This Week's Must Reads - 25-31 December 2023

A summary of this week's most interesting news, studies, reports and articles

Dec 31, 2023

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.

Make sure you sign up!

Climate Change

Rich world uses green policies to hold back the poor, says UN trade chief. “Many trade rules forbid policies that can be used by developing countries. And the developed countries have more fiscal space to subsidise in the areas that are good for ‘quote, unquote’, the environment,” Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, told the Financial Times in an interview. She said the international trading system, which had allowed states such as South Korea and her native Costa Rica to progress, was no longer working for the poorest.
No One Wants Used EVs, Making New Ones a Tougher Sell Too. Poor demand risks profits at automakers and leasing firms. In the $1.2 trillion secondhand market, prices for battery-powered cars are falling faster than for their combustion-engine cousins. Buyers are shunning them due to a lack of subsidies, a desire to wait for better technology and continued shortfalls in charging infrastructures. Because most new vehicles in Europe are sold via leases, automakers and dealers who finance these transactions are trying to recover losses from plummeting valuations by raising borrowing costs.
Media Pushes False Claims of 2023 Being “Hottest In 125,000 Years”. With the end of 2023 fast approaching, and with some media outlets already pushing the false idea that 2023 was the “hottest In 125,000 years,” we can be assured that when the final temperature numbers come out in January, the media will uncritically push this story as if it were fact, rather than speculation by a group of climate scientists. Alarmists have been building up to this false year’s-end claim, asserting at various times throughout the year that a particular July day or that the summer, were the hottest on in history, or at least in the last 125,000 years.

Covid

Investigators Probe Whether U.S. Was Billed Twice for Coronavirus Research in China. Two federal inspectors general are investigating whether a nonprofit group involved in high-risk coronavirus research in China double-billed U.S. taxpayers for hundreds of thousands of dollars for that work, according to people familiar with the matter. The probe of New York-based EcoHealth Alliance’s practices, some details of which haven’t been reported, is at an advanced stage and has included subpoenas of the organization’s records, the people said.
CIA accused of hiding records that analysts took ‘monetary incentives’ to bury COVID lab leak finding. An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic. The think tank’s Oversight Project filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA Dec. 22, alleging the agency did not comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request about analysts who allegedly “received monetary incentives to change their position on the origins of the virus.”
Excess Mortality in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden During the COVID-19 Pandemic Years 2020-2022. Compared to most European countries, the Nordic countries experienced relatively low pandemic excess mortality. However, the timing of excess mortality differed substantially. These estimates – arguably the most accurate available for any region in capturing pandemic-related excess deaths – can inform discussions and future research into the complex mortality dynamics affecting otherwise similar countries in times of crisis.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

UK's Christmas Covid chaos sees NHS nurses demand Brits 'mask up' again to stop disease. The emerging JN.1 Covid variant has helped a rise in cases over the Christmas period as NHS staff in hospitals struggle to meet demand of soaring number of patients. Royal College of Nursing officials have written to to nursing officers in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland demanding marks to be worn to mitigate the spread, which is still not legal practice but has been advised by the WHO.
Covid inquiry head says Canadian Charter allowed Trudeau Liberals to 'override all of our rights at a whim'. Inquiry Commissioner Ken Drysdale and the final report are damning of how Canada officially responded to Covid-19, saying that not only did governments at all levels in Canada use the pandemic to violate the rights of basic citizens but Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms proved to be an absolute “failure” to protect those rights and “completely collapsed” when Canadians needed it the most.
Grand Inquisitor Says Oops. Francis Collins was head of the National Institutes of Health – Anthony Fauci’s parent bureaucracy – during the wreckage caused by the Covid response. Ultimately, Dr. Collins bears a huge measure of the responsibility for the disaster, even if he played the role of the stooge. Five months ago, an organization that seeks political consensus hosted him for some frank talk about what happened. Here is what he had to say - Note that Collins doesn’t apologize. He takes no responsibility. He just continues his masquerade as a tennis-shoe wearing, guitar-strumming, Jesus-loving grandpa who is open and broad-minded, never mind that he wielded absolute power over all our lives only a few years ago.
COVID Mask Mandates Return in California, Illinois, New York. Hospitals in areas across the U.S. have reintroduced mask mandates to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses. "Our wastewater monitoring program is currently detecting high COVID-19 and RSV levels," Yolo County public health officer Aimee Sisson said. "I recommend that everybody in the community take steps to protect themselves from infection, including wearing a high-quality mask when indoors around others. "In addition, if you have not yet gotten the updated COVID-19 vaccine, annual flu vaccine, and RSV vaccine, I strongly encourage you to do so—it is not too late."
Share

Economy/Energy/Finance

The ‘Control System’ is Collapsing, and Bitcoin is the answer. A new book has exploded on the alternative / conspiracy / fringe landscape over the past few weeks. At the risk of oversimplifying it: The Great Taking puts forth a warning that a virtually unknown entity called “The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation” (DTCC) is effectively the “owner” of all the publicly traded companies in the world, and in fact all debt-based assets of any kind.
Los Angeles office building sells at 52% less than 2018 price. Harbor Associates and F&F Capital Group bought the five-storey property at 1640 Sepulveda Blvd for about US$44.7 million, according to a statement on Tuesday (Dec 26). The building last sold in 2018 for US$92.5 million. It is the latest sale of an LA office building in a market that’s been pressured by the rise of remote work and financing challenges brought about by soaring interest rates. Recently, the Aon Center in downtown LA sold for US$147.8 million, about 45 per cent less than its previous purchase price in 2014.
The Baby Boom. Causes, consequences and implications. The Baby Boom was the sudden rise in fertility, beginning in the late 1930s, of the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the world. It is often associated with the end of World War II, but actually began before then. In effect, the Baby Boom completely undid the First Demographic Transition. This is approximately what “natural” Western fertility looks like when not under severe economic stress (historical default) or subjected to anti-natal culture and laws. The proximate cause of the Baby Boom is not a mystery. Almost all births during the Baby Boom were within wedlock, meaning that fertility was a function of (1) nuptiality and (2) marital fertility. So what caused this marriage boom? The answer appears to be a rise in young men’s status compared to young women’s.
Banks Terminate 60,000 Workers In One Of The Bleakest Years For The Industry Since 2008. The collapse of three US regional banks - First Republic Bank, Silicon Valley Bank, and Signature Bank - marked some of the largest failures in the banking system since 2008. Central banks contained the "mini-crisis" earlier this year with forced interventions and the mega-merger of Credit Suisse and UBS. Despite the interventions, global banks still axed the most jobs since the global financial crisis. A new report from the Financial Times shows twenty of the world's largest banks slashed 61,905 jobs in 2023, a move to protect profit margins in a period of high interest rates amid a slump in dealmaking and equity and debt sales. This compared with the 140,000 lost during the GFC of 2007-08.
Global defence orders surge as geopolitical tensions mount. The order books of the world’s biggest defence companies are near record highs after growing by more than 10 per cent in just two years because of rising geopolitical tension, including the conflict in Ukraine. An analysis by the Financial Times of 15 defence groups, including the largest US contractors, Britain’s BAE Systems and South Korea’s Hanwha Aerospace, found that at the end of 2022 — the latest for which full-year data is available — their combined order backlogs were $777.6bn, up from $701.2bn two years earlier.
Google likely to layoff 30,000 employees post new AI innovation. Google is actively engaged in advancing its AI model, but recent indications suggest that the tech giant is not just focusing on AI development for external applications but is also contemplating a significant shift in its operational structure. The proposed restructuring is anticipated to primarily impact Google's ad sales department, where the company is exploring the benefits of leveraging AI for operational efficiency.
The top 1% of US earners now have more wealth than the entire middle class.

Health

USDA allows genetically engineered vaccines to infiltrate organic food production. The OrganicEye, an industry watchdog, said some USDA-certified organic producers are already using GE vaccines in their livestock even though it goes against the principles of organic farming. The watchdog also pointed out that consumers cannot determine whether USDA-certified organic meat, eggs or milk have been produced using GE or GMO-containing vaccines.
Gut microbes may play role in social anxiety disorder, say researchers. Scientists have previously found the gut microbiome – the collection of bacteria and other organisms that live in the gastrointestinal system – differs for people who have social anxiety disorder (SAD) compared with healthy individuals, while a growing body of research has revealed that microbes in the gut can influence the brain – and vice versa. Now researchers have found that when microbes from the guts of people with SAD are transplanted into mice, the animals have an increased response to social fear.
Peanut M&M’s are ‘Healthier’ than Beef and Pork, Bill Gates-Funded Study Claims. Dr. Dariush Moaffarian, a cardiologist, nutrition researcher and dean at the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, was funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to conduct research on more than 8,000 different foods and beverages to create a “Food Compass” that rates each food on nine nutritional values and gives each one a score on a scale of 0-100.

Middle East

Iran vows retribution after Israel kills senior general in Syria. The incident further raises tension in the Middle East where Iran-aligned groups have escalated conflict since Iran-backed Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, triggering a war with Israel. Iranian state media also reported the death of Razi Mousavi, describing him as "one of the most experienced advisers" of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Israel Routinely Dropping US-Supplied 2,000-lb Bombs In Dense Civilian Areas. As civilian casualties in the Israel-Hamas war continue to mount -- surpassing 20,000 from a population of just 2 million -- alarm is growing over Israel's all-too-eager use of a particularly devastating weapon: the 2,000-pound MK-84 bomb. Gaza is one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. For most other militaries, that would be cause for restraint, particularly where the MK-84 is concerned, given its 3,280-foot hazardous blast radius. However, as the IDF presses its campaign against the militant group Hamas and its elaborate tunnel system, it's exhibiting an unusually high tolerance for civilian harm.
Iraq's PM says government working to end presence of US-led coalition forces in the country. The Iraqi premier's announcement comes amid heightened tensions and an escalation in attacks between the US military and Iran-backed militias, with the latter group insisting that the Iraqi government should set out a clear timetable for the withdrawal of coalition troops.

Politics

"It's Disgusting What They're Doing": Tucker Carlson Describes Visit With Julian Assange. As Julian Assange approaches his 'final' appeal against extradition to the United States, where he faces some 18 counts related to the release of vast troves of damning and embarrassing evidence against the US government, the 52-year-old WikiLeaks founder received a visit from Tucker Carlson to discuss his situation.
The revenge of the Blob. In 2023, the technocratic elite made big strides towards taking back control. They have got rid of more Brexiteer Tory ministers and re-confirmed their authority over big policy issues from the British economy to immigration. In the UK in 2023, the unaccountable technocratic elite known as ‘the Blob’ has had what it hopes will be its final revenge on the British people, who dared to vote for Brexit in the 2016 EU referendum and for Boris ‘Get Brexit Done’ Johnson in the 2019 General Election.
UNESCO wants to develop an ‘internet of trust’. UNESCO has released Guidelines for the Governance of Digital Platforms in a bid to protect people’s rights online. It includes five principles that aim to prevent issues such as misinformation, disinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories. The World Economic Forum’s Toolkit for Digital Safety Design Interventions and Innovations aims to harmonize universal perceptions of online threats following a fragmentation of efforts to tackle issues from cyberbullying to hate speech.
House Republican: Jeffrey Epstein flight logs not released because colleagues would be ‘compromised’. Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican, touched on Congress’ hesitance to release the flight records of Epstein’s Lolita Express, allegedly used to shuttle young women to the financier’s private island and homes throughout the country and world. “Too many of my colleagues I’m afraid are compromised in this area for whatever reason,” Mr. Burchett told Newsmax this week.
EU to force X to shut down if Musk does not ban independent media from the platform. The European Union (EU) launched "formal infringement proceedings" into X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter owned by Big Tech mogul Elon Musk, accusing it of failing to counter illicit content and disinformation, a lack of transparency about advertising and "deceptive" design practices. The European Commission's executive branch also vowed to permanently shut it down if the platform doesn't immediately ban alternative media.
Polish culture minister says he will put state media into liquidation. Poland's culture minister has decided to put its state television, radio and news agency into liquidation, he said on Wednesday, deepening a dispute over the future of publicly- owned media after a momentous change in government. A pro-European Union coalition headed by Donald Tusk took power in Poland this month and started an overhaul of state media institutions which critics say had become propaganda outlets during the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party's eight years in power.
Maine strips Trump from the ballot, inflaming legal war over his candidacy. Activists and voters have filed numerous lawsuits around the country claiming the former president is barred from office under the “insurrection clause.” The ruling by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, is certain to inflame a roaring national debate over whether the Republican presidential frontrunner should be allowed to hold power again. The decision makes Maine the second state in two weeks to disqualify Trump’s candidacy due to the constitutional bar on officeholders who supported or “engaged in insurrection or rebellion.”
Milei says Argentina will not be joining Brics bloc in policy reversal. In a letter addressed to the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – all members of the alliance – Milei said the moment was not “opportune” for Argentina to join as a full member. The letter was dated a week ago, 22 December, but released by the Argentinian government on Friday, the last working day of 2023. Argentina was among six countries invited in August to join the bloc – made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to make an 11-nation bloc – and had been set to become a member on 1 January 2024.
Where are the young gender critical feminists? Young people need to stand up for women’s rights before it is too late. There is barely even room for discussion. Either trans women are women, or you’re a bigot. Despite the author being a part of the original Harry Potter generation, she has been at under 30s parties where even vague murmurs of support for JK Rowling are batted down with righteous pleas for us all to renounce our childhood sins and boycott her books.
Share

Science

Lost Civilization Discovered Off Coast of Australia. A lost civilization more than 1.6 times the size of the United Kingdom has been discovered off the coast of Australia, according to a new study from the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. According to the journal, “this now-drowned region,” which “existed as an extensive archipelago,” was very likely to have provided crucial resources and refuge to human populations living more than 2.5 million years ago. The shelf, once thought to be a desert, could have supported between 50,000 and 500,000 people and may have served as a bridge for people to walk onto Australia before it became the massive island it is known as today.
NASA launches mission to intercept ‘God of Chaos’ asteroid as it nears Earth’s orbit. The agency’s spacecraft OSIRIS-REx — now named the OSIRIS-APEX — has been sent off to study the asteroid Apophis’ extremely close flyby of Earth in 2029, the likes of which “hasn’t happened since the dawn of recorded history,” NASA announced. The rock, which measures around 370 yards across, only comes this close to Earth every 7,500 years.
Ancient Human Discovery: New Fossils Reveal a Mysterious Hominin Lineage From the Levant. The Nesher Ramla Homo, an archaic hominin group found in Israel, reveals a complex intermingling of Eurasian and African hominins 140,000 years ago, altering perceptions of Neanderthal origins. The researchers show that the Nesher Ramla Homo were well-versed in technologies that were previously only known among H. sapiens and Neanderthals. Together, the findings provide archaeological support for close cultural interactions and genetic admixture between different human lineages before 120,000 years ago.
Modeling geomagnetic spikes: the Levantine Iron Age anomaly. The Levantine Iron Age anomaly (LIAA) is a regional short-decadal geomagnetic strength field variation located at the Levantine region characterized by high intensities with maximum virtual axial dipole moments around 190 ZAm. It has been constrained by archeomagnetic data coming from Eastern Europe and Western Asia between 1050 and 700 BC. The LIAA can be related to a fast and spatially localized geomagnetic positive anomaly (spike) at the Earth’s surface.

Technology

Hard drive storage will soon become part of computing history, says expert. Data storage on hard drives will soon become a thing of the past, according to an expert Shawn Rosemarin, Vice President, R&D and Customer Engineering - Pure Storage. According to Rosemarin, we could see the last hard drive being sold in just about five years from now. Most computer users have long migrated to cloud storage solutions when it comes to safely storing their data. With content being streamed on smartphones and tablets practically everywhere, there is little reason to own a hard drive these days.
Why are the elites suddenly so terrified about AI? In 2023, the policy elites became immersed in a giant work of collaborative science fiction. Both the White House and Whitehall are now gripped by fear of a technology that doesn’t exist and may never exist – namely, a form of god-like artificial intelligence, or artificial general intelligence (AGI). Outside, in the real world, potholes proliferate across the UK, NHS waiting lists grow longer and we no longer generate enough electricity domestically to keep the lights on. But at least the future will apparently be safe from killer computers.
The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging that the companies’ artificial intelligence technology illegally copied millions of Times articles to train ChatGPT and other services to provide people with instant access to information — technology that now competes with the Times. The complaint is the latest in a string of lawsuits that seek to limit the use of alleged scraping of wide swaths of content from across the internet — without compensation — to train so-called large language artificial intelligence models. Actors, writers, journalists and other creative types who post their works on the internet fear that AI will learn from their material and provide competitive chatbots and other sources of information without proper compensation.

Ukraine

Belarus leader says Russian nuclear weapons shipments are completed, raising concern in the region. The president of Belarus says Russia has completed its shipments of short-range, tactical nuclear weapons to his country, an initiative that has raised strong concerns in neighboring Poland and elsewhere in the region. Tactical nuclear weapons, which are intended for use on the battlefield, have a short range and a low yield compared with much more powerful nuclear warheads fitted to long-range missiles. Russia said it would maintain control over those it sends to Belarus.
Ukrainian Ambassador Oleksandr Chalyi discusses peace talks held in Spring 2022. He says they concluded the Istabul Communique and were very close in April to finalising a peaceful settlement. Furthermore, he states that Putin tried everything possible to conclude the agreement with Ukraine and it was his personal decision to accept the text of the Communique.
The Biden Administration Is Quietly Shifting Its Strategy in Ukraine. For two years, Biden and Zelenskyy have been focused on driving Russia from Ukraine. Now Washington is discussing a move to a more defensive posture. With U.S. and European aid to Ukraine now in serious jeopardy, the Biden administration and European officials are quietly shifting their focus from supporting Ukraine’s goal of total victory over Russia to improving its position in an eventual negotiation to end the war, according to a Biden administration official and a European diplomat based in Washington. Such a negotiation would likely mean giving up parts of Ukraine to Russia.

Vaccines

Long term follow up and outcomes of Covid-19 vaccine associated myocarditis in Victoria, Australia: A clinical surveillance study. There appears to be a significant proportion of patients who experience ongoing symptoms to 6 months post onset amongst patients that experience these AESI. Male patients were more likely to report earlier and more complete symptom recovery, despite significantly higher average initial peak troponin. This difference in phenotypic presentation in females compared to males warrants further investigation and there is a need for longer term follow up data.
Repeat Influenza Vaccination Linked to Higher Risk of Infection: CDC Preprint. The preprint authors initially wondered if vaccination timing and influenza infections in prior seasons may have contributed to repeat vaccinees’ increased risk of infection. However, they concluded these factors “cannot fully explain the increased infection risk in repeat vaccinees compared with non-repeat vaccinees.” A popular theory is the concept of original antigenic sin, meaning that regardless of what virus we encounter, the body is forever biased to respond to newer viral strains the same way it responded to the initial infection.
Do vaccines increase or decrease susceptibility to diseases other than those they protect against? Contrary to the long-held belief that the effects of vaccines are specific for the disease they were created; compelling evidence has demonstrated that vaccines can exert positive or deleterious non-specific effects (NSEs). Analysis of information showed that live vaccines induce positive NSEs, whereas non-live vaccines induce several negative NSEs, including increased female mortality associated with enhanced susceptibility to other infectious diseases, especially in developing countries. High IgG4 antibody levels generated in response to repeated inoculation with mRNA COVID-19 vaccines could be associated with a higher mortality rate from unrelated diseases and infections by suppressing the immune system. Since most COVID-19 vaccinated countries are reporting high percentages of excess mortality not directly attributable to deaths from such disease, the NSEs of mRNA vaccines on overall mortality should be studied in depth.