This Week's Must Reads - 17-23 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

• CRED Finally Admit There Never Was An Increase In Natural Disasters. For years, the graphs and data provided by CRED have been misused by the UN and much of our media to try to convince the public that natural disasters are getting worse because of climate change. The apparent increase was simply due to many events not being officially recorded in the past.

• First it was Covid – now we’re being scared into submission over the weather. There’s no denying it’s hot in Europe, but it feels like sunshine is being weaponised in a bid to get us to adjust our ways to hit net zero. You may have noticed that climate catastrophism has gone nuclear over the past week but the good old British weather refuses to co-operate. Disappointingly for the We’re All Gonna Fry brigade, it’s cool, rainy and sullen here with fitful gusts of wind; almost autumnal at times.

• SNP admits to felling 16 million trees to develop wind farms. Scottish Tory MSP Liam Kerr said figure would astonish the public and communities all over the country had cited concerns about the projects. Mairi Gougeon, the Rural Affairs Secretary, estimated that 15.7 million trees had been felled since 2000 in land that is currently managed by agency Forestry and Land Scotland (FLS) - the equivalent of more than 1,700 per day.

Covid

• Anthony Fauci accused of perjury: Former White House doctor 'LIED under oath about funding gain-of-function research in China - which is feared to have started Covid pandemic', Republican Senator claims. Senator Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland last week calling for an investigation into whether Dr Fauci, 82, committed perjury when he testified in front of a Senate committee in 2021.

• NY Times Reports Coronavirus Deaths Overcounted by 30% … on Paragraph 17. And it is only after reading some 17 paragraphs where you will finally find the buried truth…”The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions”.

• Key Scientist in Covid Origin Controversy Misled Congress On Status Of $8.9 Million NIH Grant. Kristian Andersen had a major grant proposal on Anthony Fauci’s desk while writing a paper exonerating an NIH-funded lab in Wuhan, documents show.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Judiciary in the USA continues its fightback against censorship. A win for due process…. for now. Essentially, the government (including all the named agencies and individuals) are now barred by court order from continuing the activities by which they controlled information dissemination via social media to present their highly distorted version of the truth to American people and, by extension, the wider world.

• More than 28,000 convicted of Covid rule breaches in England and Wales. Data analysis shows people severely penalised for relatively minor infractions of coronavirus laws. The convictions are for Covid-related offences, such as attendance at gatherings during lockdowns or arriving at airports without the proper evidence of a coronavirus test. Almost 16,000 of the convictions – or 55% – involved people under 30.

• Why did Mental Health Professionals Go Along with Lockdowns? What is surprising is the indifference of so many from psychology and related fields coupled with their dutiful attempts to reconcile the fact that humans are social creatures who can be harmed through social isolation with political and ideological dictats that humans are diseased creatures who must be isolated.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Credit Suisse inquiry will keep files secret for 50 years. A parliamentary investigation into the collapse of Credit Suisse will keep its files closed for 50 years, according to a parliamentary committee document, a level of secrecy that has triggered concern among Swiss historians. The investigation will focus on the activities of the Swiss government, financial regulator and central bank in the run up to the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS in March.

• US M2 money supply growth has fallen to its lowest level ever.

• Ukraine grain deal expires after Russia pulls out. The deal allowing Ukraine to safely export grain via the Black Sea has officially expired after Russia pulled out of the crucial agreement. Russian President Vladimir Putin had long complained that parts of the deal allowing the export of Russian food and fertilisers had not been honoured. In particular, he said grain had not been supplied to poorer countries, which was a condition of the agreement.

• Filings for bankruptcies in the US are rising while credit spreads remain contained, indicating a credit event on the horizon.

• A $500 Billion Corporate-Debt Storm Builds Over Global Economy. A partner at Cleary Gottlieb, a top law firm for corporate bankruptcies, he’s advised businesses worldwide for decades on what to do when they’re drowning in debt. He did it through the global financial crisis, the oil bust in 2016 and Covid-19. And he’s doing it again now, in a year when big corporate bankruptcies are piling up at the second-fastest pace since 2008, eclipsed only by the early days of the pandemic. “It feels different than prior cycles,” Cooper said. “You’re going to see a lot of defaults.”

• Central Bank of Nigeria to add NFC, programmability features to eNaira CBDC. Additionally, the central bank also announced new programmability features to make the eNaira more user-friendly and increase the efficiency of government welfare programs. Mr. Angaye said the CBDC can now be programmed to be spent in a specific location or on designated items, which could help users have better control over their spending. Most importantly, it would allow public authorities to ensure subsidies are used as intended.

• Coutts and the rise of private tyranny. Farage's de-banking proves coercion lurks everywhere. Coercion and tyranny are what governments do to us, whereas the private sector is where choice, consent, and spontaneity reign. This is one of the bedrock certainties of the modern Anglo-American Right, and each day brings fresh evidence that it’s a myth. Nigel Farage is only the latest ardent free-marketeer to learn the lesson the hard way.

• China imposes deforestation in the pursuit of food independence. Beijing has adopted an authoritarian policy aimed at expanding wheat, corn and rice production, to the detriment of forest cover, green spaces and fruit production.

• The Yield Curve Is Now in the Deepest Inversion Since 1981. The most recent inversion of the yield curve is no small or minor inversion, but is an inversion deep into negative territory. This gives us good reason to expect a serious economic event, whether a recession or even a full-blown economic crisis.

Health

• [1993] National Health Care: Medicine in Germany, 1918-1945. Does the modern bureaucratization of medicine risk a return to the horrors of national socialist medicine? Nazi medicine was implemented by a political-medical complex—on the basis of political health care—a scientific and social philosophy imposed by a totalitarian regime. It should never happen again, but could it ever happen again?

• Thousands hospitalised with malnutrition as ‘Victorian’ illnesses back in Britain. "This isn’t about the health system, it’s about the social determinants of ill health, indicative of the last 15 years of austerity.” Provisional data obtained by the newspaper’s Health Commission under freedom of information laws reveal that cases of malnutrition have more than doubled in a decade and have quadrupled since 2007/8.

• Lock Them Down. America’s public-health establishment has become a threat to individual liberty. The unchecked tactics of public-health officials have become an increasing threat to Americans’ individual freedom. Seemingly high on their power to disrupt the nation’s civic life, these officials have ignored restraints meant to prevent government from abusing our constitutional freedoms.

Politics

• Populism has given the elites more power than ever. The rise of protectionism empowers a ‘deep state’ that demagogues claim to hate. Populism, which sets itself against the elite, against the “deep state”, is going to leave it more powerful, not less. The technocrat, vilified so recently, will be the string-pulling figure of our age, dispensing subsidies, guiding this economic sector, shunning that one. Corporate leaders will have an ever tighter and more collusive relationship with government, not as a corrupt byproduct of the system but as a central feature of it. Populism was meant to take the governing class down a peg or two. Its main legacy will be something close to the opposite.

• Biden $10M bribe file released: Burisma chief said he was ‘coerced’ to pay Joe, ‘stupid’ Hunter in bombshell allegations. A bombshell FBI informant file describing a $10 million bribery allegation against President Biden and his son Hunter was released Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley, showing that a Ukrainian oligarch claimed that he was “coerced” into making the payoff.

• The Free Speech Scare. It was a strange experience watching the House hearing in which Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was testifying. The topic was censorship and how and to what extent federal government agencies under two administrations muscled social media companies to take down posts, ban users, and throttle content. This was a hearing on censorship and they were trying to censor him. It only made the point.

• Newsweek asks Robert F. Kennedy Jr: Why Not Stop the Conspiracy Theories? "My father told me when I was a little boy that people in authority lie and the job in a democracy is to remain skeptical. I've been science-based since I was a kid. Show me the evidence and I'll believe you, but I'm not going to take the word of official narratives," he explained.

Science

• New research puts age of universe at 26.7 billion years, nearly twice as old as previously believed. The work is published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Our newly-devised model stretches the galaxy formation time by a several billion years, making the universe 26.7 billion years old, and not 13.7 as previously estimated," says author Rajendra Gupta, adjunct professor of physics in the Faculty of Science at the University of Ottawa.

• Scientists find explanation for huge gravity hole in the Indian ocean. A gravity hole is an area where gravitational pull is low, causing the seafloor to sink.

  Deep beneath the ocean, there is one that is three million square kilometers in size and previously it has confused scientists. More than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) beneath Earth's crust, they found cold, dense remnants of an ancient ocean plunged into a 'slab graveyard' beneath Africa some 30 million years ago, stirring up hot molten rock.

• Detection of phosphates originating from Enceladus’s ocean. Saturn’s moon Enceladus harbours a global ice-covered water ocean. Observational results, together with laboratory analogue experiments, suggest that phosphorus is readily available in Enceladus’s ocean in the form of orthophosphates, with phosphorus concentrations at least 100-fold higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans.

• ‘Diverse organic matter’ found on Mars by Nasa rover. Researchers are unable to rule out that the materials have a “biotic” origin, or are the result of life on the planet. But they might also be formed in other ways, such as interactions between water and dust or having been dropped onto the planet by dust or meteors. The findings suggest that Mars may have had a far more active past than we realised – and could have significant implications for the search for alien life.

• NASA enters the 'home stretch' in its mission to reach a $10,000 QUADRILLION asteroid that's packed full of precious metals. Far-fetched as it may seem, scientists say the 16 Psyche space rock could be worth such an unfathomable amount of money that this outcome is not out of the realms of possibility.

Technology

• UN warns that AI-powered brain implants could spy on our innermost thoughts. “We are on a path to a world in which algorithms will enable us to decode people’s mental processes”. The enormous amounts of capital being pumped into the neurotech industry should also be cause for concern, not too dissimilar to how breathless AI hype has seen the tech run amok. Money talks, and it usually doesn't have the average person's best interests in mind.

• CEO of Company that Wants to Scan Your Irises: ‘World ID’ Is Coming ‘Whether You Like It or Not’. Worldcoin was co-founded by Sam Altman, who is also the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the controversial large language model ChatGPT. The AI mogul previously stated his hopes for the technology to “break capitalism” by enabling the more efficient allocation of resources. The company uses technology that scans the irises of people around the world, data which is then used to grant access to the Worldcoin ecosystem, as well as a means of distinguishing between real people and bots.

Ukraine

• The Western Media Is Whitewashing the Azov Battalion. Before Russia invaded Ukraine, these fighters were neo-Nazis. They still are. For seven years, Western institutions have warned about Ukraine’s Azov Movement, which began as a neo-Nazi paramilitary group in 2014 and became notorious for its worldwide recruitment of extremists. Then came Russia’s invasion. Within months, Azov fighters were being feted in Congress and at Stanford University. MSNBC swooned over a Ukrainian soldier whose Twitter account overflowed with neo-Nazi images. Facebook made the stunning decision to allow posts praising the Azov Battalion, even though the company admitted that it was a hate group.

• Zelensky, Pentagon Now Admit Ukraine’s Counteroffensive Had to Be ‘Paused’ Amid Losses. The much-vaunted “Spring Counteroffensive” eventually morphed into the “Summer Counteroffensive”, before finally stalling completely.

  This week, the New York Times, Kiev and its paymasters in Washington have admitted it’s been a complete disaster for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who’ve taken heavy looses with no gains whatsoever.

• Ukraine and the West are facing a devastating defeat. The prospect of a failed counter-offensive and significant territorial concessions would only embolden Russia and China. Beijing would be utterly delighted if the war were to end with Ukraine divided, Russian troops permanently in the Donbas harassing Kyiv and Europe, and Nato fractured on political lines. Such an outcome would be a gift to China as Xi Jinping begins to ramp up his own imperialistic and extra-territorial ambitions across the Indo-Pacific – and a devastating defeat for the West.

• Ukraine begins firing U.S.-provided cluster munitions at Russian forces. The use of the controversial U.S.-made weapons, which has not been previously reported, follows President Biden’s “difficult decision” to order the delivery of the widely banned munitions last week, a move that human rights groups, European allies and some Democrats criticized due to the risk of civilian casualties. Russian President Vladimir Putin, referring to cluster munitions on Sunday, threatened to retaliate against Ukraine “if they are used against us,” although Russia has already used cluster munitions in populated areas of Ukraine at least 24 times since the start of Moscow’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, according to the United Nations.

Vaccines

• Potential “Healthy Vaccinee Bias” in a Study of BNT162b2 Vaccine against Covid-19. The adjusted 90% lower mortality due to Covid-19 reported among the participants who received a booster cannot, with certainty, be attributed to boosting. “Healthy vaccinee bias” in this population may have also led to overestimates of vaccine effectiveness in similar studies from Clalit Health Services.

• How can these ‘celebrity’ jab fanatics live with themselves? What on earth made them so certain, so bombastically sure, so early on? What gave them the right to inflict fear on the nation? Such craven irresponsibility. In the age of ‘safetyism’, was there a risk assessment relating to the forcing of an untested chemical on people before they so firmly exhorted getting jabbed?

• US Military Confirms Myocarditis Spike After COVID Vaccine Introduction. Cases of myocarditis soared among U.S. service members in 2021 after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, a top Pentagon official has confirmed. There were 275 cases of myocarditis in 2021—a 151 percent spike from the annual average from 2016 to 2020, according to Gilbert Cisneros Jr., undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, who confirmed data revealed by a whistleblower earlier this year.