This Week's Must Reads - 03-09 July 2023

A summary of this week's most interesting news, studies, reports and articles

I spend a lot of time each day gathering new information and interesting articles. I then pick the most interesting topic and write about it but that leaves a lot of information that I’m not sharing.

Below is a summary of all the best articles and information from this week. This weekly summary is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• White House cautiously opens the door to study blocking sun’s rays to slow global warming. A Biden administration report required by Congress outlines research options for a last-ditch effort to slow the heating of the planet. But the White House says it’s not changing its climate strategy. The controversial concept known as solar radiation modification is a potentially effective response to fighting climate change, but one that could have unknown side effects stemming from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, some scientists say.

• Report: Sun’s activity could peak 2-years earlier than expected; Chinese scientist warn of imminent global cooling. The Sun could reach solar maximum by the end of this year, according to a report from Live Science. In January, scientists observed more than 140 sunspots — far higher than originally predicted. However, rather than indicating a fierce and extended solar cycle to come, scientists are calling instead for its peak, and so demise, to come a lot sooner.

• Tampering With CET. As you can see, for most of the record up to 1970, the adjustments are small and with no obvious pattern, ups and downs offsetting each other. Then quite suddenly the years from 1970 to 2003 have been cooled quite markedly. Then just as abruptly the temperatures have been consistently adjusted up again.

• The net-zero time bomb that will make holidays more expensive. A raft of new environmental measures are on the horizon that threaten to render the days of cheap flights history. Under the EU’s Refuel programme agreed earlier this year, airlines will have to blend two per cent of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) into their fuel loads by 2025 and six per cent by 2030. Airline executives say global annual output would barely fuel their fleets for a few days.

Covid

• Machine learning links unresolving secondary pneumonia to mortality in patients with severe pneumonia, including COVID-19. Unsuccessful treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is associated with higher mortality. The relatively long ICU length of stay (LOS) for patients with COVID-19 was primarily due to prolonged respiratory failure, placing them at higher risk of VAP.

• Congress seeks NIH emails suggesting Fauci worked behind scenes to snuff COVID lab leak stories. House coronavirus subcommittee demands materials David Morens hid using his personal email and cellphone, transcribed interview. Fauci adviser suggested suing critics to silence them. Morens notified the scientists Sept. 9, 2021, that "As you know, I try to always communicate on Gmail because my NIH email is FOIA'D constantly," his email says. The other scientists can still email him, and "I will delete anything I don't want to see in the New York Times."

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• CISA Was Behind the Attempt to Control Your Thoughts, Speech, and Life. On Monday, the House Judiciary Committee released a report on how the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) “colluded with Big Tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor Americans,” adding to the informational firehose we work to imbibe.

• Lockdowns: the Self-Inflicted Disaster. Governments’ use of the pandemic to claim sweeping new emergency powers has had destructive effects. Long before Covid struck, economists detected a deadly pattern in the impact of natural disasters: if the executive branch of government used the emergency to claim sweeping new powers over the citizenry, more people died than would have if government powers had remained constrained. It’s now clear that the Covid pandemic is the deadliest confirmation yet of that pattern.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• China to Restrict Exports of Metals Critical to Chip Production. Gallium and germanium, along with their chemical compounds, will be subject to export controls starting Aug. 1, China’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Monday. China is the leading producer of 20 critical raw materials, including gallium and germanium, as measured by its share of global mining. These two metals are used in a wide range of products such as solar panels, lasers, night-vision goggles and computer chips.

• UK tax burden hits historic high.

• INSEE data showing a 17% drawdown in food consumption in France.

  

• Researchers: We've Underestimated The Risk of Simultaneous Crop Failures Worldwide. The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a "wake up call" about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. In the new research published in Nature Communications, researchers in the United States and Germany looked at the likelihood that several major food producing regions could simultaneously suffer low yields.

• Russia confirms BRICS will create a gold-backed currency. The gold market could see new bullish momentum as the world could see a new type of gold standard. Friday, according to state-run RT, the Russian government has confirmed that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, also known as BRICS nations, will introduce a new trading currency backed by gold. The official announcement is expected to be made during the BRICS summit in August in South Africa.

• Samsung Electronics Q2 profit down nearly 96% to hit 14-year low. The world's largest memory chip and smartphone maker estimated its April-June profit at 600 billion won ($461.2 million), significantly down from the 14.1 trillion won it reported a year ago. It marked the worst quarterly profit in 14 years since the first quarter of 2009, when the Korean tech giant reported 590 billion won in operating profit.

Health

• Anxiety grips the world as Japan readies to release Fukushima radioactive water into the oceans. The treated water has been lying at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has confirmed that the decision is consistent with its safety standards.

• 'Forever Chemicals' In At Least 45 Percent Of US Tap Water: USGS Study. The study by the U.S. Geological Survey tested for the presence of 32 types of PFAS from samples taken from 716 locations—269 private wells and 447 public supply—across the nation from 2016 to 2021.

• Antidepressants Can Cause ‘Chemical Castration’. Antidepressants can cause severe, sometimes irreversible, sexual dysfunction that persists even after discontinuing the medication. Sufferers have described it as ‘chemical castration’ — a type of genital mutilation caused by antidepressants, mainly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

History

• Giant stone artefacts found on rare Ice Age site in Kent. A total of 800 artefacts, thought to be more than 300,000 years old and buried in material which filled a sinkhole and ancient river channel were discovered. Senior archaeologist Letty Ingrey said the discovery included a footlong hand axe almost too big to be handled. "These hand axes are so big it's difficult to imagine how they could have been easily held and used."

Politics

• Nigel Farage and the corporate war on dissent. If we allow banks to unperson people, we open the door to tyranny. A new and terrifying front is being opened up in the culture wars. Where once you could be deplatformed for refusing to toe the establishment line, now you can be defunded, debanked, financially unpersoned – deprived of the means of doing business or just living a normal life.

• Rebellion, Not Retreat. Fran Maier is right that we are now at a hinge in history—the end of an age and the beginning of something new. Anyone who thinks he or she knows exactly what will emerge next is probably wrong. Whatever is coming next, it will be a very different world from the one we’ve inhabited since World War II.

• When did the left become pro-riot? There is nothing progressive about the violence in France. The consensus in France is overwhelmingly opposed to the rioting and violence, of course. But there have been some on the left who have sought to justify or excuse the destruction, to treat it as a legitimate response to police racism or deprivation – just as some American leftists responded to the BLM riots.

• Judge limits Biden administration contact with social media firms. A federal judge in Louisiana ruled Tuesday that the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by censoring unfavorable views on social media over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, calling the efforts “Orwellian.”

• [2016] You’ve Got to Stop Voting. The most common activist strategies, such as street demonstrations, protests, etc., rarely seem to bring about any change in government. There is only one nonviolent tactic that has been proven to work. Boycotting elections alone will not oust the oligarchy, but it is the only proven non-violent way to delegitimize a government.

• UN Demands Permanent Global Emergency Powers to Tackle ‘Climatic Events’ and ‘Pandemics’. The organization claims it needs the power to override sovereign countries’ laws during any “complex global shocks” such as a “major event in outer space” or a “major climatic event” on Earth.

• Leaked documents reveal Reuters helped overthrow Egyptian democracy. Reuters served as a channel for the UK Foreign Office to covertly fund an Egyptian outlet that clamored for the overthrow of the country’s first democratically elected leader, leaked documents show.

• 'America's Darkest Secret': Sex Trafficking, Child Abuse and the Biden Administration. Currently, at least 85,000 children are believed to be missing. "Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.... Realizing that we were not offering children the American dream, but instead putting them into modern-day slavery with wicked overlords was a terrible revelation”.

• ‘Missing’ Biden corruption case witness Dr. Gal Luft details allegations against president’s family in extraordinary video. The “missing witness” from the Biden corruption investigation, Israeli professor Dr. Gal Luft, has laid out his bribery allegations against the president’s family in an extraordinary video filmed in an undisclosed location while he’s on the run.

• Mark Zuckerberg spent $43M on security, but gives millions to ‘defund police’ groups. Since 2020, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has donated $3 million to PolicyLink, the organization behind DefundPolice.org, according to investigative reporter Lee Fang. CZI, which Zuckerberg founded with wife Priscilla Chan, has also donated more than $2.5 million to Solidaire, Fang reported, which seeks to do away with policing.

Religion

• Lord’s Prayer opening may be ‘problematic’, says archbishop. Archbishop of York tells General Synod that ‘Our Father’ has patriarchal connotations. “I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

Science

• Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial genome. A goal in biology is to understand the molecular and biological function of every gene in a cell. One way to approach this is to build a minimal genome that includes only the genes essential for life. The resulting JCV-syn3.0 retains genes involved in key processes such as transcription and translation, but also contains 149 genes of unknown function.

• Sun breaks out with record number of sunspots, sparking solar storm concerns. The sun produced over 160 sunspots in June, the highest monthly number in more than two decades. The data confirm that the current solar cycle, the 25th since records began, is picking up intensity at a much quicker pace than NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasted, sparking concerns of severe space weather events in the months and years to come.

Technology

• ChatGPT Creator OpenAI Sued for Theft of Private Data in ‘AI Arms Race’. ChatGPT creator OpenAI Inc. is stealing “vast amounts” of personal information to train its artificial intelligence models in a heedless hunt for profits, a group of anonymous individuals claimed in a lawsuit seeking class action status.

• Snowden Warns Today's Surveillance Technology Makes 2013 Look Like 'Child's Play'. "We trusted the government not to screw us," said Edward Snowden. "But they did. We trusted the tech companies not to take advantage of us. But they did. That is going to happen again, because that is the nature of power." Snowden said that the advent of commercially available surveillance products such as Ring cameras, Pegasus spyware, and facial recognition technology has posed new dangers.

• China’s military is leading the world in brain ‘neurostrike’ weapons: Report. Technology could be key asymmetric warfare tool for Taiwan military assault. The weapons can be used to directly attack or control brains using microwave or other directed energy weapons in handheld guns or larger weapons firing electromagnetic beams, adding that the danger of China‘s brain warfare weapons prior to or during a conflict is no longer theoretical.

Ukraine

• Report Shows How Military Industrial Complex Sets Media Narrative on Ukraine. Wealthy donors have long funded think tanks with official-sounding names that produce research that reflects the interests of those funders. The weapons industry is a major contributor to these idea factories; a recent report from the Quincy Institute demonstrates just how much influence war profiteers have on the national discourse.

• Military briefing: Ukraine provides ideal ‘testing ground’ for western weaponry. Kyiv’s defence minister says allies are gaining priceless intelligence about the performance of their munitions. The war in Ukraine is the first time that Nato weaponry is being used on a large scale against Russia’s army — after pleas for assistance from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — and it is giving western militaries invaluable insights into the performance of their kit.

• The CIA's Blind Spot about the Ukraine War. "There is a clandestine war, with clandestine rules, underlying all of what is going on in Ukraine," says a Biden administration senior intelligence official who also spoke with Newsweek. "Is the CIA on the ground inside Ukraine?" he asks rhetorically. "Yes, but it's also not nefarious." The CIA was central to the war even before it started.

• Ukraine destroyed the Kakhovka dam: a forensic assessment. In multiple ways, the dam’s destruction echoes the 2022 destruction of the Russian-owned Nord Stream 2 pipeline. That pipeline was a piece of civilian infrastructure; was destroyed by an explosion; its destruction caused a massive environmental disaster; Ukraine denies any role; many European governments claimed Russia had blown up its own pipeline; and Western media either explicitly claimed Russia had done it (Time) or tendentiously sought to implicate Russia (New York Times, Guardian).

• FLASHBACK: Last year Jen Psaki said use of cluster bombs would be a 'war crime'—now Biden sending them to Ukraine. Recently, Joe Biden proclaimed on CNN that he would be handing Ukraine a group of cluster bombs, which have been banned by 108 nations following the signing of the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. Cluster bombs can leave behind residue that could severely injure or even kill innocent people years later.

Vaccines

• Rare link between coronavirus vaccines and Long Covid–like illness starts to gain acceptance. Studies probe unusual cases of neurologic complications, blood pressure swings, and other side effects. “You see one or two patients and you wonder if it’s a coincidence,” says Anne Louise Oaklander, a neurologist and researcher at Harvard Medical School. “But by the time you’ve seen 10, 20,” she continues, trailing off. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

• CDC Altered Minnesota Death Certificates that List a Covid Vaccine as a Cause of Death. Someone (who needs to remain anonymous) was able to obtain the death certificates from Minnesota for all deaths that occurred from 2015 to the present, which presented the opportunity to see if the CDC is being entirely honest about the US death data. Unsurprisingly, the CDC is not.