This Week's Must Reads - 26 June - 2 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

• Larry Fink "ashamed" to be part of ESG political debate. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he's no longer using the term "ESG" (environment, social and governance) because it is being politically "weaponized" and he's "ashamed" to be part of the debate on the issue. When pressed on the statement later in the conversation, Fink backtracked. "I never said I was ashamed," he said, incorrectly. "I'm not ashamed. I do believe in conscientious capitalism." "I'm not going to use the word ESG because it's been misused by the far left and the far right," he added.

• EU Looks Into Blocking Out the Sun as Climate Efforts Falter. The European Union will join an international effort to assess whether large-scale interventions such as deflecting the sun’s rays or changing the Earth’s weather patterns are viable options for fighting climate change. The bloc will announce a framework Wednesday for assessing the security implications of a rapidly warming planet, such as the potential for scarce water or food to trigger conflict and migration, according to a draft document seen by Bloomberg. Part of that assessment includes studying the potential dangers of re-engineering the atmosphere.

• Three Typhoon Jets Landed Next to Thermometer When Britain’s ‘Record’ Temperature of 40.3°C Was Recorded. At least three Typhoon fighter jets were landing at RAF Coningsby around the time when the brief U.K. temperature record was declared at 15:12 on July 19th last year from a measuring device situated halfway down the runway. Following a Freedom of Information request, the Daily Sceptic has obtained portions of the log books of four pilots flying from the base that afternoon, casting considerable doubt on the record that made headlines around the world.

Covid

• There Was No Pandemic (essay). The excess mortality was not caused by any particularly virulent new pathogen. COVID so-called response in-effect was a massive multi-pronged state and iatrogenic attack against populations, and against societal support structures, which caused all the excess mortality, in every jurisdiction. It is only natural now to ask “what drove this?”, “who benefited?” and “which groups sustained permanent structural disadvantages?”

• Wuhan researcher claims China engineered COVID-19 as a 'bioweapon'. According to an ANI report, a researcher from the Wuhan Institute of Virology claims that China allegedly engineered the coronavirus as a "bioweapon."

  In an interview shared by ANI, Chao Shao told Jennifer Zeng, a member of the International Press Association, that he and his colleagues were given four strains of the virus to determine which strain could spread most effectively. Zeng, a Chinese-born human rights activist and author, took the interview between March and April 2020.

• Fauci adviser hid emails from FOIA requests by using personal account. A senior scientific adviser at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said he used a personal email account to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests and even deleted some emails during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to federal records obtained by House investigators. In one alarming exchange, Morens told Bloomberg reporter Jason Gale that the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services prohibited him from “talk[ing] about [COVID] ‘origins’ on the record,” but that he had recently been given latitude to discuss the matter — as long as he didn’t mention his boss.

Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• Britain must prepare for harder lockdowns, says Matt Hancock. Health secretary at time Covid hit admits the Government's pandemic strategy was 'woefully inadequate'. Mr Hancock advocated for lockdown, saying that the UK was “completely wrong” by assuming a pandemic could not be stopped. “It is central to what we must learn as a country that we’ve got to be ready to hit a pandemic hard,” he said. “We’ve got to be able to take action – lockdown action if necessary – that is wider, earlier, more stringent than feels comfortable at the time.”

• Over 300 Canadian Soldiers Launch $500 Million Lawsuit Against Military For COVID Vaccine Mandates. “The CAF shirked its own purpose and rushed an untested product onto its members, mislabeled this experimental gene therapy a ‘vaccine,’ knowingly made false statements of safety and efficacy, and facilitated its mandate with no option to refuse except for mandatory permanent removal from service,” reads the statement of claim filed with the Federal Court on June 21.

• The COVID vaccine mandate in English care homes led to fewer staff – and may not have reduced resident deaths. In this new study, they sought to estimate the effects of the 2021 COVID vaccine mandate for staff in elderly care homes in England. They found that the mandate was successful in reducing the percentage of unvaccinated workers, but this came at the cost of a reduction in net staffing in the sector. They also didn’t find any evidence that the mandate reduced COVID deaths among residents.

• Statistical and Numerical Errors Made by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention During the COVID-19 Pandemic. A basic prerequisite for making informed policy decisions is accurate and reliable statistics, even during times of uncertainty. This investigation revealed 25 instances of numerical or statistical errors made by the CDC. The investigation suggests 1) the need for greater diligence in data collection and reporting, and 2) that the federal entity responsible for reporting health statistics should be firewalled from the entity setting policy due to concerns of real or perceived systematic bias in errors.

• Covid pandemic linked to surge in child and teen diabetes. There has been an unusual rise in the number of children and teenagers around the world diagnosed with type 1 diabetes since Covid, say researchers. The recent study found there was a 14% rise in the rate during the first year of the pandemic, compared to before Covid and in the second year of Covid, the rate was up about 27% on pre-pandemic levels.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• Financial storm bears down on US commercial real estate. Long-awaiting reckoning arrives as building loans come due at time of scarcer credit. “In New York, buildings are selling for less than the value of the land they sit on,” said Will Silverman, managing director at Eastdil Secured, a real estate investment bank. “We are seeing prices lower than they have been in 20 years in absolute dollar terms.”

• New evidence from Nord Stream underwater expedition refutes official claims. Observers have drawn a number of conclusions based on a recent series of visits to the site of the Nord Stream pipeline rupture via drone. There’s just one problem: all of them seemed to have missed the location of the explosions. After a recent underwater expedition, The Grayzone can now reveal where they went wrong, and what the real blast sites tell us about the worst act of eco-terrorism in history.

• Eurozone M2 money growth has slowed to 0.3%, the slowest in history.

• Super-rich warned of ‘pitchforks and torches’ unless they tackle inequality. Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions. “There is often, unfortunately, too much focus on the passion behind philanthropy and the feelgood factor and not the actual need,” said Woodcraft, who works as an adviser to the super-rich. “Philanthropists are all too keen to jump in when they surmise that there might be a need, without actually having the data.”

• Airbnb revenue is collapsing around the US.

• Food prices versus consumption in France.

Health

• What’s behind the worrying rise of cancer in young people? After cases in people aged 25-49 rises 22%, experts are blaming processed foods, smoking, drinking and even pollution. Over the past 30 years, the number of young people in the UK aged between 25 and 49 diagnosed with cancer has increased by 22 per cent, according to latest figures. This is a bigger rise than any other age group — and more than twice the 9 per cent increase in the over-75s — prompting leading epidemiologists to call it an 'epidemic'.

• Malaria found in US for first time in 20 years, alarming officials. Five new cases of malaria — one in Texas and four in Florida — are alarming officials because they were locally acquired, meaning a mosquito in the US was carrying the parasite. That hasn’t happened since 2003 in Palm Beach County, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease and Prevention. [Genetically Modified Mosquitoes & EPA OKs plan to release 2.4 million more genetically modified mosquitoes. Following Oxitec's 2021 release of 144,000 mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, the EPA approved an expanded plan that added sites in California.]

• Is liberal society making us ill? Young people are reporting despair and distress at an unprecedented rate, and this mental health crisis is a symptom of a malfunctioning society — a society that is making people sick, by teaching them to feel sick. The tendency for people to misdiagnose their despair as a medical disorder can be observed far beyond reports of long Covid. Consider the surge in cases of gender dysphoria. Between 2012 and 2022, the number of adolescents referred to the NHS’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) increased by over 2000%.

• WHO's cancer research agency to say aspartame sweetener a possible carcinogen -sources. One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators.

• [2011] - Donald Rumsfeld and the Strange History of Aspartame. When Searle was absorbed by Monsanto in 1985, Donald Rumsfeld reportedly received a $12 million bonus, pretty big money in those days. Also, while at Searle, Rumsfeld was awarded Outstanding CEO in the Pharmaceutical Industry from the Wall Street Transcript (1980) and Financial World (1981).

Politics

• Draft EU plans to allow spying on journalists are dangerous, warn critics. Move to allow spyware to be placed on reporters’ phones would have a ‘chilling effect’, say media experts. On Wednesday, the European Council – which represents the governments of EU member states – published a draft of the European Media Freedom Act that would allow spyware to be placed on journalists’ phones if a national government thought it necessary.

• REUTERS INVESTIGATION REVEALS: Every living President is a descendent of slaveholders - except Donald Trump. Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden were found to have slaveholding ancestors. Obama's ancestors who enslaved others were through his mother's side. Trump’s family immigrated to the US after the abolition of slavery, with his grandfather moving to the US from Germany in 1885, Reuters reported.

• New Docs Link CIA to Medical Torture of Indigenous Children and Black Prisoners. While we may never know the full truth, we owe it to those harmed and killed to illuminate their stories. Launched in the wake of the Nuremberg Trials, which exposed the extent of Nazi atrocities carried out in the name of science, MK Ultra involved a range of grotesque experiments on unwitting test subjects within and beyond U.S. borders. Newly revealed evidence exposes previously hidden links between MK Ultra experiments on Indigenous children in Canada and imprisoned Black people in the U.S.

• Transhumanism and the Philosophy of the Elites. For scholar Francis Fukuyama, the loss of humanity's 'essence' lies unrecognised beneath transhumanism's mountain of promise for a techno-scientific future of imaginative self-improvement. This paper aims to further our critical engagement with an ideology emerging across influential sectors of society.

Science

• Marco Rubio says he's heard shocking 'firsthand' accounts of UFOs from top Pentagon officials who claim US owns crashed non-human craft - and is working on reverse-engineering their technology. 'Some of these people still work in the government, and frankly a lot of them are very fearful,' the Florida Republican noted, 'fearful of their jobs, fearful of their clearances, fearful of their career, and some frankly are fearful of harm coming to them.'

Technology

• Will AI Really Destroy Humanity? Most disaster scenarios start in the same place: machines will outstrip human capacities, escape human control and refuse to be switched off. But because these machines do not yet exist, imagining how they could doom humanity is often left to philosophy and science fiction.

• Here We Go Again: Former CIA Agent Promoted to Meta/Facebook’s “Head of Election Policies”. As the Big-Tech censorship apparatus in social media continues to roll on at full steam ahead of the 2024 Election, a former 17-year veteran of the CIA, Aaron Berman, has reportedly been promoted to the “Head of Elections Policies” for Meta/Facebook. Berman was a “Senior Analytic Manager (and various positions)” for the CIA from March 2002 thru July 2019.

Ukraine

• Before He Turned on Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin Made Hollywood-Style Propaganda Films to Sell His War. The chief of the multi-tentacled Wagner group, who appears to be attempting a coup against Kremlin, didn’t just send his army of mercenaries to the Ukrainian front lines. He was also at the vanguard of Putin’s effort to counter Western cultural dominance, and using movies to do it.

• All aboard the gravy train: an independent audit of US funding for Ukraine. In the absence of official scrutiny of Washington’s spending spree on Ukraine, The Grayzone conducted an independent audit of US funding for the country. They discovered a series of wasteful, highly unusual expenditures the Biden administration has yet to explain.

Vaccines

• COVID-19 Infection and Vaccination and Its Relation to Amyloidosis: What Do We Know Currently? Multi-organ involvement including hepatic, gastrointestinal, renal, cardiac and immunological pathological manifestations has been observed amongst individuals presenting with amyloidosis. Over the recent months, reports of new-onset and relapsed disease following COVID-19 infection and vaccination have been published.

• The Big Fail. Vaccines have not curbed death rates from Covid in countries around the world. There is no clear evidence that they have saved lives and they have probably done more to precipitate deaths than to avert them. This is a conclusion reached after completing a straightforward statistical study that compares the death rate from Covid to the level of vaccination within each of the individual countries.

• Covid jabs are making things worse - More jabs; more illness. HART reported in January that there was powerful evidence from more than one source that the more injections people had had the higher their risk of contracting covid.

  One important study in this area was of over 50,000 healthcare workers in the Cleveland Clinic. The researchers observed that the infection rate per person was higher for every additional dose given. This should have been game changing but was ignored or dismissed as not being peer reviewed work.

• B-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma following intravenous BNT162b2 mRNA booster in a BALB/c mouse: A case report. Two days following booster vaccination (i.e., 16 days after prime), at only 14 weeks of age, our animal suffered spontaneous death with marked organomegaly and diffuse malignant infiltration of multiple extranodal organs (heart, lung, liver, kidney, spleen) by lymphoid neoplasm.

• Vaccines still produce spike protein after two years. Contrary to what the authorities had claimed, Covid vaccines can modify DNA. Serious and long-term effects have been found.

• Autopsy findings of post-COVID-19 vaccination deaths in Tokyo Metropolis, Japan, 2021. Although many cases of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination in this study showed no definite causal relationship between the vaccination and deaths, some cases showed possible adverse events such as myocarditis. Autopsies are essential for detecting vaccine-related deaths, and the Japanese death investigation system needs to be reinforced from this viewpoint.

• Aaron Siri, the lead counsel for ICAN, delivered compelling testimony at the Arizona Novel COVID South Western Intergovernmental Committee (NCSWIC), an important platform dedicated to addressing the challenges and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, and charting a path forward.