Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 622
December 29, 2021
The History of the Muslim Empire
Episode 30: Islamic Expansion and Rule
The Big History of Civilizations (2016)
Dr Craig G Benjamin
Film Review
For me the most interesting part of this lecture is the thumbnail sketch Benjamin provides of the birth of Islam. After Mohammad experienced his visitation from the angel Gabriel in 610 AD, tension arising between his followers and the Bedouin Arabs who ran the city of Mecca forced the former to flee to Yethrab (later renamed Medina) in 622 AD. There Mohammad and his followers began providing social welfare services in addition to religious instruction. They also organized a Muslim military arm to protect his followers against his enemies from Mecca.
In 627 AD, Mohammad and his followers returned to Mecca where they forcibly ousted the city’s rulers and established a theocracy.* By the time of Mohammad’s death in 632 AD, his Muslim armies had conquered the entire Arabian peninsula. They then turned northward and conquered the Sassanian empire (modern day Persian and Afghanistan) and Mesopotamia. By 637 AD, they also controlled, Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine.
Between 705-713 AD they expanded into Pakistan, in 711 AD into North Africa and in 718 AD into the Iberian peninsula (modern day Spain and Portugal).
This vast Muslim empire (the largest to this point in history), known as Dar es Islam, was ruled by a caliphate** centered in Baghdad from 762 AD. Although all subjects of the caliphate were pressured to convert to Islam, the caliphate deliberately encouraged intellectual and educational pursuits of the extremely diverse populations they had conquered. The result was an economic golden age, with substantial population growth, a revival of ancient Mesopotamian irrigation systems, the introduction of crop rotation and new methods of fertilization.
As Islam spread into Pakistan and India, Indian discoveries in astronomy, agriculture and and mathematics gradually spread from India to Persia to Mesopotamia to Mediterranean cities. A number of crops originating in India (sugar, sorghum, spinach, eggplant, lemon, banana, watermelon, cotton, rice, wheat, artichokes, oranges, limes, coconuts, mangoes) gradually made their way to the Mediterranean in this way.
Adopting the compass and paper from the Chinese, the Muslim empire established thriving overland maritime trade networks and sophisticated banking systems.
The role of women under early Islam depended on the underlying culture (eg veiling of women predated Islam in Mesopotamia, leading Muslim leaders there to mandate it). In general, elite Muslim women were expected to stay at home and not participate in public life. In contrast lower class women were allowed a public role as farmers, construction workers, midwives, spinsters, dyers, seamstresses and embroiderers and money lenders.
Dar es Islam was destroyed by Mongol invaders in 1258.
*Theocracy is a form of government in which a deity of some type is recognized as the supreme ruling authority.
**A caliphate is a public institution governing a territory under Islamic rule. The Abassid Caliphate (750-1517) was the most prominent. It relied heavily on Persian bureaucrats and
Can be viewed free on Kanopy with a library card.
https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/islamic-expansion-and-rule
December 28, 2021
Five Important Stories Mainstream Media Has Been Ignoring in Favor of Covid Fear and Divide
NWO Report
Source: Don Via, Jr.
While the mainstream media continues to either outright propagandize the masses, or make abstruse any semblance of factual reporting, The Free Thought Project stays dedicated to bringing you the information they refuse to talk about.
Time and again MSM pundits have demonstrated themselves to be stenographers of the State rather than the arbiters of critical journalism speaking truth to power — Particularly in this day and age where examples like this are innumerable. This is why publications like ours exist.
To that point, living in such an era of deliberate deception via the corporate press as we do, there remain a plethora of vital stories the public needs to know that tend to slip through the cracks.
As such, TFTP has decided to resurrect an old practice of ours — In addition to our regular reporting we will also put forth the initiative to provide a collection of brief updates and further insight into additional news stories kept from the public eye, but very much within the public’s right to know.
So here are five additional stories you likely haven’t heard from the mainstream media as they shoved Omicron down our throats 24/7:
1.) The Spying Scandal You Haven’t Heard Of: NodeXL.By now most of us are aware of the constant illegal mass surveillance taking place on all members of the public at all times. Since the 2013 revelations of the NSA’s illegal spying program by Edward Snowden, it’s become common knowledge.
However, new information about the extent of the surveillance state continues to come forward, despite the lack of headline coverage of it. What many may not be aware of is that it is not just the United States that has erected a global panopticon of 24/7 snoops. Our ally Israel is arguably the next runner-up in the “how much illegal crap can we get away with” contest.
Enter NodeXL; NodeXL is a popular software package used with a multitude of different Microsoft products. It’s also recently been revealed as the means by which Israel has conducted its illegal spying operations on a plethora of unsuspecting people.
On a recent episode of RT’s “Redacted Tonight,” journalist Lee Camp was joined by cybersecurity expert Sean O’Brien who shed some light on this startling, though admittedly not necessarily surprising, disclosure.
O’Brien went on to reveal that the technology has been utilized in coordination with the United States to mount massive surveillance campaigns on a number of those targeted as “dissidents” — which include but are not limited to; supporters of Julian Assange, reporters within the alternative press, and other anti-establishment activists such as those who speak out against police brutality.
2.) New JFK Assassination Information Dismantles The Official StoryOliver Stone is known for his legendary work as a writer and director in the film industry. Having his name attached to such classics as Scarface and Platoon. However, some of his most impactful work comes from the documentaries he’s produced regarding the life and death of President John F. Kennedy.
Stone has never been a stranger to controversy, often speaking out against the war machine and asserting the importance of critical thinking. His latest documentary continues to follow in those footsteps.
With Stone going so far as to say —
“In the years since the Warren report, there is so much more that we know. Conspiracy theories are now conspiracy facts.”
A recent report featured in Covert Action Magazine, one of the oldest independent media publications to take aim at reporting clandestine affairs, sheds light on some of the bombshell information the film uncovers — directly implicating the apparatus of American intelligence agencies.
Stone teams up with fellow JFK assassination researchers to show how the former President’s policies posed a threat to the ruling class and military-industrial complex, exposing a web of intelligence community connections to both Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby.
They also examine the IC ties to the Warren Commission beyond CIA director Allen Dulles, the Commission’s conflicts of interest, and subsequent cover-up.
JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass, as the name suggests is a powerful piece in which Stone revisits some of the most compelling and curious information regarding the death of President Kennedy amid the backdrop of newly uncovered information that purports to completely discredit the official story.President’s policies posed a threat to the ruling class and military-industrial complex, exposing a web of intelligence community connections to both Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald’s killer Jack Ruby.
They also examine the IC ties to the Warren Commission beyond CIA director Allen Dulles, the Commission’s conflicts of interest, and subsequent cover-up.
[…]
Can someone help me understand the White House strategy now?
Alex Berenson
I know they’re dumb, but are they this dumb?
Guys, I don’t know how to say this any more clearly: it is OVER.
The Omicold (pronounced Immacold) variant is about to bring this clown show to its inevitable conclusion.
I know none of our supposedly non-racist public health authorities were willing to believe the South African numbers, but we now have almost a month of data out of Denmark.
They are real. And they are spectacular.
Between Dec. 13 and Dec. 20, Denmark reported approximately 50,000 confirmed Omicron cases.
Given the approximately one-week lag between infection and hospitalization, those people should be flooding into hospitals.
EXCEPT THE NUMBER OF OMICRON PATIENTS IN DANISH HOSPITALS HAS NOT RISEN IN THE LAST WEEK.
You read that right. 50,000 positive tests the week before, no change in hospitalizations. Admissions have risen slightly, but patients are being discharged as fast as they are being admitted.
The result: as of Dec. 21, Danish hospitals had 47 Omicron patients, with under five (the report is not more specific) in intensive care.
As of Dec. 27, the hospitals had 51 Omicron patients, again with under five in intensive care.
The question is no longer whether Omicron is a cold. It’s whether it’s as dangerous as a cold. (And, again, this has nothing to do with Covid vaccines; most South Africans are not vaccinated, and the pattern there was the same.)
The only sane political move at this point is to drop ALL mandates – vaccine and otherwise – and ALL asymptomatic or quarantine testing (dropping all non-hospital testing would be even better) – and declare victory and go home. Even if the country weren’t burned out on scare stories and sick of being lied to, the reality of these figures is already obvious to most people. (Including LeBron James.)
[…]
Via https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/can-someone-help-me-understand-the/
Sex Crimes of the CIA—Unreported, Unrepented, and Unpunished
[Source: thespec.com]John Kiriakou
Covert Action Magazine
The CIA rivals the Vatican in covering up sex crimes against children and then protecting the members of its organization who commit themBuzzfeed reported early this month that, in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the CIA revealed that 10 employees and a contractor had committed sex crimes against children—but only one was ever charged with a crime.
Considering how well the CIA knows how to cover up what it does not want to be known, we may reasonably speculate that those crimes represent only the tip of an iceberg—and I say this as someone who served 15 years in the CIA.
The evidence that the CIA released to Buzzfeed in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit shows that the 10 employees and one contractor committed crimes including child rape, the purchase of violent child pornography, and viewing as many as 1,400 photos of nude children on a CIA computer while overseas on a work assignment.
The contractor had arranged to have sex with an undercover FBI agent who he thought was a child. The only CIA officer prosecuted for child sex crimes had also mishandled classified information. Four of the other accused employees and the contractor were fired, four were “disciplined administratively,” and the status of one is unknown.
Let’s be clear about these crimes.
These were not “he said, she said” allegations. They were serious sex crimes against children.
The Buzzfeed information, which includes both internal CIA documents and a declassified Inspector General’s report, say that besides the contractor, CIA officers admitted to, “using a government laptop to view photographs and videos of girls as young as 10 being abused by an older guy;” having sexual contact with two girls, ages two and six, and downloading illicit photos of other children; downloading 63 videos of sex between adults and children between the ages of 8 and 16; and distributing lewd photos and videos of children to other pedophiles.
One CIA officer told investigators that he “did not know it was a violation of Agency policy to access child pornography.” He was not prosecuted.
Heavily redacted CIA report accompanying Buzzfeed exposé. [Source: buzzfeednews.com]
Heavily redacted CIA report accompanying Buzzfeed exposé. [Source: buzzfeednews.com]For its part, the Justice Department elected to do practically nothing, notwithstanding a statement to Buzzfeed that, “The occupation or employer of the suspect does not factor into that evaluation” (of whether or not to prosecute.) “While we cannot comment on the reasons why specific cases were declined, we do take very seriously any allegation that our prosecutors declined a potential case based on an improper assessment of the relevant factors.”
That’s nonsense. The truth is that the Justice Department was afraid of graymail. That’s the threat of a CIA officer on trial “accidentally” saying something classified or something that compromises sources and methods. It’s not worth the risk to the CIA to prosecute most cases. And the bottom line is that the CIA doesn’t care one whit about the children.
I spent 15 years at the CIA. It is a highly-sexualized environment full of type A personalities, sociopaths, and psychopaths. We had an old joke that, when you went into a meeting, you should never touch the conference room table because you didn’t know who was having sex on it the night before.
[…]
December 27, 2021
Protests over post-vaccination deaths spread across South Korea
Source: RT
Protesters gathered in Busan on Sunday after a similar rally was held in Seoul on Christmas Day. Aggrieved demonstrators held up large portraits of deceased family members – like those typically displayed at funerals in South Korea – and testified as to how their loved ones died soon after being vaccinated against Covid-19.
Dozens of funeral portraits were displayed at Saturday’s demonstration at the government complex in Seoul. Protesters called for the government to identify the causes of adverse reactions and admit that vaccines are to blame.
More than 1,000 South Koreans died shortly after receiving Covid-19 shots, but the government has confirmed a causal connection to vaccines in only a few of those cases. In one of the rare instances where a serious adverse reaction was acknowledged, a nursing assistant was recognized in August as a victim of an industrial accident and awarded government benefits after suffering paralysis in the wake of receiving AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 shot.
Just one week into its rollout of Covid-19 vaccines in late February and early March, South Korea’s Disease Control and Prevention Agency said that seven people had died and 24 had reported serious adverse reactions after receiving their AstraZeneca jabs. The government reportedly began an investigation in August after a teenager with no underlying health conditions died following inoculation with the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine.
An association called the Covid-19 Vaccine Victims and Families Council has held rallies in several South Korean cities. Demonstrators on Sunday marchedfrom Busan City Hall to Busan National University of Education, Yonhap News reported.
Vaccine safety may become a contentious issue in South Korea’s presidential election. The opposition People’s Power Party last week held a public hearing on vaccine side effects, inviting alleged victims and their family members to offer suggestions for support measures that presidential candidate Yoon Seok-yeol may adopt.
Kim Jong-in, the party’s campaign chairman, reportedly accused President Moon Jae-in’s administration of being indifferent on vaccine damages. The administration has pledged to compensate victims of vaccine side effects, but it’s also the arbiter of whether injuries and deaths are attributed to the jabs. “I think the people have reached a point where they can’t trust the government,” Kim said.
[…]
Via https://nworeport.me/2021/12/27/protests-over-post-vaccination-deaths-spread-across-south-korea/
More Ventura Nurses Blow Whistle on ‘Overwhelming’ Numbers of Heart Attacks, Clotting, Strokes
Nurse shortages, caused by people fleeing California and the health care profession, have local hospitals scrambling to provide care.
More VC Nurses Blow Whistle on ‘Overwhelming’ Numbers of Heart Attacks, Clotting, Strokes
By Joel Kilpatrick -December 14, 2021
After the Conejo Guardian’s report onalarming trends in Ventura County hospitals, more nurses have come forward to affirm the rise in unexplained heart problems, strokes and blood clotting in local vaccinated patient populations. They also say doctors refuse to consider that these could be adverse reactions to Covid shots.
Sam, a critical care nurse at an ICU in a Ventura County hospital, came forward because, “I’m tired of all the B.S. that’s going on,” he told the Guardian. “It’s crazy how nobody questions anything anymore.”
“NONE [OF THE DOCTORS] QUESTION WHETHER THE VACCINE CAUSES MYOCARDITIS, PERICARDITIS AND THE STROKES THAT ARE COMING IN. IF THEY DON’T TOE THE LINE, THEY COULD LOSE THEIR MEDICAL LICENSE.”
He has witnessed a surge in numbers of young people experiencing severe health problems…
View original post 1,730 more words
Ancient Civilizations of Australia and the Pacific
Episode 29: Lifeways of Australia and the Pacific
The Big History of Civilizations (2016)
Dr Craig G Benjamin
Film Review
According to Benjamin, human beings first settled in Australia 50,000 years ago when Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania were still joined as a single continent. The first evidence of agriculture in Australasia dates back to 8000 BC in the highlands of New Guinea. Initially crops were limited taro and yams, but after sophisticated drainage channels were built around 5000 BC, residents were growing bananas, yams and sweet potatoes as well. According to archeological evidence they lived in small agrarian villages and engaged in art, religious rituals and warfare.
Indigenous Australians never adopted agriculture from their northern neighbors. As “affluent foragers,” they procured enough food via hunting, fishing and gathering. The Gunditjmara took an initial step towards agriculture by constructing ponds that entrapped eels. The aborigines in this region established permanent villages, social hierarchies and elaborate trade networks extending hundreds and thousands of miles.
In the Pacific, the Philippines and Solomon Islands were first inhabited around 40,000 BC. Around 2000 BC, people speaking Austronesian* languages began exploring and occupying other Pacific Islands. By 1000 BC, they had reached Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji with canoes filled with obsidian tools; sophisticated fishing technology; ceramic pots; domesticated dogs, chickens and pigs and 15 plant species, including taro, yam and bananas. By 900 BC they had reached Tonga and by 700 BC Samoa.
The settlement of the Pacific islands relied on the invention of the triangular sail (which enabled a boat to against the wind) and the single and double outrigger canoes. Extremely skilled at using stars and tides to navigate, early Pacific Island settlers established giant trade networks extending 4,000 miles.
Around 800 AD, they migrated further eastward reaching Hawaii, the Marquesas Islands, Society Island and Rapa Nui (Easter Island)** around 1200 AD. Owing to unfavorable prevailing winds, New Zealand was settled last in 1300 AD.
All these islands shared governance by hereditary chiefs and common religious and agricultural practices. They also share a common history of distant ancestors originating in Hawaitki (which Benjamin believes refers to Samoa and Tonga).
The South Island of New Zealand was too cold to grow the topical plants Māori settlers brought in their canoes so South Island Māori reverted to foraging. North Island Māori raised kumara (sweet potatoes), taro and other tropical plants. They lived in agrarian. socially stratified villages ruled by hereditary chiefs, grew taro, yam, gourd and ti pore (Pacific cabbage tree) and engaged in war.
When the first Europeans arrived, Aotearoa (NZ) had a population of about 100,000, most settled in the North Island.
Rapa Nui had an extremely wealthy agrarian civilization prior to its collapse from deforestation. Under the rule of powerful chiefs they constructed as many as 70,000 carved stone statues, some weighing as much as much as 80 tons. Prior to the collapse of their complex agrarian society (which led them to revert to foraging), they developed their own written language.
Hawaii also had a very successful agrarian civilization supported by pigs, intensive irrigation, terraced gardens and aquaculture ponds. Some of the Hawaiian kingdoms that emerged were as large a Sumer’s city-states.
Tonga and Samoa also evolved into complex hierarchical societies whose leaders built massive stone monuments and complex irrigation schemes. At one point Tonga reached a population of 40,000.
*The Austronesian language group is believed to have originated around Taiwan and spread first to the Philippines and the Bismarck Archipelago and from there to the more eastern Pacific Islands.
**Benjamin believes that early Rapa Nui settlers may have sailed their canoes 800 miles to Chile, explaining the presence of pre-Columbian sweet potato crops in Chile and Chilean chickens in Rapa Nui.
Can be view free on Kanopy with library card.
https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/lifeways-australia-and-pacific
December 26, 2021
New Zealand okays euthanasia for COVID patients
“In some circumstances a person with COVID-19 may be eligible for assisted dying”.
NZ government
Are patients ‘eligible’ in the same way that we are all ‘eligible’ for vaccination and need to have our arms twisted by forcing us out of normal life?
Seemorerocks
Are patients ‘eligible’ in the same way that we are all ‘eligible’ for vaccination and need to have our arms twisted by forcing us out of normal life?
Patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19 can die by euthanasia if doctors decide they might not survive, the New Zealand government has declared.
The Ministry of Health confirmed that a right to a lethal injection under a new euthanasia law could extend to patients who were either dying from the coronavirus or suffering unbearably from its consequences.
In response to a request for clarity on a euthanasia law which came into force last month, the government declared that “in some circumstances a person with COVID-19 may be eligible for assisted dying”.
The admission that COVID patients were eligible for a lethal jab came after Henoch Kloosterboer, editor of the anti-euthanasia The Defender website, made a request under the Official Information Act – the New Zealand equivalent to the 2000 Freedom of Information Act.
He said the policy left “the door wide open for abuse” of elderly and vulnerable patients – especially if the country’s health service came under pressure from a COVID surge.
He said: “It would not be hard to envisage a situation in which a speedy and sizeable rise in COVID-19 hospitalisations could result in pressure to utilise euthanasia and assisted suicide as tools to resolve such a serious crisis.”
The euthanasia law, he added, “has now made the COVID-19 pandemic potentially even more dangerous for the people of Aotearoa New Zealand”.
The 2019 End of Life Choice Act is considered to be one of the most extreme euthanasia laws anywhere in the world, and critics say the safeguards are so flimsy that they are easily circumvented.
It permits both euthanasia and assisted suicide for adults suffering from an illness which would be terminal within six months, or who were in an advanced state of irreversible physical decline or who were suffering unbearably.
The law, ratified following a referendum in 2020, guarantees all residents the right of access to a doctor who will kill them within a period as short as four days from receiving a request.
Doctors receive a government fee of $1,000 plus expenses for every euthanasia death they perform.
[…]
Via https://seemorerocks.is/new-zealand-okays-euthanasia-for-covid-patients/
“Alexa, You’re Fired”: 1/4 of Users Abandon Spying Devices Within 2 Weeks
NWO Report
Source: John Titor
Anyone with an Amazon Alexa device has likely noticed that the smart speaker has tried to upsell them while asking about the weather in the last few months. This is because Amazon understands there is fading interest in its money-losing Alexa voice-controlled smart speaker division.
According to internal data obtained by Bloomberg, 15% to 25% of new Alexa users during 2018 through 2021 completely abandoned the device in the second week of ownership.
Amazon concluded that the market for smart speakers had “passed its growth phase” last year and would only grow 1.2% annually moving forward.
The company lost $5 on average per Alexa device sold, and by 2028 expects to halve that number. Generating revenue through the Alexa devices has been challenging, hence why Alexa now has features that tell you what to wear when asking about the weather and even suggest buying those clothes on Amazon.
These statistics don’t paint an excellent outlook for Amazon’s money-losing Alexa division that employs more than 10,000 people with fixed costs of around $4.2 billion in 2021. Even though Amazon has focused on new ways to regain user retention, maybe people are just tired of Alexa smart devices spying on them.
There have been countless complaints, 75,000 and counting, of Amazon users fed up with the company’s surveillance capitalism tactics to harvest their data with the core purpose of profit-making. This has spawned into at least three class-action suits alleging that Amazon devices recorded people without permission.
The always-on microphone has sparked controversy with privacy advocates, and their calls to drop the devices have grown louder. Perhaps people are figuring out that having a corporation monitoring their conversations is too intrusive and why user retention is sinking.
[…]
Huge Chemical Manufacturer Issues Sweeping Recall for Personal Care Products Linked to Cancer
NWO Report
Source: Kyle Becker
Procter & Gamble, one of the largest chemical manufacturers of personal care products in the world, has issued a sweeping recall for 32 widely used brands due to the detected presence of the cancer-linked chemical benzene.
The voluntary recall impacts numerous recognized products, such as Pantene, Herbal Essence, Aussie, and Old Spice. The full list is available on the FDA website. The company explained the reason for the recall in an announcement.
“The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE: PG) today issued a voluntary product recall to the consumer level of aerosol dry conditioner spray products and aerosol dry shampoo spray products from Pantene, Aussie, Herbal Essences, and Waterless produced in the United States, in addition to previously discontinued aerosol dry shampoo products from Old Spice and Hair Food, due to the presence of benzene detected in some products,” the company said.
It provided a reason in a “risk statement” about the detected presence of benzene in the products.
“Risk Statement: Benzene is classified as a human carcinogen,” the company said. “Exposure to benzene can occur by inhalation, orally, and through the skin and it can result in cancers including leukemia and blood cancer of the bone marrow and blood disorders which can be life-threatening.”
[…]
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