This Week's Must Reads - 18-24 September 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 more comprehensive daily summaries will be for paid subscribers only.

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Climate Change

• The orchestrated disinformation campaign by RealClimate.org to falsely discredit and censor. A small number of activist scientists have been aggressively conducting an orchestrated disinformation campaign to discredit the papers and the scientific reputation of the authors.

• Biden uses executive power to create New Deal-style American Climate Corps. Program, modeled on a Roosevelt scheme, will serve as a major green jobs training program and will employ 20,000 young adults.

• The End Of Cheap Europe Flights? France Proposes EU-Wide Minimum Price. The French government announced that it hopes to bring in a minimum price for airline tickets to eliminate the possibility of low-cost flights.

Covid

• Neanderthal Genes Are Linked to Severe Covid Risk. Study in Italy’s worst pandemic hot spot sheds light on why some people fell seriously ill and others didn’t.

• Blowing the COVID Cover-up Wide Open. A CIA whistleblower pulls back the curtain on COVID’s origins in the shadowy world of U.S. biodefense programs.

• HHS bars Wuhan Institute of Virology from receiving US funding for next 10 years. The Department of Health and Human Services announced Wednesday that it has officially barred the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) from receiving US funding for the next 10 years, as more evidence points to the COVID-19 pandemic leaking out of a Chinese lab.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• British Airways pilot banned from flying for refusing to wear Covid mask loses discrimination case. First officer claimed he was a ‘sovereign being who has a right to breathe freely’.

• Mass gatherings for political expression had no discernible association with the local course of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA in 2020 and 2021. In sum, there is no statistical evidence of a material increase in local COVID-19 deaths, cases or transmissibility after mass gatherings for political expression during the first 2 years of the pandemic in the USA.

• Biden administration announces $600M to produce COVID tests and will reopen website to order them. The Department of Health and Human Services says orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov starting Sept. 25, and that no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service.

• The print press and its politicization of public health: The case of COVID-19. This article is interested in the ways in which a serious public health issue, the COVID-19 pandemic, was used to categorize and reconfigure sections of the British citizenry into conformists and deviants.

• We’re fighting the Covid censors. When there is scientific disagreement or uncertainty, the government must never pretend there is consensus and certainty.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• The Coming Collapse of the Global Ponzi Scheme. It won’t be long before governments around the world, including the one in Washington, self-destruct. Strong words, but anything less would be naïve.

• Total US Debt has surpassed $33 trillion for the first time. An additional trillion has been added in less than three months.

  

• Brace for stocks to crash 25% - and a recession to strike by spring, top economist David Rosenberg warns. The Federal Reserve has hiked interest rates from nearly zero to north of 5% since last spring in an effort to curb historic inflation.

• The US housing market is headed for the largest sales slowdown since 2011, Fannie Mae says. The government-sponsored mortgage finance company forecasted total home sales to slump to just 4.8 million this year, marking the slowest sales environment since 2011.

• Surveyors’ assessment of UK house prices is the gloomiest since 2009. Something is going to give in the housing market soon.

  

• Credit card losses are rising at the fastest pace since the Great Financial Crisis. Goldman Sachs predicts credit card losses will continue to climb through the end of 2024/early 2025.

• Mortgage demand stalls at a level not seen since 1996. Demand for refinances dropped 5% for the week and was 31% lower than the same week one year ago. The refinance share of mortgage activity decreased to 29.1% of total applications from 30.0% the previous week.

Health

• Obesity as a factor in cardiac deaths tripled over 20 years. The finding came from analysis of death certificates in a database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There were 281,135 deaths from heart disease linked to obesity in that time range, the researchers said, and the death rate tripled from 2.2 deaths per 100,000 people to 6.6 deaths per 100,000.

• [2016] Comparison of the Levels of Five Heavy Metals in Human Urine and Sweat after Strenuous Exercise. The results showed that the levels of five trace heavy metals in sweat were significantly higher than those in urine after strenuous exercise. The results suggested that exercise-induced sweating can effectively remove the harmful heavy metals from the human body.

• The US bucks the trend when it comes to health spending. Whilst it spends far more per capita, the average life expectancy has not risen at anywhere near the same rate as the rest of the West.

  

Politics

• U.S. helped Pakistan get IMF bailout with secret arms deal for Ukraine, leaked documents reveal. The U.S.-brokered loan let Pakistan’s military postpone elections, deepen a brutal crackdown, and jail former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

• Canadian School Purges Books Published Before 2008 In Bid For 'Inclusivity'. In a quest to be more "inclusive," a Canadian school board in Mississauga, Ontario has decided to purge its library of all books published before the year 2008.

• EU leaders want new ‘Iron Curtain’ in Europe. The bloc seeks to “hurt” ordinary Russians, the Foreign Ministry said. By unleashing sanctions on ordinary Russians traveling to the EU, Brussels wants to set up a new Iron Curtain on the continent, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said.

• Online Safety Bill to become law in crackdown on harmful social media content. Peers have passed a controversial new bill aimed at making social media companies more responsible for the content shared on their platforms.

• The British public challenge ceding of sovereignty to World Health Organization. A Parliamentary hearing was held in the UK parliament in response to a petition demanding the UK Government not sign any WHO Pandemic Treaty unless approved by public referendum.

• Former NZ PM Ardern Urges United Nations To 'Crack Down On Free Speech As A Weapon Of War'. Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship.

• Who wants the WHO anyway? Australians have until 11.59 pm Sunday 24 September 2023 to voice their objections to proposed changes to international law which would see the introduction of a new ‘pandemic instrument’ (commonly referred to as a ‘pandemic treaty’) as well as changes to existing International Health Regulations.

• Over Assange, Britain’s press prefers to serve power not media freedom. We might have expected British journalists to have turned the Julian Assange case into a cause celebre for press freedom and free speech.

• China’s Role in the Global Social Credit System. If you ever point out what an appalling concept China’s Social Credit System is, you may be accused of supporting NATO, of promoting “the international rules based system,” of peddling Sinophobic “hate speech” or similar nonsense.

• Russell Brand and the presumption of innocence. The public loses from such unserious debate. Should the presumption of innocence apply to Russell Brand in the court of public opinion, as it should in a court of law?

Science

• We Just Found a Molecule on Another World...and Only Living Organisms Can Produce It. The James Webb Space Telescope spotted dimethyl sulfide—which is only unique to life on Earth—on a far-away exoplanet.

• The true story of the fake unboxed aliens is wilder than actual aliens. All the greed, fraud, centuries of racism, and deteriorated llama skulls behind Mexico’s unboxed aliens.

• A NASA probe got slammed by a massive eruption from the sun — and caught it all on camera. NASA's Parker Solar Probe flew right through a massive solar eruption and caught the whole thing on camera.

• Half-million-year-old wooden structure unearthed in Zambia. The discovery of ancient wooden logs in the banks of a river in Zambia has changed archaeologists' understanding of ancient human life.

• The Opposite of Déjà Vu Exists, And It's Even More Uncanny. Repetition has a strange relationship with the mind.

Technology

• Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue gets military funding. Last year, Monash University scientists created the "DishBrain" – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes.

• Elon Musk's brain chip firm given all-clear to recruit for human trials. Neuralink's trial will hope to achieve similar results to that of a research project in Switzerland, which also used a so-called brain computer interface to help a paralysed man walk again.

• Inside Apple’s Spectacular Failure to Build a Key Part for Its New iPhones. The company set out to design a silicon chip that would allow it to cut ties with Qualcomm, a longtime supplier and bitter foe.

Ukraine

• Out of every 100 people, 10-20 remain. The head of the Poltava TCC spoke about losses in his district. Of every 100 people mobilized last fall, 10-20 remain, the rest are dead, wounded and incapacitated.

• We Can No Longer Hide the Truth About the Russia-Ukraine War. As leading American politicians, generals, and pundits continue advocating for open-ended support to Kyiv in their war against Russia, a sober, accurate analysis of Ukraine's nearly completed summer offensive reveals that the heroic sacrifice Ukraine continues to make is producing little to no meaningful progress toward the objective of evicting Russia from Ukraine's territory.

• Elon Musk hasn’t betrayed Ukraine. Starlink worked for the military from the start. Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, had been providing communications services to Ukraine since the start of the war; there was every reason to believe the mission would be a success.

• Evidence Suggests Ukrainian Missile Caused Market Tragedy. Witness accounts and an analysis of video and weapon fragments suggest a Ukrainian missile failed to hit its intended target and landed in a bustling street, with devastating consequences.

• Poland’s president: Ukraine like ‘drowning person clinging to anything available’. Polish President Andrzej Duda on Tuesday compared Ukraine’s fight for survival to that of a “drowning person” capable of bringing down those who try to help.

• Zelensky asks Marina Abramovic to be ambassador for Ukraine. Artist will lend her voice to help rebuild schools in the country.

Vaccines

• Myocarditis and COVID-19 Vaccines: How the CDC Missed a Safety Signal and Hid a Warning. COVID-19 vaccines cause heart inflammation, U.S. authorities now acknowledge.

• COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere. CORRELATION has published a new report entitled “COVID-19 vaccine-associated mortality in the Southern Hemisphere” authored by Denis G. Rancourt, Marine Baudin, Joseph Hickey, and Jérémie Mercier.

• The mistreatment of the vaccine injured – what the Covid Inquiry heard. LAST Wednesday, the chair of the Covid Inquiry, Baroness Heather Hallett, listened to the heartrending stories of the vaccine injured and bereaved.

• Biodistribution of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in human breast milk. Of 13 lactating women receiving the vaccine (20 exposures), trace mRNA amounts were detected in 10 exposures up to 45 h post-vaccination.

• Viral RNA Can Persist for 2 Years After COVID-19: Preprint Study. A study suggests why some develop new medical conditions after COVID-19, while not investigating the link between persistent viral RNA and vaccination status.

• Cancers Appearing in Ways Never Before Seen After COVID Vaccinations. Dr. Harvey Risch talks about the new 'turbo cancers,' vaccination, and how the COVID virus should be managed.

• Researchers Alarmed to Find DNA Contamination in Pfizer Vaccine. Phillip Buckhaults, a cancer genomics expert, and professor at the University of South Carolina has testified before a South Carolina Senate Medical Affairs Ad-Hoc Committee saying that Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine is contaminated with billions of tiny DNA fragments.