This Week's Must Reads - 13-19 May 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

• Evaluating the thermal environmental alterations due to photovoltaic installations in the kushida river basin, Japan. The construction of Photovoltaic (PV) provides renewable energy, but it is also impacting the basins environment. The study simulates the annual construction status of PV installations within the research area over a time series from 2013 to 2023, and to understanding of the trends in Land Surface Temperature (LST) changes due to the PVs. The study found that the LST around PV which built from 2013 to 2023 increased by an average of 2.85 °C.

• [2022] As Carbon Dioxide Grows More Abundant, Trees Are Growing Bigger, Study Finds. Trees are feasting on decades of carbon dioxide emissions and growing bigger as a result, according to a new study of U.S. forests. Scientists tracked wood volume in 10 different tree groups from 1997 to 2017, finding that all except aspen-birch grew larger. More abundant CO2 accelerates photosynthesis, causing plants to grow faster, a phenomenon known as “carbon fertilization.” The findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Covid

• The truth about Covid’s origins is finally coming out. Two of the key figures in the story of Covid’s origins gave away vital new information last week before the US Congress. One of these figures is Ralph Baric, the University of North Carolina professor who invented ingenious techniques for genetically altering coronaviruses. He effectively taught scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China how to do ‘gain of function’ experiments with bat-derived sarbecoviruses to make them more infectious or lethal in humanised mice. The other figure is Peter Daszak, the highly paid president of the non-profit, EcoHealth Alliance. Over many years, EcoHealth Alliance has channelled large sums of US taxpayer money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for ‘gain of function’ experimentation, and for finding new sarbecoviruses in bats.

• Organization at center of ‘lab leak theory’ suspended from federal funds. The Department of Health and Human Services has suspended and initiated debarment proceedings against an organization after scrutiny of its work with the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealed a failure to monitor a risky experiment on coronaviruses, failure to obtain lab notebooks from the Wuhan lab and a long delayed grant report describing the the collaboration’s research in the months before the pandemic. EcoHealth Alliance, helmed by president Peter Daszak, will be ineligible from receiving funds from the U.S. government. The suspension will stand until the debarment proceedings are complete.

• Fauci aide allegedly boasted about ability to ‘make emails disappear’ including ‘smoking guns’. A longtime aide to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci allegedly boasted in emails about his ability to evade public records requests and his intention to delete any potential “smoking guns,” a congressional hearing revealed Thursday. The scrutiny of EcoHealth and NIAID has revealed that Daszak had a close connection to Fauci’s inner circle in the senior advisor to the NIAID director, David Morens. Morens told the committee in a transcribed interview that Daszak is one of his oldest friends. Now evidence has surfaced suggesting that Morens evaded the Freedom of Information Act — which requires that records from federal agencies be made public with limited exceptions — and that an unidentified public records official with the NIH helped him to do so.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Impact of pandemic on wellbeing of the young and the economy must not be trivialised. Children, teenagers and adults in their early 20s were the least likely to have adverse physical consequences but suffered most from the restrictions put in place to prevent the virus spreading. Children were deprived of education. Teenagers were stuck in their homes and unable to see their friends in person. The concentration of young adults working in hospitality meant they were most vulnerable to being furloughed or losing their jobs. It was a recipe for an increase in unhappiness and mental illness – and so it has proved. People in their early 20s are more likely to be out of work because of ill health than those in their early 40s.

• We must stop the pandemic treaty and take back control from the WHO. The bureaucrats who think they run the world are at it again! They are trying to convince our national leaders to sign away our sovereignty, except this time it may seriously damage your health. The legally binding Treaty that our globalist masters may sign next week, won’t be the same Treaty that rules over our lives in years to come. The Treaty can be amended at an annual Conference of the Parties (COP) every year, when civil servants and diplomats from around the world will meet behind closed doors to discuss what additional powers and money they need to build their global public health empire.

• Covid inquiry to become most expensive in history as costs soar to £300k a day and £70m a year. At current rates, the inquiry is set to cost Britons £200m by the time it produces its final report at the end of 2026, pushing it past the £195m spent on the 12-year-long Saville inquiry into the deaths of 13 people on Bloody Sunday, and totalling nearly 10 times as much as the cost of the Leveson inquiry. A total of 265 civil servants are working round the clock on providing documentary evidence for the inquiry and preparing government witnesses to give evidence - which cost Whitehall an additional £100,000 every day last year.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Dangers of dollar nationalism hang over the world economy. The dollar is both America’s and the world’s currency. While the US accounts for roughly 15.5 per cent of global GDP (PPP), the dollar is involved in 88 per cent of all international currency transactions. Some 58 per cent of global reserves are held in the US currency. Some in Washington fear that the US will overuse its sanctions weapon, eroding confidence in the dollar and thus ultimately America’s own source of power. A far more encompassing threat to the status quo, however, comes from the working of the currency system itself.

• US stocks are worth 187% of US GDP whilst the rest of the world’s stocks are worth only 61% of World (-US) GDP.

• The Falklands have just become the most valuable piece of real estate on earth. According to evidence given to the Commons Environment Audit Committee (EAC) last week, Russia has discovered an oil field in Antarctica roughly ten times the size of the North Sea’s entire 50 year output. Much of the field is believed to be in the Weddell sea, just to the east of the Antarctic peninsula and very much in the middle of the UK’s “cheese slice” down there – the British Antarctic Territory. In Antarctica, boundaries are just “claims” rather than solidly “owned”, but it is of note that Britain’s claims in the region overlap with those of Chile and Argentina. It’s a perfect chance for Vladimir Putin to start causing trouble – and it may have made the Falklands islands the most valuable real estate on earth.

• Median US mortgage payments have hit another record high of $2,894. Only three years ago, in 2021, these were around $1,600.

• Martin Armstrong: ‘West Governments Need War Because Their Debts Are No Longer Sustainable’. It is unlikely that we can avoid world war. Governments need war because their debts are no longer sustainable. They will use the war as the excuse for defaults – as was the case for WWII. They will create Bretton Woods II with the IMF digital currency as the reserve. I believe we have a third world war that will begin piecemeal with the Middle East, Iran vs Israel, Europe vs Russia, north Korea vs Japan and South Korea, China vs Taiwan. But they will eventually merge together.

• The UK has the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world…by a long way.

• Government urged to roll out compulsory smart meters as UK at risk of growing water drought. Smart water meters must be made compulsory across all households to protect the UK against severe drought, the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) has insisted. In a new report, they warned that the nation must reduce water supplies to protect itself against surging demand, extreme droughts and a growing population. It said: “The Commission recommended that government should enable all water companies to roll out compulsory smart metered charging to better manage demand.

• Money’s Grim Future. Prepare for total control of your economic life. That is the message from Brownstone Fellow Aaron Day at his 4-hour workshop in San Jose, California last Saturday, May 11th. Day has written the excellent book The Final Countdown, which carefully describes the increasingly aggressive assaults on our freedoms by our government and by the global elites. He has just begun a series of workshops around the country to deliver that message and to show us a way to resist. The book was published just last year, but Day acknowledges during the presentation that he had to make alarming updates to his slides from current news, not even weeks old – more government intrusion, more legislation, and more spurious arrests, all attacking our ability to interact freely and transact our business.

• Walmart Sales Surge as Wealthier Shoppers Flock to Retailer. Walmart Inc. breezed to another quarter of sales growth and said it now expects the full year to be slightly better than planned as the big-box retailer attracts price-conscious consumers looking for essentials and discounts. Consumers that are prioritizing staples over larger, discretionary purchases has dented sales of competitors such as Home Depot Inc. and Target Corp. But as higher-income consumers trade down or search for deals, Walmart is benefiting from a decision to roll out more discounts and new products and revamp stores. Lower-income consumers are buying in similar patterns at Walmart, Rainey said, purchasing more groceries and other necessities than general merchandise.

Health

• Hospitals’ new message for patients: Stay home. Empowered by Washington and armed with Covid-inspired health innovations, health executives are seeking to increasingly move care outside of the hospital — despite the seeming risk to their bottom line. Hospital executives think they can more than make up the revenue by shifting their exam and recovery rooms to patients’ homes. And Congress is urging them on, with legislation in the works to help hospitals expand their at-home offerings and to allow Medicare to continue paying for telehealth after lawmakers first granted temporary permission after Covid struck.

• Colon Cancer Rises Dramatically Among Children and Teens. Colorectal cancer has been commonly thought of as an old person’s disease. A new study, however, highlights how this type of cancer (often called colon cancer for short) has escalated dramatically among children, teens, and young adults over the past two decades. Results to be presented next week at Digestive Disease Week, an international gathering of gastroenterology professionals, show a 500 percent increase in colon cancer cases among children ages 10 to 14 between 1999 and 2020. In the same time frame, among teens aged 15 to 19, colon cancer has grown by 333 percent, while young adults aged 20 to 24 have seen a rise of 185 percent.

• Whistleblowing Doctors Targeted By NHS. The Patient Safety Conference at the Royal Society of Medicine, held in London on Thursday, was told that hospital trust have wasted “millions of pounds” trying to “destroy” the careers of doctors who raised the alarm about poor care. Dr. Salam Al-Sam, from Justice for Doctors (JFD), told the conference that doctors had noticed a “pattern” where whistleblowing doctors are themselves investigated instead of their concerns. Dr. Al-Sam said that some doctors would resign or retire, and claimed some took their own lives as a result of what happened to them.

Middle East

• Iranian lawmaker declares Tehran obtained nuclear bombs. After the head of the United Nation’s atomic watchdog agency warned that Iran has enough uranium to produce "several" nuclear bombs, a firebrand Iranian lawmaker declared on Friday that the Islamic Republic of Iran possesses atomic weapons. "In my opinion, we have achieved nuclear weapons, but we do not announce it. It means our policy is to possess nuclear bombs, but our declared policy is currently within the framework of the JCPOA," Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani told the Iran-based outlet Rouydad 24 on Friday, according to an article published by the independent news organization Iran International in London.

• Blinken says more civilians in Gaza have been killed than terrorists. CBS’s Margaret Brennan asked Blinken on “Face the Nation” whether the U.S. shares the same assessment of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who she said recently said Israel has killed 14,000 terrorists and 16,000 civilians in its war against the militant group Hamas. “Yes, we do. And I think the report makes clear that while Israel has processes, procedures, rules, regulations, to try to minimize civilian harm, given the impact that these operations, the war in Gaza, has had on the civilian population … those have not been applied consistently,” Blinken said in the interview.

• US senator: 'Hit Gaza with a nuclear bomb to end the war'. US Senator, Lindsey Graham, said in an interview yesterday that America was right when it hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs and that they should: ‘Give Israel the bombs they need to end the war.’

Politics

• The New York Times Denounces Cancel Culture . . . After Fueling Cancel Culture for Years. For those of us who have criticized the cancel culture in higher education for years, the attacks and shunning have been unrelenting. The media has played a role in that culture and none more prominently than the New York Times. Recently, however, the mob came for liberal professors and media who have remained silent for years as conservatives and others were targeted on campus. Suddenly, there is a new interest in free speech and academic freedom, including by the Times editors who blamed cancel culture for the recent demonstrations and disruptions on campus.

• King Charles’ first official portrait since the coronation couldn’t make him look more demonic if they tried.

• Former military lawyer David McBride sentenced to almost six years in jail for sharing classified information with journalists. ACT Supreme Court Justice David Mossop rejected McBride's case that he did not believe he was breaking the law, and found the offences were aggravated by his high security rating, which gave him access to the material. The material released by McBride was used in the ABC's The Afghan Files story, which revealed allegations that Australian soldiers were involved in illegal killings.

• The Civil Service is trying to cover up the true scale of migrant crime. If a social democratic, high-trust country like Denmark can publish data on migrant crime rates, there’s no reason why Britain can’t. It was sadly predictable that civil servants would seek to block the publication of league tables showing the migrant nationalities with the highest rates of crime. It’s the classic Blob ploy; if the data gives results you don’t like, reject the data.

• Winston Marshall: Populism Is The Voice Of The Voiceless, The Real Threat To Democracy Is From The Elites. Winston Marshall, the former banjo player from the band "Mumford & Sons" who now hosts a podcast for The Spectator, spoke in opposition to an Oxford Union motion that "This House Believes Populism is a Threat to Democracy." Speaking for the motion was former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Populism is not a threat to democracy, but I'll tell you what is. It is elites ordering social media to censor political opponents. It's police shutting down dissenters," he said.

• Biden’s Plan to Hit China With More Tariffs Is Mostly Symbolic. While China’s electric vehicle, solar power and battery sectors are central to Beijing’s blueprint to manufacture its way out of a housing slump, they’re not reliant on US consumers. Existing tariffs locked Chinese autos out of the US market years ago, while solar firms mostly export to the US from overseas, avoiding similar curbs. Perhaps, the real danger for Beijing is that Biden’s symbolic swing at EVs sets a precedent for countries where China does have market share, said Dylan Loh, assistant professor of politics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

• Tory MP Sir David Davis says New Yorker article questioning Letby evidence should be available in UK. The article published in the New Yorker magazine questioned the evidence used in the trial which convicted Letby of the murders of seven babies and the attempted murders of six others. The Haltemprice and Howden MP told the Commons: “Yesterday the New Yorker magazine published a 13,000-word inquiry into the Lucy Letby trial, which raised enormous concerns about both the logic and competence of the statistical evidence that was a central part of that trial.“ "That article was blocked from publication on the UK internet, I understand because of a court order. "Now, I’m sure that court order was well intended but it seems to me in defiance of open justice.”

• US warns Georgia not to side with Moscow against the west. Washington’s assistant secretary of state, Jim O’Brien, spoke of his fears that the passing by Georgia’s parliament of a “foreign agents” bill on Tuesday could be yet another “turning point” in the former Soviet state’s troubled history. In comments that appeared to signal a conviction in the US that the Georgian government was once again aligning with Russia, O’Brien suggested funding could soon be pulled. Billions of dollars had been spent by the US on rebuilding Georgia after the fall of the Soviet Union and hundreds of millions more were planned for the country’s economy and military, he said.

• The Gates Foundation is becoming an oligarchy. Melinda French Gates has this week further distanced herself from ex-husband Bill Gates, stepping down from the foundation the power couple built together over 25 years. Though Bill and Melinda Gates have long insisted that their foundation is a vital force for positive change, and though it generously funds academics and journalists who amplify this narrative, a growing body of independent experts, and some of the foundation’s own intended beneficiaries, argue that their philanthropy is doing more harm than good.

• Power and Corruption: The Public-Private Imperial Mafia. Chatham House, the name commonly given to The Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an extremely influential “think tank” based in London. Readers of the “insider” US historian Professor Carroll Quigley will know that he identified Chatham House as the most important vehicle for the public-private Anglo-American Establishment that he saw dominating the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic. While Chatham House pretends to be “independent”, Quigley stresses that this is not at all so and warns of the sinister implications of its true function.

• White House to Republicans: You’re not getting audio of Biden’s interview with Hur. President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege to block House committees from obtaining audio recordings of his own interviews with special counsel Robert Hur about Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur’s description of his interviews with Biden — laid out in a 345-page report released in February — fueled a firestorm over the president’s memory and mental fitness. In that report, Hur said Biden could potentially defend himself in court, if charges were recommended, by appealing to jurors as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden pushed back with a fiery news conference defending his acuity.

Science

• The First Two Cells in a Human Embryo Contribute Disproportionately to Fetal Development. A research team showed that, contrary to current models, one early embryonic cell dominates lineages that will become the fetus. “They are not identical,” said Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a developmental and stem cell biologist at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Cambridge and study coauthor. “Only one of the two cells is truly totipotent, meaning it can give rise to body and placenta, and the second cell gives rise mainly to placenta.” The findings help elucidate what happens during the earliest periods in development.

• The brain might also have a microbiome. A group of researchers from the University of Edinburgh compared the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease to healthy brains. The brains of people with Alzheimer’s harboured more bacteria and fungi than healthy people. But they did find several species of fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms in healthy brains. The human brain microbiome was found to be a subset (about 20%) of the gut microbiome. Although more bacteria were found in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s, the researchers were not able to find a pattern of certain bacteria that were only found in diseased brains.

Technology

• Facial recognition CCTV is Orwellian. But it also doesn’t work. As Londoners, we’re disturbingly used to our every step being recorded by CCTV cameras – but would we accept them being turned into live facial recognition cameras? At a time when crime is soaring under the city’s failing police force, anything that promises to crack down on crime will have some public appeal. But the tech is dangerously invasive, often inaccurate and woefully ineffective. It’s a terrible use of taxpayers’ money. But the worst cost is our liberty. High crime rates make us less free but so too does Orwellian policing. Live facial recognition has no place in London.

• China Builds World’s First Dedicated Drone Carrier. Hidden away in a shipyard on the Yangtze, far upriver from the major yards at Shanghai, is a new aircraft carrier. It’s China’s fourth, a ship whose mere existence has not been reported before. Only China can build an aircraft carrier in relative secrecy. This ship, launched in December 2022 but not reported until now, is surrounded by mystery. The world knows about China’s first three carriers; the largest and most capable, the Type-003 Fujian, is currently undergoing sea trials. This new carrier is very different. Its claim to fame will not be that it is larger. Instead, we are confident that this ship is the world’s first dedicated fixed-wing drone carrier.

• ‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference. On 7 and 8 May in Washington DC, the city’s biggest convention hall welcomed America’s military-industrial complex, its top technology companies and its most outspoken justifiers of war crimes. Of course, that’s not how they would describe it. It was the inaugural “AI Expo for National Competitiveness”, hosted by the Special Competitive Studies Project – better known as the “techno-economic” thinktank created by the former Google CEO and current billionaire Eric Schmidt.

Ukraine

• Ukraine Admits Frontlines In Kharkiv Are Collapsing. For the first time since Russia launched its major cross-border offensive into Ukraine's Kharkiv region (it began last Friday), Ukraine's government has acknowledged that Moscow forces have made rapid gains. Oleg Sinegubov, the head of the military administration of the Kharkov Region, has said Russia is pushing past the frontline. "Essentially, the frontline is expanding as the enemy is advancing from multiple positions," he admitted during an interview with Sky News.

• The secret document that could have ended the Ukraine war. A few weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine there could have been a peaceful solution. This emerges from a draft contract that both warring parties negotiated by April 15, 2022. Accordingly, Kiev and Moscow largely agreed on conditions for an end to the war. Only a few points remained open. These were supposed to be negotiated personally by Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky at a summit meeting - but that never took place. Even after more than two years of war, the deal still seems advantageous in retrospect.

• Ukraine Formally Asks NATO To Send Troops For First Time, Pentagon Mulling. The continued inevitable and disastrous slide into a WW3 nuclear-armed confrontation between Russian and the West continues as The New York Times reports NATO appears to actually be seriously mulling sending troops to Ukraine to serve in the role as 'trainers' at a moment Kiev is desperate to tap and train up new manpower. And this would be closer to front line positions as well. What has changed? The Zelensky government is now directly requesting it, apparently on a formal level for the first time of the conflict, according to officials.

Vaccines

• Vaccine trial patient files first US lawsuit against AstraZeneca. Brianne Dressen, a 42-year-old former teacher from Utah, says she developed a severe neurological condition after taking part in a vaccine trial in 2020. She is suing AstraZeneca for an alleged breach of contract, after she said it failed to provide medical care for her side effects. Her lawsuit is thought to be the first of its kind in the US, where the British-made vaccine was tested in clinical trials but never approved for use.

• “Spike from the virus is like spike from the vaccine”: this is scientific illiteracy. Even if the protein was the same, it’s ridiculous to compare delivery of it via “the virus” to delivery by the vaccine. Saying that the effect of a product is the same regardless of the delivery route is just plain idiotic. It’s like suggesting that eating a steak and fries with a side order of greens is the same as homogenising this combination and injecting it directly into your circulatory system.

• TV doctor Dr Ranj failed to tell BBC bosses about £22,500 AstraZeneca advert before jabs feature. The TV doctor was paid £22,500 by the company in 2021 for an advertising campaign. But he failed to disclose this to show executives when he led a discussion on the safety of the AZ Covid vaccine last week. BBC bosses are said to be “unhappy” he had not raised the information. Ranj Singh, 44, spoke about the AZ vaccine on TV on May 8 and the “serious but rare” complications associated with it.