Reader’s Links for May 22, 2022

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

23 Replies to “Reader’s Links for May 22, 2022”

    • Trans is “going around” just like Bell’s Palsy.

      If geoengineering is a way to shade the earth, why the solar panels?

      Economic Forum madmen are up to a lot of monkey business.

      I do agree with madman Schwab “But the power of human beings lies in their foresight, ingenuity and — at least to a certain extent — ability to take their destiny into their own hands and plan for a better future”.

      They will all be in Davos next week – how convient- – arrest them, sedition, fraud, perjury, crimes against humanity – – Using VARES numbers up to May 13, 2022, deaths 28,141 x 40 = 1,125,640 just in the USA.

  1. France blames bad weather, war for dijon mustard shortage

    May 20 (UPI) — Supermarkets in France are reporting higher prices and shortages for dijon mustard fueled in part by poor crops last summer and the Russia-Ukraine war.

    Mustard producers in France said seed production was down 50% in 2021. One of the largest producers in France, Reine de Dijon, told The Guardian that a so-called heat dome in Canada in July “really dried up the crops.”

    “In Burgundy, the region had a very wet winter and then three days of cold at the beginning of April last year, so we only harvested about 48% of expectations.

    Most of the world’s dijon mustard is produced in the Burgundy region of France, but most of the seed is grown in southern Canada, Mashed reported.

    Mundus Agri reported that Canada is expected to export about 78,000 metric tons of mustard seed from the 2021-22 growing season, about 41% lower than the 133,000 metric tons projected.

    The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February has exacerbated the shortage. Both countries also grow mustard seeds, but with sanctions on Russia and fighting disrupting the normal course of daily life in Ukraine, exports have been limited.

    “The Ukraine, without being a big producer, represented a backup plan,” Luc Vandermaesen, managing director of Reine de Dijon, told French business magazine L’Usine Nouvelle

    “We were counting on it to make the connection with the next harvest, but this solution fell through.”

    French news outlet Sud Ouest reported the price for mustard seeds has doubled compared to a year ago.

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2022/05/20/france-France-dijon-mustard-shortage/7331653071673/

  2. FINANCIAL TIMES – Five things to watch for at Summer Davos

    From economic crises to preparing for the next pandemic, here’s what the first forum for two years will focus on

    The World Economic Forum defines its mission as improving the state of the planet. Yet when it gathers 2,500 of the global elite in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos from Sunday, the backdrop will be war in Ukraine, an unresolved pandemic, growing climate risks and a rapidly souring economic outlook.

    Even WEF founder Klaus Schwab acknowledged the question hanging over this year’s annual meeting at a briefing this week: “How can Davos make a positive contribution to all those challenges in a world which is deeply stuck in crisis management?” 

    The meeting is the WEF’s first since January 2020 after aborted attempts to gather its usual array of policymakers and executives through the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.

    That period has shaken the system Davos represents and injected a rare note of self-doubt. One theme running through the sessions is whether the system of globalisation and collaboration for which it stands still works.

    Here’s what to watch for at what Schwab is billing as the most consequential annual meeting since the WEF’s creation in 1971.


    Reconstructing Ukraine

    History books will record Russia’s attack on Ukraine as “the breakdown of the post-World War II and post-Cold War order,” Schwab predicted earlier this week. He has barred Russian politicians and executives from the meeting, which Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, will address via video on Monday.

    Other Ukrainian ministers will meet western leaders including Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and German chancellor Olaf Scholtz.

    The big question will be whether delegates can make progress on Marshall plan-style investments in Ukraine’s eventual reconstruction. Expect talks on further sanctions, how to handle Ukrainian refugees, and how to stem a food crisis spreading from the traditional “bread basket” of Europe.

    Economic gloom

    We are in the throes of a worrisome moment for the world economy.

    European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde, US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo and about 50 finance ministers will be under pressure to deliver new solutions to the challenges of soaring inflation and recession fears.

    Rising interest rates and spiking energy costs are exacerbating long-term Davos concerns including the need to tackle inequality and to provide workers with new skills. Look for initiatives to drive “a jobs recovery”. 

    Averting climate change

    The top concerns in the WEF’s global risks report this January, as in early 2020, captured elites’ fears that governments, businesses and financiers are doing too little to avert irreversible climate change.

    Spiking energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine have added a new fear: that countries trying to wean themselves off Russian gas will fall back on coal.

    Chinese climate envoy Xie Zhenhua will meet his US counterpart John Kerry. But with relations between Washington and Beijing tense, can they build on pledges made at November’s COP 26 climate summit?

    Amid warnings that net zero pledges have not delivered the surge in investment needed to cut emissions, delegates will be pushed to show more action.

    Preparedness for future pandemics

    At the WEF’s last in-person meeting in January 2020, delegates knew that China was in the grip of a novel coronavirus, but few of them could imagine how Covid-19 would affect them.

    Davos 2022 is anxious to avoid a repeat, scheduling several meetings on preparedness. Expect announcements on new monitoring systems, and a focus on providing more vaccines to the poorest, least immunised populations. A new consortium — bringing together ministers, executives and international organisations — will “accelerate collective action across key resilience drivers for the global economy”.

    Capitalists confront sceptics

    Executives’ concerns this year range from the “great resignation” to how to make supply chains less vulnerable. Overlaying such issues, though, are questions about the direction in which capitalism will head.

    The WEF believes the system can adapt to meet the challenge of climate change. But with investors warming again to oil stocks, and sceptics like Elon Musk declaring ESG “a scam”, many doubt that is the case.

    This year’s meeting will try to ground what most Davos-goers see as good intentions in more demanding metrics.

    Will Davos still be Davos?

    Winter Davos features an icy Promenade, fondue dinners and heaving corporate parties. There will be no snow on the ground in May and smaller delegations from banks and once feted crypto businesses. Some larger parties, held by the likes of JPMorgan and McKinsey, are not happening.

    One recurring theme, though, will be protests outside the security perimeter, and suspicion about what goes on inside it. A new book called Davos Man lambasts executives who advocate a positive social role but then lobby for lower corporate taxes.

    The WEF has also been trying to hose down fresh conspiracy theories about its influence, spreading on sites such as 4chan. “They were not suddenly taken up: we saw a lot of amplification of them by state actors,” one WEF executive said this week.

    Schwab himself seems unswayed by the questions over his creation. Davos, he argued, is the place to understand the world “in its systemic complexity”.

    https://www.ft.com/content/cb2a937a-7425-4892-996a-12950c741352

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

    REBEL NEWS – Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla tells WEF crowd about new microchipped pills: ‘Imagine the compliance’

    • europravda- Davos 2022: What to expect from the World Economic Forum’s most consequential meeting in 50 years

      World leaders are descending on the Swiss mountain resort for the WEF’s belated annual meeting.
      Here’s what the 2022 event is likely to have in store.

  3. ctv news – LGBTQ2+ community concerned about stigma around monkeypox

    LGBTQ2+ advocate David Hawkins discusses the fears of stigma developing towards the gay community over the spread of monkeypox.

    + comments on the YT page

    • zero hedge – Belgium Begins Monkeypox Quarantines, Biden Warns “Everybody Should Be Concerned”

      Belgium has become the first country to introduce a mandatory 21-day monkeypox quarantine for those who contact the virus, after three cases were recorded in the country.

      The infections were all linked to a festival in the port city of Antwerp, according to the Daily Mail, as Belgium is now one of 14 countries to confirm outbreaks of the viral disease (in addition to suspected, but not confirmed cases in Austria and Greece).

      […]National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who told the traveling press pool that the United States has vaccines “available to be deployed.”

      […]Around 1% of those who contract the current strain will die.

      […]Symptoms include; fever, headache, muscle and back aches, swollen lymph nodes, chills, exhaustion, and of course, lesions. Nobody has died of the viral disease to date in the latest outbreak.

      https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/belgium-begins-monkeypox-quarantines-biden-warns-everybody-should-be-concerned

      GBNews – What is monkeypox and how can we stay safe?

    • GOV -UK – Information for UK recipients on COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca (Regulation 174)
      Updated 26 January 2022

      […]

      6. Contents of the pack and other information

      What COVID-19 Vaccine AstraZeneca contains

      One dose (0.5 ml) contains: COVID-19 Vaccine (ChAdOx1-S* recombinant) 5 × 10^10 viral particles (vp)

      *Recombinant, replication-deficient chimpanzee adenovirus vector encoding the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein. Produced in genetically modified human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells.

      This product contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

      […]
      https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-approval-of-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca/information-for-uk-recipients-on-covid-19-vaccine-astrazeneca

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

      GOV-AU – Is it true? Does the Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca) vaccine contain animal DNA?

      The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector. This is a harmless, weakened adenovirus that usually causes the common cold in chimpanzees. It has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans.
      ——————————–
      […]The AstraZeneca vaccine uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vaccine vector. This is a harmless, weakened adenovirus that usually causes the common cold in chimpanzees.

      The adenovirus vaccine vector, known as ChAdOx1, was chosen as a suitable vaccine technology for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine as it has been shown to generate a strong immune response from one dose in other vaccines.

      It has been genetically changed so that it is impossible for it to grow in humans.

      Chimpanzee adenoviral vectors are a very well-studied vaccine type, having been used safely in thousands of subjects.

      https://www.health.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/covid-19-vaccines/is-it-true/is-it-true-does-the-vaxzevria-astrazeneca-vaccine-contain-animal-dna
      ============================================

      Adenoviral vectors are the new COVID-19 vaccine front-runners. Can they overcome their checkered past?

      CanSino Biologics, Johnson & Johnson, and the University of Oxford are all using genetically engineered common cold viruses to make COVID-19 vaccines. The technology is more than 30 years in the making, but it’s yet to yield an effective vaccine for humans

      […]While adenoviral vectors have been tested in far more people than mRNA vaccines, the technology is used in only one commercial vaccine today: a rabies vaccine used to immunize wild animals. So far, no adenoviral vector vaccines have demonstrated they can prevent disease in humans.

      “It is not proven until it is licensed, and in postlicensure, continues to succeed,” Ertl says. “To say it is proven without peer-reviewed efficacy data is a stretch.”

      […]Some labs have sought to avoid the problem of preexisting immunity altogether by using adenoviruses that don’t normally infect humans but do infect our closest relatives. In the early 2000s, Wilson’s lab at Penn began hunting for chimpanzee adenoviruses, which the researchers isolated from the animal’s feces. Soon after, Ertl’s lab at Wistar began collaborating with Wilson to use the chimpanzee adenoviruses as a novel vaccine vector.

      Other groups adopted the idea too. “Chimpanzees are very protected, but stools can be easily collected,” says Stefano Colloca, who worked on adenoviral vectors at Merck Research Laboratories’ center in Rome in the early 2000s. He later helped form a company, Okairos, that was spun out of that work when Merck discontinued its Ad5 programs in 2007.

      Okairos focused on developing chimpanzee adenoviral vectors that closely resembled human Ad5, and it soon formed a collaboration with a newly founded vaccine center at the University of Oxford called the Jenner Institute. The Oxford team used one of the Okairos chimpanzee-derived vectors to develop a malaria vaccine, which became the first chimpanzee-derived vector to be tested in humans.

      In 2012, the Oxford group developed its own chimpanzee-derived vector, dubbed ChAdOx1, based on an adenovirus discovered in chimpanzee feces. The Oxford team went on to create the spin-off company Vaccitech in 2016 and has developed experimental vaccines for a number of diseases, including AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and Middle East respiratory syndrome, which is caused by the MERS coronavirus.

      […]The biggest drawback to the great-ape adenoviral vector vaccines may be their lack of prior testing in humans. Before the coronavirus pandemic, Oxford’s ChAdOx1 vector had been given to only about 320 people, and ReiThera’s new gorilla-derived vector has never been tested in humans. Although preexisting immunity could limit the effectiveness of the Ad5- and Ad26-based vaccines, at least their developers have a better idea of their vectors’ safety.

      https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/Adenoviral-vectors-new-COVID-19/98/i19

  4. Russians Fire S-300 Missiles At Israeli Aircraft In Syria
    Putin sends a message over Israel siding with Ukraine.

    Without specifically mentioning the incident, Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Monday said Israel would not be deterred and vowed to prevent Iran from transferring “advanced capabilities” to other entities in Syria.…

    What is not said, and need not be, is what would happen if a Russian missile from an S-300 battery brought down an Israeli plane. The Russians know that Israel will do whatever it takes to eliminate any new threat to its bombing of Iranian sites in Syria, and will not be deterred…

    The Russian military doesn’t want to be put to that test; with good reason, it fears what Israeli pilots, planes, and missiles are capable of. It would be sensible for the Russians in Syria to steer clear of direct conflict with the IAF, as it has for years, lest it be shown up in a display of Israeli air superiority. After the Russian debacle in Ukraine, that kind of humiliation in Syria would be too much. The Russians are properly wary of tangling with Israel.

    https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/russians-fire-s-300-missiles-israeli-aircraft-hugh-fitzgerald/

  5. Prof. Eyal Zisser:
    Israel, Syria and Russia and the shifting Middle East sands

    The Russians came to this region more than 50 years ago to actively and directly help the Arabs in their war against Israel. Today, Russia is a country that has open dialogue and even friendly relations with us, and its goal is not to harm Israel but rather to promote its own interests on Syrian soil – which do not necessarily contradict the Israeli interests.

    What’s more, Israel is a far stronger country than it was on the eve of the Six-Day War or Yom Kippur War, and it, too – not just Russia – can inflict considerable damage, directly or indirectly, on its adversaries. Ergo, the joint Israeli-Russian interest is to talk and cooperate as much as possible.

    As in the past, however, the Russian interest supersedes all others from Moscow’s perspective, and it is willing to go to extremely great lengths to protect them – as evidenced by the war in Ukraine. Likewise, when trees are being chopped down in Europe, more often than not the wood chips are sent flying into the Middle East.

    We can only hope that Israel and Russia will be wise enough to contain the tensions and disagreements, and the isolated run-ins, because dialogue, not conflict, will serve and advance the interests of both sides.

    https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/israel-syria-and-russia-and-the-shifting-middle-east-sands/