Today's Must-Reads - 6 June 2023 - Jacinda Arden Made Dame - Massive US Hotel Abandoned in San Francisco - Cancer Drug Shortage - Biden Informant May Be Killed - Alien Craft - Ukrainian Nazi Symbols

A selection of the latest 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 latest articles and information that I’ve found. Today, this is a slimmed down version for all subscribers but on other days will be for only paid subscribers.

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Covid Mandates & Lockdowns

• The Destruction of Language as Tool of Power. Did anyone provide you with a stable and dependable ratio between the growth of so-called cases and hospitalizations and deaths? No they did not, because such calculations either did not exist or if they existed were not made public. Were you told that prior to the Spring of 2020 the term “case” had never been used to refer to people having a positive test result in the absence of physical symptoms as observed by a doctor? Or that the PCR tests being used were being run at 40-45 cycles of amplification when it was known that anything more than 33 cycles (some experts even said 27 cycles) of amplification generated massive amounts of false positives? No, you were simply supposed to “consume” the floating signifier of the “case” and accept the fright-freighted single semantic valence that the media was attaching to it by means of nauseating repetition. And here’s the scary part, most people did exactly that!

• CNN lost trust over COVID coverage, internal report found. The Atlantic’s Friday profile of the embattled CEO profile Chris Licht drew cringes at Hudson Yards — but also anger over Licht’s criticism of the network’s award-winning pandemic coverage. “In the beginning it was a trusted source—this crazy thing, no one understands it, help us make sense of it. What’s going on?” Licht said. “And I think then it got to a place where, ‘Oh wow, we gotta keep getting those ratings. We gotta keep getting the sense of urgency.’”

• Jacinda Ardern made a dame in King's Birthday Honours. Ardern, who spent nearly six years as prime minister before her shock resignation earlier this year, has received the honour for services to the state.

• A new systematic review and meta-analysis published by the Institute of Economic Affairs finds that Covid lockdowns failed to significantly reduce deaths. COVID-19 lockdowns were “a global policy failure of gigantic proportions,” according to this peer-reviewed new academic study. The draconian policy failed to significantly reduce deaths while imposing substantial social, cultural, and economic costs.

Economy/Energy/Finance

• The 1,921 Room Hilton Union Square Hotel in San Francisco Was Just Abandoned. One of the largest hotels in US, the 1,921 room Hilton Union Sq in SF, was forfeited by owner to the lender. "Now more than ever, we believe San Francisco’s path to recovery remains clouded and elongated by major challenges, both old and new: record high office vacancy; concerns over street conditions; lower return to office than peer cities; and a weaker than expected citywide convention calendar through 2027 that will negatively impact business and leisure demand."

• Taxman is snooping on emails and social media - and now holds 55 BILLION items of our data on its AI system in a bid to tackle tax evasion. HMRC introduced its Connect system in 2010 to narrow this gap by using data to identify potential cases of tax evasion and avoidance and is used by HMRC to select individuals or businesses for further investigation. The Connect system also looks at social media posts, bank and credit card records, DVLA records, social media posts, and most concerningly of all, HMRC will sweep your browsing history and email records too.

Health

• To ease cancer drug shortage, FDA will allow imports from China. The Food and Drug Administration is working with a Chinese drugmaker to import the chemotherapy drug cisplatin, a strategy aimed at ramping up supply amid an ongoing shortage of the drug in the United States. The decision by the FDA to work with a foreign drugmaker comes as the U.S. faces a widespread shortage of more than a dozen cancer drugs. Is there a drug shortage or an increase in use?

• How is the World Health Organization funded, and why does it rely so much on Bill Gates? Global health experts say that while this money is welcome, it gives the Gates an outsized influence and underscores the chronic funding problem WHO faces even as it contends with more and more health crises.

Politics

• Rep Anna Paulina Luna says the FBI is afraid their Biden informant will be killed if unmasked. "Just left meeting for House Oversight. The FBI is afraid their informant will be killed if unmasked, based on the info he has brought forward about the Biden family," Luna wrote. The revelation comes after Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer announced that the committee would be beginning the proceedings on Thursday. "The confidential human source who provided information about then-Vice President Biden being involved in a criminal bribery scheme is a trusted, highly credible informant who has been used by the FBI for over 10 years and has been paid over six figures."

• Arab League’s visit to Xinjiang rejects Western accusations of ethnic genocide, religious persecution. The delegation from the Arab League, after wrapping up a visit to Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, said that allegations of "ethnic genocide" and "religious persecution" are completely false, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson stated on Monday. Arab countries appreciate China's efforts in caring for minority groups, including Muslims in Xinjiang, and they will continue to support China's endeavours in maintaining the development and stability of Xinjiang.

Science

• Intelligence officials say U.S. has retrieved craft of non-human origin. The whistleblower, David Charles Grusch, 36, a decorated former combat officer in Afghanistan, is a veteran of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He served as the reconnaissance office’s representative to the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force from 2019-2021. From late 2021 to July 2022, he was the NGA’s co-lead for UAP analysis and its representative to the task force.

• Plants can distinguish when touch starts and stops, study suggests. Even without nerves, plants can sense when something touches them and when it lets go, a study has found. In a set of experiments, individual plant cells responded to the touch of a very fine glass rod by sending slow waves of calcium signals to other plant cells, and when that pressure was released, they sent much more rapid waves. While scientists have known that plants can respond to touch, this study shows that plant cells send different signals when touch is initiated and ended.

• Massive sunspot four times the size of Earth is now visible without a telescope. The size of one of the sun’s sunspots has increased to the point that it can be seen from Earth without the need of magnification; nevertheless, eye protection is still clearly recommended while viewing it.

Technology

• Report Leaked To NYT Shows 59% Drop In Twitter's Ad Sales. NYT said Twitter's US advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 through the first week of May was $88 million, down 59% versus the same period a year ago. The report noted weekly sales projections were frequently missed by as much as 30%.

Ukraine

• Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History. Troops’ use of patches bearing Nazi emblems risks fueling Russian propaganda and spreading imagery that the West has spent a half-century trying to eliminate. If the NYT are discussing Ukraine’s Nazi symbols, it is a clear sign that the US is looking for a way to distance itself from the the war.

Vaccines

• UK's medical watchdog is accused of 'disturbing obfuscation' of Covid vaccine death toll by two prominent Oxford University experts. Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Tom Jefferson claimed that chiefs at the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) invested almost £2million in an AI-based system to extract data from the agency's Yellow Card reporting system. So far, it has seen 2,743 deaths linked to Covid jabs logged, though these are only submitted reports, not confirmed fatalities.

• 5.4 million swine flu jabs saved six lives: report. A total of six lives were saved by Sweden's massive swine flu vaccination programme, according to a new report, despite 60 percent of the Swedish population getting vaccinated. “I feel stupid. What disappoints me most is that it was important that everyone in Sweden was vaccinated. The problem is that you don't get any sort of help afterwards,” 27-year-old Ida Andersson told the Aftonbladet newswpaper. Andersson suffers from the sarcoidosis in her lungs, inflammation of the face, and abnormal drowsiness attributed to having been vaccinated against the swine flu.