Stephan: This is a solid fact based, with references, assessment of the American Covid death cult
Activists and faith groups protest coronavirus vaccination mandates and restrictions in late January. Credit: Shuran Huang / The Washington Post
For more than a hot second after the emergence of the omicron coronavirus variant, there was a major backlash from the right against President Biden having labeled our current state of affairs a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
The reason: The omicron variant rendered the coronavirus vaccines significantly less effective at stopping the spread. “What’s the point of vaccines or vaccine mandates?” a bunch of powerful people asked. They did so while deliberately ignoring both the vaccines’ continued assistance in slowing the spread (albeit at a reduced rate) and their continually strong performance in keeping people alive and out of the hospital.
It was shortsighted at the time, and it’s looking increasingly so now.
New data shows that on those same measures — literally the most vital ones — the gap between vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans remains stark. In fact, when you compare unvaccinated people to those most protected by the vaccines, […]
Melissa Horton, Reviewed by Jefreda R. Brown, Fact checked by Pete Rathburn, - Investopedia
Stephan: A reader wrote me saying he and his wife were in a friendship ending argument with a neighbor who was in the oil business and who criticized them for attacking continued fracking in Oklahoma, citing how much money it had made, and how many jobs it had created. He asked me if I had real facts about fracking. As it happens I did. Here they are. In my view fracking should no longer be allowed.
Fracking well Credit:iStock
The oil and gas industry in the United States has enjoyed record levels of production in recent years,1 thanks primarily to hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking. In 2018, the U.S. became the top producer of oil and natural gas in the world, ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.2 This is due to hydraulically fractured horizontal wells, which in 2019 accounted for 71% of all oil and natural gas wells drilled in the U.S.3
This extraction process combines chemicals (often dangerous ones) with large amounts of water and sand at high rates of pressure to create rock formations; these formations are used to fracture material surrounding oil and gas, enabling them to be extracted. Fracking is controversial because of a) the number of natural resources needed to complete its process, and—perhaps more notably— b) the negative effects it can have on the air and water quality of the fracked areas.4 https://39ab36efd37c6997729879887def2c3f.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Fracking and Air Quality
One of the main pollutants released in the fracking process is methane. Research indicates the U.S. oil […]
Kassandra Frederique, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance - truthout
Stephan: The data is now clear and, once again, it follows the 8 laws of change, and it works. Drug decriminalization fosters wellbeing. Here is the Oregon data.
Even though Oregon’s move to treat addiction as a public health issue is a huge step forward, there remains more work to do. Credit: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout
As COVID-19 continues to rage, another health crisis persists — one that is decades long. In the first year of the pandemic, the United States hit the devastating milestone of 100,000 overdose deaths, a nearly 28.5 percent surge from the record numbers we saw the previous year. Now, fentanyl is the leading cause of death in Americans ages 18-45. The reaction from many of our leaders has been to call for more arrests and criminalization, but this response is rooted in fear, not science. We have spent the last 50 years trying to treat a public health issue with a criminalization response, yet people are dying of overdose at record rates. This response is clearly not working.
Stephan: The christofascists, Republican State Senator Rob Standridge of Oklahoma being an example, have discovered it is easy to get control of local government agencies to which, normally, no one paid much attention. This bill, were it to pass would make education impossible. Any group could take exception to anything. With its large cash punishments "for contradicting a student's religious beliefs" how could one teach in such an environment?
Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Rob Standridge in the Oklahoma Senate in Oklahoma City Credit: AP
In fact, the bill forbids school districts to employ a person “that promotes positions in the classroom or any function of the public school that is in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of students.”
The bill also allows parents to bring an action against the school or individual, in which case they can seek the following remedies.
1) They can ask for an injunction to require the school and teacher be “enjoined from the conduct” that promotes positions “in opposition to the closely held religious beliefs of the student.”
2) If the school does not immediately comply, the parents or guardians may refile against any and all employees of the district “directly or indirectly” promoting those positions. Those individuals can be held liable for a minimum of $10,000 in damages […]
Robin Wright, Contributing Writer - The New Yorker
Stephan: This is a completely cynical but very important geopolitical trend. The Chinese having gone through the bloodbath of communism, have recreated the Mandarin system of scholar bureaucrats which provided a stable government in China for 1,300 years, from 605 to 1905 -- the oldest continuous form of government in human history.
They look at the United States particularly during the Trump era and believe that democracy is essentially unworkable in the long run precisely because when an incompetent authoritarian crook gets into office everything comes unglued, as it did. They see most members of Congress -- I know this because I was told it by high ranking Chinese -- as ill-equipped poorly educated incompetents, which many are.
When the Chinese look at what they have done by recreating the Mandarin system, after the end of the ill-fated Great Leap Forward to the present day, essentially transforming China from a developing nation to a world leader in less than 50 years they think their system is the way to go. They see Russia as a failing state run by thuggish oligarchs, which only matters because of its nuclear weapons, but as a useful tool to use against America, hence their interest in this alliance. China is playing a long game that neither the American media nor most of those in Congress really comprehend.
Moscow and Beijing have declared their opposition to further enlargement of NATO and to the formation of other regional security alliances. Credit: Li Tao / Xinhua / Getty
In their matching mauve ties, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping last week declared a “new era” in the global order and, at least in the short term, endorsed their respective territorial ambitions in Ukraine and Taiwan. The world’s two most powerful autocrats unveiled a sweeping long-term agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world. “Friendship between the two States has no limits,” they vowed in the communiqué, released after the two leaders met on the eve of the Beijing Winter Olympics. “There are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”
Agreements between Moscow and Beijing, including the Treaty of Friendship of 2001, have traditionally been laden with lofty, if vague, rhetoric that faded into forgotten history. But the new and detailed five-thousand-word agreement is […]
