This Week's Must Reads - 11-17 March 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 fascinating 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

• Mars influences Earth’s climate, scientists discover. Mars affects Earth’s climate by dragging it closer to the Sun in 2.4 million-year cycles, scientists have found. Researchers have discovered geological evidence proving how the gravitational pull of Mars influences long-term global warming, speeding up the circulation of the oceans. The team, from the University of Sydney and Sorbonne University, used drilling data dating back 65 million years from hundreds of sites worldwide to look at how deep-sea currents change over time. Earth is around 200,000 years into the current warming cycle, and will reach the next warming peak in around one million years.

• Net Zero, the Digital Panopticon and the Future of Food. The food transition, the energy transition, net-zero ideology, programmable central bank digital currencies, the censorship of free speech and clampdowns on protest. What’s it all about? To understand these processes, we need to first locate what is essentially a social and economic reset within the context of a collapsing financial system. In response to a collapsing neoliberalism, we are now seeing the rollout of an authoritarian great reset — an agenda that intends to reshape the economy and change how we live.

• Effects of geoengineering must be urgently investigated, experts say. Richard Spinrad, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said the government-backed body was estimating the effects of some of the likely techniques for geoengineering, including those involving the oceans. Potential geoengineering techniques include seeding the oceans with iron to absorb more carbon dioxide, or spraying water from the oceans into low-level clouds to reflect some of the sun’s radiation.

Covid

• Preventive Vitamin D Supplementation and Risk for COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. This is the first meta-analysis conducted exclusively on studies that considered preventive vitamin D supplementation in people not affected by COVID-19 infection. The results seem to support the use of vitamin D, especially in populations with vitamin D deficiencies, in the prevention of COVID-19 infection and in the prevention of related complications.

• Time to stop using term ‘long Covid’ as symptoms no worse than those after flu, Queensland’s chief health officer says. The lead author of the study, the state’s chief health officer Dr John Gerrard, said it was “time to stop using terms like ‘long Covid’” because they imply there is something unique about the longer-term symptoms associated with the virus, and in some cases create hypervigilance. Gerrard said long Covid may have appeared to be a distinct and severe illness because of the high number of people infected with Covid-19 within a short period of time, rather than the severity of long Covid symptoms.

• Weaponising ‘long Covid’ damaged public trust. The idea that long Covid presents a unique and significant threat to the enduring health of millions of people has become established as an article of faith among many in the public health establishment. The politicisation of post-Covid-19 symptoms is unhelpful both to medical professionals and the broader public. Ending the use of the term “long Covid” would be a positive step in reversing this trend.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Four Years Ago This Week, Freedom Was Torched. The death of American liberty happened around four years ago, when the orders went out from all levels of government to close all indoor and outdoor venues where people gather. It was not quite a law and it was never voted on by anyone. Seemingly out of nowhere, people who the public had largely ignored, the public health bureaucrats, all united to tell the executives in charge – mayors, governors, and the president – that the only way to deal with a respiratory virus was to scrap freedom and the Bill of Rights. And they did, not only in the US but all over the world.

• Excessive alcohol deaths surged 29% during COVID pandemic, CDC data reveals. The number of deaths related to excessive alcohol surged amid the stress and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. The annual average number of deaths stemming from alcohol use jumped 29%, to 178,000 from 138,000, between 2016-2017 and 2020-2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed last month. At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, that was about 488 deaths per day, the data showed.

• Martin Kulldorff - Harvard Tramples the Truth. When it came to debating Covid lockdowns, Veritas wasn’t the university’s guiding principle. Martin is no longer a professor of medicine at Harvard. The Harvard motto is Veritas, Latin for truth. But, as he discovered, truth can get you fired. This is his story—a story of a Harvard biostatistician and infectious-disease epidemiologist, clinging to the truth as the world lost its way during the Covid pandemic. Science cannot survive in a society that does not value truth and strive to discover it.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• “We Will Have A Hard Landing At Some Point. I Guarantee You That.” Ellen Zentner is Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist, and she is the one that said it. During an interview with CNBC she warned that “the tightening impacts from monetary policy” will have enormous consequences for the U.S. economy in the months ahead. Higher interest rates have certainly started to cause a lot of problems, but if rates are not brought down soon the level of pain that we are experiencing will begin to go up dramatically.

• UK’s Hope for Economic Rebound Fades With Slide in Job Vacancies. Job vacancies in England have fallen to their lowest in more than three years. Data provided by Reed Recruitment and analysed by Bloomberg show listings for open positions fell by almost a quarter in the three months to February compared to a year earlier. The number of applications rose by a fifth year-on-year for February, adding to evidence that what was once a red-hot labor market has cooled significantly.

• Homebuyers need to earn 80% more than in 2020 to afford a house in this market. It’s not just due to high mortgage rates. Factors beyond high mortgage rates are affecting housing affordability for many Americans, according to experts. Almost four years ago, a household earning $59,000 annually could afford a new mortgage without spending more than 30% of their monthly income and with a 10% down payment, according to a recent report by Zillow Group. That is no longer the case today. While the typical household in 2024 makes about $81,000 a year, up from $66,000 in 2020, wages have not kept up with housing costs.

• The Truth Business Leaders Need to Face. A silent disruption of population health and human potential is causing a decline in economic growth and increased poverty worldwide. The number of citizens losing trust in leaders from public-private partnerships that ruled and mandated public health and climate policies and are responsible for eroding human capital is rising. Recovery via improved investments is urgently needed. Creating healthy generations and rebuilding a flourishing economy both require trusted independent business leaders from small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who uphold finding truth and not doing harm as bedrock principles.

• Cities Face Cutbacks as Commercial Real Estate Prices Tumble. Lost tax revenue fuels concerns over an urban ‘doom loop.’ Steep discounts have become normal for office space across the United States as the pandemic trends of hybrid and remote work have persisted, hollowing out urban centers that were once bustling with workers. But the losses are hitting more than just commercial real estate investors. Cities are also starting to bear the brunt, as municipal budgets that rely on taxes associated with valuable commercial property are now facing shortfalls and contemplating cutbacks as lower assessments of property values reduce tax bills.

• The big players continue to dump stocks. This time Peter Theil has sold over $170 million of Palantir Technologies shares.

  

• No recovery in sight for Germany economy, ministry says. A tangible recovery in Europe's biggest economy is not yet in sight despite positive trends in industrial production, construction and foreign trade at the start of 2024, Germany's economy ministry said on Friday in its monthly report. "This is due to persistently weak domestic demand, high financing costs and continued subdued sentiment among private households and companies," said the ministry in its report.

Health

• A Simple Change: Switching to Potassium-Enriched Salt Could Save Millions of Lives. Experts recommend adding low-sodium potassium-enriched salt to hypertension guidelines to combat high blood pressure and related health risks. This recommendation follows evidence that potassium-enriched salt can reduce sodium intake and increase potassium intake, offering a taste-neutral solution to a widespread health issue.

• Broccoli's Anti-Cancer Compound Could Have a Whole Other Health Benefit. A chemical found naturally in broccoli could one day prevent and treat the blood clots that can lead to strokes – currently the second leading cause of death worldwide. Researchers, led by a team from the University of Sydney in Australia, conducted a series of lab tests on 23 compounds commonly found in plants to determine their fondness for bonding with our blood's platelets.

• Why are so many young people getting cancer? What the data say. Statistics from around the world are now clear: the rates of more than a dozen cancers are increasing among adults under the age of 50. This rise varies from country to country and cancer to cancer, but models based on global data predict that the number of early-onset cancer cases will increase by around 30% between 2019 and 2030. In the United States, colorectal cancer — which typically strikes men in their mid-60s or older — has become the leading cause of cancer death among men under 50.

• The Unsaturated Truth: Drop Seed Oils If You Want to Be Healthy. The industrial revolution changed food processing forever. Oils could be extracted from plants on an industrial scale. Advanced nations began consuming vegetable oils high in omega-6 polyunsaturated fats. Omega-6 oils are easily oxidised, especially when heated. Cells are more likely to become damaged due to oxidation creating oxidative stress and chronic inflammation, two symptoms that characterise many chronic diseases including but not limited to: cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia, and metabolic diseases including obesity and diabetes type 2.

Middle East

• Netanyahu vows to defy Biden’s ‘red line’ on Rafah. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to press ahead with an invasion of the city of Rafah on the southern border of the Gaza Strip in defiance of U.S. President Joe Biden, who has warned such an offensive would be a "red line." Amid signs of increasing frustration with Netanyahu, the U.S. president told MSNBC on Saturday that he opposed an escalation of the conflict into Rafah, and that he could not accept "30,000 more Palestinians dead."

Politics

• UCL lecturer warns academic freedom at risk as module removed after student complaints. Academic freedoms are at risk in UK universities, according to an associate professor at University College London (UCL) who says staff are caving in to demands from Chinese students seeking to influence British academia. Michelle Shipworth, who teaches energy and social sciences, told Sky News the university removed a module from her after complaints were raised by Chinese students. The academic had included a data set slide on slavery during one of her teaching exercises, asking why there are so many slaves in China.

• How Canada became a cauldron of authoritarianism. It seems Justin Trudeau isn’t only a dick – he also gets his ideas from one. Philip K Dick, to be precise. Trudeau’s government has proposed a new law that would give judges the power to put an individual under house arrest if they fear he might commit a hate crime. That’s right – might. It’s right out of The Minority Report, Dick’s 1956 dystopian tale of a future America in which a ‘Precrime’ police division uses intelligence from mutants known as ‘precogs’ to arrest people before they’ve committed an offence. Welcome to woke Canada, where Dickian nightmares come true.

• American politics is going through a racial realignment, with non-white voters shifting away from the Democrats and towards the Republicans.

  

• The Great Election Fraud: Manufactured Choices Make a Mockery of Our Republic. Unfortunately, what is being staged is not an election. It is a mockery of an election. This year’s presidential election, much like every other election in recent years, is what historian Daniel Boorstin referred to as a “pseudo-event”: manufactured, contrived, confected and devoid of any intrinsic value save the value of being advertised. For the next eight months, Americans will be dope-fed billions of dollars’ worth of political propaganda. Forcing the citizenry to choose between two candidates who are equally unfit for office does not in any way translate to having some say in how the government is run.

• Irish voters have delivered a stunning blow to the establishment. In Friday’s dual referendum, voters overwhelmingly rejected the government’s attempts to change the meaning of ‘family’ and the references to women in Ireland’s constitution. Sixty-seven per cent voted ‘No’ in the ‘family’ referendum and 74 per cent voted similarly in the ‘care’ referendum. In the family referendum, the government wanted to change the meaning of ‘family’, as defined in the 1937 constitution, so that it extended beyond marriage to include households based on ‘durable relationships’.

• Boeing whistleblower’s lawyers question whether he committed suicide, call for thorough probe: ‘No one can believe it’. “We need more information about what happened to John,” attorneys Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, who represent former Boeing manager John Barnett, said in a statement Tuesday. “The Charleston police need to investigate this fully and accurately and tell the public. “We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life,” they added. “No one can believe it.” “No detail can be left unturned.” Barnett, 62, was due in court for further testimony in a bombshell lawsuit against the company when he was found dead, with the Charleston County coroner ruling the cause as a “self-inflicted” wound.

• F.A.A. Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues. A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times. For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.

• US investigators say video footage overwritten of work on Boeing jet's door plug. The head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said on Wednesday investigators still do not know who worked on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 door plug involved in a Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines midair emergency and that video footage was overwritten. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a letter to senators that investigators sought security camera footage when the door plug was opened and closed in September but were informed the material was overwritten.

• It may now be too late for the West, a corpse that cannot be galvanised. Elected governments no longer have the power or will to do what is needed to save our free societies. Are we and most of the West so fragmented and leaderless that we remain inert in the face of danger, however many shocks we receive? George Orwell wrote of the 1930s that “like the mass of the people [the government] did not want to pay the price either of peace or of war”. Here we are again, hoping it will all go away.

• British people are the second most miserable in the entire world! The new Mental State of the World report ranks happiness based on surveys of satisfaction. Clearly relative wealth does not equal happiness.

  

  

• CIA allegedly made fake social media accounts to troll the Chinese government. Reuters reports the operation began in 2019 and was also aimed at causing paranoia within Xi Jinping’s government. CIA agents reportedly made fake social media accounts to spread rumors, such as allegations that Communist Party members hid ill-gotten wealth outside the country, and criticize Chinese government initiatives, like saying a program financing infrastructure projects in other countries was corrupt. Reuters said the operation, authorized by then-President Donald Trump, operated beyond China and used social media to influence public opinion in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Science

• Bees Reveal a Human-Like Collective Intelligence We Never Knew Existed. When trained in the lab to open a two-step puzzle box, bumblebees of the species Bombus terrestris could teach the solution to another bee that had never seen the box before. This naive bee would not have solved the puzzle on its own. To teach the 'demonstrator' bees the non-intuitive solution in the first place, researchers had to show them what to do and offer them a reward after the first step to keep them motivated.

• Reading aloud boosts memory, but not understanding. This interest in reading aloud as a study strategy dates back to early 20th-century research, which suggested that vocalization could aid in memorizing material, a phenomenon later termed the “production effect.” Yet, while the production effect’s influence on memory has been well-documented, its impact on deeper comprehension remains less clear, highlighting a gap in our understanding of how vocalization influences learning beyond mere recall. Despite the clear benefits for memory recall, reading aloud did not confer any significant advantage for comprehension.

Technology

• False GPS signal surge makes life hard for pilots. False GPS signals that deceive on-board plane systems and complicate the work of airline pilots are surging near conflict zones, industry employees and officials told AFP. A ground collision alert sounds in the cockpit, for instance, even though the plane is flying at high altitude—a phenomenon affecting several regions and apparently of military origin. This includes the vicinity of Ukraine following the Russian invasion two years ago, the eastern Mediterranean and the air corridor running above Iraq, according to pilots and officials interviewed by AFP. Disruptions which were previously limited to jamming preventing access to signals from geolocation satellites are now also taking a more dangerous form making it difficult to counter spoofing. This sees a plane receive false coordinates, times and altitudes.

• Newly declassified footage reveals Britain's deadly DragonFire LASER weapon that can blow up drones and hypersonic nuclear missiles at the speed of light - and for just £10 a shot. In these secret trials at the Military of Defence's Hebrides Range, the weapon proved so accurate it could hit a £1 coin half a mile away. Its full range remains classified, but the invisible 50kW beam can cut through targets using it 'pin-point accuracy' and does not require any ammunition. The weapons platform, which military chiefs say will revolutionise the battlefield of the future, could one day be used to annihilate fighter jets, warships and hypersonic missiles.

• Mysterious Drones Swarmed Langley AFB For Weeks. Langley Air Force Base, located in one of the most strategic areas of the country, across the Chesapeake Bay from the sprawling Naval Station Norfolk and the open Atlantic, was at the epicenter of waves of mysterious drone incursions that occurred throughout December. The War Zone has been investigating these incidents and the response to them for months. We know that they were so troubling and persistent that they prompted bringing in advanced assets from around the U.S. government, including one of NASA's WB-57F high-flying research planes. Now the U.S. Air Force has confirmed that they did indeed occur and provided details on the timeframe and diversity of drones involved.

Ukraine

• Russia producing three times more artillery shells than US and Europe for Ukraine. Russia is producing about 250,000 artillery munitions per month, or about 3 million a year, according to NATO intelligence estimates of Russian defense production shared with CNN, as well as sources familiar with Western efforts to arm Ukraine. Collectively, the US and Europe have the capacity to generate only about 1.2 million munitions annually to send to Kyiv, a senior European intelligence official told CNN.

• ‘Your vampire ball is over’ – Putin to Western elites. The era of Western elites being able to exploit other nations and other peoples across the world is coming to an end, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in an exclusive interview published by Rossiya 1 and RIA Novosti on Wednesday. The president stated that over the past few centuries, the so-called “golden billion” has grown accustomed to being able to “fill their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money” as they have been “parasitizing” other peoples in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. ”But they must understand that the vampire ball is ending,” Putin said.

• France's Macron says Europe must be ready for war if it wants peace. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday Europe should prepare for war if it wants peace, calling President Vladimir Putin's Russia an adversary that would not stop in Ukraine if it defeated Kyiv's troops in the two-year-old conflict. Macron caused controversy last month after he said he could not rule out the deployment of ground troops in Ukraine in the future, with many leaders distancing themselves from that while others, especially in eastern Europe, expressed support.

Vaccines

• [The latest propaganda] Covid vaccines cut risk of virus-related heart failure and blood clots, study finds. Researchers analysed health records from more than 20 million people across the UK, Spain and Estonia and found consistent evidence that the jabs protected against serious cardiovascular complications of the disease. Writing in the journal Heart, the researchers describe how the adenovirus-based Covid vaccines produced by Oxford-AstraZeneca and Janssen, and the mRNA-based vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, were most protective against Covid-related heart failure and blood clots in the first month after contracting the virus.

• Australian Court Blocks Covid Vaccine Challenge. A judge who previously provided legal counsel to Pfizer has blocked a legal challenge over Moderna’s and Pfizer’s mRNA Covid vaccines, stalling efforts to raise the alarm over alleged unregulated genetically modified organisms (GMOs), including high levels of DNA contamination, in the vials. The dismissal of the lawsuit on the procedural matter of standing is the latest in a string of Covid vaccine-related cases thrown out by Australian courts on narrowly interpreted technicalities, raising questions about the integrity of the courts in arbitrating disputes involving powerful pharmaceutical interests.

• The extent and impact of vaccine status miscategorisation on covid-19 vaccine efficacy studies. It is recognised that many studies reporting high efficacy for Covid-19 vaccines suffer from various selection biases. Systematic review identified thirty-nine studies that suffered from one particular and serious form of bias called miscategorisation bias, whereby study participants who have been vaccinated are categorised as unvaccinated up to and until some arbitrarily defined time after vaccination occurred. Simulation demonstrates that this miscategorisation bias artificially boosts vaccine efficacy and infection rates even when a vaccine has zero or negative efficacy.