This Week's Must Reads - 20 - 26 November 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

• Biden invokes wartime powers to fund electric heaters as he cracks down on gas appliances. American Gas Association says wartime law is 'being used as an instrument to advance a policy agenda contradictory to our nation’s strong energy position'. In a joint announcement with the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) said the federal government would award a "historic" $169 million for nine projects across 15 sites nationwide in an effort to accelerate electric heat pump manufacturing.

• Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1m homes, analysis finds. Twelve of the world’s wealthiest billionaires produce more greenhouse gas emissions from their yachts, private jets, mansions and financial investments than the annual energy emissions of 2m homes, research shared exclusively with the Guardian reveals. The tycoons include the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the tech billionaires Bill Gates, Larry Page and Michael Dell, the inventor and social media company owner Elon Musk and the Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim.

• Study examines how massive 2022 eruption changed stratosphere chemistry and dynamics. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered tsunamis in Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, Japan, Chile, Peru and the United States. It also changed the chemistry and dynamics of the stratosphere in the year following the eruption, leading to unprecedented losses in the ozone layer of up to 7% over large areas of the Southern Hemisphere. Driving those atmospheric changes, according to the research, was the sheer amount of water vapor injected into the stratosphere by the undersea volcano.

  

Covid

• Secret Warnings About Wuhan Research Predated the Pandemic. A series of previously unreported alarms and clashes over US-funded research in China reveal long-standing friction between two groups of government scientists: those who prioritize international collaboration, and those who are kept up at night by the idea that cutting-edge technologies could end up in the wrong hands. Researchers at the WIV intended to study Ebola, but Chinese government restrictions prevented them from importing samples. As a result, they were considering using a technique called reverse genetics to engineer Ebola in the lab. Anticipating that this information would set off alarm bells in the US, the official cautioned, “I don’t want the information particularly using reverse genetics to create viruses to get out, which would affect the ability for our future information gain,” meaning it would impair the collaboration between NIAID and the WIV.

  

• Dr. Jeffrey Sachs Says COVID About 'Massive Government Lying,' Quits Democrats. A prominent "lifelong Democrat" scholar and economist who chaired a COVID-19 commission blasted Dr. Anthony Fauci and others for promoting "massive government lying" regarding the coronavirus, and accused Senate Democrats of refusing to investigate the virus' origins. Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor who chaired a COVID-19 commission set up by "The Lancet" medical journal, said he has since left the Democratic Party after seeing how government officials have behaved around the origins of the virus.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Care home nailed window shut to stop me holding Mum's hand - ex BBC star. A sports broadcaster has told how care home staff nailed a window shut and left her feeling ‘bullied and abused’ by refusing to let her see her mother. She said she was left sobbing after being denied a day out with her mother in March 2021 because care home staff misinterpreted mask rules. Ms Walker said that they refused to accept her explanation that she was exempt from wearing one.

• The Startling Evidence on Learning Loss Is In. The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education. It also set student progress in math and reading back by two decades and widened the achievement gap that separates poor and wealthy children. These learning losses will remain unaddressed when the federal money runs out in 2024. Economists are predicting that this generation, with such a significant educational gap, will experience diminished lifetime earnings and become a significant drag on the economy.

• People who stuck by UK Covid rules have worst mental health, says survey. Trauma of pandemic having lasting impact on people’s mental health three years on, research reveals. Those who followed the restrictions most closely when the pandemic hit are the most likely to be suffering from stress, anxiety and depression, academics at Bangor University have found. They identified that people with “communal” personalities – who are more caring, sensitive and aware of others’ needs – adhered the most rigorously with the lockdown protocols that Boris Johnson and senior medics and scientists recommended. However, people with “agentic” personalities – who are more independent, more competitive and like to have control over their lives – were least likely to exhibit those behaviours.

  

• Disabled people were secretly given Do Not Resuscitate orders, Scottish Covid-19 inquiry hears. As Covid began to spread, GP receptionists even called up those with disabilities to try to persuade them to sign up to the orders, which inform doctors that they do not want their lives saved in an emergency. Glasgow Disability Alliance chief executive Tressa Burke also told the Scottish Covid-19 Inquiry how some of her members were left so isolated during lockdowns they feared their bodies would not be discovered if they died at home.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• The Banking Crisis Is Worse Than You Thought. The clock is ticking on the CRE time bomb at regional banks. Over a month ago, Federal Reserve data made it clear that we weren’t out of the banking crisis. Today, it’s even worse. Not only have the regional banks not cleaned up their balance sheets and eliminated interest rate risk, but they’re holding a ticking time bomb on top of it all. Commercial Real Estate (CRE) is poised to implode small banks, even if those institutions arrest the plague of deposit flight.

• IMF says central bank digital currencies can replace cash: ‘This is not the time to turn back’. IMF’s Kristalina Georgieva said that the public sector should keep preparing to deploy central bank digital currencies and related payment platforms in the future. “We have not yet reached land. There is so much more space for innovation and so much uncertainty over use-cases,” said Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2023 on Wednesday. As of June 2023, only 11 countries have adopted CBDCs, acccording to data from the Atlantic Council.

• Americans Increasingly Tapping Into Their Retirement Accounts To Make Ends Meet. Mainstream financial pundits, politicians, and Fed officials keep telling us the economy is strong because Americans keep spending money. They just assume this is a sign of economic strength without ever asking exactly how they’re paying for all of this “robust” spending. The fact is Americans have blown through their savings, they’re maxing out their credit cards, and now they’re digging into their retirement savings to maintain this involuntary spending spree caused by rampant price inflation. As prices skyrocketed last year, Americans blew through their savings to make ends meet. Aggregate savings peaked at $2.1 trillion in August 2021. As of June, the San Francisco Fed estimated that aggregate savings had dropped to $190 billion.

Health

• Where has all the science gone. Why we must say No to the World Health Organisation. Retention of primary decision-making for strategic responses to pandemics and planning for long-term medical self-reliance based on Australian science-based experience, strong institutional frameworks, and geographic peculiarities, was in relief with Covid-19 due to the imposition of external self-serving strategies. National interest must guide objective review of our Covid-19 experience, the rejection of ‘one-size-fits-all’ WHO control of our pandemic future, and pausing development of industrial production of mRNA vaccines unless toxicity concerns are resolved.

• China: WHO seeks data on 'pneumonia clusters' in children. The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked China for more information on "clusters of undiagnosed pneumonia" reportedly spreading among children in the north of the country. Non-state media reports say children's hospitals in parts of the country are overwhelmed with sick children. Chinese authorities have attributed a spike in flu-like illnesses this winter to the lifting of Covid measures.

  

• Virology poses a far greater threat to the world than AI. Sam Altman, the recently fired (and rehired) chief executive of Open AI, was asked earlier this year by his fellow tech billionaire Patrick Collison what he thought of the risks of synthetic biology. ‘I would like to not have another synthetic pathogen cause a global pandemic. I think we can all agree that wasn’t a great experience,’ he replied. ‘Wasn’t that bad compared to what it could have been, but I’m surprised there has not been more global coordination and I think we should have more of that.’ He is right. There is almost no debate about regulating high-risk virology, whereas the world is in a moral panic about artificial intelligence.

• Is It Alzheimer's Disease or Vitamin B12 Deficiency? As the name suggests, vitamin B12 deficiency is when there is not enough of the B12 vitamin in your body. This can cause a multitude of symptoms, including a cognitive decline. A diagnosis is B12 deficiency may be a reversible cause of confusion and behavior changes. In other words, it’s possible that increasing your B12 level can improve or restore your memory and ability to think clearly. It can also resolve the other symptoms you may be experiencing such as fatigue and weakness.

Middle East

• UK Government Blocks MP Questions About Gaza-Related Activity at tis Cyprus Base. Ministry of Defence takes extraordinary step of censoring all requests for information by MPs about RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus, which Declassified has reported is facilitating arms supplies to Israel’s war on Gaza. MP whose questions were blocked tells Declassified: “This is totally unacceptable in a democracy”. RAF sent A400M military transport aircraft from Cyprus base to Tel Aviv this morning. Britain’s Cyprus base has secretly become international military hub supporting Israel’s bombing of Gaza.

• Is Gaza genocide being used to push fake “multipolar world” as a “solution”? It’s certainly true the controlled media are increasingly giving a lot more space to the plight of the people of Gaza than is usual. The controlled media are showing us the evils in Gaza because for some twisted reason their controllers want us to see and deplore the very slaughter they have created. The big question that should be flashing in pink neon in all our minds is WHY?

  

• Gaza has become a moonscape in war. When the battles stop, many fear it will remain uninhabitable. Israel’s bombardment has become one of the most intense air campaigns since World War II, said a director of a London-based conflict monitor. Whole neighborhoods have been erased. Homes, schools and hospitals have been blasted by airstrikes and scorched by tank fire. Some buildings are still standing, but most are battered shells. Nearly 1 million Palestinians have fled the north, including its urban center, Gaza City, as ground combat intensified. When the war ends, any relief will quickly be overshadowed by dread as displaced families come to terms with the scale of the calamity and what it means for their future.

Politics

• New J6 Footage Shows Capitol Police May Have Incited Riot By Firing Munitions Into Peaceful Crowd. House Speaker Mike Johnson has released over 40,000 hours of J6 footage including capitol police body cam footage to the public in the interests of transparency, an action which should have been taken years ago. Each new piece of footage only confirms what many Americans already understood - That the few scant minutes of available video recycled by the media paint a false picture of what really happened. Many would argue that J6 was nothing more than a protest that was turned into a riot by police incitement and establishment spin.

• What Is Anarcho-Capitalism? The presidential victory of Javier Milei in Argentina puts at the head of state the first self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist” in modern history—or probably the first person ever to win an election at this level to identify with that term. Central to the idea is that society does not require an entrenched entity of legalized compulsion and coercion called the state in order to enjoy the enforcement of property rights, contracts, defense, and commercial society generally. The fusing of the terms anarchism and capitalism is not a plan for the social order but rather a prediction of what would happen in a civilized community in the absence of the state. The term originates in the work of American economist Murray Rothbard, who was strongly influenced in his libertarianism by novelist Ayn Rand in the 1950s. (One of Milei’s dogs is named Murray.) But as Rothbard examined Rand’s work closely, he began to develop doubts about the institution Rand insisted was necessary and essential, namely the state itself.

• The Pentagon Fails Another Audit – Trillions Missing. They say the Pentagon is the government’s favorite money laundering tool for a reason. It is comical that they even attempt to audit the Pentagon when they know the agency will fail miserably. The government spent $187 million to conduct the meaningless audit at 700 locations. This year, as with the year prior, only 7 of the 29 sub-audits passed. HALF of the claimed assets were nowhere to be found by the 1,600 hired auditors. How does trillions of dollars disappear?

• Revealed: King Charles secretly profiting from the assets of dead citizens. The Duchy of Lancaster, a controversial land and property estate that generates huge profits for King Charles III, has collected tens of millions of pounds in recent years under an antiquated system that dates back to feudal times. Financial assets known as bona vacantia, owned by people who died without a will or known next of kin, are collected by the duchy. Over the last 10 years, it has collected more than £60m in the funds. It has long claimed that, after deducting costs, bona vacantia revenues are donated to charities. However, only a small percentage of these revenues is being given to charity.

• The humiliation of the Dutch establishment. The victory of Geert Wilders shows voters are desperate to hit back against the elites. That voters were willing to plump for Wilders shows us how furious the Dutch are with the political establishment. For all the complacency about the Netherlands being immune to populism, voters are apparently desperate to hit back at the elites, using whatever weapon they have at their disposal. Populism in Europe is here to stay. And there is tremendous potential here for those of us who want to see this democratic revolt pushed in a more positive, progressive direction.

  

• Now Big Brother Wants to Control the Gas Pedal in Your Car. Just when you thought there were no parts of your life not already under the thumb of the federal government, a new idea emerges. This time it comes from the National Transportation Safety Board and it involves outsiders having control of the gas pedal in your car. While you’re driving, of course. The proposal from the NTSB is to install “intelligent speed assistance” tech in all cars, a system that uses a car’s GPS location and local speed limit postings “to help ensure safe and legal speeds.”

• Autumn statement funded by public service cuts, IFS says. Pain to come as chancellor's tax cuts will decrease funding for already stretched public services, according to the UK's leading independent economics research institute. The UK can expect lower spending on public services because of a lack of additional funding for government departments, according to analysis of the chancellor's autumn statement from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). While inflation remains high, government department funding isn't being "sufficiently topped up" with reduced spending a consequence now and in the future, the IFS said.

• Government disinformation unit rebrands following accusations it suppressed free speech. The rename is reportedly part of a larger change focusing on misinformation spread by foreign states. The unit, which has links to Britain’s intelligence agencies, is now called the National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT) and sources claim it is predominantly focused on false information that is deliberately spread by foreign states. Sir John Whittingdale, the minister for data and digital infrastructure, said the NSOIT was “focused exclusively on risks to national security and public safety” and that “preserving freedom of expression is an extremely important principle underpinning the team’s work”.

• Will Ireland’s populist unrest come to Britain? In 2022 alone, Britain saw more immigration than from every year between 1945 and 2000 combined. Yet, at the same time, the Tories have managed to alienate liberals with their entirely performative restrictionist rhetoric, to the point that many of Britain’s self-declared sensible centrists seem to sincerely believe the Conservatives to be a Right-wing party edging on fascism. The Conservative Party’s chosen policies reveal our government to be open-border zealots, whose policies are supported by only a tiny fraction of the population. At every available opportunity, British voters have demanded a clampdown on immigration numbers, yet every Tory leader has increased them as a willed policy choice.

• Mass migration is covering up the scandal of out-of-control welfare. Few politicians will dare to address worklessness when it is far easier just to import more migrants. In the 1980s such figures would have been seen as a scandal: how could a fifth, or a quarter, of entire cities be on the dole? Businesses would not be able to grow. They would be forced to raise wages to entice people to work, or provide training. But mass immigration offers an alternative, and it is one we have silently chosen to take. So we don’t notice the missing workers: the real total (5.5 million) doesn’t show up in the official claimant count. If you know where to look, you can find shocking projections: 2.8 million claiming sickness benefits now, for example, and that’s expected to rise to 3.4 million by the end of the decade. An increase bigger than the population of Bristol, swallowed up by this system. A social problem? Absolutely. But an economic one? Nothing that mass migration cannot solve.

Science

• Recent excavations at Girsu uncovered innovative civilization-saving technology of Ancient Sumerians. In ancient city Girsu, located near the modern city of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq, revealed through a recent excavation by the British Museum, that ancient Sumerians invented a “civilization-saving” water channel 4,000 years ago. A recent dig at Girsu revealed “a mysterious structure,” which in the 1920s was interpreted as an unusually shaped temple. However, members of the museum’s Girsu Project have discovered the true function of a mysterious structure created by the civilization. The team describe the ancient lifesaving device as a “flume” that was used to deliver water to distant locations for agriculture.

  

• Archaeologists uncover Europe's hidden Bronze Age megastructures. Archaeologists from University College Dublin, working with colleagues from Serbia and Slovenia, have uncovered a previously unknown network of massive sites in the heart of Europe that could explain the emergence of the continent's Bronze Age megaforts—the largest prehistoric constructions seen prior to the Iron Age. Using satellite images and aerial photography to stitch together the prehistoric landscape of the south Carpathian Basin in Central Europe, the team discovered more than 100 sites belonging to a complex society.

• Bacteria store 'memories' and pass them on for generations, study finds. Scientists have discovered that bacteria can create something like memories about when to form strategies that can cause dangerous infections in people, such as resistance to antibiotics and bacterial swarms when millions of bacteria come together on a single surface. The discovery—which has potential applications for preventing and combatting bacterial infections and addressing antibiotic-resistant bacteria—relates to a common chemical element bacterial cells can use to form and pass along these memories to their progeny over later generations.

• ‘What the heck is going on?’ Extremely high-energy particle detected falling to Earth. The particle, named Amaterasu after the sun goddess in Japanese mythology, is one of the highest-energy cosmic rays ever detected and is coming from an apparently empty region of space. Only the most powerful cosmic events, on scales far exceeding the explosion of a star, are thought to be capable of producing such energetic particles. But Amaterasu appears to have emerged from the Local Void, an empty area of space bordering the Milky Way galaxy.

Technology

• Secretive White House Surveillance Program Gives Cops Access to Trillions of US Phone Records. A WIRED analysis of leaked police documents verifies that a secretive government program is allowing federal, state, and local law enforcement to access phone records of Americans who are not suspected of a crime. According to the letter, a surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims. Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well.

• UK police plan nationwide rollout of NEC facial recognition on mobile phones. The app, known as Operator Initiated Facial Recognition (OIFR), is already being trialed by three UK police forces, with plans for a nationwide rollout next year. By May 2024, UK police plan to increase the use of retrospective facial recognition to identify people by 100 percent, and to set up a roadmap for OIFR on a national level.

• OpenAI Employees Say Firm's Chief Scientist Has Been Making Strange Spiritual Claims. OpenAI chief scientist and board member Ilya Sutskever has established himself as an esoteric "spiritual leader" at the company, per The Atlantic, cheering on the company's efforts to realize artificial general intelligence (AGI), a hazy and ill-defined state when AI models have become as or more capable than humans — or maybe, according to some, even godlike. "Feel the AGI! Feel the AGI!" employees reportedly chanted, per The Atlantic, a refrain that was led by Sutskever himself. The chief scientist even commissioned a wooden effigy to represent an "unaligned" AI that works against the interest of humanity, only to set it on fire. In short, instead of focusing on meaningfully advancing AI tech in a scientifically sound way, some board members sound like they're engaging in weird spiritual claims.

  

• The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans. Lethal autonomous weapons, that can select targets using AI, are being developed by countries including the US, China, and Israel. The use of the so-called "killer robots" would mark a disturbing development, say critics, handing life and death battlefield decisions to machines with no human input. Several governments are lobbying the UN for a binding resolution restricting the use of AI killer drones, but the US is among a group of nations — which also includes Russia, Australia, and Israel — who are resisting any such move, favoring a non-binding resolution instead.

Ukraine

• Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III Visits Ukraine. Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III traveled to Ukraine today to meet with Ukrainian leaders and reinforce the staunch support of the United States for Ukraine's fight for freedom. He will also underscore the continued U.S. commitment to providing Ukraine with the security assistance it needs to defend itself from Russian aggression, while also discussing a long-term vision for Ukraine's future force.

• Putin says we must think how to stop 'the tragedy' of war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin told the leaders of the Group of Twenty (G20) on Wednesday that it was necessary to think about how to stop "the tragedy" of the war in Ukraine, some of his most placatory remarks to date about the conflict. "Yes, of course, military actions are always a tragedy," Putin told the virtual G20 meeting called by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "And of course, we should think about how to stop this tragedy," Putin said. "By the way, Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine."

Vaccines

• Moderna is spying on you. New documents reveal its attempts to control the vaccine debate. Far from viral deception, much of the content flagged by Moderna as “misinformation” and a supposed danger to public health was nothing of the sort, it was legitimate discussion of vaccine-related issues. But the Moderna misinformation reports, reported here for the first time, reveal what the pharmaceutical company is willing to do to shape public discourse around its marquee product. And, even affect policy-making. Behind the scenes, the marketing arm of the company has been working with former law enforcement officials and public health officials to monitor and influence vaccine policy. Key to this is a drug industry-funded NGO called Public Good Projects.

• "One study after another confirms the scandalous consequences of massive vaccination." Fico shines a light on covid. The new Slovak government will evaluate the progress of the previous cabinets during the time of the coronavirus in connection with restrictions, vaccination with untested vaccines and the purchase of expensive medical equipment and vaccines. Its chairman and Prime Minister Robert Fico said this on Saturday at the parliament of the Smer government movement. At the same time, he announced that his party, and thus other parties, would not agree in the parliament to strengthen the powers of the WHO during the pandemic.

• Excess mortality and Covid vaccination: is there a correlation? Since the introduction of Covid vaccines, the official narrative in Australia (and other parts of the world) is that these vaccines are safe, efficacious, and working well. However, this claim is considered to be untrue, as demonstrated by both the science and the statistics. There is compelling evidence that the official narrative promoted by politicians and health bureaucracies, and enforced by politicised police forces, is misleading and even irresponsible in the light of the demonstrable side-effects of mRNA vaccines.

  

• Pfizer is suing Poland over vaccines. This is how we got here. The court case is the latest fallout from Ursula von der Leyen’s massive COVID-19 vaccine contract. U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is taking the Polish government to court over missing payments for 60 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine it developed with BioNTech. The lawsuit, which comes as Poland prepares for a change in government following its October election, marks the culmination of a 19-month struggle between Warsaw and Pfizer over a glut of vaccine doses.

• Natural Immunity Better Than Protection From COVID-19 Vaccination: Study. People who recovered from COVID-19 were better off than those who received a COVID-19 vaccine, researchers find. People who received a vaccine were nearly five times as likely as the naturally immune to test positive for COVID-19 during the Delta era and 1.1 times as likely to test positive for COVID-19 during the Omicron era, researchers in Estonia found. The vaccinated were also seven times as likely to be admitted to a hospital for COVID-19 amid the spread of the Delta variant and two times as likely to be admitted to a hospital during the Omicron period, when compared with the naturally immune, the researchers found.