This Week's Must Reads - 1-7 January 2024

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 more comprehensive daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• Climate Scientists Say We Should Embrace Higher CO2 Levels. While governments pour billions of dollars into lowering CO2 emissions, several climate experts say CO2 is essential and higher levels are not a problem. According to Patrick Moore, chairman and chief scientist of Ecosense Environmental and co-founder of Greenpeace, the climate change messaging isn’t based in fact. “The whole thing is a total scam,” said Mr. Moore. “There is actually no scientific evidence that CO2 is responsible for climate change over the eons.”

• UN: Natural Disasters Do Not Exist. The globalists at the United Nations need the masses to believe that they are solely responsible for the changing climate. They cannot usurp power and modify our way of life if the masses do buy into the climate change agenda. The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has declared “natural disasters” to be a myth as only human intervention can cause a weather event to be disastrous.

• The tyrannical cult of Greta Thunberg. How the political elites exploited Greta’s moral immaturity to impose their punishing eco-agenda. The globalist elites marshalled her political naivete, even her emotionalism, to the cynical end of scaring the populace witless about climate change. It was Greta’s very artlessness, her moral immaturity, that made her attractive to elites who had long ago tired of engaging with the irritating adults of the electorate. How much easier it is to march a moralistic teen to the global soapbox where she might cry about the world being ‘on fire’ than to gather facts and make arguments to try to sway stubborn, sceptical adults. Greta’s teen fury was weaponised by political operators to circumvent democratic discussion, to impose their punishing eco-ideology by emotional fiat rather than consent.

Covid

• At least £550 million of Covid drugs wasted in the UK. Paxlovid – an antiviral developed by Pfizer and designed to be used shortly after people test positive for Covid-19 – was approved across Britain in 2021. Yet more than one million courses of the antiviral have now expired in the UK, according to a report from the health analytics firm Airfinty. That figure could surge to 2.2 million by the end of June – equivalent to £1.1 billion worth of wasted drugs. Britain’s unused stock is higher than anywhere else in Europe. About 200,000 doses expired before they were prescribed in Spain, and 100,000 in France and Italy, respectively.

• US must come clean on what it’s hiding about Covid origins. The primary reason we don’t know the truth is that the Chinese Communist Party is determined to bury the truth, as it tries to do with everything that goes wrong on its territory. But there’s a second guilty party: the US government. Or, rather, certain parties within it. The distinction is vital. Whereas no one can dislodge state secrets from within the clutches of the Chinese Communist Party, which exercises a totalitarian dictatorship over every aspect of Chinese society, the US has a constitution, a division of powers and laws that make extraction of such things possible.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Rapid help needed for Covid babies who fell behind, says former Ofsted chief. Babies born in England during the Covid crisis have been slower at developing key language, cognitive and social skills, and the veteran education policymaker Sir David Bell is warning that rapid intervention is needed to stop those children being left further behind. More than 80,000 children born in 2020 or 2021 did not reach one or more of the key measures of progress for their age group last year, according to official data highlighted by Labour’s education team, including 60,000 very young children who did not develop communication abilities usually seen in children their age.

• The New York Times pushed this notification to millions of people’s phones yesterday…in 2024.

  

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Shale Is Keeping the World Awash With Oil as Conflicts Abound. The shipping crisis in the Red Sea is expected to raise consumer prices. But it has had little impact on energy prices, largely because of surging supplies from U.S. frackers. When Iranian-backed Houthi militants began launching missiles and drones at ships crossing the Red Sea near Yemen in October, many feared disruption to the vital shipping lane would drive up energy prices. But oil and gas prices this past month have sunk about 5% and 23%, respectively. That is largely because of record production of U.S. fossil fuels.

• Multiple Financial Executives Commit Suicide Amid China’s Financial Crisis. In 2023, at least 96 Chinese financial executive have fallen from grace, and 38 people have been investigated in the five major state-owned banks. “In the past, enterprises were encouraged to operate in debt. Some enterprises did not meet the conditions for loans, but through interpersonal connections, they got the loans anyway. No one asked about it for so many years. Now for the year-end check, someone must be held accountable, can the bank presidents not be anxious? Which sum of money was loaned out without the presidents’ sign? Choosing to commit suicide may be able to save their families or assets.”

• Debunking degrowth. Want to be poorer and less free? Do we have an ideology for you. It is under the guise of environmentalism that the anti-growth ideology is most often promoted today. For eco-mentalists, the aim is not just zero growth but degrowth. Wrongly assuming that economic growth is incompatible with tackling climate change, they want economies to produce less. This is a fringe view and it would lead to appalling consequences if acted upon, so it was a little worrying to see it recently espoused in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals. Last month, Nature published an article titled “Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help”, written by eight academics including Jason Hickel who believes that mankind existed in a state of plenty until capitalism came along and that the phenomenal reduction in global poverty since 1980 hasn’t actually happened. These people have been given €10 million by the European Research Council for a project “that will study how to escape from a growth economy”.

• Massive Layoffs Are Coming in 2024. That's the latest information from a Resume Builder survey, based on responses from more than 900 companies this month. Resume Builder is a professional platform that allows users to create resumes in just a few steps. In the survey, nearly four in 10 companies said they are likely to have layoffs in 2024, prompting increased fears of a recession around the corner. More than half of companies also said they plan to implement a hiring freeze in 2024.

• How to be happy, wealthy, and bankrupt. Financialization, Anomaly and Risk in an Inflecting Economy. It’s been said that, when events turn fast, furious and frightening, and civilians are panicking, the professionals get ever cooler and more calmly calculating. If this is so, we’ll need to be very professional indeed in 2024. One of our most serious challenges is that economic and financial forces are pulling in opposite directions. Transactional activity, and the aggregates of assets and liabilities, are continuing to expand, even as the underlying material economy is inflecting from growth into contraction.

• Calstrs Seeks to Borrow More Than $30 Billion to Manage Cash. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System, the country’s second-largest pension fund, may borrow more than $30 billion to help it maintain liquidity without having to sell assets at fire-sale prices, according to a new policy its investment committee will consider this month.

• Brace Yourself: US Oil Output on the Verge of Decline. Here’s Why. If energy analyst Doomberg is right about effectively unlimited oil, all is well, If he’s wrong, then this view is destructively misleading. How can you decide which view is more likely to be true? By reviewing the data, of course. Chris Martenson says whilst he cannot discount human ingenuity, he can interpret oil data and right now that says, “the days of heady oil growth in the US are over.” Maybe forever due to geology (we’ll have to wait and see), but certainly oil output cannot appreciably grow at these too-low prices (currently ~$72/bbl for WTIC oil).

• Inside The Catastrophic Jobs Report: Record 1.5 Million Crash In Full-Time Jobs, Multiple Jobholders Soar To Record, Native Born Workers Plunge And Much More. While the prevailing post-payrolls narrative has focused on the surprisingly strong headline payrolls number (at 216K, this not only came above most estimates but was the highest in 4 months, denting the Fed's case for a March rate cut) and the far stronger than expected hourly earnings (which rose to 4.1%, but only because hours worked dropped again to 34.3, a level last seen in the pre-covid days from 34.4) and unchanged unemployment rate, which at 3.7% further makes the case for rate cuts quite challenging, a closer look at the details of today's jobs report reveals just how ugly the reality behind the the Budget-Busting Bidenomics truly is.

• Beginning of the End for the Permian. Permian basin and Eagle Ford oil recoveries have both fallen by 30% and Bakken has declined by almost 20%. Those plays accounted for two-thirds of U.S. output in 2023. That means that U.S. production will decline at some time in the relatively near-future. But wait—isn’t the U.S. producing a record amount of oil? Yes, U.S. output increased by more than 1 million barrels per day in 2023 to 13.2 mmb/d and about 80% of that increase was from tight oil plays. How can well performance be decreasing while production is increasing?

• Net interest costs on US national debt grew 40% in 2023.

  

Health

• Too many patients are prescribed drugs they don't need. So here's a radical solution: Let pharmacists de-prescribe. The fact is, many prescribed medicines can be harmful as well as helpful. This is especially true when people are taking multiple drugs that may interact badly, or overburden patients' bodies. A 2022 study by Newcastle University concluded that each additional drug prescribed to a patient was associated with a 3 per cent increased risk of mortality. And as a report published by NHS England (NHSE) in July 2023 concluded, it is not unusual for patients, particularly older people, to be taking ten or more prescribed medications, which could mean a 30 per cent increased risk of dying based solely on the number of medications the patient takes, not their actual condition.

• Record number of excess deaths amid NHS strikes. Nearly 53,000 more people died in 2023 than normal – the highest figure recorded in a non-pandemic year since the Second World War. Prof Heneghan said: “We’re at a tipping point in the NHS. People are dying on the waiting list, those who require emergency care are not being sought and seen quickly enough, and social care is almost non-existent.” He said many GPs had not worked for seven of the last 10 days, with a quarter of their number being made up of junior doctors.

• Glyphosate, commonly found in many weed killers, has been under scrutiny for potentially acting like estrogen, a hormone in the body. This study explores how glyphosate might cause these effects using breast cancer cells that respond to estrogen. The results suggest that at high levels, glyphosate can mimic estrogen, affecting estrogen receptors and leading to increased cell growth and other changes in the cells. The exact way glyphosate does this involves complex interactions at the molecular level, particularly with the part of the estrogen receptor that binds to hormones. This finding indicates that glyphosate could potentially disrupt normal hormonal functions at high concentrations.

• You have one life. Do you really want to spend it looking at your phone? There are many reasons that we’re tethered to our phones, but the one that I find the most infuriating is that our most time-sucking apps are deliberately designed to hook us – because that’s how their creators make money. These apps are part of what’s known as the “attention economy”, in which it’s our attention (and data about what we are likely to pay attention to) – rather than goods or services – that’s being sold.

• Is modern medicine making us sick? Written in the Seventies, Limits to Medicine — Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health (catchy title) constitutes one of several blistering critiques of modernity and post-industrial alienation Illich produced in his heyday. The gist of it is that the more we lather ourselves in technology, the more of our autonomy we inevitably sacrifice, and the more technology we need just to get by in turn. Instead of enhancing nature, we attempt to step beyond it. A self-replenishing negative feedback loop ensues. The result: Nemesis, the envy of the gods.

Middle East

• UK preparing for attacks on Houthi rebels with US. Britain’s military is preparing to launch a wave of air strikes against the Iranian-backed Houthis creating chaos in the Red Sea, raising the prospect of a significant spiralling of tensions in the region. Under the plans the UK would join with the US and possibly another European country to unleash a salvo of missiles against pre-planned targets, either in the sea or in Yemen itself, where the militants are based. It is understood an unprecedented statement is expected to be released by the UK and the US which will warn the Houthis to stop attacking commercial vessels or face the military might of the West.

• War on Gaza: Tony Blair reportedly tapped to relocate Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Channel 12, without citing a source, has reported that Blair recently met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz to go over the possibility of the former British leader taking charge of where Palestinian refugees from Gaza could be relocated.

• Iran Getting Nervous. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei, clearly understands the game at foot. He is aware that the Neocons want to engage Iran, for that would force Russia to defend them as well and turn the heat up in the Middle East. Ali Khamenei has reportedly ordered IRGC Military Commanders to LIMIT their ongoing Attacks on U.S. and Coalition Forces within Syria and Iraq. Khamenei Has made it clear that Iran must Avoid any Direct Military Confrontation with the United States at all Costs.

Politics

• The EU has given up on growth – and could soon self-destruct. Comparing the UK with the sluggish economies of Western Europe may help disguise the overall stagnant condition of the British economy. But we should not forget that GDP per capita figures show the UK – which is trapped in a doom-loop of high taxes and low growth – is trending in the wrong direction. In order to reverse this decline and cement the difference between the UK and other European nations, we must leave behind the stagnancy-inducing, anti-competitive regulation that Western Europe appears so fond of.

• J6: A True Timeline. This video gives the audience a never-before-seen timestamped blueprint for the events of January 6, 2021, as they unfolded in real time. No other film to date fills the gaps or tells the story chronologically the way this film does. The film is also different from anything produced to date because a small group of protestors, some who are J6 defendants, have been the ones to collect hours of footage to help contextualize the events of the day. The film was funded and produced entirely through small donations and tens of thousands of volunteer man hours. The hope is that the film will provoke all Americans to be more curious about the true timeline of January 6.

• Critical Social Justice Subverts Scientific Publishing. The politicization of science – the infusion of ideology into the scientific enterprise – threatens the ability of science to serve humanity. Today, the greatest such threat comes from a set of ideological viewpoints collectively referred to as Critical Social Justice (CSJ). This contribution describes how CSJ has detrimentally affected scientific publishing by means of social engineering, censorship, and the suppression of scholarship.

• Jeffrey Epstein List Sparks New Theory About Bill Gates. The first released list includes high-profile names such as Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Campbell, Cate Blanchett, Cameron Diaz, David Copperfield, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking, Kevin Spacey and Bruce Willis. Bill Gates' name has not been confirmed to be on the list. Four of the 90 names remain redacted, however, causing speculation as to who those people are. Gates, 68, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, has been theorized to be one of the redacted names based on his past admissions in addition to comments made by his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates.

• The box-tickers shall inherit the Earth. In every organisation, whether in the public or private sector, a great inversion has taken place where the people who do actual, useful work (from surgeons to call-centre staff) find themselves working at the behest of a vast army of box-tickers and pen-pushers who demand that they must conform to a host of metrics and proxy targets so their contribution can fit into a cell on a spreadsheet. Although this caste often uses capitalist language, its principal achievement is a kind of Sovietisation of the modern organisation.

• Criminal conspiracy: slowly joining the dots. A throwaway line in a piece of oral evidence at the Horizon IT inquiry yesterday may have revealed more about the cover-up which some are now openly calling a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice at the Post Office. Pardoe’s evidence followed a familiar line – that Post Office investigators were told they shouldn’t consider Horizon as the source of a discrepancy at a branch. Then he said: “There was a persistent sentiment that the system was fit for purpose. I was never in a meeting when it was discussed with me the concept of putting the brakes on prosecution activity.

  It’s clear that there was a fear that, to do that, would immediately cast doubt on prosecutions that had been completed, that had gone before.”

Science

• Archaeologists find network of ancient tunnels at Houchengzui, China. Previous excavations have dated the city to around 4,300 to 4,500 years ago during the Longshan period, which saw the emergence of late Neolithic societies such as the Black Pottery or Longshan culture. Encompassing approximately 341 acres in an oval layout, Houchengzui consists of both an inner and outer city, fortified by a triple defensive system comprised of trenches and walls. A total of 6 underground tunnel passages were discovered at a dept of between 1.5 to 6 metres, which are distributed in a radial pattern from the city centre. The tunnels have an arched ceiling, similar to cave dwellings from the Longshan culture, and measure around 1 to 2 metres in height by 1.5 metres wide.

• Nature - Brain organoid reservoir computing for artificial intelligence. This article talks about a new technology that mimics the human brain for computing purposes. Scientists have created a mini-brain in the lab, known as a brain organoid, and use it to process information. This technology, called "Brainoware," works by connecting the organoid to a device with many small electrodes. By sending specific electrical signals to the organoid, it can perform advanced tasks like remembering information for a short period, and learning by itself through adjustments in its internal network. The technology has been successfully used for recognizing speech and solving complex mathematical equations, similar to how our brain works.

• Possible Meissner effect near room temperature in copper-substituted lead apatite. In an experiment with a material made of copper, lead, and apatite, scientists found that it behaves differently under various magnetic conditions at temperatures below room temperature. When exposed to a weak magnetic field, the material showed no magnetic properties, but in a stronger field, it became magnetic. They also observed that the way they cooled the material - either with or without a magnetic field present - affected its magnetic behavior. This suggests the material has a kind of 'memory' for the conditions it was cooled under. The findings hint at the possibility of the material exhibiting a special type of magnetism, known as the Meissner effect, at room temperature.

• The Universe Is Not Locally Real, and the Physics Nobel Prize Winners Proved It. Elegant experiments with entangled light have laid bare a profound mystery at the heart of reality. One of the more unsettling discoveries in the past half a century is that the universe is not locally real. In this context, “real” means that objects have definite properties independent of observation—an apple can be red even when no one is looking. “Local” means that objects can be influenced only by their surroundings and that any influence cannot travel faster than light. Investigations at the frontiers of quantum physics have found that these things cannot both be true. Instead the evidence shows that objects are not influenced solely by their surroundings, and they may also lack definite properties prior to measurement.

Technology

• A New Kind of AI Copy Can Fully Replicate Famous People. The Law Is Powerless. New AI-generated digital replicas of real experts expose an unnerving policy gray zone. Washington wants to fix it, but it’s not clear how. In the Senate Judiciary Committee, a bipartisan group of senators — including the leaders of the intellectual property subcommittee — are circulating a draft bill titled the NO FAKES Act that would force the makers of AI-generated digital replicas to license their use from the original human.

Ukraine

• Millions Of Ukrainians About To See Salaries & Pensions Paused As Western Aid Dries Up. Just as the Biden administration has announced a new $250 million weapons package for Ukraine, which is to be the last unless Congress approves new spending for next year, Ukraine is warning of salary and pension delays for millions of people in the war-ravaged country. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed last week that after this final aid package, "We will have no more replenishment authority available to us, and we’re going to need Congress to act without delay."

Vaccines

• Why Pfizer’s stock had its worst year of the century in 2023. Pfizer was down 44% when markets opened on Friday. The pharmaceutical giant began 2023 with its stock at $51, only to see shares plummet to $26 in mid-December, a ten-year low. Though shares have nudged up slightly since then, its market cap stands at $162 billion, less than half of what it was just two years ago. When markets closed on Friday, it became official: Pfizer’s stock had its worst year of the 21st century, a distinction the company achieved even as the S&P saw massive gains and rival pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly saw the price of its shares explode by nearly 60%.

• COVID-19 Vaccines Linked to Increased Risk of Swollen Lymph Nodes in Children: Study. The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in children aged 12 and up were linked to increased risks of severe allergic shock, lymphadenopathy, and heart inflammation, according to the paper. Researchers included people as old as 19. In subanalyses, increased risks of acute appendicitis, epilepsy, and convulsions were also detected.

• Florida State Surgeon General Calls for Halt in the Use of COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines. The Surgeon General outlined concerns regarding nucleic acid contaminants in the approved Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, particularly in the presence of lipid nanoparticle complexes, and Simian Virus 40 (SV40) promoter/enhancer DNA. Lipid nanoparticles are an efficient vehicle for delivery of the mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccines into human cells and may therefore be an equally efficient vehicle for delivering contaminant DNA into human cells. The presence of SV40 promoter/enhancer DNA may also pose a unique and heightened risk of DNA integration into human cells.

• Scientists Detect Spike Protein From COVID Vaccination in Long COVID Patients. Scientists in a new paper detected spike protein in the bloodstream of people with long COVID two months after infection and COVID-19 vaccination, suggesting that spike protein may persist in the body much longer than previously predicted and does not remain at the injection site.