Sandra Finley

2021-06-27 Battle to recover scientific honesty

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Jun 272021
 

Another reversal in thinking may be imminent. Some scientists have raised concerns that the safety risks of Covid-19 vaccines have been underestimated. But the politics of vaccination has relegated their concerns to the outskirts of scientific thinking—for now.

Historically, the safety of medications—including vaccines—is often not fully understood until they are deployed in large populations. Examples include rofecoxib (Vioxx), a pain reliever that increased the risk of heart attack and stroke; antidepressants that appeared to increase suicide attempts among young adults; and an influenza vaccine used in the 2009-10 swine flu epidemic that was suspected of causing febrile convulsions and narcolepsy in children. Evidence from the real world is valuable, as clinical trials often enroll patients who aren’t representative of the general population. We learn more about drug safety from real-world evidence and can adjust clinical recommendations to balance risk and benefits.

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or Vaers, which is administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration, is a database that allows Americans to document adverse events that happen after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and CDC state that the database isn’t designed to determine whether the events were caused by a vaccine. This is true. But the data can nonetheless be evaluated, accounting for its strengths and weaknesses, and that is what the CDC and FDA say they do.

The Vaers data for Covid-19 vaccines show an interesting pattern. Among the 310 million Covid-19 vaccines given, several adverse events are reported at high rates in the days immediately after vaccination, and then fall precipitously afterward. Some of these adverse events might have occurred anyway. The pattern may be partly attributable to the tendency to report more events that happen soon after vaccination.

 

The database can’t say what would have happened in the absence of vaccination. Nonetheless, the large clustering of certain adverse events immediately after vaccination is concerning, and the silence around these potential signals of harm reflects the politics surrounding Covid-19 vaccines. Stigmatizing such concerns is bad for scientific integrity and could harm patients.

Four serious adverse events follow this arc, according to data taken directly from Vaers: low platelets (thrombocytopenia); noninfectious myocarditis, or heart inflammation, especially for those under 30; deep-vein thrombosis; and death. Vaers records 321 cases of myocarditis within five days of receiving a vaccination, falling to almost zero by 10 days. Prior research has shown that only a fraction of adverse events are reported, so the true number of cases is almost certainly higher. This tendency of underreporting is consistentent with our clinical experience.

Analyses to confirm or dismiss these findings should be performed using large data sets of health-insurance companies and healthcare organizations. The CDC and FDA are surely aware of these data patterns, yet neither agency has acknowledged the trend.

The implication is that the risks of a Covid-19 vaccine may outweigh the benefits for certain low-risk populations, such as children, young adults and people who have recovered from Covid-19. This is especially true in regions with low levels of community spread, since the likelihood of illness depends on exposure risk.

And while you would never know it from listening to public-health officials, not a single published study has demonstrated that patients with a prior infection benefit from Covid-19 vaccination. That this isn’t readily acknowledged by the CDC or Anthony Fauci is an indication of how deeply entangled pandemic politics is in science.

There are, however, signs of life for scientific honesty. In May, the Norwegian Medicines Agency reviewed case files for the first 100 reported deaths of nursing-home residents who received the Pfizer vaccine. The agency concluded that the vaccine “likely” contributed to the deaths of 10 of these residents through side effects such as fever and diarrhea, and “possibly” contributed to the deaths of an additional 26. But this type of honesty is rare. And it is rare for any vaccine to be linked to deaths, so this unusual development for mRNA vaccines merits further investigation.

The battle to recover scientific honesty will be an uphill one in the U.S. Anti-Trump politics in the spring of 2020 mushroomed into social-media censorship. News reporting often lacked intellectual curiosity about the appropriateness of public-health guidelines—or why a vocal minority of scientists strongly disagreed with prevailing opinions. Scientists have advocated for or against Covid-19 therapies while having financial relationships with product manufacturers and their foundation benefactors.

Public-health authorities are making a mistake and risking the public’s trust by not being forthcoming about the possibility of harm from certain vaccine side effects. There will be lasting consequences from mingling political partisanship and science during the management of a public-health crisis.

Dr. Ladapo is an associate professor of medicine at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Dr. Risch is a professor of epidemiology at Yale School of Public Health.

2021-06-18 FW from Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA)

 Charter Right, Privacy of Personal Information; Surveillance; StatsCan Censuses & Surveys, Corruption, Democracy requirements, deficits, solutions, Lockheed Martin, War Economy (includes Cdn Census & Trials)  No Responses »
Jun 182021
 

FW from Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA)

Biometrics and Identity Management

It’s directed to a Canadian audience.

But, it’s the Canada-U.S. border.

The extrapolation for “the south side of the border” follows after.

/Sandra 

The CBSA is using covid- induced fear to put Surveillance of Canadians into the stratosphere.

A tender notice or Notice of Proposed Procurement (NPP) posted to the Public Services and Procurement Canada website on June 7   ~~~

I copied from the Government page:

Tender Notice – Notice of Proposed Procurement (NPP)

https://buyandsell.gc.ca/procurement-data/tender-notice/PW-21-00958775 

Publication date   2021/06/07

Biometrics and Identity Management (1000357607)

Description

The Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) has an urgent need to secure the services of a global organization (the “Contractor”) with knowledge of and expertise in biometrics. The Agency requires this organization to assist with the immediate establishment of an Office of Biometrics and Identity Management and to work with the Agency in researching, planning for and rapidly developing a strategy and roadmap related to the use of Digital solutions enabled by supporting technologies in biometrics, in response to the COVID 19 situation and other operational priorities. The Contractor will bring knowledge, capabilities, and experience to support CBSA’s urgent need to establish a biometric strategy, biometric foundation and ultimately a Biometrics Authority (Centre of Excellence). Specifically, the “contractor” will assist the CBSA with the development of a comprehensive approach and plan to manage, evolve and adapt in using biometrics to deliver the mission of the agency while considering our interrelationship and joint ventures with other federal government departments and agencies and our international partners.

Are you (burp n) nuts?!   (Not you personally.   All of us, collectively.)

 

I am not going to ask the Government for anything.

It’s better if we all just tell each other.

Be sure to connect with every immigrant and marginalized person you know.  They are the best ones to understand the significance of the CBSA Tender Notice.

From what I know of Surveillance States (Police States)  I don’t embrace them.  I thought you might like a say in the matter.

Cheers!    /Sandra Finley

FOR PEOPLE ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF THE BORDER:

I don’t think this is about CANADIAN BORDER SERVICES AGENCY    (CBSA).   Because, when you string together the developments over the years,  it isn’t “Canadian” – – not anymore than Canadian National Railway (CNR) is “Canadian”.  It isn’t.

 

RE your question:  How widespread is the knowledge of this among the Canadian public, thus far?  (as at 2021-06-14)

We’re in the early stages of getting the info out.  HOWEVER, it is very “disgusting” for you (an American), directly – – – BECAUSE  it ain’t about the CANADIAN border.  It’s about the CANADA – U.S.  border.

Vaccine passport?   Put it in context to understand it.

What’s happening under the name of the CBSA ostensibly applies if you’re living in Canada. HOWEVER, it applies equally if you’re on the south side of the border.

There has been an effective “merger” of military, education (especially higher level), technology, business, agriculture, politics, vaccination . . . down to (now overtly)  the  Office of Biometrics and Identity Management (Centre of Excellence, no less).

Don’t kid yourself – – – Canada would not be undertaking this on its own.  The U.S.  dramatically expanded their Biometrics funding some years ago.  The expanded centre is on the East Coast of the USA.   It was about the same time as they invested $2 billion into the centre in Utah for collection of everyone’s e-communications and  phone calls (digitized).

During the time I was on trial over the Census (Canada),  and  in conversation with persons in other countries fighting the same thing (in the U.K. for example)  it was quite obvious that  people in the U.S. were oblivious to the role of Lockheed Martin in your Census Bureau  (construction of ever-increasing detailed files on individual citizens;  GPS coordinates for all the buildings (homes and potential homes) were being built into your individual record at the Census Bureau).

I recall reading transcript from U.S. Govt Committee – it’s in my files somewhere – – a Committee tasked with oversight.  The Committee asks questions.  The answers from the Administration of the Census Bureau gave zero clue that Lockheed Martin played a large role in their operations.   BTW:  your censuses are every 10 years.  Ours are every 5 years.

You know the NSA is behind the collection of all your (and our) emails, texts, and phone calls (digitized).  And that Lockheed Martin is one of the prime surveillance contractors to the NSA.  Not the only one.

Raytheon’s tracking capability of your (but it includes Canadians) physical movements are astounding – – the ability to PREDICT with VARYING PROBABILITY where you will be on a given day of the week for example.   There’s a link on my blog to a promo video that Raytheon put out a few years ago, to demonstrate to potential buyers (clients anywhere in the world?), just what Raytheon software is capable of.  It constructs from the data collected from cell phones, etc.  It IS truly astounding.)  

More people in Canada have become more clued in, over time.  The prosecutions of people for non-compliance with the Census data collection (increasingly more, and more personal) have been useful for building awareness of “what’s going on”.  The Canadian census happens to be in progress right now.

The data-gathering is not restricted to the Census.  It’s on-going relentlessly, year-round, every year through “Surveys”.  And other means.   Under threat of prosecution if you don’t hand over the personal information that they want.  What gets done on this side of the Border, eventually gets done on the other side.  And vice versa.  The introduction on one side is like a test introduction – – how can it be done more expeditiously next time, wherever “next time” happens to take place.  (Make the introductions more palatable, causing less upset among citizens)

In the email I sent to you and others, I didn’t include any Context re the Border Services Notice of Tender.   The CBSA is hardly “Canadian”.  Nor is the military “Canadian”.   Not when you weave together news and other reports through the years since 2003 (recorded on this blog).    Things are “integrated” and “harmonized” for “interoperability” to the point where Canada has no or little remaining sovereignty.   We are blessed by an abundance of quislings.

You may be interested:  Linguistics are important.  Words and how they are used to mould our thinking.   If the meaning of words is not well understood in a society,  WHY is that?

2016-07-08   Democracy overtaken by Corporatocracy = coup d’état. Citizens fight to regain democracy = Revolution (insurgency).  Corporatocracy fights to hold on = counter insurgency.   

http://sandrafinley.ca/blog/?p=16943   

Thanks for your ear, Paul.

I don’t mean to be overwhelming with big pessimism.

To me, the spreading of information is key.

There’s easily enough of us, to de-rail the Agenda.  It’s just that people have to know the situation.   They’ll find their own solutions in their own communities.  That’s where we grow our strength, working together to accomplish Good Works, whatever those may be – – different in different communities.  Conversations happen when you’re working side-by-side on a community project.

Sandra

2021-06-05 The Story of a National Crime, Andrew Nikiforuk, The Tyee. An analogy for Today’s many crimes.

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 052021
 

 Recommend:  Read this on the Tyee website, complete with the pictures.

I want to keep it for the purpose of making an analogy to what’s happening in Canada today in several different arenas.  Same thing.

A century ago, Dr. Peter Bryce demonstrated that residential schools were designed to kill. Canada’s government ignored him.

 Andrew Nikiforuk 2021-06-05  | TheTyee.ca

Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.

(Photo)

Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce was appointed Canada’s first chief officer of medical health in 1904. He toured residential schools and exposed them as disease incubators and superspreaders.

You have probably never heard of Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, but I can tell you this: he would not have been shocked or surprised by the discovery of a mass grave on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School last week.

He knew, like Faulkner, that the past is never dead. “It is not even past.”

For 15 years, Canada’s first chief officer of medical health repeatedly warned his superiors that the country’s disease-riddled residential schools had become glorified tuberculosis death camps. He courageously pressed for reforms.

But Bryce’s superiors didn’t listen. They didn’t want to know the truth, and made the physician’s job impossible as only bureaucrats can do.

And so, when Bryce left the government and was no longer oath-bound to secrecy, he wrote a 24-page exposé on the accelerated extinction of Indigenous people willfully being perpetrated in Canada’s residential schools. You can read it here.

Bryce titled his book The Story of a National Crime. The year was 1922.

Canada, a nation full of deep secrets and afflicted by selective memories, can no longer keep this “national crime” hidden anymore.

Nations can deny history, ignore history, minimize history, postpone history and even rewrite history.

But they can’t grow up without facing history for a simple reason. “Knowing the before lets you create a different after.”

The before started a century ago. Educated in Edinburgh, Toronto and Paris, the native of Mount Pleasant, Ontario took up the job of chief officer of medical health in 1904 for Immigration and Indian Affairs.

One of the first statistics that caught Bryce’s eye was this: First Nations reported very low levels of nervous disorders and alcoholism. But tuberculosis was eating their people alive.

The disease had a powerful colonial history. Prior to the eradication of the buffalo and the destruction of an entire ecosystem on the Canadian plains, tuberculosis was rare or non-existent. Although the fur trade had seeded the bacterium, it needed crowding, hunger and homelessness to erupt.

The federal government dutifully provided those conditions after the extermination of buffalo, the chief source of nutrition for many Indigenous peoples.

By withholding food rations, the government forced First Nations into signing treaties and herded 300 different nations into often inhospitable reserves where disease and the politics of starvation became their treaty companions.

As a result, TB began a terrible conquest of Indigenous peoples and helped, along with smallpox and other European microbes, to clear the plains for white settlement.

Cattle, the European replacement for buffalo, also carried a host of diseases including anthrax, brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis.

One infected cow, whether poached or purchased by the government, could infect 100 hungry and immunocompromised Indigenous people with the lung disease.

But the racist theory of the day held that Indigenous people were just weaker than Europeans or naturally inclined to get TB.

Bryce, an expert in the disease, didn’t believe the nonsense and proved it when the government asked him to inspect health conditions in residential schools in 1907.

The federal government set up the schools in 1883 as a colonial force to “assimilate” First Nations and turn them into farmers and fellow extractors of resources.

The schools were, pure and simple, a state-sanctioned tool to remove the culture and identity of subjugated people. The federal government wanted to do to First Nations what the British did to Highland Scots: dispossess them.

Bryce spent three months visiting 35 schools in Manitoba and the Northwest Territories (then including Saskatchewan and Alberta), all located in former buffalo country where people were now starving or undernourished. He found one indignity after another. The buildings were poorly-constructed firetraps with inadequate water supplies. Most had no infirmary. Or proper food supplies.

The schools’ poor ventilation combined with their prison-like atmosphere appalled Bryce. It was “almost as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created.”

Bryce noted that the agents of colonialism, the teachers and church officials running the schools, were also reluctant to collection information on the fate of their pupils. He discovered why. In what is today Saskatchewan, of 31 students discharged from the notorious File Hills Indian Residential School in the previous 15 years, only nine had remained alive.

Bryce calculated that the residential schools acted as TB incubators and superspreaders. If children didn’t have TB before they arrived, they immediately contracted the disease in crowded dormitories where children weren’t even allowed to exercise.

And if they were too sick to occupy a desk, they were sent back to their communities, where they spread the disease in crowded reserve housing.

After questioning the principals of some of the schools, Bryce estimated that approximately one-quarter of all Indigenous children attending residential schools for the last 15 years had died from tuberculosis. He wrote that “of a total of 1,537 pupils reported upon, nearly 25 per cent are dead, of one school with an absolutely accurate statement, 69 per cent of ex-pupils are dead, and that everywhere the almost invariable cause of death given is tuberculosis.”

In other words, residential schools typically prepared Indigenous children not for life but death.

(Photo)

Superspreading conditions in crowded, poorly-ventilated Old Sun’s Alberta dormitory. Photo via General Synod Archives, Anglican Church of Canada.

Someone eventually leaked what became known as “the Bryce report” to the press where it produced this headline: “Schools Aid White Plague — Startling Death Rolls Revealed Among Indians — Absolute Inattention to the Bare Necessities of Health.”

But most Canadians did not know, care or understand.

Bryce ultimately recommended a dramatic prescription for Canada’s plague schools: supervised medical care (nurses and doctors), better nutrition and better ventilation. (Like COVID-19, tuberculosis is spread by aerosols.)

Bryce also thought the schools should be relocated closer to Indigenous communities. And he recommended that the government take over the schools outright and turn them into sanatoria where First Nations children would live instead of die.

Bryce was no opponent of the colonial order. It was merely that, as historian Adam J. Green notes, “Although assimilation would have certainly been the goal of Bryce’s Aboriginal policy, forced extinction was not.”

Yet neither the government nor churches were impressed by Bryce’s recommendations. They dithered and dallied and calculated the economic costs.

The government then performed the bare minimum “to remove the imputation that the department is careless of the interests of these children.” It set a few standards for diet and ventilation, banned tubercular students and increased the grant for the schools by a small amount. But the children still kept on dying.

Duncan Campbell Scott, the penny-pinching head of Indian Affairs, couldn’t see why the scandalous procession of Indigenous children from boarding schools to unmarked graves was so upsetting.

“When the peculiar conditions are taken into consideration, the department is doing as well as can be expected for the Indians, and to anything further would entail a very heavy expenditure, which, at present, I am not able to recommend.”

Bryce kept on fighting and compiling more statistics. In 1909, the official found more bleak conditions in Alberta. At one school more than 28 per cent of the children had perished, mostly from tuberculosis. Another study in Saskatchewan found 93 per cent of children in the Qu’appelle district were afflicted by TB.

Bryce could see no moral reason why the government could ever tolerate a TB “death rate” among First Nations two to three times higher “than that of an average Canadian community.”

But government didn’t care. By 1914, the Department of Indian Affairs had tired of Bryce’s statistics, and pointedly sidelined the chief medical officer.

Scott, then head of Indian Affairs, informed Bryce that his annual medical reports on TB and residential schools weren’t needed anymore. They cost too much, and the government didn’t really plan on doing anything with the information anyway.

And so the Canadian government, demonstrating a bent instinct for evasion and denial that persists to this very day, never asked Bryce to do any more work related to the Department of Indian Affairs.

Yet Bryce persisted. In a 1918 pamphlet that the government refused to publish, Bryce estimated that the Indigenous population, given the national birth rate, should have grown by 20,000 people between 1904 and 1917. Instead, it shrank by 1,600 — largely due to treatable diseases such as TB.

Irritated by Bryce’s conscience, the government refused to provide its health officer with any more mortality statistics on First Nations. A problem doesn’t exist if a government doesn’t record it.

(Photo)

Residential school students at the Roman Catholic cemetery at Fort George, Quebec. Photo via the Deschatelets Archives.

In 1921, the federal government passed a law that forced Bryce to retire from federal service after 15 years as chief officer of medical health.

But the physician’s heart could not keep silent. The following year he published The Story of a National Crime: An Appeal for Justice for the Indians of Canada. It sold for 35 cents a copy. The book named names and documented the ongoing neglect, complacency and inaction that Bryce witnessed for 15 years.

What bothered Bryce most was the government’s refusal to act, let alone acknowledge the problem: 15 years after his first report, TB still killed children in residential schools at the same alarming rates documented in 1907.

Bryce also decried the implicit racism in the government’s TB response, which disturbingly mirrors in so many ways the current government’s unequal response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Where’s the justice, asked Bryce, in a government that can only allocate $10,000 for the control and treatment of tuberculosis among 105,000 Indigenous people but provides more than $33,000 for the 100,000 white settlers of Ottawa just to handle the hospitalization of their TB victims?

How is it that the city of Hamilton could reduce TB by 75 per cent between 1904 and 1917, yet nothing had been done to keep TB from killing “a splendid race of warriors as the Blackfeet” in Alberta?

The “desire for power,” concluded Bryce, repeatedly over-rode “any higher consideration such as saving the lives of the Indians,” in Ottawa.

But little changed after the book’s publication. Health care for Indigenous people wouldn’t become a government priority for decades.

Until 1945, the minister of mines and resources remained officially responsible for the health of First Nations people, as though TB had become some perverse mineral.

In 1934, the doctor died while on a trip to the Caribbean.

Last year an article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by Cindy Blackstock, a courageous advocate for Indigenous children, described Bryce as “the whistleblower on residential schools.”

An investigation into the legacy of residential schools and their survivors didn’t begin until a decade ago.

‘Neglected in Life, Dishonoured in Death’

In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported more than 3,000 confirmed deaths at the nation’s residential schools.

Government or church officials did not record the names of 32 per cent of the dead.

In half the cases, the government did not even disclose the cause of death.

In a quarter of cases, no gender was reported.

Most of the dead were never sent home for burial. Which brings us back to the mass grave in Kamloops.

Now you can’t say that you haven’t heard of Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce.

And now you can understand why he would not have been shocked or surprised by last week’s discovery.

He told the story of a national crime before our collective ears were willing to hear it.

2021-05-30 California faces another drought as lake beds turn to dust – a photo essay. Plus updates on Lake Mead and Lake Powell. And warnings to Canadians.

 Bottled, For-Profit Extraction, Export, Commodification, Climate, Resource depletion (water in USA)  No Responses »
May 302021
 
CONTENTS

1.    (Utah)  Lake Powell water level at a historic low.  From “TownLife”, Bullfrog Utah,   May 28, 2021.  For now, the water level continues to drop a little more than an inch a day.

2.  (Nevada)   Projections for Lake Mead show it dropping well below the lowest level on record, in the next 20 months.   NewsNow Las Vegas, April 30, 2021

3.   California faces another drought as lake beds turn to dust – a photo essay.  The Guardian newspaper, UK, May 30

= = = = = = = = =

COMMENT BEFORE THE CONTENTS

As we have addressed in the past:  with the falling water levels comes the loss of the hydro-electric capacity of the dams, along with everything else.

The two reservoirs I’ve used as a thermometer over the years:

  1. Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead near Las Vegas (Colorado River).  It used to be the largest man-made reservoir in the U.S.

I was wondering how they’re doing with the intake water pipe for Las Vegas.

It had a shrinking two feet to go before it would be above water, last I remember.  Then came the intention of Vegas Water Officials to unilaterally appropriate water from agricultural lands to their north.  The rural people went ballistic;  I believe that ended that plan and the hubris behind it!

ANSWER TO THE WATER INTAKE PIPE IN LAKE MEAD:  Scroll down to 2.  April 2021, from Las Vegas.  The concluding lines:

An $817 million project (completed in 2015) to construct a “third straw” to draw water from Lake Mead at the 860-foot level provides security. Two other “straws” take water at the 1,000-foot and 1,050-foot levels.

The last time Lake Mead reached full capacity was in 1983.

2.  Glen Canyon Dam’s Lake Powell (also on the Colorado River).  Second largest man-made water reservoir in the U.S.

= = = = = = = = =

 THE WARNINGS TO CANADIANS

The Americans take what they want.  There are quislings in Canada only too happy to collaborate.

2021-02-14 The New Canada Water Agency

2019-08 Water export, History: The determination to make water accessible for money-making goes back to the first trade deal with the U.S.

2015-03-22   Bill C-51 Understood in terms of water shortages in the U.S.A.

2011-09-22     Chasing Water: Colorado River running near empty, 12:25 minute video

 

= = = = = = = = =

1.    Lake Powell (Glen Canyon Dam) water level at a historic low

Parker Malatesta
May 28, 2021

Lake Powell on May 25, as seen from Bullfrog, Utah.

Lake Powell on May 25, as seen from Bullfrog, Utah. Photo: Parker Malatesta

BULLFROG, Utah. — As of May 25, Lake Powell is 43.9 feet lower from a year ago. At 3559.89 feet, the lake is down 140.08 feet from full pool. The man-made reservoir is only receiving 39.4% of its average water inflow so far this year.

“It was so depressing,” said Tim of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, describing his last trip in Bullfrog. He has been coming to Glen Canyon since 1979.

Recent projections from the Bureau of Reclamation are pushing the Upper Colorado River Commission to develop a drought response plan. The commission is made up of officials from Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, and the federal government. The minimum probable projection for mid-2023 shows the water level reaching close to below the minimum power pool level of 3,490 feet. That is the minimum water level needed for Glen Canyon Dam to produce power generation.

A drought plan drafted in 2019 calls for water releases to Lake Powell if it falls below a critical threshold of 3,525 feet. The most probable estimate from the Bureau of Reclamation Water Operations (BOR) report shows it falling below that level as early as March next year. Reservoirs that would be called upon to fill Powell include Flaming Gorge, Blue Mesa, and Navajo.

“It was really a toilet bowl tank for Mead,” Tim said, referring to the creation of Powell. Lake Mead is dealing with its own issues at the moment, with current projections from BOR forecasting the Arizona reservoir hitting a Tier 2 water shortage in 2023.

The flow of the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Powell and Mead, is operated under a vast series of laws and regulations known widely as “the Law of the River.” The most important statute is the Colorado River Compact, which was signed nearly a century ago in 1922. We now know because of various tree ring studies that the estimates used to craft the compact were far too optimistic, the early 20th century saw some of the wettest years since the 1400s.

The legal right to use more than every gallon of the river is claimed by someone. Theoretical rights are known to lawyers as “paper water.” The drought in the western U.S. has contributed to a large disparity between these rights and the actual flow of the river. Since the early 1900s, water demand in the Colorado River basin has increased while water supply has decreased. Per the U.S. Drought Monitor, the majority of Utah is currently experiencing either an exceptional or extreme drought.

Statistics according to lakepowell.water-data.com. Courtesy of HighCharts.com

Don and Mary, a couple from Heber City, Utah, have come to Lake Powell since it was being filled in 1969. “It’s the lowest we’ve ever seen it,” Mary said. They recommend all boaters use either a depth finder or spotter, given that the water is consistently decreasing.

They don’t agree with the idea of the pipeline to Washington County. The Lake Powell pipeline project includes a 140-mile tap from Page, Arizona to the fast-growing St. George area.

“We devote way too much water to agriculture in Utah,” said Don. The couple was split on what should be done with Lake Powell. Don feels there should be a calculated median among all the southwestern reservoirs that states can compromise on. Mary leaned towards the argument of emptying the lake into Mead.

For now, the water level continues to drop a little more than an inch a day.

A Bullfrog resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said on the issue of the water levels, “Mother Nature always wins.”

Parker Malatesta

= = = = = = = = =

2.    LAS VEGAS  – – WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH LAKE MEAD (HOOVER DAM)?   April 2021
NewsNow, Las Vegas
by:
Updated:
In this July 28, 2014, file photo, lightning strikes over Lake Mead near Hoover Dam that impounds Colorado River water at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Arizona. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Projections for Lake Mead show it dropping well below the lowest level on record in the next 20 months.

Bureau of Reclamation projections contained in a 24-month study indicate the lake could fall another 30 feet by November 2022.

Lake Mead is currently at 1,079.46 feet.

The agency monitors the lake level and makes decisions on how to allocate river water. Measurements and projections that are released in August will determine if a Level 1 shortage would be declared. That would trigger automatic cuts in water allocations.

Projections right now don’t look good.

Flourish logoA Flourish chart

Lake Mead is expected to drop to 1,071.57 feet in June, which would break the record of 1,071.6 feet, set in June of 1981. That’s about four feet below the level that would trigger a federal declaration of a water shortage.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) has been proactive as the current 22-year drought has persisted, and the state has not been using its full allocation of river water as conservation saved water even as the valley continues to grow.

Officials say even if a shortage were declared, the water supply is still sufficient for now. SNWA says it has an eight-year supply of water saved.

If projections hold, that 1981 record could become a distant memory. The 24-month study shows Lake Mead at 1,049.4 feet in November of 2022.

An $817 million project (completed in 2015) to construct a “third straw” to draw water from Lake Mead at the 860-foot level provides security. Two other “straws” take water at the 1,000-foot and 1,050-foot levels.

Copyright 2021 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.2= = = = =

 

= = = = = =

3.    California faces another drought as lake beds turn to dust – a photo essay

Note:  Copy and paste the heading into a search engine.  Fast and easy.  The photos are important, but they won’t upload here.

This is a copy of the text only.

Water shortages and dry conditions are already affecting the state as the governor has declared an emergency in 41 of 58 counties

by Gabrielle Canon

Sun 30 May 2021

Verdant hillsides losing their hue, receding reservoirs with bathtub rings of newly exposed earth, crops withering in the fields.

These are the visions of California’s parched landscape as the state braces for another potentially devastating drought. Water shortages and exceptionally dry conditions are already beginning to hit home.

 

  • The San Gabriel reservoir lake bed is reduced to mud. Photographer: David McNew/Getty Images

The state is facing yet another hot, dry summer ahead, and the governor has declared a drought emergency in 41 of the state’s 58 counties. More than 37 million Californians reside in these drought areas, according to the US drought monitor.

“This is without precedent,” Newsom said at a news conference announcing the first two declarations in April, speaking from the bed of Lake Mendocino that had been reduced to arid, cracked clay. Not long ago, he would have been standing under 40ft of water. “Oftentimes we overstate the word historic, but this is indeed an historic moment.”

 

  • Governor Gavin Newsom holds a news conference in the parched basin of Lake Mendocino in Ukiah. Photographer: Kent Porter/Associated Press
  • A child walks across the parched bottom of Lake Mendocino. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Many of the state’s reservoirs are at extremely low capacity and levels are expected to drop further in the coming months. Already, the state’s 154 major reservoirs are collectively at 71% of where they typically are on average. Federal climate analysts with the National Integrated Drought Information

System called the outlook for California’s reservoir levels recovery “grim” in their most recent report.

  • Water levels at Lake Oroville have dropped to 39% of capacity. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
  • Houseboats in Lake Oroville are dwarfed by the exposed banks. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The dry conditions are expected to fuel another potentially devastating and record-breaking wildfire season. In 2020, roughly 4.1m acres were consumed by the flames, tens of thousands of buildings burned and 31 people lost their lives.

These conditions only began to develop in May of last year, according to federal monitoring systems. But now into a second consecutive dry year – characterized by a hot summer and little rainfall to replenish the dehydrated landscape through the winter months – by mid-May this year 93% of the south-west and California was in drought, with 38% of the region classified at the highest level.

“It really stands out how rapidly this drought has developed and intensified,” said Brian Fuchs, a climatologist, during a webinar this week hosted by the NIDIC.

Northern California’s reservoirs, which heavily depend on the rapidly disappearing mountain snowmelt, have been among the hardest hit. Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, two of the largest, have fallen to 44% and 39% of their total capacity respectively. Inflow into Lake Shasta is even lower than it was in 2014.

  • Many farmers are preparing for an expected water shortage by removing water-dependent crops, such as almond trees like these in Snelling. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
  • A sign in Buttonwillow, Kern county. Photographer: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images

To prepare for declining reserves, the California Department of Water Resources reduced farmers and growers to 5% of their expected water allocation in March. The move sparked an outcry from California’s agricultural belt, which is likely to be hit hard by the drought.

During the last drought, between 2014 and 2016, the agriculture industry lost roughly $3.8bn, and more than half a million acres couldn’t produce for lack of water. Farmers and ranchers have already begun to cull crops, fallow fields, and thin their herds in preparation.

Officials have also had to step in to help salmon raised in the state’s central valley region reach the Pacific Ocean, as waterways grow too shallow and warm for them to safely make the journey. Tens of millions of young fish will instead be trucked out to sites across the coast.

  • With rivers like the American River growing too warm and shallow for fish to reach the ocean, juvenile Chinook salmon will be transported by truck. Photographer: Nina Riggio/Reuters
  • Boat docks sit on dry land at Folsom Lake in El Dorado Hills. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Drought has always played a part in California’s climate, and it’s not unusual for the region to see periods of dry years interspersed with wetter ones. But, rising temperatures are fueling deeper extremes and climate scientists believe the cycle will only intensify.

With only a short two-year reprieve since the state was declared drought-free – after the period between 2012 and 2015 became the driest four-year period recorded – the negative impact that dry conditions had across the state are still fresh in residents’ minds.

  • A park visitor runs on the dry Folsom Lake bottom in Granite Bay. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
  • A resident fills a water tank with recycled water from a fill station in Oakley.

In an attempt to mitigate some of the expected impacts, Newsom has earmarked $5.1bn over four years for water infrastructure and drought response. The state is also hoping to apply key lessons learned through the last drought period, including establishing new standards of use for water, increasing efficiency requirements, and assessing and intervening when water systems fail. Still, as conditions worsen, the state will continue to call on residents to adapt.

“It’s time for Californians to pull together once again to save water,” said California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot in a statement issued with the emergency declaration. Encouraging shorter showers and limiting wasted water during every-day activities like dishwashing and teeth brushing, he added, “all of us need to find every opportunity to save water where we can”.

 

  • Marin county became the first county to impose mandatory water-use restrictions on 1 May. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

2007-06-03 Doctors Get Drug Company Pay, New York Times June 3, 2007

 Corruption  No Responses »
May 192021
 
Doctors Get Drug Company Pay, New York Times June 3, 2007

Sent: June 03, 2007

I am sending these articles to some health officials.
/Sandra

==============
Thanks to Hart Haidn:

June 3, 2007

After Sanctions, Doctors Get Drug Company Pay

By GARDINER HARRIS and JANET ROBERTS

A decade ago the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice accused Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab of a “reckless, if not willful, disregard” for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that.

But Dr. Abuzzahab, a Minneapolis psychiatrist, is still overseeing the testing of drugs on patients and is being paid by pharmaceutical companies or the work. At least a dozen have paid him for research or marketing since he was disciplined.

Medical ethicists have long argued that doctors who give experimental medicines should be chosen with care. Indeed, the drug industry’s own guidelines for clinical trials state, “Investigators are selected based on qualifications, training, research or clinical expertise in relevant fields.” Yet Dr. Abuzzahab is far from the only doctor to have been disciplined or criticized by a medical board but later paid by drug makers.

An analysis of state records by The New York Times found more than 100 such doctors in Minnesota, at least two with criminal fraud convictions. While Minnesota is the only state to make its records publicly available, the problem, experts say, is national.

One of Dr. Abuzzahab’s patients was David Olson, whom the psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit for clinical trials. Drug makers paid Dr. Abuzzahab thousands of dollars for every patient he recruited. In July 1997, when Mr. Olson again refused to be a test subject, Dr. Abuzzahab discharged him from the hospital even though he was suicidal, records show. Mr. Olson committed
suicide two weeks later.

In its disciplinary action against Dr. Abuzzahab, the state medical board referred to Mr. Olson as Patient No. 46.

“Dr. Abuzzahab failed to appreciate the risks of taking Patient No. 46 off Clozaril, failed to respond appropriately to the patient’s rapid deterioration and virtually ignored this patient’s suicidality,” the board found.

In an interview, Dr. Abuzzahab dismissed the findings as “without heft” and said drug makers were aware of his record. He said he had helped study many of the most popular drugs in psychiatry, including Paxil, Prozac, Risperdal, Seroquel, Zoloft and Zyprexa.
The Times’s examination of Minnesota’s trove of records on drug company payments to doctors found that from 1997 to 2005, at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

The sanctions by the board ranged from reprimands to demands for retraining to suspension of licenses. Of those 103 doctors, 39 had been penalized for inappropriate prescribing practices, 21 for substance abuse, 12 for substandard care and 3 for mismanagement of drug studies. A few cases received national news media coverage, but drug makers hired the doctors
anyway.

The Times included in its analysis any doctor who received drug company payments within 10 years of being under medical board sanction. At least 38 doctors received a combined $140,000 while they were still under sanction. Dr. Abuzzahab received more than $55,000 from 1997 to 2005. Drug makers refused to comment, said they relied on doctors to report disciplinary or criminal cases, or said they were considering changing their hiring systems.

Asked about the Minnesota analysis, the deputy commissioner and chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Janet Woodcock, said the federal government needed to overhaul regulations governing clinical trials and the doctors who oversaw them. “We recognize that we need to modernize the F.D.A. approach in keeping people safe in clinical trials,” Dr. Woodcock said.
Drug makers are not required to inform the agency when they discover that investigators are falsifying data, and indeed some have failed to do so in the past. The F.D.A. plans to require such disclosures, Dr. Woodcock said. The agency inspects at most 1 percent of all clinical trials, she said.

Karl Uhlendorf, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the trade group would not comment on The Times’s findings.

The records most likely understate the extent of the problem because they are incomplete. And the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice disciplines a smaller share of the state’s doctors than almost any other medical board in the country, according to rankings by Public Citizen, an advocacy group based in Washington.

Dr. David Rothman, president of the Institute on Medicine as a Profession at Columbia University, said the Times analysis revealed a national problem. “There’s no reason to think Minnesota is unique,” Dr. Rothman said.

“Clinical trial investigators must be culled from only the finest physicians in the country,” he said, “since they work on the frontiers of new knowledge. That drug makers are scraping the bottom of the medical barrel is an outrage.”

Payments by drug companies to doctors, whether or not the doctors have been disciplined, are a matter of much debate. Drug makers and doctors say the money finances vital research and helps educate doctors about helpful medicines. But others in the medical profession say the payments are thinly disguised incentives for doctors to prescribe more, and more expensive,
drugs. Among the other doctors who were disciplined or criticized by the board and paid by pharmaceutical companies:

¶Dr. Barry Garfinkel, a child psychiatrist from Minneapolis who was convicted in federal court in 1993 of fraud involving a study for
Ciba-Geigy. His criminal case made headlines across the state. From 2002 to 2004, Eli Lilly paid him more than $5,500 in honoraria, according to state records.

Dr. Garfinkel said in an interview that he had wondered why drug makers would hire him as a speaker considering his statewide notoriety. He decided that “they’re hiring me to influence my prescribing habits,” so he quit giving sponsored talks and taking money from drug makers, he said.

¶Dr. John Simon, a Minneapolis psychiatrist who for years shared an office with Dr. Abuzzahab and was told by the state medical board in 1994 to complete a clinical training program after it concluded in a report that he “frequently makes abrupt and drastic changes in type and dosage of medication which seem erratic, not well considered and poorly integrated with nonmedication strategies.” He prescribed addictive drugs to addicts and failed to stop giving medicines to patients suffering severe drug side
effects, the board concluded.

Dr. Simon earned more than $350,000 from five drug makers from 1998 to 2005 for consulting and giving drug marketing talks. Of this, Eli Lilly paid more than $314,000. Dr. Simon said in an interview that the board’s action was a learning experience, and that drug makers continued to hire him to speak because “I am respected by my peers.”

Asked about Drs. Garfinkel and Simon, Phil Belt, a spokesman for Eli Lilly, said that both doctors were licensed to practice medicine and that the company relied on doctors to report disciplinary actions or criminal convictions against them.

¶Dr. Ronald Hardrict, a psychiatrist from Minneapolis who pleaded guilty in 2003 to Medicaid fraud. In 2004 and 2005, he collected more than $63,000 in marketing payments from seven drug makers. In an interview, Dr. Hardrict said it was “insulting” and “ridiculous” to suggest that income from drug makers might influence doctors’ prescribing habits.

“I bought the Mercedes because it has air bags, and I use Risperdal because it works,” Dr. Hardrict said, referring to an antipsychotic medicine for schizophrenia. Johnson & Johnson, the maker of Risperdal, paid Dr. Hardrict more than $30,000 in 2003 and 2004.

Srikant Ramaswami, a spokesman for Johnson & Johnson, said the company removed Dr. Hardrict as a speaker in 2004 when, as a result of his conviction, his name appeared in a government database. Asked why other drug makers continue to hire him despite a fraud conviction, Dr. Hardrict responded with an e-mail message stating only, “I will pray for you daily.”

In cases involving Dr. Abuzzahab over 15 years in the 1980s and ’90s, the medical board found that he repeatedly prescribed narcotics and other controlled substances to addicts, renewing one patient’s prescriptions six weeks after the patient was jailed and telling another that his addictive pills should be thought of as “Hamburger Helper.” He prescribed narcotics to pregnant patients, one of whom prematurely delivered a baby who soon died.

In explaining his abrupt discharge of the suicidal Mr. Olson, Dr. Abuzzahab told the medical board that “if a patient is determined to kill himself, he can’t be prevented from doing it and hospitalization postpones the event,” records show.

Mr. Olson’s sister, Susie Olson, said Dr. Abuzzahab “had no time for my brother unless David agreed to get into a drug study. He said, ‘You’re wasting my time and the hospital’s.’ It was all about money.”

Separately, the F.D.A. in 1979 and 1984 concluded that Dr. Abuzzahab had violated the protocols of every study he led that they audited, and reported inaccurate data to drug makers. He routinely oversaw four to eight drug trials simultaneously, often moved patients from one study to another, sometimes gave experimental medicines to patients at their first consultation, and once hospitalized a patient for the sole purpose of enrolling him in a study, the F.D.A. found. Dr. Abuzzahab, 74, was president of the Minnesota Psychiatric Society and two decades ago was chairman of its continuing education and ethics committees. He would not discuss the specifics of his disciplinary record, saying he did not have the time. But in 1998 he signed an agreement with the
board saying that his conduct “constitutes a reasonable basis in law and fact to justify the disciplinary action.”

A simple Google search reveals Dr. Abuzzahab’s 1998 medical board disciplinary file, which was reported at the time by a local newspaper and a TV station. In 1998, The Boston Globe featured Dr. Abuzzahab in a front-page article questioning the safety of psychiatric drug experiments. And in 1999, the NBC program “Dateline” did a segment about a woman who committed suicide
while in a drug experiment he supervised.

In June 2006, the medical board criticized Dr. Abuzzahab, this time for writing narcotics prescriptions for patients he knew were using false names, a violation of federal narcotics laws. Despite all this, drug makers continued to hire him. Dr. Abuzzahab’s résumé
lists 11 publications or research presentations since 2000, when the medical board lifted its restrictions on his license.

Takeda, a Japanese drug maker, confirmed that Dr. Abuzzahab was doing a study financed by the company on its sleep medicine, Rozerem. Eisai, another Japanese drug maker, said that although Dr. Abuzzahab had signed a clinical trial agreement with the company to study its Alzheimer’s drug, Aricept, it told him two days after a reporter asked for comment on the case that he was
not qualified to be an investigator. And at AstraZeneca, for which Dr. Abuzzahab said he had performed clinical trials and still gave drug marketing lectures, a spokesman said the company was “concerned” about Dr. Abuzzahab’s disciplinary record.

“We have our own internal processes for dealing with these matters, which are under way,” said Jim Minnick, an AstraZeneca spokesman.

The Minnesota records often fail to distinguish between drug company payments to doctors for research and for marketing, so it is sometimes impossible to determine why doctors were paid. Some doctors, like Dr. Abuzzahab, clearly performed both research and marketing. Gene Carbona, who left Merck on good terms in 2001 as a regional sales manager after 12 years in drug sales, said the only thing the company considered when hiring doctors to give marketing lectures was “the volume or potential volume of prescribing that doctor could do.” A Merck spokesman declined to comment.

Mr. Carbona, now executive director of sales for The Medical Letter, which reviews drugs, said that had he known that a doctor had a disciplinary record for excessive prescribing, “I would have been more inclined to use them as a speaker.”

==========================
from yesterday’s email:

(3) THE INDEPENDENT, MAY 31, US PHARMACEUTICAL GIANT PFIZER SLAPPED WITH CRIMINAL CHARGES IN NIGERIA OVER NOTORIOUS CLINICAL TRIAL IT CONDUCTED ON CHILDREN

http://www.commondreams.org/contactingus.htm

Friday, June 01, 2007

Published on Thursday, May 31, 2007 by the Independent/UK

Drugs Giant Faces Criminal Charges Over Clinical Trial
by Andrew Gumbel

LOS ANGELES – The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been slapped with criminal charges in Nigeria over a notorious clinical trial it conducted on children during a meningitis epidemic a decade ago. Patients became unwitting guinea pigs for a new, untested antibiotic and many of them either died or were left with permanent disabilities.

Pfizer and its representatives will be called to account at hearings due to begin next month in the Nigerian state of Kano, where public anger over the clinical trial – and the assurances of any pharmaceutical company – remains so high that the local population won’t even trust the Nigerian government to immunise their children against polio.

The episode, which has already led to one unsuccessful suit in the US courts, was the inspiration for John Le Carré’s novel The Constant Gardener and is frequently held up as an instance of scientific inquiry gone shockingly awry.

The Nigerian authorities say Pfizer researchers selected 200 children and infants from a crowded epidemic camp in Kano in 1996 and gave about half of them an untested antibiotic called Trovan. The lawsuit alleges that the researchers did not obtain consent from the children’s families even though they knew from their own research that Trovan might have life-threatening side effects and was “unfit for human use”.

The suit further contends that the researchers gave the other half a comparison drug made by Pfizer’s competitor Hoffman-La Roche, but deliberately underdosed them to make their own product look better. Pfizer and its doctors “agreed to do an illegal act,” the suit says, “in a manner so rash and negligent as to endanger human life”.

Once the trial was over, the suit continues, Pfizer left the area, removed all medical records and “obliterated any evidence” of the trial. A Nigerian government report, which appears to have spurred the criminal charges, previously found that Pfizer never told the children or their parents they were participating in a trial and did not inform them that alternative treatments were available – most obviously chloramphenicol, a relatively cheap antibiotic usually recommended for bacterial meningitis.

The government report found that of the 11 children who died, five were taking Trovan and six were taking low doses of the comparison drug, ceftriaxone. An unknown number suffered deafness, blindness, paralysis and other disabilities.

The Kano authorities have charged Pfizer on eight counts of criminal conspiracy and voluntarily causing grievous harm. They have also filed a civil suit seeking more than $2.7bn (£1.3bn) in damages. Pfizer has responded to the lawsuit by insisting it did nothing wrong. “Pfizer continues to emphasize – in the strongest terms – that the 1996 Trovan clinical study was conducted with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government and in a responsible and ethical way consistent with the company’ s abiding commitment to patient safety,” a company statement said. “Any allegations in these lawsuits to the contrary are simply untrue – they weren’t valid when they were first raised years ago and they’re not valid today.”

Back in 1997, when Pfizer faced a US government audit of its records on Trovan, the company produced a letter from a hospital in Kano saying its study had been approved by the hospital’s ethics committee. The company’s accusers contend that the letter was fabricated after the fact, using a forged letterhead. The hospital, according to the suit, has no ethics committee.

Nigeria’s decision to prosecute Pfizer marks the first known instance of a Third World country going after a pharmaceutical multinational. Until now, the Nigerians have trod very carefully around the issue – commissioning an investigation but then suppressing the results until they were leaked to The Washington Post a few years ago.

But the episode has got in the way of successive public initiatives, including a polio vaccination drive that prompted an 11-month boycott in Kano.

Trovan has never been approved for use on US children. It was cleared for adults in 1997, but its use was restricted two years later following reports of liver damage and death. It is banned throughout Europe.

© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

=========================

Email from:
Sandra Finley, Saskatoon
Email network started in year 2000 – www.sandrafinley.ca
Joined Green Party in May 2006
Leader, Green Party of Saskatchewan, Oct 2006

 
 

2021-05-08 Reply to my “misplaced paranoia”

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  2 Responses »
May 082021
 

Received in reply to the last email I sent out,  2021-03-26  (copy below):

Sandra, I am appalled to see this message.  You are potentially contributing to pandemic harm by invoking vaccine harms, in a context in which (my City) has the largest covid variant spike in the country.  This is not evidence of critical thinking but of misplaced paranoia.  I urge you to cease.

= = = = = = = = = = =

SEQUENCE

  1.    In my reply to the Professor last week,  are the numbers and statistics on covid defensible?  Are they being used in a defensible way?   (elaborated below)
  2.    Statistical information about covid,  gained through an FOI on the Government of Alberta.   Government data.  I can’t vouch for the credibility of the analysis.   (https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/alberta-governments-own-data-shows-hospital-bed-and-icu-utilization-at-five-year-low)
  3. On May 09 (today)  CBC Radio News (Regional):      They (main stream media) REPORTED that people are calling for release of data.  Hmm . . .  seems that the numbers and statistics on covid are openly under question.  (I have been appalled by the propagandist nature of reporting.)

 

REBUTTING  MY  MISPLACED PARANOIA:

This is not evidence of critical thinking but of misplaced paranoia.  I urge you to cease,

statement by a full-fledged Professor who cc’d the Provost of her University on the email she sent to me (copy at top of posting).

In my reply to the Professor it was helpful to draw on my “credentialing” (ha ha!) which is in Quantitative Analysis.

Excerpt from my reply:

Dear Rebecca (prof) and Provost;

. . .   My degree is an honours Bachelor of Commerce with a major in Computational Science & Quantitative Analysis;  old, but not entirely obsolete!

I  have some understanding of how “the numbers” or “the statistics” can be, and are, routinely manipulated, it’s part of the training.  Try this easy example:

From the BC Coroners Service:  1,068 (BC) people have died of a fatal overdose so far this year.

I am currently trying to find the comparable figure for Covid:  How many people have died in BC from Covid,  so far this year?

I could find the CUMULATIVE number since the Pandemic began in 2019-2020.  I think it is this figure that is often quoted in the media – – but I need to know, to confirm.)   On the BC CDC website (where the source info would be) I could find WEEKLY reports to the end of March.   But I couldn’t find what I need.

So,  I input to the website the question:  Yes but, SO FAR THIS YEAR,  HOW MANY DEATHS FROM COVID?   Compare apples with apples – number of covid deaths versus overdose deaths, to get an idea of the scale of covid.  I hope I receive an answer.   BUT! even that is problematic – – read on.

If I were the Covid statistician,  I wouldn’t have started with a focus on reporting deaths from Covid among the elderly populations in care homes.  

Talking with someone who works in a community hospital:  EVERY YEAR with Flu Season approaching, they prepare for deaths from THE FLU among their elderly patients.  It’s a sad time of year for them. 

The person I spoke with (he initiated the conversation) had 30 years’ experience in the same Hospital,  on the Management Team:  they experienced approximately 10 deaths from the flu every year, in a small Hospital (that is larger today).  Those deaths were of elderly patients.  They KNEW every year to gear up for the deaths;  they knew they were coming, along with the flu. 

He felt, and was bothered: the reporting of Covid deaths as it is done, is misleading / irresponsible;  it is skewed by virtue of the population being reported on (especially obvious in the first stages of covid).

Why anyone would choose to use the population of persons who are already on Life’s exit ramp, approaching the time of death, as the first cohort to highlight,  is beyond me.   If your intention is to create fear, to drive people to vaccination, it’s a good strategy IF you can create the environment that holds the lid on public discussion. 

Which is what the Professor’s email to me attempts to do:

This is not evidence of critical thinking but of misplaced paranoia.  I urge you to cease.   This was said in response to:

 

MY EMAIL,  DISTRIBUTED MARCH 26, 2021

“Consent Form” which helps people to understand the natural consequences of taking the mRNA injections.

There are also links within the Form to help people research,  to better understand.

https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/in-the-news/declaration-of-informed-consent/ 

/Sandra

THE REST OF MY REBUTTAL

From: Sandra Finley
Sent: May 8, 2021
To:  Rebecca,  Professor

Hi Rebecca,

Thank-you for communicating your view.

I believe we have to have robust discourse if we are to have an Open Society.

 

My actions are not driven by fear or mental illness or (I hope) propaganda,  thank-you very much!

Over years, I have delved into topics such as

  • how vaccines are made
  • what the ingredients are
  • Are the pharmaceutical companies trust-worthy;  are they corrupt?
  • I have looked into the American Government’s Vaccine Adverse Effect Reporting System (VAERS), (check it out – available online) – – how it works,  how much it has paid out and continues to pay out in cases where children have been critically injured or died, from vaccines.
  • Outrageous conflicts of interest in the regulating bodies,  among the “scientists” who perform “the research”,  and the corrupting influence on the political side, of Corporate lobbyists who are also university funding sources.

The mRNA vaccine draws on technologies used in the manipulation of DNA.  I have been heavily involved in matters related to Genetic manipulation (GMO / GE .   I’ve done work in the area of immune systems.  So, I have a bit of a foundation upon which to build, to gain A LITTLE understanding.  My somewhat-informed view is that the introduction of mRNA technology/injections into human beings has serious ramifications.  But the topic is verboten;  can’t be discussed.

It is absolutely fine with me if other people choose vaccination.  It’s up to you.  You know best what works for you.  For that I have respect.   My life experience is very different from yours.

I have read Dr. Bonnie Henry’s 2009 book on pandemics (“Soap, Water, and Common Sense”)  which describes, among other things, the conditions required for pandemic organisms to spread.

. . .  (then the bit about skewed results from the focus on elderly people in care homes, who are already on life’s exit ramp)  . . .

Your statement regarding my email:  This is not evidence of critical thinking but of misplaced paranoia.  I urge you to cease.

Well,  I leave that to you, Rebecca.

/Sandra

2007-05-14 Re-visited 2021-05. The Powerful Origin of Mother’s Day, 1870 & Jezile, Son of Man

 Peace or Violence  1 Response »
May 072021
 

A uniting force for Mothers, the original Mother’s Day Proclamation  (below)

But start with:
Two Excerpts from Kent Nerburn’s Neither Wolf Nor Dog, sub-title “On Forgotten Roads . . . ”.

Page 248, mid-para 3: (Young woman, Dannie speaking to Nerburn)

See, the men like my grandpa Dan, they are still fighting.  You’re helping them fight.  That’s good.  But it’s our turn now – – Indian women.  The men are tired.  They fought for almost two hundred years.  Now it’s our turn. . . . 

P 249, top:  It was taken from them (the men).  Everything. (result is shame, can’t provide for and protect their families)

. . . But no one paid any attention to us women.  We kept things alive in our hearts and hands.  . . . They ignored us.  We were just women.  . . . But we were always the ones to keep the culture alive.  That was our job as women and as mothers.  It always has been.  . . .  Our men may be defeated, but our women’s hearts are still strong.  . . .

(Nerburn speaking) When I worked on Red Lake it seemed to me that the Indian women were strong – – stronger than white women in a lot of ways.  But they were strong APART (my emphasis)  from the men, as mothers, as grandmothers.  . . .

 

Which leads into The Mother’s Day Proclamation, the strength of the women behind it.

MY SONG FOR MOTHER’S DAY

supported by my Mother who will be 94 years old this November, and by my 41-year old daughter

THE ORIGINAL MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION, 1870, BY JULIA WARD HOWE

DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER!  

In the aftermath of the American Civil War (1861-65):

“Arise then, women of this day!  Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears! 

“Say firmly”:  ‘We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies.  Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage for caresses and applause.  Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.  We women of one country will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.  From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own, it says “Disarm! Disarm!” The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.  Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.’

“As men have forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.  Let them meet first as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace. 

“In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality be appointed to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.” 

By Julia Ward Howe.

(who went on to work internationally (in Africa and elsewhere) at uniting women, implementing the ideals of The Mothers Day Proclamation.)

THE PRECEDING IS 2021.

MY 2007 POSTING, EDITED, includes JEZILE FILM.  Thanks to Phyllis

The history of Mother’s day is powerful.   Its founders never intended it as a commercial event.

Phyllis writes:

I have attached the Mother’s Day speech from 1870 for you. It is sad, really, that women have been saying the same things for centuries.

The history of Mother’s day is so much more than many of us know – it is much, much more than a Greeting Card and Flower Shop construct.  Please check out online the story of American women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were early activists and promoters of the celebration of women and women’s work.

There was a marvellous speech written by Julia Ward Howe perhaps best known today for having written the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” when she was an antislavery activist.

The original Proclamation was an impassioned call for peace and disarmament.  In the years following the Civil War her political activism increased, as did her condemnation of war. Here are the words to:

The ORIGINAL           Mother’s Day Proclamation (as above)

“Arise then, women of this day!   . . .    “In the name of womanhood and humanity, . . .   ” 

Now – wasn’t that something? In this movie you are about to see, Son of Man – this mother/son story of Jesus, Mother Mary states those thoughts in her own fashion, surrounded as she is by the devastation that is Africa.

Today, I dedicate this movie to the intense bond between mothers and their children.   I hope you like it as much as I do.    /Phyllis

=========================

(Sandra speaking)

Phyllis saw the movie “Jezile, Son of Man” at a film festival.  She determined that it had to be seen.  She tracked it down, finally, to a British production company.  Phyllis’ efforts resulted in the film being shown here (Saskatoon, SK) on Mother’s Day.  Very appropriately so, when you read  THE ORIGINAL MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION, 1870. 

THE MOVIE

(back to Phyllis)

Jezile: Son of Man

2006 South Africa

Dir: Mark Dornford-May

86 min.

English/Xhosa w/EST

(Note: the film is rich in spite of scant dialogue.  You might, however, want to sit close to the front in order to read the sub-titles.)

From wikipedia:  “Presently approximately 8 million Xhosa people are distributed across the country, and Xhosa is South Africa’s second most common home language, after Zulu, to which Xhosa is closely related. The pre-1994 apartheid system of bantustans denied Xhosas South African citizenship and attempted to confine them to the nominally self-governing “homelands” of Transkei and Ciskei, now both a part of the Eastern Cape Province where most Xhosa remain. Many Xhosa live in Cape Town (iKapa in Xhosa), East London (iMonti), and Port Elizabeth (iBhayi).”

To me there is an interesting parallel between Jezile, Son of Man and the book “Testament” by Canadian author Nino Ricci.  Jezile is set in modern-day Africa.  Testament is set in the Roman Empire during a period of political unrest.  The central character in both stories is a Jesus-like person.

Jezile:  “If Jesus were alive today, he would be singled out as a dangerous political leader, just as he was the first time around.”  Testament offers an interpretation of Jesus in his time as precisely that.

Jezile, Son of Man:  “Nominated for Grand Jury Prize Sundance Film Festival. This story of Jesus is set in present-day Africa and says the same sorts of things Jesus said in the Bible, updated only in terms of reference. The film sends an unmistakable message: If Jesus were alive today, he would be singled out as a dangerous political leader, just as he was the first time around. The movie has relatively little spoken dialogue but a great deal of music, that joyous full-throated South African music that combines great technical skill with great heart. Some of the best moments belong to Mary (Pauline Malefane), who sings in celebration after being told she will be the mother of Jesus (Andile Kosi). “One of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance.” — Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com “

2021-04-17 Assange, Nils Melzer says the treatment of Julian leaves him “speechless”

 Julian Assange, Wikileaks, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Arjen Kamphuis  No Responses »
Apr 202021
 

by Stefania Maurizi

In an in-depth interview with Il Fatto Quotidiano, Nils Melzer discusses his investigation on the WikiLeaks founder, which has made him speak out as a whistleblower and raise an alarm on this case and its implications: “We have already created a parallel world of secret services that controls everything”.

Melzer is right on the money, and forcefully.   He’s published a book.  Interview at  https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/in-edicola/articoli/2021/04/17/assange-melzer-says-the-treatment-of-julian-leaves-him-speechless/6169437/?fbclid=IwAR2ZtJQO3OZXRU6lyoQ6Cup7p8bJeFWIWCaP0y7hEOROzbiFK_ufzoQYkLc

 

The concluding 2 paragraphs of the interview:

When Navalny came to Germany, we didn’t say he was violating his bail, and when he flew back voluntarily to Russia and was arrested and sentenced for bail violation, everybody immediately screamed “foul” and imposed sanctions against Russia. But then I thought: Hold on, you have your own guy whom you sanctioned for bail violations, and he has finished his sentence more than a year ago, and he is still in prison without any legal basis. When I see the hypocrisy of the West I am speechless, I am honestly speechless.

We have already created a parallel world of secret services that controls everything, and it is getting worse every year. When you go to sleep in democracy, you wake up in tyranny. That’s the motto of my book, taken from a German lawyer, commenting on the Third Reich. That is precisely the situation we are in, we have a world population that is sleeping by and large, and we are still in democracy, but in the background the structures of tyranny are already being built up, and they are already advanced. My book rings the alarm bell, it is a wake-up call, because my biggest fear is that, by the time the world public wakes up from their sleep, we will all live in a tyranny.

From my perspective, we reached that red alarm situation some time ago.  Melzer describes why he was a late-comer to the realization.  I forgive him, because he’s coming out powerfully now.  But God!  what does it take?   Excellent article.

2021-04-19 My comment: U.S. Military WOULD BE more resistant to forced vaccination. History forgotten (deliberately?) Enforced Anthrax vaccination.

 Vaccinations (incl corruption of science & govt)  No Responses »
Apr 192021
 

In reply to an article,   Sandra Finley wrote:

Hi,

Re:  opposes nuclear power as a “solution” to the climate crisis, and also calls attention to the elephant in the room — the role of militarism, including nuclear weapons — in its very significant contribution to the climate crisis.

Just before opening your “Vets4Peace” I commented on an article;  it was apparent that the author was unaware of the history, there was no reference to it.  (Perhaps deliberately.)   The Comment:

The U.S. Military WOULD BE more resistant to forced vaccination than the population at large.  A million of their members and first responders were forced to get the Anthrax Vaccination with disastrous results for thousands upon thousands of them.  The “Gulf War Syndrome” was more accurately the Anthrax Vaccine Syndrome.  . . .   I always figured that the reason 4,000 U.S. Vets showed up at Standing Rock in solidarity with the Indians,  under the leadership of Wesley Clark Jr,  son of NATO Commander, General Clark, was because they had been so badly treated by the U.S. Military and the country they served.   Young lives destroyed by the forced vaccinations, tragic beyond belief, and then abandoned, thrown into destitution and homelessness.  

Another example of Militarism at its best.  Care not whether it’s foreigners OR your own people you’re killing.  Deny responsibility.  Deny, Deny, and keep denying.

/Sandra

From: Cindy Piester
Sent: April 19, 2021
To: Sandra Finley
Subject: Re: re Vets4Peace, nuclear, . . .

Thank you, Sandra.  Good to hear from you.  yeah those vaccines really wiped out a lot of our people.

cindy

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