Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 533
July 28, 2022
The Decline of the Mongol Empire and the Birth of Russia
A Map of Muscovy Russian Expansion from 1533-1598 Under Ivan the Terrible
Episode 31: Conversion and Assimilation
Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)
Dr Kenneth Harl
Film Review
At its height the Mongol Empire consisted of four semi-independent states or hulas
The eastern hula, consisting of the Yuan Empire, Tibet and the Mongol homeland
The Chagatai Khanate on the central steppes
The Golden Horde controlling the western steppes and the Russian principalities
The Ilkhanate (Persia and Transoxiana)
The Yuan Dynasty was overthrow in a civil war in 1368. Mongol control over the other hulas began to decline even earlier (after 1254) as they converted to Islam.
Demise of the Yuan Dynasty
Concerned an entrenched bureaucratic state would undermine his power, the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan scrapped the civil service exam established by the Mandarin followers of Confucius. Appointing his own Mongol relatives to run the empire, he relocated the capitol further north to Xanadu (now Beijing) close to the steppes and the Mongol homeland. Likewise he refused to use Chinese script for official documents, adopting Tibetan script instead.
From the outset, this made him extremely unpopular with the Mandarin class. His successors were even more unpopular with the Chinese people for heavy taxes they imposed to fund military campaigns and construction initiatives. Owing to their failure to properly maintain the canal system, successive Yuan emperors were also blamed for a series of floods.
in 1351 a peasant named Chu Yuan-Chang launched an armed uprising. By 1356 he controlled south China, and in 1368 he marched his forces to Xanadu. After the Yuan emperor fled, Chu proclaimed himself the first Ming emperor. In 1403 the Ming Dynasty leveled Xanadu and rebuilt the city as Beijing. They also ordered total reconstruction (in masonry) of their border walls to ensure nomads never again ruled over China.
Ilkhanate
By 1334 the Ilkanate Empire had fragmented into multiple small kingdoms as Transoxiana was assimilated into the Chagatai hula. In 1453, with the fall of Constantinople, Ilkhan rule totally vanished as the Ottoman Sultanate (1299-1924) and the Safavid Dynasty of Iran absorbed the former Ilkhan kingdoms
Chagatai Empire
Beginning in the 14th century, the Chagatai Empire (which controlled the Tarim Basin Silk Road), split into smaller and smaller kingdoms until it was eventually absorbed by the Ottoman Empire.
The Golden Horde
The Golden Horde continued to control the Russian principalities until the 15th century. Between 1325-49, they collaborated with Prince Ivan of Moscow, who collected tribute for them from the other Russian princes and Mongol cities on the western steppes. Also allying themselves with the Marmaluk Sultans in Egypt, the Golden Horde continued to provide them with Slavic slave via the Genoese colony of Kafia (on Black Sea) and later the Venetian colon of Tarnau (also on Black Sea).
In the 1380 Battle of Kurvo Yeti, a Russian army assembled by a coalition of princes defeated the Mongol army for the first time. However Mongol rule persisted, especially after Tamerlane came to the rescue of the Mongol khans.
Between 1453-70, the Golden Horde disintegrated into competing khanates (Muscoy, Crimea Khanate, Kazan Khanate and Astrakhan Khanate), all vassals of the Ottoman sultanate in Constantinople, which they supplied with slaves.
In 1480 Prince Ivan III (Ivan the Great) invaded the Kazan Khanate (comprised primarily of Turkish Tatars) for the first time. In 1568, Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible) conquered both Khazan and Astrakhan and gained control of the Volga. Crimea would remain a vassal of the Ottoman Empire until the 17th century, when Cossack cavalry developed the skill and technology to defeat mounted Mongol archers.
As Russia expanded rapidly across the Eurasian tundra, taiga and steppes, they made treaties with the Chinese Manchu Empire about control of the steppes. The Russians assumed control of Transoxiana, and the Chinese the Tarim Basin, Tibet and Inner Mongolia.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
July 27, 2022
FDA, CDC Sell Out America’s Children — Could Their Betrayal Bring Down Entire Childhood Vax Program?
By authorizing COVID-19 vaccines for young children on the basis of shoddy data, public health officials proved they’re in the business of protecting pharma’s profits, not people — and once enough people realize it, the entire childhood vaccine program will be finished.
Story at a glance:In late June, the United States became the first country in the world to grant Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Pfizer’s and Moderna’s COVID jabs for toddlers as young as 6 months. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued the EUA on June 17, and the very next day, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended all toddlers get the shot as soon as possible.The pediatric EUA was based on extremely weak evidence — and that’s after the FDA lowered its efficacy requirements for the pediatric population, even though they have the lowest risk of COVID and therefore have the least need for the shots.With this recommendation, the FDA and CDC have evaporated any last vestiges of trust they may have held onto. The reason they authorized COVID jabs for toddlers is because the drug industry needs this age group to be included under the EUA for legal indemnity purposes.Once the emergency is over, the next phase of liability shielding requires that the shots receive approval from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Once the COVID jab is on the childhood vaccination schedule, the vaccine makers are permanently shielded from liability for injuries and deaths that occur in any age group, including adults.The FDA and CDC have sold out America’s children. Once enough people realize what they’ve done, they and the entire childhood vaccine program will be finished, as no one will trust any of the vaccines on the schedule. Already, only 44% of Americans believe what the CDC says.[…]
It’s one thing to show regulatory flexibility during an emergency. But for children, COVID isn’t an emergency. The FDA bent its standards to an unusual degree and brushed aside troubling evidence that warrants more investigation.”
COVID is inconsequential for young children
Finley points out that only 209 children between the ages of 6 months and 4 years have died from COVID, per CDC data. She uses the word “from,” but the evidence suggests most children die “with” COVID and from other serious health conditions such as cancer.
That said, Finley does note that the two children in Pfizer’s pediatric trial who developed the most serious infections “also tested positive for other viruses,” so “it’s possible that many hospitalizations attributed to COVID this winter were actually instigated or exacerbated by other viruses.”
Another telling statistic is that the number of toddlers hospitalized with COVID between October 2020 and September 2021 was about half the total number of toddlers hospitalized with influenza the previous winter.
[…]
Shots don’t work well in young children
. . . while the shots initially seemed to offer robust protection for adults, the same cannot be said for children. The Moderna shot was only 51% effective against symptomatic Omicron infection in 6-month-olds to 2-year-olds, and a mere 37% effective in 2- to 5-year-olds.
[…]
“More troubling, vaccinated toddlers in Pfizer’s trial were more likely to get severely ill with COVID than those who received a placebo. Pfizer claimed most severe cases weren’t ‘clinically significant,’ whatever that means, but this was all the more reason that the FDA should have required a longer follow-up before authorizing the vaccine.
“Also worrisome: Most kids who developed multiple infections during the trial were vaccinated. This warranted more investigation since experimental vaccines for other diseases sometimes increase susceptibility to infection.
“Scientists are also discovering that triple-vaccinated adults who were previously infected with the Wuhan variant have a weaker immune response to Omicron, leaving them more susceptible to reinfection.
“This phenomenon, called ‘immunological imprinting,’ could explain why children who received three Pfizer shots were more likely to get reinfected.”
CDC and FDA are recklessly throwing caution to the wind
[…]
This ongoing “training” that the immune system undergoes during the first few years of a child’s life is what allows them to develop a well-functioning immune system over time. Immunological imprinting could throw a huge wrench in the works, making children less able to combat infections.
Young children are exceptionally “hardy” and can bounce back from most infections.
However, that’s provided something hasn’t been done that prevents their immune system from functioning normally. Of course, we also know the shots are associated with even more serious effects, including heart inflammation, neurological disorders and cancer.
[…]
CDC is breaking trust in childhood vaccination
Leslie Bienen and Tracy Beth Høeg addressed the CDC’s self-imposed self-destruction in a July 5 Tablet magazine article, in which they noted that “With its unscientific push to vaccinate all infants and toddlers against COVID, the agency will harm vaccine uptake for more significant diseases.”
The duo cites polling data showing a majority of parents are skeptical of the CDC’s recommendation to jab their young children. Only 18% of respondents said they were eager to get their babies and toddlers inoculated, while 38% said they would wait and see if there are side effects; 27% said they would “definitely not” get their child jabbed.
[…]
Indeed, one of the few silver linings of COVID is that people are starting to wake up in droves, realizing the entire childhood vaccination program has been misrepresented, just like the COVID shots are being misrepresented.
For example, I recently interviewed Dr. Robert Malone, who stated:
“I’m now completely in the same camp as Bobby Kennedy, in that I believe the entire vaccine enterprise needs to be revisited, and it’s unequivocal.
“We do not have the data to support the safety and efficacy of the current pediatric vaccine schedule, and all of the components of the pediatric vaccine schedule need to be reassessed for risk-benefit ratio. Both as individual products and as combined products.”
[…]
Why did two-thirds of toddlers drop out of Pfizer’s trial?
[…]
In “How Vaccine Trials Routinely Rig the Results,” I also discussed other red flags, such as the fact that 3,000 of the 4,526 children (aged 6 months through 4 years) enrolled in Pfizer’s pediatric COVID trial were excluded, without explanation.
Oftentimes, trial participants drop out or are excluded due to severe side effects. Here, we don’t know why two-thirds of the participants were eliminated, and according to Dr. Clare Craig, a diagnostic pathologist, a 66% dropout rate should have been sufficient to deem the trial null and void (see video below).
[…]
It’s all about securing indemnification
So I’m guessing everyone is wondering why the FDA voted unanimously to give not one — but THREE shots of the C@ViD
to the youngest of children when there’s N
emergency.
It is IMPERATIVE they have this approval.
R. obert K. ennedy Jr. tells us why: pic.twitter.com/denjlTchMF
— NEWSNANCY
(@NewsNancy9) June 15, 2022
As explained by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in the short video clip above, they need this last remaining age group to be included under the EUA, because once the emergency is finally declared “over,” the next phase of liability shielding requires that the shots receive approval by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
[…]
Inventing Diagnoses to Cover Up Vaccine Injury — a Con as Old as Vaccination Itself
By Children’s Health Defense Team People injured by COVID-19 vaccines may not realize it, but the pretense that post-vaccination injuries and deaths are just “sad coincidences” — far from being unique to the pandemic jabs — is a trick as old as vaccination itself.
So-called “fact-checkers” are having to work double-time to come up with ways to deny the undeniable fact that COVID-19 vaccines are causing injuries and deaths on a massive scale.The shot pushers and their media enablers have taken cover-up tactics to absurd new heights by, for example, chalking up the rash of fatal heart attacks and overnight deaths in athletes and young adults to a fluky condition referred to variously as “sudden adult death syndrome” or “sudden arrhythmic death syndrome” (SADS).
What the COVID-19 vaccine-injured do not necessarily recognize, however, is the pretense that post-vaccination injuries and deaths are just “sad coincidences” — far from being unique to the pandemic jabs — is a trick as old as vaccination itself.
Facilitated by well-honed semantic and statistical flimflam, public health officials’ core strategy for perpetuating their fiction is to profess innocence — making unabashedly unsubstantiated pronouncements about vaccine safety, on the one hand, while on the other hand, declaring themselves “baffled” by ailments that emerge in the aftermath of a given vaccine’s rollout.
From 1899 to 2022 — has anything changed?
In an astonishingly frank and prescient book, “The Fallacy of Vaccination,” published in 1899, Dr. Alexander Wilder called attention to the “growing conviction” among “profounder thinkers and observers” that vaccination was not only “utterly useless as a preventive” but “actually the means of disseminating disease afresh where it is performed.”
[…]
Wilder also blew the whistle on the suppression and concealment of vaccine adverse events and deaths, describing a fellow physician’s urging of his “professional brethren to be slow to publish fatal cases of smallpox after vaccination” and outlining other shenanigans that sound all too familiar today:
[…]
“Even when death occurs as the result of vaccination, the truth is concealed and the case represented as scarlet fever, measles, erysipelas [bacterial skin infection], or some ‘masked’ disease, in order to prevent too close questioning.”
The intentionality of the suppression seemed obvious to Wilder, who added, “Further argument is met by stolid silence, and by an apparent concert of purpose to exclude carefully all discussion of the matter from medical and public journals, and to denounce all who object.”
Similar sleight-of-hand was on full display during the recent Novavax-focused meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
In the ably summarized live-blog account by internist Dr. Meryl Nass — a member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee — Nass noted CDC’s faking of COVID-19 data to hide the far-greater hospitalization and death rates among the COVID-19-vaccinated as compared to the unvaccinated.
Conveniently for the CDC, Nass noted, the only charts not “up to date by the day” were those presenting vaccination status versus outcome.
However, despite CDC’s “mumbo jumbo,” Nass pointed out, the agency was unable to hide the higher rate of myocarditis in mRNA-vaccinated males within a week of dose two — 75.9 times higher for 16- to 17-year-olds and 38.9 times higher in 18- to 24-year-olds.
Polio: another example of ‘mumbo jumbo’
With New York State recently reporting a case of “vaccine-derived polio,” and U.K. scientists declaring a “national incident” after allegedly finding “genetic sequences” of poliovirus in London sewage water, it appears public health authorities might be preparing to resurrect polio as the bogeyman du jour.
At first blush, the concession that nearly all modern paralytic polio cases are iatrogenically (inadvertently induced) caused by the oral polio vaccine — shared by no less than the World Health Organization and CDC — seems unexpectedly and refreshingly candid.
However, public health authorities have no intention of conceding that the official story of poliomyelitis (where “myelitis” refers to spinal cord inflammation) is otherwise full of more holes than Swiss cheese.
There is, and always was, ample evidence to suggest that poisoning — whether by lead arsenate, DDT, or later, the toxic ingredients in polio vaccines themselves — is the most credible explanation for the paralytic symptoms and deaths that were labeled as “polio.”
In fact, early public health luminary Bernard Greenberg, founding chair of the biostatistics department at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, testified before Congress that polio vaccination had “actually increased incidents of polio” and that “misuse of statistical methods had made the opposite seem true.”
Greenberg was referring to a change in the diagnostic criteria for “paralytic poliomyelitis.” implemented in the mid-1950s, which began to require at least 60 days of paralytic symptoms to earn the diagnosis, versus previously, just 24 hours of such symptoms.
As Greenberg did not hesitate to point out, the victory claimed by the first polio vaccines, which began to be administered around the same time, was entirely undeserved.
In the present day, “acute flaccid paralysis” and “acute flaccid myelitis,”, which have a clinical picture virtually identical to polio, are the diagnoses of choice for childhood paralysis cropping up all over the world, including in the U.S.
In countries like India, where tens of thousands of children have developed acute flaccid paralysis, doctors explicitly linked the condition to oral polio vaccination. But decades of published reports also associate paralysis with other childhood vaccines, such as pertussis-containing and aluminum-containing vaccines.
In fact, historical reports of spinal cord inflammation, including not just poliomyelitis but other forms of myelitis, track closely with pediatric vaccination trends, and with the concurrent rise in the practice of pediatric injection.
Earlier generations of doctors even described polio cases that followed pediatric injections as “provocation paralysis,” while more recent generations of clinicians have noted the similarity between “polio” and injection injuries dubbed “traumatic neuritis.”
On the current vaccine schedule for American children, clinical trial or post-marketing data link 17 different vaccines to “myelitis,” “encephalomyelitis,” “acute disseminated encephalomyelitis” and/or “transverse myelitis.”
Transverse myelitis also has been making an appearance with COVID-19 vaccines.
Sidestepping the obvious explanation
Since the “polio” era, there are many other examples of diagnoses intended to obfuscate rather than elucidate vaccination as a cause of illness and death — and gaslight sufferers.
These include autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Among the environmental causes put forth as plausible triggers for the neuroimmune disorders labeled as “ASD,” heavy metal poisoning — principally via vaccination — is one of the most consistent contenders.
Meticulous landmark papers published in 2004 and 2012 demonstrated strong parallels between the brain effects of mercury intoxication and ASD brain pathology. Later papers furnished similar evidence with respect to aluminum.
As for SIDS, the diagnosis first entered into vogue around the same time (in the early 1970s) that the vaccine load for children in the U.S. doubled.
Although the 1970s vaccine schedule appears restrained by today’s immoderate standards, young children of that decade not only began receiving 13 vaccines instead of seven, but also went from mostly receiving one shot at a time to often getting two at once, including five one-two punches of diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) and oral polio vaccine — both subsequently taken off the U.S. market due to their troublesome adverse event profile.
SIDS deaths, which by definition affect “seemingly normal, healthy infants,” and toddler deaths categorized as “sudden unexplained deaths in childhood” typically occur “in close temporal association following vaccination,” with nine of 10 SIDS deaths occurring around the same time as two- and four-month “well-baby” visits.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/vaccine-injury-cover-up-covid-vaccination/
‘The Special Relationship’: How the British Reconquered the United States and Established an Anglo-American Empire
Cynthia Chung“Neither the sure prevention of war, nor the continuous rise of world organisation will be gained without … a special relationship between the British Commonwealth and Empire and the United States…”
– Winston Churchill, ‘Iron Curtain Speech’, 1946
This will sound like an outrageous statement to many. How could the British have reconquered the United States?! They never won any war against her and by the 20th century had always fought alongside the United States as a trusted ally. And isn’t it rather the opposite, doesn’t the United States dictate British foreign policy at this point?
It is true, Britain never won a war against the United States, and it was understood by the mid-19th century that the British would never succeed in conquering the United States externally. Rather, if they were to be successful, she would need to be conquered from within, to which this paper is dedicated to telling the story of.
Two Opposing Systems
During the American Civil War, British support for the Confederate army had reached a point where Britain would have certainly militarily intervened on their behalf if it had not been for Tsar Alexander II deploying the Russian navy on both eastern and western coasts of America for seven months in support of Lincoln’s Union. Russia was prepared to go to war with Britain in order to keep the United States whole.
Tsar Alexander II explained in an interview with pro-industry American banker Wharton Barker on Aug. 17, 1879 why he thought it important that Russia should take such a strong stance in America’s Civil War (published in The Independent March 24, 1904):
“…All this I did because of love for my own dear Russia, rather than for love of the American Republic. I acted thus because I understood that Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American Republic, with advanced industrial development were broken up and Great Britain should be left in control of most branches of modern industrial development.”
In other words, Tsar Alexander II understood that the United States had created the only economic system (known as “The American System”) that was capable of competing and defeating Britain’s slave-based economic policy of free trade. (For an overview of what is The American System refer here and here.)
In stark contrast to this sentiment, Lord Robert Cecil, who later became Marquess of Salisbury, a very prominent position in British peerage and who served three times as Prime Minister of Britain, had this to say in Parliament during the American Civil War:
“The Northern States of America never can be sure friends because we are rivals, rivals politically, rivals commercially…With the Southern States, the case is entirely reversed. The population are an agricultural people. They furnish the raw material of our industry, and they consume the products which we manufacture from it. With them, every interest must lead us to cultivate friendly relations, and when the war began they at once recurred to England as their natural ally.”
In other words, the cotton plantations that ran on slave labour in the American South, were in service of the British Empire’s global cotton trade which also ran on slave labour from India and conducted terrible exploitation of its British cotton workers.
The American Civil War was about two different economic systems in opposition to each other, and it was the South that was the “natural ally” to the British Empire.
However, the Union won the Civil War and the United States managed to keep itself whole. The South had to end its slave labour and the United States managed to push back on Britain’s slave-based economic policy (for more on this story refer here).
In fact, many leaders throughout the world, during this period were pushing back on Britain’s slave-based economic policy of free trade enforced by the British East-India Company. With leading opposition coming out of Germany, Russia, Japan and China, in addition to the United States.
In 1879, Otto von Bismarck broke Germany’s free trade system implementing an American style tariff policy for his nation. The kinship between Germany and the United States became so strong at this time that Otto von Bismarck’s speech in the parliament (1879) was quoted by McKinley on the floor in US Congress.
[…]
Otto von Bismarck was heavily organising for the building of the Berlin to Baghdad railway, which after much resistance and delay would only be completed in 1940. If this has been accomplished during Otto von Bismarck’s life, the Middle East could have avoided the Sykes Picot carving up.
In 1869, Japanese modernizers working directly with the Lincoln-Carey strategists ran the Meiji Restoration which industrialized Japan.
In the 1880s and 90s, Lincoln-Carey Philadelphia industrialists were contracted for huge infrastructure and nation-building projects in China. Hawaiian Christian missionary Frank Damon, having participated in the Carey group’s strategies at a very high level, helped instigate, shape, and build the Sun Yat-sen organization that gave birth to modern China.
Sun Yat-sen referred to his admiration of Lincoln’s USA as the basis for a new multipolar system saying:
“The world has been greatly benefited by the development of America as an industrial and a commercial Nation. So a developed China with her four hundred millions of population, will be another New World in the economic sense. The nations which will take part in this development will reap immense advantages. Furthermore, international cooperation of this kind cannot but help to strengthen the Brotherhood of Man.”
It was crystal clear that the leadership of the world had embarked upon a common path and was desirous to enter a new age where slavery might truly become a thing of the past; that the individual was from henceforth to be seen as sacrosanct, that after centuries of brutal war the world was finally ready for peace and was willing to uphold liberty and freedom for all.
Was it just a dream?
No, it was not just a dream, although it was just as fleeting. The reason for this is found in the list of names below.
[…]
Via https://cynthiachung.substack.com/p/the-special-relationship-how-the
Denmark bans Google software and laptops in schools
Privacy Concerns
Last year, officials in a municipality in Denmark were ordered to conduct a risk assessment on Google’s processing of personal data. Last week, the country’s data protection agency Datatilsynet ruled that Google services used in schools, including Drive, Gmail, and Docs, do “not meet the requirements of the EU’s GDPR data privacy” rules and banned their use in schools.
The data protection agency said that Google’s terms and conditions allow the transfer of data to other countries, yet the GDPR regulations stipulate that data should be stored in data centers within the region.
The ban of Google services also applies to Chromebooks, which are widely used in schools across Denmark. Technically, the ruling applies to schools in the Helsingor municipality. But Datatilsynet said it expects other municipalities “to take relevant steps” in light of its ruling in the Helsingor municipality.
“We know that students and schools expect the technology they use to be legally compliant, responsible, and safe. That’s why for years, Google has invested in privacy best practices and diligent risk assessments, and made our documentation widely available so anyone can see how we help organizations to comply with the GDPR,” a spokesperson for Google told TechCrunch.
“Schools own their own data. We only process their data in accordance with our contracts with them. In Workspace for Education, students’ data is never used for advertising or other commercial purposes. Independent organizations have audited our services, and we keep our practices under constant review to maintain the highest possible standards of safety and compliance.”
[…]
Via https://reclaimthenet.org/denmark-bans-google-software-and-laptops-in-schools/
Saudis Resell Russian Oil to EU
Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
InfoBRICS
Ever since United States President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he’s been trying to bring Saudi Arabia back to the political West’s flock. The attempts to do so have escalated significantly after Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO’s crawling encroachment. Biden made numerous futile attempts to contact Saudi leadership, culminating with a failed visit on July 15.
The reasons why Saudi Arabia has been reluctant are many, including the openly declared intention of the US leadership to transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. With oil being the lifeblood of Saudi Arabia virtually since its inception as a modern country, it is quite clear why Saudi leadership is not too keen to help the US achieve such a goal.
Joe Biden engaged in a sort of quasi-Reaganian attempt to have Saudi Arabia significantly increase oil production, which should have accomplished at least two goals. First, bring down oil prices, alleviating the pressure on the US economy while it transitioned towards alternative energy sources, and second, help bring Russia’s economy to its knees, very much in the same manner late US President Ronald Reagan did during the 1980s, which many in the political West believe helped bring down the Soviet Union. However, it seems President Biden did not only fail to achieve either of the two, but has actually made things worse for the political West.
Naturally, all major oil-producing countries have used oil price hikes on the global market to profit exponentially more while having to pump virtually the same quantity of oil. This is especially true for Saudi Arabia, the world’s third-largest oil producer, right after Russia and the US. After the political West imposed sanctions on Russia, the markets went into a frenzy, which immediately caused an increase in the price of all energy products, including crude oil. However, now it was Russia that was selling the cheapest oil, making it extremely attractive for other countries which simply couldn’t afford anything more expensive. Soon, massive oil importing countries like China and India started buying more Russian oil than ever before.
At this point, Russia was starting to overtake Saudi market share in other countries, including China, one of the world’s largest oil consumers. At a glance, this should’ve made Saudis more open to the idea of ramping up oil production and causing a drop in prices. But again, why would they do that for the interests of the US, whose government takes an openly hostile approach toward the oil industry, including its own? Expectedly, Riyadh had to find an alternative. And that’s exactly what happened after it made a deal with Russia within the OPEC+ framework. Among other things, this deal also seems to include an increase in Saudi import of cheaper Russian oil. And indeed, according to Reuters, the Wahhabi monarchy doubled its Russian oil imports in the second quarter of this year.
Now, we might ask ourselves, why would the world’s third-largest oil producer and a net exporter want to import more oil? Although it might not have much sense at a glance, in reality, it is very convenient for the Saudis to do so. After the political West imposed the suicidal sanctions on Russia, effectively enforcing an oil embargo on itself, Saudi leadership realized how much of an opportunity this was for Riyadh to buy the cheaper Russian oil and then re-export it to the European Union and elsewhere. For Russia, this was not only acceptable but even desirable. The EU, which did just as much damage to Russia’s interests in the post-Soviet region as the US itself, is now effectively still buying Russian oil, just through a middleman, paying exorbitant prices to get the same amount of oil as before February.
This is weakening the EU, putting tremendous pressure on the already failing European economies, which haven’t even recovered from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is also affecting the US, as oil prices are soaring, exacerbating the inflation problem, which is now at the highest point in over 40 years. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is profiting immensely, as it is now effectively a middleman, reselling Russian oil to the political West. This also alleviates the strain on the Saudi oil industry, making it possible to work less, while profiting more. In addition, it nullifies Saudi losses in other markets, particularly in China and India, both of which are now buying more Russian oil.
The only losing side in this situation is the political West, particularly the EU. As long as Brussels is locked in a confrontation with Russia, it will be forced to buy Russian oil through Saudi Arabia and other middlemen. This is weakening EU economies, making them less competitive on the global market while also draining the resources of the domestic market, bringing down demand and effectively causing a recession.
In the meantime, Washington DC is still importing Russian oil and removing other sanctions on essential Russian commodities to reduce pressure on its own economy. All the while, mindless Brussels bureaucrats, completely detached from reality, keep following the US diktat. This will inevitably further impoverish and weaken the EU.
[…]Via http://infobrics.org/post/36248July 26, 2022
Toxic Chemicals to Blame for Decline in Kids’ IQs
By Barbara Demeneix and R. Thomas Zoeller
Every baby born in America is contaminated with industrial chemicals and many of those chemicals — especially endocrine disruptors — affect brain development.
Brain function, especially in children, is often evaluated by intelligence tests resulting in an Intelligence Quotient or “IQ.”
IQ scores, after having increased for most of the 20th century, have been going down since the mid-1990s.
The decline is well documented across Europe, the U.S. and Australia.
Is this trend for real?
Some technical issues related to IQ measurements may be playing a role. However, scientific studies show that chemical exposures harm brain function in our children.
Every baby born in America (and in the developed world) is contaminated with industrial chemicals and many professionals — including numerous medical and scientific organizations — are focusing on the soup of chemicals in which we raise our children.
Many of these chemicals affect brain development, especially endocrine-disrupting chemicals.
Reducing exposure to these mixtures of chemicals offers the single best approach to improving the mental and physical health of our children.
An assault on our children
Endocrine-disrupting chemicals interfere with our hormones. Newborn babies are pre-exposed to mixtures of more than 200 endocrine-disrupting chemicals. These include phthalates, perchlorate, fluoride, BPA (bisphenol-A) and its substitutes, parabens, legacy chemicals such as PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT (dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane), and heavy metals including lead and mercury.
What is worse: these chemicals are in the amniotic fluid and surround the baby during the first nine months of its life when the brain is forming at an incredible rate with thousands of nerve cells born per second.
Contamination continues through the mother’s milk or formula, through the air the baby breathes, in the creams, lotions and baby wipes used on its small body and more. This is an assault on our children — our species’ next generation.
The major culprits in reducing IQ
Let’s go through some of the worst offenders.
Consider phthalates. These chemicals are included in many consumer products, personal care products, processed foods, food packaging materials and medical supplies.
Several studies have shown that exposure to these chemicals causes reductions in IQ. In addition, they have been found universally, from the Arctic to Antarctica, including in different species from ants to alligators.
Perchlorate is a thyroid disruptor and is found in rocket fuel, fireworks and airbags, as well as in food packaging.
It is present in groundwater and can be taken up through the food we eat. Perchlorate acts by reducing the ability of the body to use iodine — an essential ingredient in the formation of thyroid hormone. Perchlorate affects IQ by suppressing thyroid function and producing a state of thyroid hormone insufficiency.
Fluoride that is often added to drinking water is another problem for brain development. One of the most clear-cut demonstrations of the fluoride-lowering effect on IQ came from Canada.
A study led by Christine Till measured the IQ of Canadian children living in different cities. There was a stark contrast in IQ, equivalent to 10 points, with lower scores in children that had fluoride in their drinking water.
BPA is the poster child of endocrine disruption, and its substitutes like BPS and BPF are equally problematic. A recent study found an increase in BPS use in thermal paper by 153% in a single year.
Other studies on BPS exposure show decreases in psychomotor function at 2 years of age associated with increases in ADHD. Several studies have also shown that BPF decreases IQ, showing interference with the thyroid system, which is essential for normal brain development.
The chemicals PCBs and DDT are considered “legacy” because their production was banned, but they both remain in our environment. Both of these chemicals decrease IQ in children and adults that were exposed as children. They act by interfering with the thyroid system.
Mercury is known to damage brain development, including detrimental effects on IQ. An example is the 2.5 IQ points lost in the cohort of exposed South Korean children.
And the mixture of all of these chemicals — and more — contaminate our children from conception to adulthood.
Breaking this vicious cycle
So yes — we are getting dumber. And we are watching it happen, pretending that the regulatory system that has overseen this debacle can reverse the trend.
While focusing on IQ gives us a glimpse at what is happening, there are other trends that are just as disturbing: the rise in attention deficit disorder and autism, as well as other brain-based disorders.
Although these trends will not be reversed overnight, we must find the political will to reduce these exposures.
The first step is for people to be aware of sources of contamination and avoid those sources; however, there is no face mask for endocrine disruptors. The next step is to empower regulatory agencies to effectively monitor and decrease exposure to the most common.
The science is established. We must prioritize our children’s health by reducing environmental contaminants.
[…]
Liberals and Conservatives Find Unity In Distrust of Mainstream Media
There Are No Sunglasses
A deeply polarized America is united in its ‘disdain and distrust’ of the media: Trey Gowdy“With this poll, we see confirmation that the majority of the American people do not trust corporate media, 85%. We the People have learned to see through big mA Gallup poll from early July showed a majority of Americans don’t trust print or television media.edia’s claim that they are the defender of Democracy, when it is now obvious that Big Media’s purpose is to manipulate Democracy, as the path to subverting real Democracy at the polls. Corporate control of the American electoral process through money and the media demonstrates most clearly that America is NO LONGER a Democracy, it is just another authoritarian dictatorship…complete totalitarianism is next.”
The media love to blame everyone but themselves: Gowdy
Fox News host Trey Gowdy tore into the country’s deteriorating trust in the media during his weekend show, ‘Sunday Night in America.’
“Sunday Night in America” host Trey Gowdy credited the media for managing to unite the country against them in a deeply polarizing political environment, citing a Gallup poll that found that 85% of the country has lost faith in print and television media.
POLITICO URGES READERS ‘DON’T BELIEVE POLLS SHOWING SINKING LEVELS OF TRUST IN THE MEDIA
TREY GOWDY: I want to congratulate the media, they have managed to do that which seemed impossible. A pandemic could not do it, natural disasters can’t do it, war can no longer do it. But the media has done it. In a country rife with vision torn asunder with political fights, the media has brought about a glimmer of unity. The media has united the country in believing that the media is untrustworthy, unfair, and biased.
Disdain and distrust for the media cross geographical and generational and ideological boundaries. In other words, having no confidence in the fairness of media may be the single most unifying thing we have going for us. And when everyone thinks you are wrong, that should be cause for self-reflection, but not for the media. They don’t blame themselves, they blame you and the internet and lack of diversity, except of course, a lack of political diversity. The public does not trust media and believe that media is fair, because the media is not fair. It’s not complicated. The media doesn’t speak truth to power, the media tries to influence whose in power. The media isn’t a societal referee, it’s an active participant in the contest.A country and a culture cannot survive without fairness. We need… an impartial, neutral detached judge… Americans know fairness is a virtue. And we salute the humility of those who can call the game without trying to influence the game.
[…]
New Four-Part Documentary “JFK: Destiny Betrayed” Leaves No Doubt That JFK Was Assassinated as Part of CIA Coup
John Potash
Covert Action Magazine
Oliver Stone film shows that JFK was trying to reorient U.S. foreign policy in more peaceful direction prior to his murder and that the Warren Commission was a fraud.
JFK: Destiny Betrayed presents convincing evidence confirming that U.S. intelligence orchestrated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Directed by Oliver Stone and written by Jim DiEugenio, the documentary series builds on Stone’s Oscar-winning 1991 film JFK.
It illuminates JFK’s opposition to the imperialist machinations of American oligarchs, who enlisted U.S. intelligence and the Mafia to orchestrate his assassination and then cover it up for decades.
The Shocking Presidential Assassination and Cover-up in a NutshellDebuting in May, JFK: Destiny Betrayed is now available on Amazon Prime and Vudu. Stone edited down the four-hour film to just under two hours for film festivals, titling the shorter version, JFK: Through the Looking Glass (previously reviewed in CAM by this writer).[1]
Destiny Betrayed gives more history regarding John F. Kennedy’s political career leading to his election as president in November 1960. The film also presents a bit more on Robert F. Kennedy in relation to his brother in the White House.
The four-part series begins with shocking and tragic footage of the multiple shots hitting JFK in the throat and head as he rode in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963.[2]
Stone then shows Robert Kennedy, Jr., speaking about his father’s reaction: “My father’s first call [after the assassination] was to the CIA desk officer, asking ‘Did your people conduct this horror?!’”
Two aides to the president who had served in World War II drove in the car behind JFK’s car and said there was a crossfire of gunshots at the president.[3]
Slate founding publisher David Talbot wrote the book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. He reported talking to Robert F. Kennedy’s aides who all thought the Warren Commission organized by Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s successor, produced a “fairy tale” report.
Two days after President Kennedy’s assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald’s arrest, Jack Ruby approached Oswald as he was being escorted in front of police and journalists in the police station garage, and fatally shot him.
JFK Evolved into a Civil Rights-Supporting Anti-Imperialist Leaving Vietnam’s OpiumAll four chapters of JFK: Destiny Betrayed present little-known aspects of JFK’s evolution toward positive work for the rights of the oppressed at home and abroad.
The first chapters discuss JFK’s opposition to CIA machinations.
JFK and RFK were arguably the most powerful people, outside of the Civil Rights movement itself, to lead the passage of the most comprehensive Civil Rights legislation since the Emancipation Proclamation, with their 1963-crafted Civil Rights Act.[4]
Chapter 3 presents Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., stating his belief in the sincerity of the President and Attorney General as friends and advocates for Civil Rights.[5]
Regarding JFK’s political evolution, the series started with John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert’s visit to Vietnam in 1951 when he was a U.S. congressman and Robert was his campaign manager. JFK and RFK ended up finding that France’s war to continue colonizing Vietnam was futile and Vietnam deserved independence.
After becoming a senator in 1953, JFK opposed the advice of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to help the French in Vietnam by using nuclear weapons.
JFK also ended up giving a famous speech in the Senate in 1957 entitled “Imperialism: The Enemy of Freedom,” in which he called for supporting anti-colonialism in Africa and Asia.[6] This brought the wrath of both Democrats and Republicans on him.
Once in the White House, while President Kennedy and his brother waged war on the Cuban Revolution, they ultimately did not back a full-fledged military invasion of Cuba and forced CIA Director Allen Dulles’s resignation over the Bay of Pigs.
Allen and John Foster Dulles were lawyers representing various oligarchs’ interests. JFK further planned to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
While this documentary failed to mention it, President Kennedy also closed down Dulles’s CIA Project MK-Ultra twice, as people under Dulles kept it running behind JFK’s back.
As President Kennedy evolved toward wanting peace with the Soviet Union, Cuba and other leftist countries, he started back-channel correspondences with those countries’ leaders. Top JFK researchers such as James Douglas and Slate’s publisher, Talbot, published on the secret correspondence JFK and Khrushchev had behind their war-hawk generals’ backs.
JFK reportedly said to Norman Cousins that he was 100% committed to disabling all nuclear arms and he was ready to talk to the Soviet Khrushchev about that.
President Kennedy’s final blow against the war-mongering oligarchs came when he decided against sending American ground troops into Vietnam, and ordered an eventual complete pull-out of American involvement there.
RFK and Senate’s Church Committee Unveil CIA and Mafia Work in JFK’s AssassinationThe Warren Commission Report concluded that only Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
Author David Talbot referenced RFK’s aides saying Bobby Kennedy was determined to start an official inquiry into his brother’s assassination as soon as he entered the White House in 1969. RFK’s California 1968 presidential primary nearly assured that until gunmen assassinated RFK that primary night.[7]
Regarding the Warren Commission, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., summed up the fact that “commissions in this country anoint orthodoxies.”
Church Committee Senator Richard Schweiker (R-PA) stated that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had confirmed to him in a letter that Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby worked as an FBI informant.[8]
In April 1964, CIA-contracted Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who had regular correspondence with CIA Project MK-Ultra Director Sidney Gottlieb, interviewed Jack Ruby for 48 hours. Ruby reportedly had a sudden “acute psychotic break” during those interview hours. This barred any testimony from Ruby.[9]
Chapter 2 of JFK: Destiny Betrayed also linked Jack Ruby to the Mafia working with the CIA on removing President Fidel Castro in Cuba. The Church Committee exposed Johnny Roselli’s function as a liaison between the CIA and Mafia, which RFK Jr. claimed his father had been unaware of.[10]
The end of Chapter 1 presented several witnesses who confirmed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not on the 6th floor of the building from where the Warren Report said he fired fatal shots.
[…]
Revival of the Silk Road Under Kublai Khan
Episode 30: Pax Mongolica and Cultural Exchange
Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)
Dr Kenneth Harl
Film Review
Following Kublai Khan’s conquest of China, the Mongols imposed a Pax Mongolica* across the steppes, which ended centuries-long warring between nomad tribes. The resulting peace led to a revival of the Silk Road and renewed prosperity of both states and nomads involved in the Silk Road trade. It also resulted in unprecedented cultural exchange. Exchanges between Persia and China about geography and map-making enabled both kingdoms to produce maps that were far better than those Columbus used to explore the New World. The Persians also shared their knowledge of medicine (from Hindu sources) with China, as well as citrus and grape cultivation. While the Chinese shared their knowledge of tea, black pepper and cinnamon with the Muslim world.
Under Kublai Khan, the Mongols built great cities and set up lavish courts in many of the regions they conquered. He used captive Muslims and Christians to administer cities in northern China and captive Chinese to administer the Ilkhanate Empire (comprising modern-day Iran and parts of Azerbaijan and Turkey).
Most of the Golden Horde (northwestern sector of Mongol Empire – see Mongol Invasion of China) converted to Islam in the 13th century. Although the Ilkhanate abandoned Sunni Islam for Shi’a Sufism, Buddhism was also an important religion there until the empire collapsed in 1335.
Kublai Khan’s conversion to Buddhism (although he was equally tolerant of Daoism and Islam) resulted in its spread across the eastern steppes. The Uighurs, however, abandoned Buddhism for Islam. Most of Transoxiana also became Muslim.
Thanks to improvements in Silk Road security, it now became possible for European Christians to send envoys to Muslim courts for the first time, while Chinese porcelain became widely traded across the Muslim world. There was a simultaneous expansion in sea routes connecting Europe.
China shared their knowledge of block printing (invented under the Song Dynasty) with the Ilkhans, who used it to produce paper money. Under Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty, gunpowder technology (discovered under the Han Dynasty) also spread across the steppes and into Europe.
This would be the first major eastern technology to take hold in Europe, leading the English to invent the cannon in the mid-14th century and hand held small arms in the 17th century. It was thanks to these technologies that they conquered the world over the next two centuries.
*Russian historians refer to the Pax Mongolica as the Mongol Yoke, owing to the massive slaughter of civilians during their conquest of the Russian principalities. 500,000 total were either killed or died of exposure and starvation (after the Mongols destroyed their homes and crops).
**Harl briefly discusses the Venetian explorer Marco Polo who traveled to China via the Silk Road in 1271 and served 23 years in Kublai Khan’s court. Because there are no references to the explorer in Chinese sources, Harl believes he likely served as a minor civil servant and exaggerated his role in his writings. His book The Travels of Marco Polo inspired Columbus’s voyage to the new world.
The film can be viewed with a library card on Kanopy.
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