Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 587
March 23, 2022
Unvaccinated New York State Judge on Highest Court Could Be Removed From Bench
Children’s Health Defense
A judge on New York State’s highest court could face removal from the bench for failing to comply with the state’s COVID vaccination mandate, according to court guidelines and state officials.
Jenny Rivera, an associate judge on the state Court of Appeals, has participated remotely in the court’s activities since the fall, when the state court system’s vaccination mandate took effect and unvaccinated employees were barred from court facilities.
She is now one of four state judges who face referral to the state’s Commission on Judicial Conduct, according to a person familiar with the process who spoke on background to discuss a personnel matter. The commission could move to admonish Judge Rivera, or remove her from the bench.
On Monday, Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for New York’s Unified Court System, said court administrators told 156 court employees — along with the four judges — that they failed to meet qualifications for employment, and if they do not comply with the vaccination requirements in the next two weeks they would be fired.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bb-unvaccinated-new-york-judge-could-be-removed-bench/
A Simple Way to End Vaccine Misinformation Now
By Steve Kirsch
Titre Du Site
All a state has to do is MANDATE autopsies for anyone who dies within 2 months of a vaccination. The Medical Examiner would be required to make the results public.If they truly wanted to end vaccine hesitancy, all they have to do is require autopsies if you die within 60 days of vaccination and require the medical examiners to make the required tests to determine vaccine involvement (as doctors Bhakdi and Burkhardt have done) and publish them. Publishing a fraudulent report would be a criminal offense.
This would end the debate.
Or they could simply require all licensed embalmers to check for the telltale clots and make the numbers public. Again, it would be a crime to falsify reports.
Or they could do both.
Why don’t they do this?
I’ll tell you why they don’t do it: They don’t do it because they know the results would be devastating and would immediately halt the vaccine and discredit the FDA, CDC, the entire medical establishment, virtually all members of Congress, and the mainstream media.
Why doesn’t Florida Governor DeSantis require this in Florida? What is he afraid of? Why doesn’t Governor Newsom require this in California? What does he have to fear? DeSantis would be the most likely of any governor to do this. He could be a world hero if he did this.
Nobody wants transparency of the data. They all want to keep you in the dark.
My suggestion isn’t limited to the US.
Any public health official anywhere in the world could order this: local, state, federal.
A state or federal legislature could require it.
Any member of any legislature could introduce a bill.
Why are California Assemblymember Evan Low and state Senator Dr. Richard Pan doing nothing? They have said they want to end medical misinformation. This is a perfect opportunity for them to walk the talk!
Why aren’t members of the medical community calling for this? Will any of these people join me in calling for this? Or will they sit on the sidelines and say nothing?
[…]
The Day the Petrodollar Died
By Dmitry Orlov
March 23, 2022 is shaping up to be an important date. Today Putin announced that in very short order Russia will stop accepting payments for its exports in currencies of hostile nations, immediately for natural gas, eventually for everything. Existing contracts will be honored but rewritten to stipulate payment in rubles.
In response, the ruble immediately strengthened relative to the US dollar and currently stands at 98.5₽/$ compared to 139.0₽/$ on March 7th—a gain of almost 30% in just over three weeks. At the same time, dollar-denominated prices of oil and gas surged.
Here’s the complete official list of hostile nations: Australia, Albania, Andorra, Great Britain, all members of the European Union, Iceland, Canada, Liechtenstein, Micronesia, Monaco,New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, San Marino, Northern Macedonia, Singapore, USA, Taiwan (a province of China), the Ukraine, Montenegro, Switzerland, Japan.
And here’s a partial list of Russia’s key strategic exports for which there is no replacement: oil, natural gas, wheat, fertilizer, titanium, sapphire for semiconductor manufacturing, nickel, enriched uranium, rocket engines… Hostile nations will be unable to continue business as usual without these key ingredients.n turn, hostile nations are likely to be unable to raise enough rubles in order to continue purchasing these commodities because of sanctions which were imposed on Russia as a result of its special operation in the Ukraine. Many companies stopped doing business in Russia altogether (Siemens is the latest major casualty) and their market niche in Russia has been immediately taken over by Russian companies. Many other companies limited their exports to Russia to essentials, but these essentials now include potato chips, lip gloss, children’s makeup and many other nonessentials.
A return to dollar trade seems unlikely for Russia. By arresting Russia’s sovereign wealth fund held in dollars the US essentially declared sovereign default, proving itself to be an unreliable partner. Neither Russia, nor any other country, has any reason to sell anything for dollars since the proceeds of such a transaction can be confiscated at any time. Conversely, the US will no longer be able to print dollars (borrow, technically, but since this debt will never be repaid it is essentially just printed money) and buy imports with them; instead, it will be forced to earn rubles to buy the oil it needs to keep its refineries in operation or the enriched uranium it needs to continue generating electricity.
But what can the US export to Russia that Russia would want? These would need to be products, not services, since the services Russia has received from the US are most unsatisfactory. Nor could these be payments for the use of patents, software licenses and other intellectual property: all of these are now free to Russians. There is, of course, gold, but US gold reserves haven’t been audited and it is unknown how much of its hoard has been quietly traded away to China and other creditor nations to keep them from dumping US debt.
And that leaves asset stripping. A lot of it went on in Russia in the 1990s after the Soviet collapse. I predicted that it would eventually happen in the US as well in the very first article I published, “Post-Soviet lessons for a Post-American Century.” And now, barely 22 years into the post-American century, these predictions are about to come true.
[…]Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/3491540d-13d2-470e-bf21-f8ce3c1b8e19Stone Age Mesopotamia
10,000 year old tower from Jericho
Episode 3: Neolithic Farming, Trading and Pottery
Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization
Dr Amanda H Podany
Film Review
This lecture covers the Neolithic (new Stone Age) period in Mesopotamia (9,000 – 5,000 BC). During this period, plants and animals domesticated by pre-Neolithic settlers provided the bulk of people’s diet. However most residents added to their diet by fishing, hunting and gathering berries and other plant-based food.
Remains from the first farming settlements are found in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant [1], both areas with sufficient rainfall not to require irrigation. Peas and Lentils were grown close to the Eastern Mediterranean and Einkorn wheat in the Western Levant. Sheep, pigs, goats and cattle were herded in northern Mesopotamia. The rest of region was uninhabited prior to the advent of irrigation technology, except for Jericho. The latter relied on Persian Gulf agricultural settlements fed by a natural spring.
Tools used during this period relied on obsidian (which made the best knives), imported from Anatolia,[2] and bitumen (made from petroleum deposits), used to waterproof baskets and boats. Early inhabitants of Mesopotamia also adopted a new use of fire, which was first discovered by pre-human hominids. They burned limestone to make plaster, and to cover walls and floors and for food storage vessels and human figurines.[3]
Around 6,000 BC, Mesopotamian farmers moved south into flood plains lying between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Thanks to thousands of years of silt laid down by the two rivers, they found the soil there extremely fertile. Moreover with the fields lying downhill from the rivers, it was easy to exploit early summer floods by building simple dykes, levees and reinforced irrigation channels.
The city of Samarra dates from this later period. Samarra culture is characterized by distinctive clay pots (repaired with bitumen) and figurines. The Samarrans grew barley and several kinds of wheat and herded sheep, goats and cattle. They also hunted and fished.
Tell Halaf in Northeastern Syria was another city (5700 – 5000 BC) appearing during this period. Thanks to abundant rainfall, no irrigation was necessary.
Jericho and a second settlement known as Catal Huyuk grew large enough to qualify as towns (defined as hundreds of residents) during this period.
[1]The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia.
[2]Anatolia is a large peninsula in Western Asia that constitute the major part of modern-day Turkey.
[3]Although clay was used to make bricks, there was no clay pottery as yet. The advantage of clay pots is you can use them for cooking (plaster vessels disintegrate when they come in contact with fire. With clay pots, it became possible to make porridge out of grains, as well as clay ovens to cook flatbread.
Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.
https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/neolithic-farming-trading-and-pottery
March 22, 2022
Repeated COVID Vaccines May Impair Immune System’s Natural Ability to Fight Disease
By Rob Verkerk Ph.D. Rob Verkerk Ph.D., founder of Alliance for Natural Health International, explores the links between SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19 vaccines, HIV and immune deficiency.
Topline:
Jean Claude Perez and Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier identified 18 gene sequences in HIV-1 that are present in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.Among these are gp120 that facilitates the attachment of the “spike” of HIV to host cells as well as helping HIV target CD4 T cells.Emerging evidence shows that chronic exposure to COVID-19 “vaccines” that occur through administration of regular boosters can disrupt T cells generally, and, more particularly, suppress CD4 T cells that are targeted by gp120.Such chronic exposure can also erode all-important innate immunity and increase the risk of new-onset autoimmune conditions. These might contribute to what has been described as VAIDS (vaccine-induced acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).Despite known harms to HIV/AIDS patients from a genetically engineered common cold virus (adenovirus type-5) used as a vector in the STEP trials in the early 2000s, some vaccine manufacturers, with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) approval, are continuing pre-clinical or clinical development with these same adenovirus vectors.Some of the HIV motifs present in SARS-CoV-2 are highly functional in terms of facilitating attachment and fusion on host target cells, but are missing from the genetically very similar SARS virus.People who are already immune compromised or have had a history of cancer should very carefully weigh up the risks of COVID-19 and the vaccines, as well as the benefits. They should also consider the many alternatives before simply complying with what have now become social norms despite a common absence of evidence of medical need.Unwrapping Montagnier’s legacy
In February 2020, just a month after the SARS-CoV-2 genome had been published, French scientist and mathematician, Jean Claude Perez, colleague of the recently deceased Prof. Luc Montagnier, published an article titled “Wuhan COVID-19 Synthetic Origins and Evolution” on the preprint server, ResearchGate.
The paper was published the following month in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Research.
Among Perez’s in silico findings were the presence of fragments of the genome of two variants of two retroviruses, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), in the reference genome of SARS-CoV-2 from the Wuhan seafood market.
The discovery of the presence of these genetic fragments made Perez among the first to raise questions in the scientific literature over the claimed natural and zoonotic origin of the SARS-CoV-2 genome.
His reasoning was that these viruses would be unlikely to find their way either into a bat cave in remote China or, as yet, an unidentified intermediate host that might have found its way, dead or alive, to the seafood market.
Montagnier, as the co-discoverer of HIV, for which he was awarded the Nobel prize in 2008, went on to collaborate with Perez on another paper, also published in the International Journal of Research, in July 2020.
The analysis presented gave further detail on Perez’s initial findings. This included the fact that 2.5% of the entire SARS-CoV-2 “Wuhan” genome was represented by 18 RNA fragment “insertions” from the HIV or SIV retroviruses, with one section having a density rate for these inserts as high as 73%.The authors asserted that because the fragments were 18 to 30 nucleotides in length, they had the ability to modify gene expression in humans exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
They also proposed that the presence of these inserts was likely the result of human manipulation, potentially both for gain-of-function research to improve cell penetration of the virus, but also for the purpose of “vaccine design.”
The final words of the paper — published just a few months into the pandemic — were directed at the alleged architects of SARS-CoV-2 and provided a somber warning:
“This analysis, made in silico, is dedicated to the real authors of Coronavirus COVID-19. It belongs only to them to describe their own experiments and why it turned into a world disaster: 650 000 lives (on 26 July 2020), more than those taken by the two atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“We, the survivors, should take lessons from this serious alert for the future of humanity. We urge our colleagues, scientists and medical doctors to respect ethical rules as expressed by Hippocrates oath: do not harm, never and never!”
More recently, and shortly before Montagnier’s passing on Feb. 8, aged 85, the following quote attributed to the Nobel laureate circulated widely on the internet:
“For those of you who have taken the third dose, go and take a test for AIDS. The result may surprise you. Then sue your government.”
It has not been possible to verify the authenticity of the quote, but, coupled with the discovery of a new, highly virulent HIV variant in the Netherlands in early February, the scene was set for concerns among the public and some health professionals over possible links between HIV, COVID-19 injections and SARS-CoV-2.
Immune erosion by COVID-19 injections
Added to this was mounting concern among scientists, such as renowned Belgian vaccinologist Geert Vanden Bossche Ph.D., that successive COVID-19 injections may compromise the effectiveness of the immune system, especially trained innate immunity gained following naturally-acquired infection.
Vanden Bossche has proposed that high levels of non-sterilizing (“leaky”) “vaccinal” antibodies produced following injection, suppress all-important, polyreactive, antibodies produced by specialized subsets of B cells (B-1 and marginal zone B cells) associated with the innate immune system.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/repeated-covid-vaccines-impair-immune-system/
Pfizer COVID Vaccine for Kids 5 – 11 Fails FDA Standard for 50% Efficacy
By Meryl Nass, M.D. Based on a small study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Pfizer’s COVID vaccine — after just under two months — was 31% effective at preventing “symptomatic and asymptomatic” COVID in 5- to 11-year-olds. But how effective was the vaccine at four or six months?
The study I am about to describe was published in the March 18 issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Review (MMWR).
Once upon a time, the MMWR appeared to be a high-quality publication. It included useful editorial comments and criticisms of the articles, but those have now disappeared.
However, the study referenced in the March 18 issue is based on data collected from a relatively small group of children — 1,052 children between the ages of 5 and 11 — from four states. Surprisingly, 76% of the children live in Arizona.
In this group, 65% of the children were fully vaccinated, 7% had had one dose and 29% of the children were unvaccinated.
The group is not representative of the entire U.S., in which just over 30% of children in this age group are vaccinated (and by Feb. 14 only 22% in Chicago).
The children are swabbed weekly for COVID. There were a total of 381 COVID infections in this group: 137 in the fully vaccinated and 184 infections in the unvaccinated. Half the Omicron infections were asymptomatic.
It is unclear if CDC distinguished the variants by anything other than timing.
This leaves, per my calculation, 60 COVID cases in the group of children who received one dose of the vaccine — a group for which few data are presented.
There is no way to check CDC’s calculations because each child had a unique number of days in which he or she was “enrolled” in the study, starting two weeks after their second dose.
But what CDC states is that the median duration of enrollment in the study for the vaccinated kids is 53 days, and for the unvaccinated kids, 41 days.
You would have thought the unvaccinated would have participated for a longer period, as they don’t have to wait two weeks until after the second shot to join the ranks of the officially vaccinated.
I have no explanation for this.
So how well did the vaccine work a little less than two months after the children were considered “fully vaccinated?”The CDC said that after adjustments, the vaccine was 31% effective at preventing “symptomatic and asymptomatic” COVID in this age group — at under two months.
But how effective was the vaccine at four or six months? And how long until we are in negative efficacy territory?
What are the media going to look at as they try to get out a story quickly?
The final paragraph, of course. In fact, they probably are working off the press release.
What does that final paragraph say?
“This study provides evidence that receipt of two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is effective in preventing both asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant among children and adolescents aged 5–15 years. All eligible children and adolescents should remain up to date with recommended COVID-19 vaccinations.”
Now we understand why the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had the vaccine makers vaccinate the placebo group at two months in all the COVID vaccine trials — the FDA had established a 50% efficacy standard to issue an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and the longer the trials went on, the lower the efficacy would be.
But now the FDA and CDC can’t even get the 5- to 11-year-old efficacy above 31% in Arizona. And in New York, at seven weeks, efficacy was 12% in this age group.
This does not meet the EUA standard.
I wonder how they can possibly spin the benefits of vaccination for infants and children 6 months to 5 years old.
But I expect our federal health authorities will find a way.
[…]
Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/pfizer-covid-vaccine-kids-fails-fda-standard-efficacy-2/
WATCH: Presearch Search Engine
Offguardian
Now that DuckDuckGo has officially DuckDuckGone in the direction of censorship, what’s a free speech-loving, liberty-minded conspiracy realist to do? Never fear, #SolutionsWatch is here.
In the first of a series of explorations of Alt Tech, James talks to Colin Pape of Presearch, a decentralized search engine that is seeking to offer an alternative to the Big Tech monopolization of search.
Sources, shownotes and links – as well as audio versions and download options – can be found here. Previous episodes of #SolutionsWatch can be found here and here.Via https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/21/watch-presearch-search-engine/
Severe Drought And “Dust Bowl Conditions” Threaten To Create A Disastrous Winter Wheat Harvest In The U.S.
By MichaelEconomic Collapse BlogFood prices in the U.S. have already been soaring, and now we are on track for an absolutely horrible winter wheat harvest. Of course this comes at a time when the war on the other side of the globe is going to greatly reduce wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine. Over the last 12 months, the price of wheat has already risen 69 percent, and now this crisis threatens to go to an entirely new level. In all my years of writing, I have never seen anything like this, and I am deeply concerned about what the months ahead will bring.
Due to extreme drought, winter wheat is in very bad shape in states such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The following comes from one of the most prominent agricultural websites in the entire country…
Some farmers in southwestern Kansas, the top U.S. wheat producing state, have not received much measurable rain or snow since October. Winter wheat is planted in autumn, lays dormant in winter and begins sending up green shoots in spring. Proper soil moisture is critical at this stage for the crop to thrive.
More than half of Kansas was classified as under severe drought or worse as of March 8, the driest conditions since 2018, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center. Severe drought is also covering three-quarters of Oklahoma and more than two-thirds of Texas, both of which also are large wheat producers.
If that sounds really bad, that is because it is really bad.
Farmers are praying for rain, because they desperately need it.
That same article also discussed the fact that winter wheat was severely damaged by a wind storm “that brought ‘Dust Bowl’ conditions to Kansas”…
The coming weeks will be critical for the southern Plains wheat crop, said Lucas Haag, extension agronomist at Kansas State University. Many farmers apply fertilizer to maximize crop potential, but moisture is needed to carry nutrients to plant roots, he said.
Wheat plants damaged by the December wind storm that brought “Dust Bowl” conditions to Kansas face additional drought problems because plants have been weakened either by the sand-blast effect of blowing dust and dirt or by soil nutrient loss from the 100 mph (161 kph) winds.
How many years have I been warning that “Dust Bowl conditions” would return to the middle of the country?
Now it has happened.
And forecasters are telling us that “abnormally dry” conditions will likely continue across much of the nation for the foreseeable future…
Abnormally dry to exceptional drought conditions are expected to persist across 60% of the continental U.S. as spring in the Northern Hemisphere begins. Forecasters expect little to no rain for certain parts of the western U.S. through June.
From April to June, above-average temperatures are expected from Southwest to the East Coast and north through the Midwest, according to a new outlook published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
NOAA’s map shows a greater than 50% chance of drought persistence for nearly 60% of the continental U.S.
We have been witnessing very strange weather patterns all over the globe in recent months, and that is one of the reasons why major agricultural commodity prices have been spiking dramatically…
Over the past year, wheat prices are up 69 percent. Among other major food exports of Russia and Ukraine, corn prices are up 36 percent and barley 82 percent.
Now war in Ukraine has created an immense “supply shock”, and this is going to have ripple effects that are felt all across the planet.
Ukraine is normally one of the key “breadbaskets” of the world, but now the invasion has changed everything…
Ukraine’s top agricultural export products are corn and wheat. Before the invasion, Ukraine was the second-largest supplier of grains for the European Union and one of the largest suppliers for emerging markets in Asia and Africa. Breaking down the numbers, Ukraine produced 49.6% of global sunflower oil, 10% of global wheat, 12.6% of global barley, and 15.3% of global maize.
Collectively, Russia and Ukraine typically account for a very large chunk of all global agricultural exports…
For the global food market, there are few worse countries to be in conflict than Russia and Ukraine. Over the past five years, they have together accounted for nearly 30 percent of the exports of the world’s wheat, 17 percent of corn, 32 percent of barley, a crucial source of animal feed, and 75 percent of sunflower seed oil, an important cooking oil in some parts of the world.
[…]
Elite Flock to Doomsday Bunkers as World Bank Tells Peasant Class NOT to Store Food
By Matt Agorist
Underground Newswire
Since the invasion of Ukraine began, manufacturers of doomsday bunkers have seen a massive spike in sales. This is typical during any crisis as people wait until the last minute to start preparing. What sets this rush toward prepping apart from ones in the past is the fact that the World Bank is warning against such actions — despite many of their elite friends doing exactly that.
During a virtual event hosted by the Washington Post on Monday, World Bank President David Malpass told people not to store food or gasoline in spite of the massive spike in prices since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“The right thing to do in these current circumstances is not to go out and buy extra flour or extra gasoline, it’s to recognize that the world is a dynamic global economy and will respond. There’ll be enough to go around,” Malpass said.
Malpass’ intentions are clear — don’t create fear to further hurt the supply chain. But it is too late for that and people should definitely be preparing. In fact, it may be too late.
While high prices and inflation are being blamed on Russia, it is important to point out that we have been headed in this direction well before the invasion. Russia was just an easy scapegoat.
While the president blames high prices on “corporate greed” and the Federal Reserve blames supply chain dysfunction, no one is looking at the elephant in the room — massive expansion of the money supply and insane deficit spending which has reached historical proportions in the last two years.
Sure Russian sanctions helped tip the scales a bit, but this was coming regardless. We only need to look at the massive price increases across the board over the last year to see it.
That being said, the super rich who have been oblivious for the past several years, appear to be in panic mode and are seeking to find some solace in the form of doomsday bunkers.
In a recent article from The Sun, who interviewed a large company who caters to rich preppers, since the invasion of Ukraine, doomsday bunker sales have shot up over 1,000 percent.
“Typically, I’ll sell between two and six shelters a month,” General Manager of Rising S Bunkers, Gary Lynch said to the Sun. “Business has increased astronomically over the last few days.”
Lynch said the Texas-based company can put you in a single bed bunker on your own property for as little as $39,500 but for the elite, the top-tier bunkers cost upwards of $9 million each.
“Typically, I’ll sell between two and six shelters a month – and usually winter is a quiet time for us,” Lynch said, adding that he sold 5 bunkers the day after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing and we’ve been sending out so many quotes,” he told the The Sun. The Texas-based company has received inquires from all the world, including Italy, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Japan, and Canada, as well as across the US. “The interest isn’t just isolated to the US, it’s everywhere,” he said.
As TFTP previously reported, the theory that the super-elite have turned into “Doomsday preppers” stockpiling supplies and doomsday bunkers in preparation for the end of the world as we know it, is more than just a theory, and the latest properties purchased by the world’s top billionaires give insight into how they plan to survive.
The cause of such an event used to be rather debatable—like will an asteroid collide with Earth? But as tensions increase around the world as ignorant Americans cheer for nuclear war, it’s not very debatable any longer.
Forbes contributor Jim Dobson noted that in addition to “preparing for future escape plans with ‘vacation homes’ in remote locations,” and “private planes ready to depart at a moment’s notice,” some of the wealthiest individuals in the U.S. are buying large amounts of land that can be used for self-survival.
Tele-Communications CEO John Malone owns a total of 2.2 million acres, with massive amounts in Wyoming and Colorado. CNN founder Ted Turner owns 2 million acres that include land in Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico and North Dakota. AEG CEO Philip Anschutz owns 434,000 acres in Wyoming. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos owns 400,000 acres of land in Texas. And sports mogul Stan Kroenke owns 225,162 acres of land in Montana.
Dobson also noted that this type of preparation extends worldwide to moguls in Australia and New Zealand who are buying massive amounts of farmland. Because money and precious metals would be virtually useless following a major disaster, self-sustainable territory and the tools that come with it appear to be the new hot commodity.
As mentioned above and as the Free Thought Project reported, the concept of the super-rich preparing to survive a worldwide disaster is nothing new—former Facebook product manager Antonio García Martínez and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman are among the moguls openly preparing for a major crisis.
[…]
March 21, 2022
Poultry Giants Sold Tens of Thousands of Meat Products That Caused Life-Threatening Illness in Kids
By The Bureau of Investigative Journalism Between 2015 and 2020, U.S. companies — including poultry giants Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Foster Farms and Koch Foods — sold tens of thousands of meat products contaminated with campylobacter and salmonella, according to government sampling records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
Joanne Canda-Alvarez found her 9-year-old son splayed out on his bedroom floor, unable to move and foaming at the mouth. The day before, Jayven had been playing golf with his family.
Now he was completely paralyzed by the sudden onset of a rare autoimmune disease that doctors linked to campylobacter, a bacteria mainly found in poultry products.
Canda-Alvarez and her husband did not know whether their son would survive — he was on a ventilator in hospital and unable to even speak. But his mother could see how scared he was. “I could tell it in his eyes,” she said.
Nearly four years after falling sick, Jayven still struggles to control his hands and his right foot, a result of lasting nerve damage. “Nobody has an answer to if he’ll ever recover fully — if his body will ever be the same,” said his mother.
Campylobacter is America’s biggest cause of foodborne illness, just ahead of salmonella. Both are potentially fatal.
Yet between 2015 and 2020, U.S. companies — including the poultry giants Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Foster Farms and Koch Foods — sold tens of thousands of meat products contaminated with campylobacter and salmonella, according to government sampling records obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
More than half of these were contaminated with antibiotic-resistant strains — a rapidly escalating issue that can be exacerbated by poor hygiene conditions.
The poultry companies supply major grocery stores and fast-food chains. Tyson has supplied chicken to McDonald’s, Perdue has sold to Whole Foods and both have supplied Walmart.
Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) deems a certain level of salmonella and campylobacter within poultry acceptable, 12 major U.S. poultry companies, including Perdue, Pilgrim’s Pride, Koch Foods, Foster Farms and Tyson, have exceeded USDA standards for acceptable levels of salmonella multiple times since 2018, when the government began reporting contamination rates at individual plants, according to the department’s records.
The USDA still runs tests for campylobacter in processing plants but it is not currently tracking whether plants exceed the contamination thresholds.
Batches of poultry products with contamination rates above the limit don’t have to be recalled, although plants that repeatedly exceed the thresholds can be temporarily shut down.
Separate government records also show that between January 2015 and August 2019, the same 12 major U.S. poultry companies broke food safety rules on at least 145,000 occasions — or on average more than 80 times a day.
Poultry plant workers also claimed they have sometimes been asked to process rotten-smelling meat, have witnessed chicken tossed into grinders with dead insects and found government safety inspectors apparently asleep on the job.
“Since [the meat] comes to us really dirty, when we open the box, it’s like, ‘Let’s see what’s inside!’” alleged one worker at a Tyson plant in Springdale, Arkansas.
“Sometimes it has flies, it has crickets, cockroaches in there already frozen.” He claimed that when he pointed this out to the supervisors, they seemed to show little interest — and so the insects ended up being put into the grinder with the meat.
Campylobacter causes more than 100 deaths every year in America as well as 1.5 million infections. It also accounts for up to 40% of the country’s cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, the disease that left Jayven paralyzed.
Yet the sale of poultry products found to be contaminated with either that or salmonella bacteria remains perfectly legal.
Canda-Alvarez is still shaken by her son’s experience. “One day he’s playing golf, and the next day he’s completely paralyzed. It was the most mind-boggling thing I’ve ever experienced,” she said.
“When they told me that it was from campylobacter I was like, ‘So this bacteria that nobody knows about, that could destroy your whole life, is from chicken or poultry?’
“That’s why I tell people, you need to be careful how you cook your food or where you eat. Because you never know what could happen.”
The level of salmonella and campylobacter that the USDA deems acceptable differs depending on the product. A maximum of 15.4% of chicken parts leaving a processing plant, for instance, can test positive for salmonella and the plant can still meet acceptable standards.
The threshold for campylobacter is 7.7%. Many experts argue these levels are too lax.
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) does “a very poor job of regulating the contaminants,” according to Zach Corrigan, senior staff attorney at the pressure group Food & Water Watch.
“This comes in the way of allowing super-fast line speeds, allowing companies to largely regulate themselves on the slaughter and then doing very little monitoring of contamination.”
An FSIS spokesperson said: “FSIS is committed to reducing foodborn infections associated with FSIS-regulated products, including reduction of salmonella illnesses attributable to poultry.”
Especially concerning is the increase in antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. The number of drug-resistant salmonella infections in the U.S. rose from around 159,000 in 2004 to around 222,000 in 2016, according to the CDC.
Campylobacter has become more resistant too: ciprofloxacin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat it, is increasingly ineffective.
[…]
The Most Revolutionary Act
- Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's profile
- 11 followers
