Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 552
June 16, 2022
The Turkmen Role in the Rise of China’s Tang Dynasty
Episode 15: The Turks: Turkmen Khagans and Tang Emperors
Barbarian Empires of the Steppes (2014)
Dr Kenneth Harl
Film Review
Harl begins this lecture by describing internal changes in China following the 220 AD collapse of the Han dynasty collapse, and a mass population shift from the Yellow to the Yangtze River. Owing to better rainfall and more fertile soil, southern China provided better opportunities for cultivating rice and silk.
Simultaneously mainly Turkish speaking nomads migrated into northern China, carving out a new federation around the Yellow River. Prioritizing control of the Silk Road trade, these nomads garrisoned the Jade Gate and took the dynastic name of the former Wei kingdom (220-226 AD). They were great sponsors of Buddhism and helped it spread throughout China.
In 581 AD the Sui Dynasty reunified China, to be usurped in 618 AD by the Tang Dynasty. Under the latter, China was as large as it had ever been, relying on the Turkish Wei rulers to run northern China. Continuing the corvée* system of military construction initiated by the Han Dynasty, the formed required all males to engage in one year of construction for the emperor or one year of military service (followed by one year of garrison duty), Twenty percent of the Tang armies were nomadic cavalry and horse archers.
In 630 AD, the Tang emperor invaded the Eastern Gökturk Khanate and recruited prisoners they captured into the army. Through this process, they brought the entire Tarim Basin under Chinese control for the first time (see How the Arrival of the Turks Transformed the Steppes ).
In 660 AD, the Tang army conquered the Western Gökturk Khanate, bringing it under Chinese control.
The Tang Empire invested heavily to stimulate development (mainly stock raising) in the Tarim Basin. They resettled native Chinese settlers to better oversee the Silk Road caravan cities and cast bronze coins to pay the Chinese garrisons that maintained order.
They also invested heavily in restoring Chinese border walls and canal building to move rice, silk and troops. The Grand Canal, stretching over 1400 miles between the Yellow and Yangtze River, was constructed during this period.
In 755-763 AD, there was a massive uprising against the heavy taxes imposed to pay for all this, led by a Gökturk (Uighur) general named An Loushan. The Tang emperor eventually put down the rebellion but lost control of the Tarim Basin to Tibet.
In 907 AD the Tang Dynasty collapsed, fragmenting into smaller kingdoms run by warlords.
*Corvée is a form of unpaid, forced labor (usually for a government ruler), which is intermittent in nature and which lasts limited periods of time.
June 15, 2022
Queen Elizabeth owns most of the UK seabed, slowing conservation work.
Principia Scientic
Written by nationalgeographic.com
The royal family is called on to help recover Britain’s biodiversity, starting with royal properties.
Queen Elizabeth is well known as one of the largest landowners in the world. Less well known is that her holdings include most of the seabed encircling the United Kingdom, out to 12 nautical miles from shore.
That eye-popping detail of monarchical history is being seen in a new light as Britain’s declining biodiversity gains attention and the royal family has been urged to take on greater leadership in restoring nature—starting with the properties they control.
Yet lately efforts to restore coastal waters have encountered obstacles unique to this monarchy—ones that have chased a kelp farmer to a more welcoming reception in southeast Asia, for example, and that threaten to derail the largest effort to replant seagrass ever undertaken in Britain.
The U.K. is in no position to lose such opportunities, advocates say. Nearly half of the country’s wildlife and plant species have been lost since the Industrial Revolution, according to a biodiversity monitoring initiative launched last year by London’s Natural History Museum. Britain now ranks in the bottom 10 percent of the world and as the worst among G-7 nations.
Scientists describe the loss of seagrass meadows and kelp forests that ring the coastline in a single word: catastrophic. Nearly 90 percent of seagrass has vanished, much of it in the last 30 years to coastal development, overfishing, pollution, and damage by boats and anchors. Some scientists predict that most of the UK’s 26,000 square miles of kelp forests are likely to be lost by 2100.
When seagrass and kelp thrive, they protect against coastal erosion, serve as nurseries to coastal marine life, and absorb copious amounts of carbon dioxide. But gaining permission to restore those ecosystems requires a lease, with fees paid to the Crown Estate—the commercial real estate company that manages properties owned by the monarch.
The scientists and supporters involved in restoration efforts say the idea that people should have to pay for the chance to fix dying ecosystems for the good of the nation is wrongheaded. It is not the case elsewhere. In Florida, for instance, the state government owns coastal waters, makes patches available for restoration without charge, and in some cases requires developers to fund restoration projects, says Susan Bell, a University of South Florida marine ecologist.
Richard Unsworth, a marine ecology professor at Swansea University in Wales, whose Project Seagrass in one of the U.K.’s most prominent marine restoration efforts, is incredulous that the Crown Estate “would charge us to plant seagrass on their seabed.”
Together with the World Wildlife Fund and Sky Ocean Rescue, Unsworth developed plans to replant 7,500 acres of seagrass in hundreds of sites around the U.K. shoreline. The lease for a five-acre (two-hectare) test site off the coast of Wales, came with a $3,100 fee (£2,500), and Unsworth says he fears the fees for the rest of the campaign could render it unaffordable.
Much of the funding for the campaign is to be raised locally from donations of £10 or £5.
“We get kids emailing us trying to get all their friends to donate for their birthday parties, rather than giving each other presents, you know? And we’re passing that money on to the queen,” Unsworth says. “It’s just messed up, let’s face it. There’s no moment I’ve thought, actually, they’re trying to help us.”
Meanwhile, a Hampshire-based firm that planned a network of 58 small kelp farms around the country, hoping to grow biomaterials for plastics, cosmetics, and cattle feed while also boosting marine biodiversity and storing carbon waited through a year of delays trying to secure leases from the Crown Estate and licenses from the government. When his investors ran low on patience, says Howard Gunstock, co-founder of Carbon Kapture, he relocated kelp production to southeast Asia.
“If I can’t execute, my timing window goes,” says Gunstock. “And then 18 months later, those contacts are dead to me.”
Queen and seabed go way backThe queen’s vast holdings, including the seabed, date to the Norman Conquest of 1066, when William the Conqueror claimed all England for the crown. Today, the queen remains, by law, the ultimate legal owner of all land, although this gives her no power over most of it. She has complete control only over her privately owned estates, including Balmoral and Sandringham.
But as monarch she continues to own and derive revenue from the seabed and half the foreshore—the land between the high- and low-tide lines—as part of an eclectic set of crown assets that also include all silver and gold deposits and swathes of valuable central London real estate.
This $18.1-billion (￡14.4-billion) portfolio is managed on behalf of the queen by the Crown Estate, as part of an arrangement that began in 1760 with a deal between Parliament and King George III. At the outset of the king’s reign, years before he confronted American revolutionaries, he faced a financial crisis that led him to hand over control of crown properties in exchange for a set annual fee from income of those properties.
Today, this “unique—peculiarly British—organisation,” as the U.K. Parliament has called the Crown Estate, combines a royal endowment with a public investment fund. Earnings go to the public purse, with a quarter of them paid back to the royals. In the last decade, the Crown Estate has made $3.7 billion (£3 billion) for the royal family and Treasury.
The majority of these earnings come from urban property, including most of London’s famed Regent Street. The seabed has only recently become a big earner for the Crown Estate, with marine revenues of £121 million in 2021, from sources including offshore wind leases, pipelines, and cables.
Parliament has chided the Crown Estate for its emphasis on revenue generation, which “appeared to prevent the [Crown Estate’s managers] taking full account of potential wider public interests.” The announcement of an expected $11 billion (£8.8 billion) revenue windfall over the next decade from the sale of leases for offshore wind farms provoked a backlash in Parliament. It prompted calls from lawmakers that the archaic institution be brought up to date—or be stripped of its management duties.
“The seabed is more than a cash cow for the Crown Estate and the Treasury,” says Luke Pollard, a member of Parliament from the coastal city of Plymouth. “In the middle of a climate and ecological crisis we need the Crown Estate to put nature and carbon on the same level as receipts for offshore activity.”
[…]
What Happens When the Workforce No Longer Wants to Work?
Charles Hughes Smith
Workers are voting with their feet, and that’s difficult to control. When values and expectations change, everything else eventually changes, too.
What happens when the workforce no longer wants to work? We’re about to find out. As with all cultural sea changes, macro statistics don’t tell the full story. The sea change is better illuminated by anecdotal evidence: workers constantly quitting to take better jobs; zero loyalty to corporate employers; workers cutting hours from full-time to part-time; workers going out for lunch and never coming back; workers giving up on selling sugar-water for the rest of their lives (echoing Steve Jobs’ famous challenge to John Scully: “Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?”) and giving up on owning an insanely over-valued house.
Workers may sell sugar-water but their hearts are no longer in it. Some are interested in changing the world, and others are interested in changing their own lives as the means to change the world.
Numerous articles have been published describing these cultural changes in values and expectations: here are three:
From the Great Resignation to Lying Flat, Workers Are Opting Out: In China, the U.S., Japan, and Germany, younger generations are rethinking the pursuit of wealth.
‘We are the last generation’: China’s youth rallied around a now-censored social media hashtag to rage about their disillusionment with life and disdain at draconian lockdowns
The rise of ‘bai lan’: why China’s frustrated youth are ready to ‘let it rot’
Note that this cultural shift is global. The dynamics of the global economy are similar the world over: capital has garnered most of the gains of the past generation, leaving shards for labor; the “good things in life” such as owning a house and nice vehicle have soared out of reach of all but the top 10% of households; youth were implicitly promised “good paying jobs and fulfilling careers” if they went to university, and then they graduate into a global economy of dead-end jobs and cut-throat competition for the few slots at the top of the constantly eroding sand pile.
The global lockdown revealed several great truths to many idled workers: 1) I’m wasting my life slaving away for an employer to whom I am disposable; 2) trying to own the upper-middle class lifestyle is not worth the sacrifices required, and 3) there are ways to work less and still get by, and live a better life doing so.
Once the rats are no longer interested in the rewards because they’re out of reach, they jump off the wheel. Once the tax donkeys flop down in exhaustion and ask why they’re working so hard to pay outrageous taxes and fees, they lose interest in carrying their heavy load ever again. When debt-serfs stop and calculate their chances to pay off their debt and reach upper-middle class Nirvana, they bail on the entire project.
People found they could get by on much less than they previously reckoned. Some found niches in the informal or gig economies, others secured a quasi-pension in the social-welfare system, others decided that net-net of expenses, they were better off quitting and staying home to care for the kids rather than pay thousands of dollars in higher taxes and childcare fees for the privilege of busting their derrieres on an endless treadmill.
People realized they wanted a career and worklife they defined and controlled rather than one defined and controlled by an employer. I outline accrediting yourself and other aspects of this in my book Get A Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. (sample chapter here)
Some people awakened to the practicality of micro-homes and small home-based enterprises. They realized they didn’t have to sign on to a lifetime of labor as tax donkeys and debt-serfs.
Employers are struggling to adapt to this cultural transition. Those demanding employees go back to the good old days are like dinosaurs expecting the meteor-strike’s effects to dissipate in a few days.
The fantasies of fully automated whatever have been revealed as unrealistic. As with all such techno-fantasies, the proponents are never experts in the field being touted as the solution. Automation has limits. Robots break down, need to be reprogrammed, and need human co-workers (so-called cobots). Enthusiasts naively believed that because something is technically possible, that it automatically becomes financially viable. This is an entirely different proposition.
How this all plays out is an open question. The Powers That Be don’t approve, for obvious reasons: who’s going to do all the work to enable our lavish lifestyles and gargantuan gains?
Workers are voting with their feet, and that’s difficult to control. When values and expectations change, everything else eventually changes, too.
[…]
Hunger in Latin America: Whole Continent Is on the Move
© WFP/Julian Frank | Migrant families in Honduras walk to the Guatemalan border.
Human Wrongs Watch
(UN News)* — Ever greater numbers of vulnerable people are risking their lives on dangerous migration routes in Latin America, forced to move by the global food security crisis that’s been made worse by spiralling inflation linked to the war in Ukraine, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday [14 June 2022].
“We are having countries like Haiti with 26 per cent food inflation and we have other countries that really are off the charts even with food inflation,” said Lola Castro, WFP Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
Latest data indicates that 9.7 million people in the 13 LAC countries where WFP works are already extremely food insecure, up from 8.3 million in late 2021.
“We are looking at around 14 million people as forecast if the crisis continues,” said Ms. Castro.
Negative trend“This is not good and we are going back almost to the high levels that we had during COVID-19”, when 17.2 million people were severely food insecure, at the peak of the pandemic.
Fuel and energy prices were also “a huge issue” for those least able to feed themselves, Ms. Castro told journalists in Geneva.
“We have seen how in the last two years the cost of moving a tonne of food in our region is seven times more expensive.”
Desperate migrantsThe dramatic deterioration in people’s daily lives has given them little option but to leave their communities and head north, even if it means risking their lives, the WFP official explained.
Communities of particular concern include Haitian migrants who travelled during the COVID-19 pandemic in search of work and shelter in Brazil and Chile.
“All of you are watching caravans, caravans of migrants moving, and before we used to talk about migration happening from the north of Central America, but now, unfortunately, we talk about migration being hemispheric. We have the whole continent on the move.”
Darien Gap dangerOne of the clearest signs of people’s desperation is the fact that they are willing to risk their lives crossing the Darien Gap, a particularly arduous and dangerous forest route in Central America that allows access from the south of the continent to the north.
“In 2020, 5,000 people passed by the Darien Gap, migrating from South America into Central America, and you know what, in 2021, 151,000 people passed, and this is 10 days walking through a forest, 10 days through rivers, crossing mountains and people die because this one of most dangerous jungles in the world.”
For these migrants the reason why they are on the move is simple, the WFP official explained: “They are leaving communities where they have lost everything to climate crisis, they have no food security, they have no ability to feed their people and their families.”
UN data indicates that of the 69 economies now experiencing food, energy and financial shocks, 19 are in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
[…]
Via https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2022/06/15/hunger-in-latin-america-whole-continent-is-on-the-move/
Zuckerberg, Rockefeller, Google and the Privatization of Election Integrity
William Engdahl
New Eastern Outlook
Through deceit and capitalizing on loopholes in US law for non-profit entities, private corporate and foundation interests have and are pouring vast sums of money to corrupt the US election process in the interest of a dystopian “Green Agenda” and worse. It consists of a complex network of interests including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Rockefeller funds. The evidence is that this is all being covertly orchestrated by US intelligence agencies to impose a destructive economic and social agenda on the US tied to the Davos Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030.
Increasing evidence is coming to light detailing the hijacking of the core of the American elections system that not only sheds light on the 2020 US elections, but also on private financing the very infrastructure of local election clerks and election procedures including drop-box mail-in balloting and expenses of city and county election offices. The room for abuse is staggering as the process is not transparent. At the heart of this is a little-known “non-profit” known as the oddly-named Center for Tech and Civic Life or CTCL.
[…]
Center for Tech and Civic Life
Epps-Johnson founded CTCL in 2012, when she was in her 20s. By 2019 she was in the big leagues when Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan gave CTCL several donations totaling over $419 million to influence the 2020 US elections. How this was done is a study in sophisticated and patently illegal election manipulation.
[…]
In the US political system each state is responsible for the conduct of election laws. In the run-up to the 2020 elections, following irregularities in the 2018 mid-term Congress elections where Democrats took majority in both houses, Republicans began pointing to a move by radical Democrat states like California, New York, Illinois or Michigan to open the floodgates to potential fraud by not requiring voter photo ID photo, or even standard restrictions on mail-in voting such as postmark or signature. Presently no proof of photo ID is required to cast a vote in 15 states including the most populous states of California, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Minnesota.
Follow the Money
In the crucial November 2020 US election, CTLC played an unprecedented, highly-sophisticated and clearly highly corrupt role to influence the outcome in favor of Democratic candidates, especially Joe Biden as President. It was thanks to donations totaling $419 million, nearly half a billion dollars, from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, through their $86 billion tax-exempt foundation. The crucial point was how and where the money was given out.
[…]
The states where covid lockdowns and social measures were most severe were precisely the key Democratic-run states asking no voter ID and imposing massive mail-in voting “because of covid restrictions” as noted above, like California, Illinois, Pennsylvania or New York. CTCL announced grants to support unprecedented mail-in voting, including special drop-boxes in key locations to make voting by mail easier, and vote fraud as well. The grant monies could finance vast networks of drop boxes in key Democrat neighborhoods such as Philadelphia, where Democratic Party corrupt machines were in control. Money also might be spent in local election districts to “educate” poll watchers or “train” election officials. Oh, how could this go wrong?
[…]
For example the highly-populated Dallas County Texas where 65% voted Democrat, the County Election Commission got an eye-watering $15,130,433 from Tiana Epps-Johnson to spend as they saw fit. No details required. Neighboring Tarrant County where Fort Worth is, and 49% Democrat, was given $1,678,523, and Harris County where Houston is, and 56% Democratic, got a generous $9,663,446. Laredo Texas, a small town on the Mexican border got a juicy $2,435,169.
In Democratic-run Pennsylvania where major legal challenges of significant Democrat vote fraud in Philadelphia and Pittsburg were made, Tiana Epps-Johnson’s CTLC nonprofit gave $2,052,251 to Allegheny County (Pittsburg) and a generous $10,016,070 to Philadelphia, the “City of Brotherly Love.” That $10 million was granted even as the former Philadelphia Judge of Elections was convicted for his role in accepting bribes to cast fraudulent ballots and certifying false voting results during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 primary elections in Philadelphia. Keep in mind neither CTLC nor Zuckerberg nor any government, required any accountability for their generosity.
New York City Board of Elections, under then notoriously corrupt Democrat Mayor Bill DeBlasio (born Warren Wilhelm Jr), got a CTLC contribution of $19,294,627. In Democrat-run Michigan the notoriously corrupt Democrat-run Detroit election officials got $7,436,450 to organize the vote as they saw fit. All told, in the State of Michigan, where significant 2020 vote fraud was claimed and even documented before corrupt judges threw the evidence, CTLC gave an estimated $24 million to some 420 towns and county election commissions. In Democratic Illinois, notoriously corrupt Chicago, home of CTLC, was given $2,269,663 to play with.
In the hotly-contested state of Georgia where both Republicans and Democrats were accused of fraud and refusal to legally prosecute it, tens of millions of dollars flowed from CTLC to key Democratic areas such as Dekalb County (83% Democrat) which got $9,625,041. Fulton County (Atlanta) which got some $10.7 million. Gwinnett County Georgia by Atlanta got $6.4 million of a total for Georgia in 2020 of $40 million! Biden “won” the pivotal swing state by a mere 0.2% of a percent. A corrupt Republican Secretary of State refused to challenge the result despite ample evidence of fraud. Another hotly-contested “Swing State” in 2020, Arizona, also got millions for key counties from CTLC including fraud-documented Maricopa County which got $1,840,345. And Democrat-run California, got some $18 million in a state asking no voter ID.
‘Non-partisan’ Tiana and CTLC
What is exactly the Center for Tech and Civic Life whose website claims to be about “working to foster a more informed and engaged democracy, and helping to modernize US elections,”? Tiana Epps-Johnson in her own website modestly claims she is doing, “groundbreaking work to make US elections more inclusive and secure.” Bizarrely, she calls herself a “civic technologist,” whatever that is. Leave aside the fact that the most secure elections today are the classical in-person, ID verified paper ballot voting and not hackable Internet-accessible computer voting machines or mail-in or absentee ballots, which are banned in most developed countries. Outdoor Ballot Drop Boxes make vote fraud simple. This was the key to the Zuckerberg CTLC strategy
[…]
Things become clearer when we look at the funders of this formerly obscure non-profit. In addition to Zuckerberg’s Facebook (meta), CTLC’s website lists Google, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, eBay billionaire founder Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, the Knight Foundation, most notably. Clearly Tiana, the mysterious young “civic technologist” travels in very high-powered circles.
Google-YouTube Censors
In a May, 2022 journalist Dinesh D’Souza released a documentary detailing actual CCTV video footage of ballot drop box fraud across key states in the 2020 elections. It’s titled ‘2000 Mules’, a reference to some 2,000 paid vote fraudsters documented on surveillance CCTV video cameras. They are shown illegally delivering multiple votes to the special ballot drop boxes in key swing state cities like Philadelphia, drop boxes paid for by Zuckerberg’s CTLC election largesse.
[…]
Since 2020, some 14 states have passed laws forbidding private funding of elections. Similar bills have passed the legislature in another five states, including Pennsylvania, but have been blocked by Democratic governors.
[…]
June 14, 2022
Is Push to Vaccinate Young Kids a Ploy by Pharma to Get COVID Shot on Pediatric Immunization Schedule?
If Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is added to the pediatric vaccine schedule, and if it’s mandated like other childhood vaccines, it will become an evergreen market representing billions of dollars to the drug companies.
Story at a glance:Pfizer announced preliminary data from Phase 2/3 trials in children 6 months to under 5 years would be submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency use authorization; the data are based on 1,678 children and 10 who got sick, which Pfizer claims is an 80.3% effectiveness rate.Even vaccine advocate Dr. Paul Offit is dismayed at the number from which Pfizer is drawing conclusions. Just days before, New York announced the vaccine efficacy in children 5 to 11 years fell to 12% within two months after vaccination.Despite 48,833 records in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of adverse events in children under 18 from the vaccine, Pfizer says the shot for 6 months to under 5 years old has “a safety profile similar to placebo.”Moderna announced their submission to the FDA for children younger than 5 years has a 37% to 51% effectiveness, which is close to the effectiveness of the flu vaccine.Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that as the months roll by, more Americans are not taking or completing the shots to meet CDC criteria to be fully vaccinated. The push to vaccinate children may likely be related to the pharmaceutical industry’s goal to mandate the vaccine under full legal immunity from damages.On May 23, Pfizer-BioNTech announced preliminary results from their Phase 2/3 trial evaluating a three-dose vaccine schedule for children 6 months to under 5 years of age would be submitted to the FDA for emergency use authorization (EUA).
Many in mainstream media are hailing this development as important to children’s health, writing, “many parents of these very young children have been really anxious to get their kids vaccinated” and “Parents hoping to get their youngest children vaccinated against COVID-19 got some encouraging news Monday.”
Yet, despite the continued push by mainstream media to encourage parents to vaccinate the very young, the Vaccine Monitor Survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found only 18% of parents with children under age 5 are planning to get their child vaccinated immediately.
Parents expressing concern for children’s safety
KFF reports that a larger number — 38% — are planning to wait to see the side effects the vaccine may have in younger children before making a decision and 27% have indicated they will definitely not have their child injected.
Importantly, the survey also found that “Just over half of parents of children in this age range say they do not have enough information about the vaccines’ safety and effectiveness for children under age 5.”
While information about vaccine injuries from the COVID-19 jab has been difficult to find on mainstream media, it is apparent from these numbers that many parents are concerned about their children’s safety and want more information before they’re willing to risk their health.
A paper published December 15, 2021, in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) referenced the previous survey by KFF, which found 27% of parents of children 5 to 11 years old were interested in giving their children the jab, which is a 9% drop from the survey in 2020.
The paper sought to smooth the waters with parents who were hesitant to vaccinate their children by attributing fear to misinformation and a misunderstanding of what “EUA” means.
It is interesting to note that the author of the paper has received research grants from Pfizer and Moderna, and also serves on the advisory boards for Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Merck.
The JAMA paper states the KFF survey found the primary reason parents were concerned was reasonably the “long-term and serious adverse effects, including future fertility issues.” According to the author, these concerns were addressed and disproven based on just one year’s worth of data.
Pfizer’s 80.3% effectiveness is based on 10 children
Pfizer’s announcement that they were seeking an EUA from the FDA for children 6 months to under 5 years is “based on 10 symptomatic COVID-19 cases identified from seven days after the third dose and accrued as of April 29, 2022.”
While the study included 1,678 children who received three doses of the formulation, the stated 80.3% efficacy in children is based on just 10 cases. The number is so low that even outspoken vaccine advocate Dr. Paul Offit — co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine — expressed dismay at the number, saying:
“I mean, 10 children — you’re talking about 10 children. It’s a small number, so it’s really hard to comment or this as something more general since you don’t know because the numbers are so small.”
Pfizer announced these results after delaying the EUA application process to gather more data. Initially, children in the study did not produce a significant immune response after two doses, so the company delayed the request until they could give the children a third dose.
The trial reportedly was evaluating “the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine.”
Curiously, Pfizer’s claim of 80.3% effectiveness in children comes on the heels of a New York State Department of Health study that showed vaccine efficacy in children ages 5 to 11 years old fell to 12% in two months after vaccination.
In other words, 7 out of 8 kids who were vaccinated had no benefit from the vaccine two months after receiving the jab. The data taken from 365,502 children showed a striking difference between children ages 11 and 12.
The effectiveness against infection in 12-year-olds was 67%, but in 11-year-old children, it dropped to 11%.
The data from the U.S. were consistent with a report from Britain that showed effectiveness against symptomatic infection dropped 22.6% after two months in adolescents aged 16 to 17 years.
Interestingly, the Pfizer press release published May 23, mentioned the word “safety” 22 times while discussing the COVID-19 vaccine for children, and wrote the shot was “well-tolerated among 1,678 children under 5 years of age with a safety profile similar to placebo.” The vaccine being used on younger children is one-tenth the strength given to adults.
Yet, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) recorded 1,878 adverse events in children aged 5 and 10,029 in children aged 6 to 11 from data published as of May 13.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/covid-vaccine-pediatric-immunization-schedule-cola/
US Seeks to Expand Monkeypox Testing as Narrative Keeps on Rolling
The Biden administration is working to expand monkeypox testing capabilities beyond a narrow group of public health labs, as infectious disease experts are now suggesting that testing for the virus needs to become part of routine care.
As the Epoch Times notes, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a conference call on Friday that her agency is working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to expand testing capacity to include commercial laboratories.
At present, monkeypox testing is done through a network of 69 public health laboratories, which send results to the CDC for confirmation.
So far, there have been 50 confirmed cases in the US across 16 states, while roughly 300 monkeypox tests have been administered.
“There is not enough testing going on now for monkeypox in the United States,” said Dr. Tom Inglesby, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “The commercial labs are used to working with healthcare providers from across the country, moving samples around quickly, reporting results quickly in a way that providers understand and expect.”
Meanwhile, as Off-Guardian notes, Monkeypox hysteria continues – with The Atlantic publishing a recent piece suggesting that Monkeypox “Could be nothing,” or “Could Be the Next Syphilis.”
Nature asks, “can the global outbreaks be contained?”
That said, there has been some pushback to the ‘dire’ sounding headlines – with the CDC declaring that it was “very unlikely” Monkeypox is airborne (in response to a NYT article claiming it can become so), and the Washington Post noting that “Number of monkeypox cases grows, but U.S. officials say overall risk is low.”
And despite monkeypox’s relatively low transmission rate, as we noted on Sunday, the Biden administration has ordered 500,000 more doses of monkeypox vaccine.
Denmark-based biotech group Bavarian Nordic, the manufacturer of the vaccines, said that the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has placed the order, to be delivered later this year.
[…]
Via https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/us-seeks-expand-monkeypox-testing-narrative-keeps-rolling
Nursing Reports From The Front Lines Of The COVID Vaccine Crisis
Dr Pierre Kory
The massive propaganda campaign which led doctors to disassociate from the reality of widespread vaccine injuries is slowly weakening in impact. A stark reality is finally creeping in.
I recently posted a deeply referenced compilation of evidence detailing the historic humanitarian catastrophe that has slowly unfolded within most advanced health economies across the world. Caused by a global mass vaccination campaign led by the Pharma masters of BMGF/WHO/CDC that illogically (but profitably) targeted a rapidly mutating coronavirus. They did it with what turned out to be the most toxic protein used therapeutically in the history of medicine. In vials mixed with lipid nano-particles, polyethylene glycol and who knows what else.
[…]
I will move away from numbers and data and studies to give a more qualitative view of how the vaccines’ impacts are manifesting in the “belly of the beast,” (i.e. on the inside of a major academic medical center).
[…]
Anyway, this was the first email I received from [Linda ER/ICU nurse]
On May 12, 2022, at 7:47 PM, L. wrote:
I wish I could have you as my doc. Nurse of 20 yrs + ICU – cardiac, neuroICU/ neurosurgical ICU mostly, and ED at Level 1. Vax injured from 2 Pfizer doses mandated by my major University hospital system. Clotting issues, open bleeding, spontaneous with no ability to stop, weeping down arms and legs. Severe leg clot post-surgery in March. Had to get D-Dimer ordered by force at little ED I was in, and use my own portable doppler I brought in from work, b/c they had no Ultrasound techs or equipment access – TPA (clot buster med) finally. Cervical lymph nodes enlarged since vax especially, for over 1.5 yrs. Cannot biopsy at least one as it sits on my Left carotid, now wrapped around it, . Got Covid originally while working ED in March 2020. “N antibody” still high as of Nov 2021. Hit neuro, never respiratory. Had same issues with H1N1 vaccine which was also mandated and then I got Guillain Barre Syndrome and neurological weakness – out of work 5 months. Will not get any boosters or vaccines this year, but have no exemption as all docs took to the “deer in headlight” look and said nothing. I will lose my career this winter if I refuse. Functional med/family practitioner – she has a long wait list and I have no idea how she sits with this data on vaccine injured. My VAERS report – it was deleted. Pharmacist never entered as required so I did. It has vanished. My batch numbers – significant for bad neurologic responses, clotting. I lost my Hematologist-Oncologist doctor to vaccine injury – he is out and never to practice again – in his early 40s. He was a “true believer” and in denial until it was him who was the injured patient. Our cancer hospital – know most of the case managers and many doctors since they were residents. They now have case loads in the 1000s rather than 250-400 over any given quarter. Not enough bed or infusion space for the cancer patients as outpatients. Radiation treatment backlog. All at a huge cancer hospital monstrosity itself. All kinds – brain, lymph, stomach, pancreas, blood, AND EYE CANCERS – orbital especially in younger people recently vaxxed. Microvascular ischemia on rise in vaxxed younger people. Strokes way up in no-risk, no co-morbidities, young to younger-ish.
[…]
Follow up:
Lost 4 practitioners to serious side effects of “strongly encouraged” boosters. 2 hospitalized, one in MICU. The irony is, for most staff, completely lost ….All in early 30s to mid 40s. They had no need for boosters while BEING OUTSIDE ALL WEEKEND even if they truly believed in efficacy of them. All had Covid previous, N antibodies fully measurable. One female, one male, both inpatient. Female still nursing newborn.
[…]
I was getting texts from my old stat team covering cardiac catheterization lab – the clots. The clots stunned everyone…it continues. My cardiac units – where I spent the bulk of my nursing years – lung and heart transplant included – have so many anomalies presented with patients that never existed before. Re-writing the script for each new problem never encountered. The constant codes (cardiac arrests). Can’t keep up. Lost quite a few coworkers to either VAX injury itself – took them out of the work force, OR they resigned/accepted firing or retired once mandates were settled.
The signaling coming from management MD/PhD administrators has not been towards what winter will bring, but is focused on congratulating everyone on clinical excellence during the last 2 yrs. I think there is great trepidation in their approach because they see the data, they know the inside info on injury, disability/death of faculty and staff not from Covid itself, but the forced vax. We lost only a few to original Covid, with underlying co-morbidities that made outcomes a given in many cases.
[…]
[…]In my current position, I read many charts and see in depth info – so much boosting and reboosting and not following other protocols – it’s a given now that the explosions in diagnosis of the cancers and cardiac issues especially come from these decisions.
It makes me just stop, and by end of the week, take into account cases of say, ocular orbital cancer in 20-somethings. Have had 6 in last 2 weeks with no Family History or other indicators. Out of the blue, some with brain mets now. All vaxxed unwillingly, all had Covid and recovered fine prior to employer forced vax. The employers, the areas the patients reside in….nothing in common other than the previous. The actuaries are correct. Excess mortality, let along whatever-life-left disability. Stunning numbers.
[…]
She also told me that night nurses are more openly discussing the vaccine as the cause of what they are seeing (much more than during day shifts apparently). However, they do this largely in text, and they use “code”. Their code word for a vaccination injury or cause is “that issue,” i.e. in reference to a 22 year old who suddenly arrested on the hospital ward, “he is having that issue.” Note these are nurses.. not the docs.. but some of the docs are talking to her, like the one above who performed 6 enucleations (eyeball removals) this year already in young people (very rare to have to do this, especially in this age group). She also told me about how her interventional cardiologist nurse friends related that some patients are coming in with massive heart attacks, and during the angiogram the interventional cardiologists are seeing such extensive thrombi filling the entire artery (as documented by some embalmers)
[…]
Via https://pierrekory.substack.com/p/nursing-reports-from-the-front-lines?s=r
The Reality Behind Conspiracy Theory
The Reality Behind Conspiracy Theories and Domestic Terrorism
Directed by Matthew Ehret (2022)
Film Review
The main premises Ehret presents in this short film are
1. The current oligarchy controlling the US government (and the world) came to power via a coup launched through a series of 1961-68 assassinations (Malcom X, John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King among others).
2. All Western elected leaders support the current global oligarchy.
3. Throughout history, powerful rulers have acted to criminalize dissent. In the US, this includes individuals who disagree with the official version of the JFK assassination and 9-11, as well as the Covid narrative and the current war on the fascist leaders the CIA installed in Ukraine in 2014. In Ehret’s view, massive censorship (with government support) by Google, YouTube, Facebook and other big tech companies has essentially cancelled free speech guaranteed by the first amendment to the US Constitution.
Most of the film concerns two decades of efforts by the US oligarchy to suppress dissent by labeling it “conspiracy theory.”
It starts by exploring the work of legal scholars Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule. The pair predicted the blanket censorship of dissent that has occurred in 2022 in their 2008 working paper Conspiracy Theories.
It advocated for greater government control of human behavior via the following strategies:
1. Government “cognitive infiltration” of so-called “extremist groups.”
2. A government ban on “conspiracy theories.”
3. A government tax on people who disseminate “conspiracy theories.”
4. An organized government strategy to engage in “counter speech” (contradicting “conspiracy theories”) or to pay or “encourage” private parties to engage in “counter speech.”
In other writings and speeches, Sunstein promoted the view that unlike other animals, human beings are fundamentally irrational and must be controlled by “enlightened” elites maintaining the illusion of democracy. This was also the fundamental view of George Soros’s mentor Karl Popper.
Obama’s science czar John Holdren, who supported similar views, went so far as to propose a global regime supported by a scientific priesthood with ultimate control over all global populations, resources and environmental management.
According to Ehret, the fatal flaw in the work of Sunstein, Vermeule, Popper, Holdren (and Soros) is their view of human beings as machines under the total control of their genes All five men have totally rejected the notion that human beings can be motivated by metaphysical beliefs (such as conscience, truth, intention, soul, honor, God, justice, patriotism, dignity and inequality) independent of their genes and their bodily functions. Throughout history, many dissidents strongly identified with what they view as “inalienable rights” have been willing to sacrifice popularity, physical comfort and even their lives to defend them. (Ehret gives Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King as examples).
Such individuals have always been extremely sensitive to false narratives presented as truth, and the example they set is always extremely contagious.
According to Ehret, modern historians tell you that history is driven by purely random events. The historical record suggests otherwise, that it is shaped by the ideas and intentions (ie conspiracies both for good and for evil) of powerful elites and the truth seekers who oppose them.
June 13, 2022
Newsweek Publishes Op-Eds Criticizing CDC Response to COVID
Newsweek last week published two opinion pieces criticizing the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19, claiming Americans don’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, in one case, recommending the creation of a new means of decision-making in public health.
Newsweek last week published two opinion pieces criticizing the U.S. government’s response to COVID-19, claiming Americans don’t trust the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and, in one case, recommending the creation of a new means of decision-making in public health.
“People don’t trust the CDC,” wrote Dr. Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor and author of “The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How To Fix It,” in an op-ed published June 10.
Makary cited the agency’s recent decision to recommend COVID-19 booster shots for children ages 5-11, despite a Pfizer spokesperson admitting its own study of 140 children did not determine the efficacy of the booster in 5- to 11-year-olds.
“That didn’t matter to the CDC,” Makary wrote, adding:
“Seemingly hoping for a different answer, the agency put the matter before its own kangaroo court of curated experts, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).
“I listened to the meeting, and couldn’t believe what I heard. At times, the committee members sounded like a group of marketing executives.”
The ACIP and committees like it are made up of “like-minded loyalists” to the CDC, wrote Makary, and one member — Dr. Oliver Brooks of the Watts Healthcare Corporation — exhibited “classic medical paternalism” when he insisted the CDC say that 5-to-11-year-olds “should” get a booster, rather than “may.”
Brooks “was essentially suggesting that boosting in this age group would be a clinical trial conducted without informed consent,” wrote Makary. “That doesn’t sound like following the science to me.”
The committee approved the booster for this age group by a vote of 11-1, ignoring the professional expertise of many (especially rural) pediatricians who do not recommend the vaccines for their patients — and discounting the effectiveness of natural immunity, Makary claimed.
“If the CDC is curious as to why people aren’t listening to its recommendations, it should consider how it bypassed experts to put the matter before a kangaroo court of like-minded loyalists,” he wrote.
Austin Stone, whose op-ed also appeared June 10 in Newsweek, called the public’s eroding trust in public health officials a “crisis,” citing recent polls commissioned by the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation that show only a third of the public trusts insurance groups and pharmaceutical companies, while just 56% trust the government health agencies that are meant to regulate these industries.
Stone, managing partner at Beck & Stone and COO for the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, called on the government to listen to “competing voices” when making public-health decisions.
“We can no longer give public officials unilateral decision-making power over our public health response,” he wrote.
Stone disputed the narrative, promoted early on in the pandemic, that Blacks were “hesitant” to get the COVID-19 vaccine based on historical abuses, such as being coerced into taking part in experiments.
Calling the public health officials behind that narrative “clueless,” Stone said people who chose not to take the COVID-19 vaccine, regardless of their race, “made their choice based on the authorities’ very recent dishonesty, not a tragedy from decades ago.“
“It wasn’t complicated,” he wrote.
And it didn’t help, he wrote, when the experts who were brought in to advise on the White House pandemic response, including Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci, “insisted on the most asinine and evidence-free preventative measures, including facial coverings, lockdowns and social distancing.”
Government monopoly on public health recommendations and mandates makes abuse and misconduct inevitable, according to Stone, who called for competition and accountability.
Stone commended the “courageous” scientists, policymakers, healthcare workers and public figures who signed the Great Barrington Declaration, risking their careers and reputations.
Since the declaration was signed, Stone wrote, “every single concern and recommendation it listed has been abundantly vindicated.”
This vindication demonstrates that “the goal of public health experts should not be to silence dissent of this kind, but to welcome it and encourage it to be as professional and accurate as possible,” he said.
Future policies should include choice, debate and competition, according to Stone.
“Before the next public health crisis, we need to create a fair, forward-thinking, and reputationally robust institution to serve as a non-governmental alternative and foil to federal bureaucracies like the CDC.”
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/newsweek-op-eds-cdc-response-covid/
The Most Revolutionary Act
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