth and benefited red states because American workers, as well as major American businesses, are attracted to lower costs of living, a welcoming business environment and even certain social policies, economists tell the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“People move with their feet, and lots of folks are attracted to fewer taxes, regulations and government interference in daily life. Those things matter to people,” Vance Ginn, chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
This process of moving with one’s feet has been reinforced by the increasing prominence of remote work allowing people to decide where to live for “financial and lifestyle reasons” rather than being anchored by where their company is headquartered, according to the WSJ.
Red states have also fared better because their lower tax rates appeal to workers, the WSJ reported. The top 10 states for new residents in 2021 averaged a maximum income-tax rate of 3.8%, with four of them charging no income tax at all, according to the WSJ. The 10 states that lost the most residents had an average tax rate of 8.0%.
Top 10 inbound vs. top 10 outbound US states in 2021: How do they compare on a variety of economic, tax, business climate, and political measures? https://t.co/CZqJkEzMSN via @AEI Americans on the move and #VotingWithTheirFeet
— Mark J. Perry (@Mark_J_Perry) December 29, 2021
Business owners seeking a more favorable business environment also likely drove migration dynamics, according to the American Enterprise Institute. The averaging ranking in Forbes’ “Best States for Business” index for the 20 states with the most new arrivals last year was eight out of 50, while the average ranking for the top ten states for outbound migrants was 33 out of 50, AEI noted.
Pointing out that that Texas has attracted 256 new corporate headquarters under Gov. Greg Abbott’s leadership, a spokesperson for the governor told the DCNF that “businesses are relocating to and investing in the Lone Star State at a record pace because we’ve built a framework that allows free enterprise to flourish and hardworking Texans to prosper.”
Finally, COVID-related restrictions and particularly school closures have also encouraged many people to leave blue states, according to the WSJ. In-person educators in Florida received inquiries and higher demand for enrollments from parents “unhappy that their children’s schools in other states had moved to remote learning,” the WSJ reported, and pandemic-era movers typically flocked to places with fewer restrictions, according to a study conducted by Vanderbilt University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“Blue states have forced job creators and their own citizens to flee to red states because of lockdowns, high taxes, high crime caused by ‘no bail,’ among many other bad policies,” Alfredo Ortiz, president of the Job Creators Network told the DCNF.
In the twelve months between February 2021 and February 2022, 46 million people moved to a different zip code, according to the New York Post.
The top three states for new arrivals were Florida, Texas and North Carolina, each of which voted for Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020, while the top three states for emigrants were California, New York, and Illinois, each of which have a Democratic-majority legislature and Democratic governors, the New York Post added.
[…]
Lost in space: Astronauts struggle to regain bone density
France24
Paris (AFP) – Astronauts lose decades’ worth of bone mass in space that many do not recover even after a year back on Earth, researchers said Thursday, warning that it could be a “big concern” for future missions to Mars.
Previous research has shown astronauts lose between one to two percent of bone density for every month spent in space, as the lack of gravity takes the pressure off their legs when it comes to standing and walking.
To find out how astronauts recover once their feet are back on the ground, a new study scanned the wrists and ankles of 17 astronauts before, during and after a stay on the International Space Station.
The bone density lost by astronauts was equivalent to how much they would shed in several decades if they were back on Earth, said study co-author Steven Boyd of Canada’s University of Calgary and director of the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health.
The researchers found that the shinbone density of nine of the astronauts had not fully recovered after a year on Earth — and were still lacking around a decade’s worth of bone mass.
The astronauts who went on the longest missions, which ranged from four to seven months on the ISS, were the slowest to recover.
“The longer you spend in space, the more bone you lose,” Boyd told AFP.
Boyd said it is a “big concern” for planned for future missions to Mars, which could see astronauts spend years in space.
“Will it continue to get worse over time or not? We don’t know,” he said.
“It’s possible we hit a steady state after a while, or it’s possible that we continue to lose bone. But I can’t imagine that we’d continue to lose it until there’s nothing left.”
A 2020 modelling study predicted that over a three-year spaceflight to Mars, 33 percent of astronauts would be at risk of osteoporosis.
Boyd said some answers could come from research currently being carried out on astronauts who spent at least a year onboard the ISS.
Guillemette Gauquelin-Koch, the head of medicine research at France’s CNES space agency, said that the weightlessness experienced in space is “most drastic physical inactivity there is”.
“Even with two hours of sport a day, it is like you are bedridden for the other 22 hours,” said the doctor, who was not part of the study.
“It will not be easy for the crew to set foot on Martian soil when they arrive — it’s very disabling.”
‘The silent disease’The new study, which was published in Scientific Reports, also showed how spaceflight alters the structure of bones themselves.
[…]
Gallup Poll: Americans Obsessing Over Russia Are Fringe Minority, “Only 1%”
Andrew Korybko
The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” shows just how out of touch the Mainstream Media is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority.
The Mainstream Media (MSM) has been waging an unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia for nearly half a year already, yet Gallup’s latest poll shows that literally only 1% of Americans consider it to be the US’ “most important problem” despite their government already sending Kiev tens of billions of dollars in their name as part of its proxy war against that Eurasian Great Power. This confirms that those Americans who obsess over Russia are a fringe minority.
The polling company also noted in their report that the 1% of those who consider Russia to be their country’s “most important problem” is a steep drop from March when 9% of them shared that opinion. This suggests that Americans were most powerfully influenced at the onset of the MSM’s anti-Russian information warfare campaign but have since grown numb to it, with domestic issues like inflation, dysfunctional leadership, and abortion being regarded as much more important by them nowadays.
That’s bad news for the warmongers in Washington who wrongly assumed that their targeted audience could continue seeing Russia as their country’s “most important problem” well into the summer. What seems to have happened is that their MSM proxies overplayed their hand and have thus dealt irreparable damage to their information warfare operations after 99% of Americans no longer really care all that much about the Ukrainian Conflict.Absent a major provocation aimed at artificially manufacturing another false narrative fearmongering about Russia, it might very well end up being the case that this trend is irreversible. Simply put, the MSM shared too many claims about Russia too fast to the point that most people started tuning out after realizing that everything they were being told about what a threat it supposedly was to their country never ended up panning out.
Russia never attacked NATO, World War III didn’t break out, and no fearmongered nuclear apocalypse ever happened unlike what the MSM warned was about to happen. The Ukrainian Conflict remains contained and Americans quickly realized that they have much more important things to worry about like inflation, which nobody seriously blames Russia for. “Putin’s price hike” that Biden never tires of talking about hasn’t caught on and is widely mocked as intellectually insulting propaganda.
There’s probably nothing that the US Government can do to make its people care anymore since most probably wouldn’t bite the bait even if their intelligence services engineered a major provocation like was earlier predicted. This suggests that the Democrats can’t realistically campaign on the Biden Administration’s support of Kiev since 99% of voters don’t think that it addressed their country’s “most important problem”. To the contrary, a growing number consider it to be a money laundering operation.
The fact that only 1% of Americans regard Russia as the US’ “most important problem” also shows just how out of touch the MSM is with their targeted audience’s interests. That in turn adds credence to the speculation that they’re being ordered by their government to wage this unprecedented information warfare campaign against Russia despite it only being popular with a fringe minority. Building upon this observation, it can be concluded that American media isn’t as “independent” as it claims to be.
With a view to the future, it’s unlikely that the MSM’s obsessive smears against Russia will end anytime soon even though 99% of Americans don’t consider it their country’s “most important problem”. That’s because the US Government wants to falsely signal to its transatlantic vassals that their own people supposedly haven’t lost interest in this proxy war in the hopes that this lie will convince their leaders not to waver in their support of Kiev like American officials worry is already in the process of happening.
Like the author noted last week, “The Zelenskys’ Vogue Photoshoot Exposed What A Charade The Ukrainian Conflict Has Become” while Gallup’s latest poll just confirmed that observation with statistical facts that nobody can deny since that company is regarded as the world’s most reputable in its field. This “politically inconvenient” development proves what a failure the MSM’s US Government-managed information warfare campaign against Russia has been.
[…]
Via https://korybko.substack.com/p/gallups-latest-poll-shows-that-those
August 5, 2022
Big Pharma’s $7.2 Billion Cash Cow: Vaccines for Industrial Meat Production
As U.S. regulators restrict antibiotic use, industrial meat producers turn to vaccines, hormones and other problematic drugs to promote growth and prevent disease in unsanitary, overcrowded factory farms.
Many people know about the routine use of antibiotics in livestock production — and object to it.The drugs are profitable to industrial meat producers because they cause animals to gain more weight with less feed and prevent the outbreak of disease in often cramped concentrated animal feeding operation conditions.
In 2017, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began regulatory measures to prevent the use of livestock antibiotics for growth purposes and recently finalized the guidance. Injudicious antibiotic use drives the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
As the extent of antibiotic residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria in meat has been revealed, there has been a public backlash against the drugs’ use, resulting in some meat producers labeling their products “raised without antibiotics.”
Unfortunately, consumers are unaware that other drugs are now being used in meat production and left off the labels.
Worse, in an effort to reduce the publicly spurned antibiotics, meat producers are turning to vaccines.
“Vaccines and other alternative products can help minimize the need for antibiotics by preventing and controlling infectious diseases in animal populations, and are central to the future success of animal agriculture,” read a 2018 article in Veterinary Research.
How prevalent are livestock vaccines?
Drugmaker Merck markets 58 poultry vaccines for diseases that food consumers neither know about nor probably want to know about like coccidiosis, infectious bronchitis, Newcastle disease, infectious laryngotracheitis, mycoplasma gallisepticum, Marek’s disease (chicken herpes), infectious bursal disease, hemorrhagic enteritis, rhinotracheitis (turkey coryza), avian encephalomyelitis, fowl pox and more.
In addition to vaccines for cattle, swine and fish, food animals are also vaccinated as embryos.
By 2020, the animal vaccine market was estimated to be $7.2 billion.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Biden Administration to Let Djokovic Play in US Open
In ovo vaccination
More than 90% of broiler chickens in the United States are vaccinated “in ovo,” according to research published in Veterinary Research in 2018. That means they are vaccinated as embryos in the egg.
Vaccines are either directly injected into the embryo or into the amniotic cavity of the egg. But like human vaccines, the technology has its risks.
The authors of the Veterinary Research study report that the mass routine vaccination at the hatchery, “is labor-intensive, causes stress for the chicks, and high sanitary standards need to be followed during vaccine preparation and injection to manage infection risks.”
Injecting vaccines at the wrong stage of embryonic development can be disastrous, they write, giving the example of 1- to 12-day-old embryos who were injected with turkey herpes virus too early and developed lesions and died.
Are poultry and other food animal vaccine residues in the meat? Possibly.
Researchers writing in the Archives of Virology in 2011 advised that a “vaccine, particularly if injected subcutaneously, should be introduced into an area of the animal not used for human consumption such as behind the animal’s ear or in the area of the chest wall behind the elbow.”
That way, wrote the researchers, “if there is any residual vaccine left or any reaction to it, there will be neither involvement of an edible part of the carcass nor trim losses in food animals.”
Unlabeled hormones
Have you ever heard of oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate?
Probably not but they are hormones routinely used in U.S. cattle for growth production.
Much of the European Union looks askance at these hormonal drugs. According to the EU’s Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures Relating to Public Health, “Misplaced [hormonal] implants and repeated implanting, which seem to occur frequently, represent a considerable risk that highly contaminated meats could enter the food chain.”
The EU Scientific Committee also wrote that “the highest rates of breast cancer are observed in North America, where hormone-treated meat consumption is highest in the world … Prostate cancer shows similar variations … [and] is comparable to that of breast cancer.”
These cancers are known to be hormone-dependent or hormonally mediated.
Scientists writing in the journal Anticancer Research say the hormone zeranol may “play a critical role in mammary tumorigenesis” and “be a risk factor for breast cancer.”
Few in the U.S. are aware that other countries reject U.S. hormone-raised beef.
According to the Library of Congress, “The United States and the European Union (EU) have engaged in a long-standing and acrimonious trade dispute over the EU’s decision to ban hormone-treated meat.”
The conflicts intensified when, in 2009, the U.S. Trade Representative announced its intent to increase tariffs on some products. The EU claimed this constituted an “escalation” of the dispute.
As the United Kingdom prepared to leave the EU, the London-based Food Research Collaboration wrote:
“There is a risk that food standards may be sacrificed to win trade agreements with non-EU states such as the USA. This report looks at the case of hormone-treated beef, which is permitted in the U.S., but which the EU refuses to import. The World Trade Organization has accepted the EU’s refusal to import hormone-reared beef.
“The report shows that at least one of the hormones routinely used in US beef production has been judged to be a significant cancer risk by the EU.”
China also restricts “beef from cattle implanted with growth promoting hormones,” says the University of Minnesota Extension, a research and outreach partnership between the university and the state, federal and county governments. The Extension defends the drugs as promoting sustainability, and as natural as hormones found in plants.
A problematic growth drug
Not many people are aware of ractopamine either — an asthma-like drug designed to add weight to livestock but banned in 160 countries by 2014. In an early Canadian study, monkeys given ractopamine “developed daily tachycardia” — rapid heartbeat.
Rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged heart.
In Taipei City, Taiwan in 2007, 3,500 pig farmers gathered at the Department of Health and Council of Agriculture to protest the possible lifting of a ractopamine ban, Taiwan News reported.
Chanting, “We refuse to eat pork that contains poisonous ractopamine,” and “Get out, USA pork” protesters threw eggs at police, soldiers and reporters and pig dung at government buildings.
According to Temple Grandin, the famed American scientist and animal behaviorist concerned with humane slaughter, the “indiscriminant use of the beta-adrenergic agonist Paylean (ractopamine) has contributed to an increase in downer non-ambulatory pigs,” and pigs that “are extremely difficult to move and drive.”
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/animal-antibiotics-livestock-drugs-vaccines/
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