CHINA Stew

This has come out of the woodwork and it implies a possible event involving China.  absolutely nothing is actually known as fact.

I have heard one story that the Chinese airforce attacked Taiwan and was beaten back by the Taiwan Airforce and USA carrier planes.

We have a also heard that the Marines and Taiwanese forces will make a landing on the Mainland to support a change of regime.

It is also claimed that Xi is part of this plan of action.  Again all this appears to be generally an impossibility on the face of it.  At the same time we are dealing with large amounts of misinformation both here and abroad.

What is true though is that i have had real difficulty in understanding CCP military strategy during the past few months.  It has not been conservative which is the best option.

Has Xi been engaging CCP elements generally to neutralize them?  Sending the airforce out does just that and sending your best infantry units out into the Himalyas puts them thousands of miles from been any help at all.  My point is that a state of alert allows forces to be sent to places that will not matter.

This sets the stage for arresting all ccp members with foreign assistence.  All this mirrors CCP plans on the USA.

Certainly the USA has assembled an invasion capability in the South China Sea and India will be  in position to fly in a  million troops through Taiwan.

At the least, the CCP has chosen to become a global threat.  What is now underway is the full elimination of that global threat.  Fair enough.  As i have posted, the actual takedown of the internal CCP seemed impossible.

This can no longer be discounted.

UNCONFIRMED: CHINA’S GENSEC XI TO STEP DOWN, CHINA COMMUNIST PARTY TO DISSOLVE, PRESIDENT TRUMP INVOLVED – CIRSTEN W

Posted on January 29, 2021 by John Helios Leave a comment

Click the original video or article link here >>> Taiwanese Intel

At 5:05 Cirsten begins talking news about what sounds like the lessening of tenuous relations among Taiwan, China and the USA. This includes the dissolution of the CCP. President Trump seems to be involved. The wording of the email she reads aloud seems unclear, but the message sounds as if it means to impart good news.Source: CWConnect

Video Notes:

Cirsten mentions (remember, this is not confirmed):

Chairman Xi Jinping stepping down as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Upcoming dissolution of the CCP.

China will undergo changes similar to what happened with the former USSR.

To occur before March 2021.

President Trump deeply involved.

IMPORTANT STATEMENT: Please understand that much of the “news” in present and coming days will be an informational chess dance, with information being used as weapons by various interested parties. So please take all information with a proverbial “grain of salt”, and keep in mind that information provided by externals news sources are not necessarily reflective of the viewpoints of this website. Also see the Disclaimer/Legal section on this page.

CHINAFEATURED

Is the Chinese Communist Party Sustainable Without Democratization?

BySang-Mo Yeon

January 29, 2021

Who will win a bloodless war between the United States and China over democracy and human rights? 

Editor’s Note: Understanding the true nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has become more urgent than ever due to the global chaos caused by the Coronavirus that was originated from China. There are pessimistic suspicions that South Korea has already fallen victim to the CCP’s hegemonic efforts. VON News conducted three special interviews to understand the CCP’s ideology, reality, past and present, and future. The interviews were conducted on August 3, 10, and 18. We will post another series of article titled “Is there a future for Chinese socialist market economy?” in next month’s edition. Kim Mi-young, the president of VON News, conducted the interviews with Dr. Yeon Sang-mo. 

Kim: As the conflict between the United States and China are worsening, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has recently been issuing very important statements. Not long ago, he raised a very serious issue and the Secretary said he will no longer overlook China. This appears to be a bloodless war—much more than an armed conflict and an economic war. Secretary Pompeo established the Commission on Unalienable Rights, which would work directly under him. This reaffirmed the concept of human rights established in 1776 during the American Revolutionary War and the concept declared by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. This means that China cannot be an exception to the unalienable rights, and it appears that the United States is directly confronting the CCP with this issue. The United States is sending a clear message that China should respect its people’s human rights in order to become a member of the international community. Do you think the CCP will be able to respond properly?

Yeon: To begin with, China will never respond the fundamental question posed by the United States. No, they simply cannot. The United States basically declared war against China. However, he said they will confront China with the value of ‘democracy’, not with physical measures or weapons. Moreover, it appears that the United States, after going through the COVID-19 crisis, has decided that it can no longer let China be as it is now. What is meaningful is that the United States differentiated the CCP from the Chinese people. People can see this through how the U.S. government calls Xi Jinping. Before they used the term “President”, but now calls him “Chinese Communist Party General Secretary.” This means that the U.S. government doesn’t consider him the head of state anymore, and only sees him as the head of the CCP. This is sending a very clear message to the CCP. 

This means that the U.S. government is aiming directly at the CCP, which does not follow the universal values of democracy and human rights that are promoted by the United States. The U.S. government considers the CCP’s ideology and values to be an internal problem of China. However, it now appears that the U.S. government realized that the CCP will become a significant threat to the world if it is not challenged. Its perception changed significantly. I do not think that this was just because of the COVID-19 crisis. It was unexpected, but it was a trigger.

The United States once thought that China could accept democracy and transform through its economic development. It believed in an optimistic theory that democratic countries do not engage in war with one another. The United States thought that if they helped China economically, Beijing would transform naturally. However, 30 or 40 years later, this optimism has shattered. 

China also made misjudgments. China was able to develop economically when the United States started to embrace them around 1978. However, during the 2008 financial crisis, many people started to think that not only the U.S. economy but also the U.S. itself could collapse. I think this was when China started to make more misjudgments. After receiving help from the United States for about 30 years, China began to think that it can now challenge the U.S. I think China believed that they could challenge the United States after hiding its strengths until it became a superpower. From the U.S. perspective, even though China wasn’t exactly equal to their level, they thought it strange, and I think they’ve been watching what has been going on for about 10 years.

Deng Xiaoping Eventually Followed Mao Zedong’s Dictatorship Model

Kim: There is historical evidence between East Asia and the United States. The U.S. government managed Japan in a similar way in the previous century. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, as it thought the United States was not taking any action. This event brought all of Asia into chaos during the end of World War II. It resulted in a tragic victory after using atomic bombs for the first time in history. I think this is why the United States was optimistic about China. 

Yeon: When looking at how the U.S. government and academic world positioned themselves in the past, they seem to have a strong desire to reflect their political philosophies or views of the world into the real world. After the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama, the author of “The End of History and the Last Man,” argued that only liberal democracy and free-market capitalism will be left for the rest of human history. At this time, the ideology of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and liberal ideas became very popular. People like Samuel Huntington, the author of “The Clash of Civilizations,” also introduced very optimistic predictions. He predicted that even though the Cold War is over, war itself has not disappeared. He argued that the world will be divided into a Christian society and Islamic society and that they will clash with each other.

Huntington believed that China was on the side of Islam. I think his judgment was correct on that part. The United States, at that time, believed that it would have to prepare for a conflict with Islam, and did not think the conflict with China would go that far. That is why they were optimistic about China. 

Some scholars differentiated countries by how globalized they are, and the key criteria were ‘trade and investment’. They looked at which countries have adopted these concepts and judged whether they were on the U.S. side or not. China was very active when it came to trade, so it was considered to be on the side of the United States. I think this and many optimistic views overlapped to make the United States feel relaxed about China. 

Kim: There is something hard to understand about China. China has a large population and land, but it has barely won any war or conflict against foreign countries, historically speaking. Recently, China lost a big war against Japan that lasted from 1894 to 1895. I think this is why the United States believed that China has never actually stood out in world history. However, I think the United States started to realize that China is a civilization that is more complicated than they originally thought. It appears that Western society discovered that leaders like Qin Shi Huang, known as the first emperor of a unified China, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping view the world in a very unique way. These people seem to imitate each other as well. 

Yeon: Many people believe that Xi Jinping is imitating Mao Zedong quite a lot based on his latest actions. To simplify, Xi is focused on the original form of communism, centralizing power around one person, and undertaking international policies that boldly challenge superpowers.

Mao, who ruled China from 1948 to 1976, focused on these three factors. He was very ideological and showed how a one-person dictatorship can work. He even stood against the Soviet Union, the big brother of all communist societies, and said China will take an independent route. Deng Xiaoping, who ruled China from 1976 to 1997, followed Mao’s policies. One difference was that Mao completely ruined China by pursuing his passion for the Great Unity, Chinese utopian vision of the world that lasted for thousands of years. Deng, on the other hand, had pragmatism and seemed to criticize Mao. However, the goal of constructing a socialist country was the same for both of them. 

This was misinterpreted by the United States and the liberal society. Deng’s pragmatism did not mean that China will adopt the American version of democracy. So Chinese history was only differentiated by who the leader was at the time, but realistically, we can’t completely differentiate the two leaders. The prime example would be how Mao pushed ahead with the Great Leap Forward campaign from 1958 to 1962, and it was reported that at least 30 million people died of hunger during that time. I am not sure whether Mao felt a little bad about it, but he stepped back for a short period of time. That was when Deng and other pragmatists gained power. China opened its economy up until 2012, which was when Hu Jintao was leading the country, but it resulted in a significant gap in people’s income. 

People’s rage exploded and Hu felt the threat that socialism could collapse. That was when Hu introduced the slogan of the “Harmonious Society.” He argued that economy and pragmatism are all good things, but that equality is also important. However, the true nature behind the concept was repeating the ideology of Great Unity and Mao Zedong’s ideological passion. 

Xi Jinping’s ‘Strong China’ Obsessed with Past Glory

Kim: Then do you think Xi Jinping is no different from past leaders? I think that the so-called Xi Generation has a lot of homework to do that was left unsolved by Mao and Deng. The two leaders didn’t try to solve the homework of liberty, human rights, and democratization, which are fundamental problems of the CCP. They have become ticking time bombs that are now in Xi Jinping’s hands. 

Yeon: People could differentiate generations of Mao and Deng by the ideology and pragmatism. However, it is also that the two were harmonious at the same time. Experts in China expected that Xi would practice a flexible and humble foreign policy by following the pragmatism established by Deng. However, a year or two after Xi gained power, he took stances that were strong and very ideological, like those of Mao. 

Deng introduced certain ideas of capitalism in China for over 40 years. It resulted in corruption, an income gap and chaos in the social order. What Deng ultimately wanted was also a communist dictatorship, or one person ruling a totalitarian system. Many argue that Deng was a great pragmatist. The economy and social issues were mixed with each other in a complicated way, which he ignored and did not reveal his vision to reform politics. 

In 1989, when the Cold War was coming to an end, the Tiananmen Square incident occurred. The CCP tried to hide the fundamental nature of the crisis and tried to solve the complaints made by college students by physically persecuting them. People called for a collective leadership system. Many misinterpreted this as providing guidelines for Hu Jintao to rule the country with the idea of communism. This was the same case with Xi Jinping. I think Xi has the clear goal of making a ‘Strong China’. However, I think he is trying to make a strong country that is obsessed with past generations’ glory. He does not have any specific vision or procedures on how to make such country. He is only focusing on his own idealistic goal.

The U.S.-China Difference is the Concept of Good and Evil

Kim: It was reported that educational institutions, which the CCP is deeply involved with, are pushing ahead with a certain campaign. If you look at the content, they mean to restore the great China. They specifically state that the concept of neoliberalism, nihilism about communism and many others should not be accepted. This simply shows that they are trying to make great China without adopting western liberal democratic system, which promotes universal values. 

Yeon: China has a huge population and land area. It was invaded many times and went through multiple internal conflicts in history. The reason why China was able to last is its patience and power to absorb many ideas. I think it is why they think they can regain their glory if they hold on for just a bit more. Many Chinese say that “time is on the Chinese side,” and this reflects their belief. They think 30 percent of what they have done is wrong but is confident in the remaining 70 percent that it is good. Philosophically speaking, China wants a relative victory, instead of a total victory, like they would while playing a game of Go. To meet this ambitious goal, they would create a harmonious environment in which the final result would be 7 to 3. This allows an awkward harmony to occur. In a deeper sense, there is no concept of differentiating between good and evil. 

However, the United States and Western civilizations, which base their worldview on the concept of Christianity, believe there’s no middle ground and that there is a clear good and evil. This is why the CCP cannot compromise with Western democracy. So, if the relationship between the United States and China can be maintained without a war, even though if China won’t adopt democracy, they should not challenge the U.S. But even if China doesn’t challenge the American-led global order, I think it is clear that the United States will not overlook China stealing economic benefits through illegal ways. 

But above all, there is a clear difference in the ideology and political system that the United States and China can never ignore. The current conflict between the two is caused by the Chinese decision to challenge the United States and it also creates fear that the power that the United States hold might shift toward China. 

China used various rhetoric to say that it will cooperate with the United States, but the reality is that the complete opposite has happened. The U.S. government announced its “U.S. Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China” in May last year and it clearly stated that it will not fall for Chinese rhetoric emphasizing a harmonious relationship. It said it will take actions to protect fundamental and physical benefits of the country. 

Kim: Does that mean that China will have to admit that it has no choice but to implement a very different political system from the current one? 

Yeon: Like I’ve said all along, China cannot adopt the Western democratic system as long as the CCP holds power. Even if it is adopted, this would not make China’s political systems into two separate systems, it would mean the collapse of the CCP. Adopting a new political system takes a long period of time. Above all else, the CCP has to dissolve. Ultimately, the conflict between the United States and China is a fight to decide the existence of the CCP. 

Dr. Yeon Sang-mo

Former Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Niigata, Japan

Will 5,000,000 armed patriots descend on the border to block the barbarian invasion? Have 400,000 Americans Died of Covid-19?

 

First, a legitimate number is around 16,000.  The rest of the Stats are as credible as the size of the Persian army at Thermopoli.

Read this and you will become furious.

Now imagine angry armed patriots stopping all this criminality out in plain sight.  So this is how Hitler did it?

Have 400,000 Americans Died of Covid-19?

Celia Farber

-January 25, 2021

New York's Empire State Building pulsed red like a beating heart to honor the 400,000 Americans who have died from the coronavirus.

Many assumed, lots screamed it, but now there is proof: The Covid-19 death count is a fabrication. However, the story is much bigger than number manipulation within our government. It’s a story told best with an introduction. For those who may be impatient, scroll down to the section titled “The Natural Enemy of the PSYOP is the True Scientist” and read from there. Otherwise, learn what they have done and will continue to do. Learn about the PSYOP.

A Scientist Finds Something Shocking In CDC Covid Stats

“In less than 12 months, they closed our businesses, forced us to wear muzzles, kept us from our families, killed off our sports, burned down our cities, forcibly seized power.

Then they accused us of the coup.” —Raheem Kassam.

“Besides being the first President to get impeached twice, Donald Trump will have a stain on his legacy with arguably longer-lasting consequences: He’s about to become the only American leader in a century with more than 400,000 deaths from one event on his watch.” —Jose Ortiz, USA Today.

“But, you know, I feel more fellowship with the defeated than with saints. Heroism and sanctity don’t really appeal to me, I imagine. What interests me is being a man.” —Albert Camus

“I don’t want to jump up and down and start screaming, ‘Death! Death!'” —Donald Trump

A PSYOP is a most dangerous thing—a fusion of reality, simulation, and projection. A form of a storm—monsoon or typhoon—that moves in fast, breaks and soaks, changes everything, and kills in a variety of ways.

Its guilt grip is so powerful, you will also be stripped of the right to reject or even resent it. Powerful and merciless, it splits people, weaponizes our thoughts and feelings about one another, tears apart families, old friendships, gets people fired, and above all, makes everybody miserable.

Even when it’s wrong (and it’s always wrong), you can’t put an end to it. It is essentially mass media’s mental implants that people mistake for their own thoughts and feelings. It violently demands certain “emotions” while it cruelly strips away all individual, natural human ones.

PSYOPS, or “Influence Operations,” don’t have to correlate with reality because they create a new hyper-reality, seen only through specific virtual reality goggles. Inside the virtualized media dome, all of its promises come true, funnily enough—like clockwork, whereas a natural story will contain surprise twists.

The generators and controllers of the PSYOPS know how to use large numbers with which to savagely club people. If a number is suspiciously big and suspiciously even, you can be sure it is a PSYOP number.

Right now, we are all being clobbered hard by the number 400,000—but none so viciously as former President Donald Trump.

The 400,000 PSYOP was timed to coincide with the days before, during, and after Joe Biden’s inauguration. Thus, Donald Trump was accused of essentially killing all “400,000,” as the Empire State Building lit up in red (the same color as the AIDS PSYOP, now retired). It was suggested on National Public Radio that perhaps Donald Trump should be executed for this crime.

The media drums on the 400,000 began just before Joe Biden’s Covid-centric inauguration. A few headlines bearing the accusation of genocide:

“Blood On His Hands’: As US nears 400,000 Covid-19 deaths, experts blame Trump administration for a ‘preventable’ loss of life.” USA Today, Jan 17

“One Year, 400,000 coronavirus deaths: How the US Guaranteed Its Own Failure.” The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Jan 17.

These media attacks brought together the two titanic PSYOPS of our era: Trump Is Hitler and Covid is Eternal Mass Death. In the second week of January, the two mated, giving birth to a new PSYOP, never fully flogged before, namely: Covid is Eternal Mass death because of Trump.

Covid is not a respiratory illness so much as a blunt force perception and guilt weapon to “kill” Donald Trump with. Decent people can’t locate what former President Trump did wrong exactly. Nor why none of this was the highly paid and revered Dr. Anthony Fauci’s responsibility, especially since he said years ago, ominously, that President Trump could “expect” a new pandemic during his tenure. (For the record, I think what he did wrong was to listen to Anthony Fauci. This was no minor error; The country has fallen.) But the Covid PSYOP has that precisely the other way around.

Here’s a cloudy, highly revealing PSYOP-adherent Trump flogging from Nathalie Baptiste, writing in Mother Jones, with all the cliches in bold:

“The staggering death toll was both preventable and entirely predictable. Even aside from his vast personal incompetence—we’ll get to that later—President Trump blithely put into practice cherished conservative principles that are incompatible with a decent pandemic response. Castigating and de-legitimizing government institutions, demonizing minority communities, and playing into white grievances may help Republicans win elections, but when it comes to beating back a massive public health catastrophe, what’s paramount is robust public agencies, a strong health care system, and special attention to the vulnerable. In many ways, we were doomed from the start.”

Incredibly, this is from the side that claims to believe in science.

I was troubled enough to see the spate of articles and TV reports chiming the 400,000 death bells, but soon I saw what it was preparation for: The inauguration.

US Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (2nd L) and husband Douglas Emhoff and US President-elect Joe Biden (R) and wife Dr. Jill Biden attend a Covid-19 Memorial at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on January 19, 2021, to honor the lives of those lost to Covid-19. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

Biden/Harris and their production teams had long since made this new number—400,000—centrally symbolic to its eerie, choreographed, virtualized inauguration ceremony.

Milan Kundera called this kind of thing “Communist Kitsch.” Exploiting the dead (no matter what they, in truth, died of, but primarily old age), the pageant was all about Covid, with flags representing those who could not attend due to the Covid Scare and the Domestic Terrorism (from Patriots) scare. Throughout the ceremony, those who died “of Covid” were remembered, though no mention of those who have died from lockdowns. PSYOPS hyper-direct our allowed emotions. In the end, the supposed “blood on hands” of the outgoing President was fused with the (dark) triumphalism of the incoming one. Meaning: The very theme of Biden’s Presidency would not be, say, America, but rather, “Covid.” Don’t serve America; serve Covid, as the new America. The new America is actually America inverted, prepared, and served up to The Great Reset and the final destruction of all human freedoms, in the name of a “virus” you may not question without risking prison.

Little detail: 400,000 Americans did not die of “Covid-19” in 2020. Neither did half that number. Nor a third, nor one 10th. If we are generous to the scare-mongers, the real number is only 4.2% of the genocidal drama number, 400,000, namely: 16,848.

And if they were held to further scrutiny and forced to explain the difference between an influenza death and a Covid death, the number would go down even further, possibly down to zero.

The Natural Enemy of the PSYOP is the True Scientist

Unbeknownst (of course) to the architects of the two Covid PSYOPS of 2020 and 2021, an atmospheric scientist in Greensprings, Oregon, himself unafraid of controversy, was putting the finishing touches on a Covid-19 paper he’d begun to write three months earlier.

The bombshell paper is titled: “A Critical Review of CDC USA Data on Covid-19: PCR/Antigen Tests & Cases Reveal Herd Immunity Only, & Do Not Warrant Public Hysteria or Lockdown.” It was posted on two of his academic webpages on 16 Jan 2021. The links are here and here.

In it, Dr. James DeMeo, Ph.D., demolishes the central premise of global lockdown policies. That people are dying in massive and alarming numbers from a novel disease. He’d been waiting for the final statistics to come in for 2020. When they did, he noticed two spectacularly odd things: Firstly, if one subtracted the numbers of Covid deaths (around 315,000) from the total number of people who died from all causes in 2020 (around 2.9 million), one obtained a dramatically low number of total deaths, lower than in any year since 2014. It appeared to him that the reported number of “Covid” deaths were being re-defined and subtracted from other causes of deaths; the people who died of “co-morbidities” were being shifted over into the Covid category. Secondly, on January 3rd, the CDC released its year-end count of all-cause deaths in one dramatically high number—268,259 to be exact.

These deaths did not appear anywhere in the CDC’s records previously but turn up as a “data dump” in the very first days of 2021, as though there had been some catastrophic event or mass die-off of older Americans in a single week. In a very unsettling way, it echoed the middle of the night miraculous Joe Biden lead over Donald Trump between Nov 3 and 4, 2020. 

“I have never seen anything like it,” said Dr. DeMeo, when I reached him at home to discuss his paper, which a mutual friend had brought to my attention.

“It’s extremely odd. The only thing I can compare it to is when people in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were trying to cover up large radiation discharges from nuclear power plants. They took the radiation levels and put a “0.” They were stupid; they didn’t realize, background radiation never goes to zero.”

But where might those deaths have come from? I pressed.

“I could not tell you,” DeMeo replied. “The end of year data I used was the CDC’s data as of Dec 26, and that was a figure of 2 million 900,000 deaths from all causes with 301,679 deaths from Covid. I went to Our World In Data—they have a dynamic, interactive graph. You can hold your mouse over any part of the graph, and it will show you the numbers. That’s how I got my numbers. It did not have this massive data dump. There was nothing like that.”

“I cannot know what the heck happened. Why would they dump so many all-cause deaths on that last week? There was no atom bomb going off, in Miami or some other place where a lot of old people live, to kill that many people at the tail end of December. I tried calling the AP reporter who first came out with an article around Christmas where he said there would be 3-3.2 million deaths in the US—he made it sound like most would be from Covid.”

The Dec 22, 2020 article Dr. Demeo refers to was written by Mike Stobbe in AP. It opens:

“This is the deadliest year in U.S. history, with deaths expected to top 3 million for the first time—due mainly to the coronavirus pandemic. Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.”

DeMeo remarks:

“When people hear “cases in the millions” They start thinking of people who are dying and on the way to death or who have already died, and it’s not true, but they’re not even trying to clarify that to the public. They’re very deliberately sending people into a panic. It’s irresponsible as hell.”

DeMeo says he sent Stobbe an email, asking him what statistics he was referencing.

“I didn’t get a response.”

DeMeo is well equipped to deconstruct Covid statistics if that word even applies anymore.

“I’m a geographer and an atmospheric scientist by training; we work with data sets of all different kinds. Moisture, humidity, barometric pressure, and so on. Agriculture and human health, Climate factors around the world. I have a background in epidemiology, and I used to teach university courses covering epidemiology and population dynamics. So I’m used to looking at those kinds of numbers, and they just didn’t make any sense. So that’s how it all got uncovered.”

The mutual friend who brought the paper to my attention was Tom DiFerdinando, who’s worked closely with Dr. DeMeo on various research projects for many years, and has a long history deconstructing medical tyranny. He is the President of a Non-Profit called “Unmasking Covid and AIDS.” His email, clarifying the “trick,” put it like this:

If there were 315,507 excess deaths due to Covid-19, why is the difference in all-cause deaths between the end of 2020 and the end of 2019 only 61,654? That’s 61,654 more all-cause deaths in 2020 than in 2019, where the increase in all-cause deaths over each of the past ten years has averaged 44,806. That’s a difference of 16,848 from the median in a year with an alleged 315,507 extra Covid-related deaths.

When you subtract the alleged 2020 Covid death total from the all-cause 2020 death total, i.e., 2,916,492 – 315,507, you get 2,600,985.

That figure, 2,600,985, is less than the all-cause death counts each year going back to 2014! That means the total death count for all fatal diseases and accidents in 2020, excluding Covid-19, dropped mysteriously and substantially—right about to the same degree that Covid-19 went up. For the Covid deaths to be genuinely new “excess” deaths, that all-cause total of 2.9 million—which already includes “Covid-19” deaths—should be something like 3.2 million, with an annual increase in 2020 of 376,000 deaths, not 61,000. 

What these two points mean, of course, is that the 315,507 Covid death count does not represent Covid deaths but a displacement of deaths from other causes.

In his January 7 postscript, DeMeo catches the CDC red-handed. Earlier in the paper, he points out, as I did above, that there are nearly 300,000 missing deaths in the all-cause category for the numbers to pan out. On that day, Jan 7, he discovered the CDC had suddenly added 269,249 all-cause deaths into their end of year all-cause death totals!

Evidently, 269,249 people suddenly died in the last week of 2020. How convenient for the Covid narrative!

In a phone interview, DiFerdinando elaborated:

“Without those added deaths, there would be no evidence of a Covid pandemic,” he said. ”This triangulation of facts: essentially no excess deaths beyond the normal annual background count; absolutely NO relationship between Covid “confirmed” cases and Covid “confirmed” deaths; and the mysterious, last-minute dump of 268,259 all-cause deaths into the 2020 end-of-year all-cause death totals; completely demolish any pretext of their having been a 2020 viral pandemic, whether caused by a novel coronavirus or by anything else and that therefore there is no rational reason to be putting masks on children, isolating elders, destroying businesses, locking down populations and shattering the public trust.”

Says Dr. DeMeo:

“The people who are dying of so-called Covid, it’s all happening in the wintertime. So, all this correlates with the idea that this is a big error, a big mistake. Maybe with nefarious motivations. You don’t even have to reference why to understand that it is indeed a falsehood, the whole construct of a Covid pandemic. The numbers do not lie; the numbers tell the story. Where are the massive, massive numbers of people dying, which you would correlate with positive PCR and antigen tests, which is what you would expect to happen. People who are dying of old age diseases, they’re re-defining them as Covid 19, but the symptomatology is so exactly similar to influenza and other lung diseases.”

It comes down to a truly devastating assault of PSYOP by media and a fast-growing class of super-predators; Covid careerists. We must have our lives destroyed because they must assert and enrich themselves.

“I would not trust anything I read in the American newspapers or media, Johns Hopkins, CDC, WHO—all untrustworthy,” says DeMeo. “Where are they coming up with 400,000 deaths?” He continues. “They’re talking about approximately 318,000 people who died as of Jan 2. Where are they coming up with…in 15 days they are saying they’ve identified another 75,000 dead? I don’t think so. This is data magic.”

One of the most astonishing features of “Covid 19” is that nobody can quite define what it is or why it is so spectacular as to force almost the entire world into lock-down.

“I think what we’re dealing with absolutely is a confusion of ordinary lung and heart diseases that take out a lot of old people as they approach the end of their lives,” says DeMeo. “And it’s being redefined in very ugly ways.

“What’s going on with influenza statistics? They’ve gone down to a very low number, the figure I found was 0.2%. Two-tenths of one percent, when at this time of year, we should be having something between 5 and 20 percent. In terms of the number of influenza deaths, that happens every winter. The numbers they are throwing out make no sense whatsoever.”

Shortly before press time, Dr. Demeo followed up, having cross-checked his numbers yet again. He wrote in an email:

“I now feel fully confident that my method for making that excess deaths calculation is the best and most scientific method possible, given all the other factors revealed in the paper. It may actually be the only scientifically-sound method, making the fewest assumptions. I could stand before Fauci or any of them with high confidence. They are like powdered-wig fops and dandies in the French Court of the Louies, commanding “respect” only due to position and faux-authority, but not by scientific accuracy or empathy for the ordinary people they were appointed to serve.”

From the towers of academic science to bold citizen journalism, “Covid 19” has been assailed all around the world as the least credible, most diabolical pack of lies ever launched upon innocent people.

Richard Citizen Journalist has posted many videos to his Twitter feed, inside US hospitals, always empty. His Profile says: “Empty Hospitals Are The Smoking Gun.”

This video is his pinned Tweet:

Scientist, Social Theorist, and former Professor of Physics Denis Rancourt tweeted:

And one of my favorite ever Covid tweets came from Dr. Thomas Bender, one of the 22 authors of the paper, requesting withdrawal of the Corman/Drosten paper that spawned this whole nightmare with an unavailable viral isolate turned into a global hell-PSYOP, presumably for economic and socio-political reasons. He wrote:

Dr. Kevin Corbett, Ph.D., also an author of the challenge to the Corman/Drosten PCR paper, said in a telephone call from London:

“This paper joins the ranks of academic works around the world, all pointing to the same conclusion: They’re lying. They’re doing it very deliberately, and we all know statistics are a convenient tool of the Big Lie. At this point, the actual statistical and epidemiological case for Covid-19 being a real pandemic is closed. To honest people, it’s closed. We’re done.”

The PSYOP, however, is a beast that must be fed daily, hourly, new variations of mangled, manipulated numbers, new scenarios intended to scare you anew into submission. The PSYOP depends upon you reacting with fear and guilt. Don’t be afraid, therefore, and don’t feel guilty for not being afraid. None of us know when our lives will end, but let us remain fully human—alive, loving, and trusting—until that time comes.

As Albert Camus wrote in his most famous novel, The Plague, where the real plague winds up being something well beyond the illness:

“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one’s work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth, and wonder of a loving heart.”

Celia Farber is half Swedish, raised there, so she knows “socialism” from the inside. She has focused her writings on freedom and tyranny, with an early focus on the pharmaceutical industry and media abuses on human liberties. She has been under ferocious attack for her writings on HIV/AIDS, where she has worked to document the topic as a psychological operation and rooted in fake science. She is a contributor to UncoverDC and The Epoch Times and has in the past written for Harper’s, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and more. Having been gravely injured in legacy media, she never wants to go back. She is the recipient of the Semmelweis International Society Clean Hands Award For Investigative Journalism and was under such attack for her work; she briefly sought protection from the FBI and NYPD. She is the author of “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS” and the editor of The Truth Barrier, an investigative and literary website. She co-hosts “The Whistleblower Newsroom” with Kristina Borjesson on PRN, Fridays at 10 am. Twitter: @CeliaFarber

Web: www.truthbarrier.com FB: Celia Ingrid Farber

Trove of ‘Ancient Treasures’ Found in Shipwreck Off the Coast of Greece

We find these wrecks only because they all carry amphorae to haul fermented food and oils which handily survive to today.   It appears clear that this trade became established during the fifth century BC.  This is actually pretty recent and is part of  the historical record as well.

What is largely missing so far is the full Bronze Age from 2500 BC through 500 BC.  We still have a few wrecks though.  I would like to see how far amphorae go back in time here.

Obviously all wood has long since disappeared leaving only amphorae and metal.  Thus we have had some direct confirmation of the movement of copper from Lake Superior to the Levant.

Ultimately we wil need to fully survey the sea bed to get all the data available.

Trove of ‘Ancient Treasures’ Found in Shipwreck Off the Coast of Greece

Researchers surveying the seabed surrounding the island of Kasos discovered pottery that holds clues to trade in the Mediterranean

Archaeologists discovered ancient amphorae from Spain and what is now Tunisia. (Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports)

By Isis Davis-Marks

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-unearth-ancient-roman-artifacts-shipwreck-kasos-180976820/

Archaeologists excavating shipwrecks off the Greek island of Kasos have unearthed a trove of pottery that sheds light on trade networks in the ancient world, according to a statement from the country’s Ministry of Culture and Sports.

Scholars from the ministry and the Institute of Historical Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation uncovered the four shipwrecks last fall. As the Athens News Agency reports, the most significant discovery was a hoard of Roman pottery. The vessels found on board the second- or third-century A.D. wreck included amphorae filled with oil produced in Guadalquivir, Spain, and African amphorae from what is now Tunisia.

Speaking with ERT International’s Teofilakti Zavitsanu, expedition co-leader Xanthis Argyris says, “[T]his is the first time we [have found] amphorae from Spain and North Africa, which probably transported oil to Rhodes or the coasts of Asia Minor.”

Per Antonia Komarkowski of Greek City Times, the other three shipwrecks spanned millennia: One held amphorae dating back to the Hellenistic era, in the first century B.C., while another contained amphorae created during the classical era, around the fifth century B.C. The final shipwreck was far more recent, dating to modern times.

Used throughout the classical world, amphorae represent a wealth of information for contemporary scholars. As Mark Cartwright pointed out for Ancient History Encyclopedia in 2016, the two-handled jugs—whose name is derived from amphiphoreus, the Greek term for “carried on both sides”—hold clues to archaeological sites’ dates, trade links and inhabitants. Though these vessels are commonly associated with ancient Greece, civilizations ranging from the Romans to the Phoenicians also used the jars.

Archaeologist surveying one of the abandoned shipwrecks (Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports)

The newly unearthed amphorae may reveal more details about Kasos’ history. According to Ancient Origins’ Ashley Cowie, the island, which is located near Crete in the southern Aegean Sea, was an important ancient trade center where merchants exchanged goods from across the globe. The recent finds offer scholars additional information about what Kasos’ residents ate and where these foods originated.

Kasos, says the ministry in the statement, per a translation by Ancient Origins, was a “crossroads of civilizations.”

According to a separate statement, the expedition was a part of a three-year research project that aims to document the seabed near Kasos. As Tornos News reports, 23 experts from multiple fields have conducted around 100 dives totaling more than 200 hours. Work is expected to conclude this year.

“The next research project will include a state-of-the-art seabed detection machine without divers that will give us possible wreck points both on the surface and at the bottom,” Argyris tells ERT.

In 2019, the research team discovered another five shipwrecks dated to between the fourth century B.C. and the modern period. As Nick Kampouris noted for the Greek Reporter at the time, one of the wrecks dated to the Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, while another dated to the Byzantine era, between the eighth and tenth centuries A.D. Highlights of the finds included an iron cannon, tableware, Byzantine amphorae and five pyramid-shaped stone anchors, according to the second statement.

Felines May Use Catnip for More Than Just Euphoria

Anyone who has seen a cat respond to catnip knows just how absurd it is.  Now we discover that the essential oil happens to be ten times more effective than DEET.  Soon to be available in a product i am sure..

Who would have thought that this could solve our mosquito problem?

DEET is also plant derived.

Felines May Use Catnip for More Than Just Euphoria

The plant may keep pesky mosquitos away

Catnip and a plant called silver vine, Actinidia polygama, are not closely related, but both make cats go wild. (Masao Miyazaki & Reiko Uenoyama/Iwate University)

By Elizabeth Gamillo

SMITHSONIANMAG.COM

JANUARY 25, 2021 12:08PM

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/felines-may-use-catnip-more-just-euphoria-180976826/

Cat owners—and the kitty-obsessed internet—have observed felines go into a frenzy after rubbing and rolling against catnip, Nepeta cataria, when it is nearby. New research published this week in the journal Science Advances suggests that cats not only use catnip for a high but may also use it as protection against mosquitos.

Catnip and a plant called silver vine, Actinidia polygama, are not closely related, but both make cats go wild. The two plants also contain iridoids, which are chemical compounds that protect the plants against sap-sucking insects, reports Sofia Moutinho for Science. After testing catnip and silver vine leaves for potent chemicals that give cats a bit of a buzz, biochemist Masao Miyazaki from Iwate University in Japan and his colleagues identified the silver vine iridoid, nepetalactol, as the key to the feline’s euphoric state and protection against mosquito bites.

Miyazaki and his team presented a menagerie of cats ranging from big cats at the zoo to domestic and feral cats with scraps of paper soaked in nepetalactol. No matter how big or small the cats were, the results were the same: All cats began to anoint themselves with the paper, reports Katherine J. Wu for the New York Times.

After observing the cats in ecstasy, Miyazaki and his colleagues were sure there had to be more benefits to this behavior besides the intoxicating experience. Previous studies have shown that catnip releases an iridoid called nepetalactone that is ten times more effective at repelling mosquitos than DEET. Taking a cue from past research, the team tested how well silver vine-derived nepralactol protected the felines against mosquitoes. Cats covered in nepetalactol attracted significantly fewer mosquitos——in some cases, by half as many—than cats left untreated with the chemical, reports George Dvorsky for Gizmodo.

“This is convincing evidence that the characteristic rubbing and rolling response functions to transfer plant chemicals that provide mosquito repellency to cats,” the researchers write in the study.

Cats’ attraction to iridoids has puzzled researchers for years, and experts still are unsure why the chemical affects cats but does not affect other animals like dogs or mice, reports the New York Times. The researchers involved in this study argue that this behavior evolved in cats to aid them when stealthily stalking prey.

“Anyone who has ever sat in the field to observe animals ambushing prey knows just how difficult it is for them to keep still when there are many biting mosquitoes around," Miyazaki tells Science.

Mikel Delgado, a cat behaviorist at the University of California Davis, who was not involved in the study, says that this behavior could have also evolved to protect felines from mosquito-borne diseases like heartworm, reports the New York Times.

The researchers are currently looking into how nepetalactol could be used as an insect repellent for humans and have already submitted a patent, reports Science.

One year after Native-owned Tanka Bar had lost nearly everything, the buffalo are on their way back

Get over the difficulties.  The big news is that we have a core commodity product using ground bison.  This means that the industry can now grow rapidly and lift all boats which will include native bison ranchers who need to manage these herds back onto hteir traditional range.

With this type of innovation the buffalo commons is on the way back.  The majors have created the necessary commodity market that supports the steak market for high quality premium sales.  You were never going to own that and by the way, you never wanted to own that unless you want to own millions in equipment somewhere else.

The point is that the native community now has a vibrant  growing bison ranching industry which they can champion..

One year after Native-owned Tanka Bar had lost nearly everything, the buffalo are on their way back

by Marilyn Noble

01.24.2020, 8:00am

Business

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Arlo Iron Cloud

https://thecounter.org/tanka-bar-niman-ranch-bison-grassfed/

This weekend, Niman Ranch and Native American Natural Foods (NANF), maker of the Tanka Bar, will announce a unique collaboration. The aim: to restore the buffalo to its revered place in Lakota society and regenerate prairie, while helping Niman create a new source for bison and organic and grass-fed beef.

Last year, The New Food Economy explored what had happened to Tanka Bar, the originator of the buffalo and berry snack bar based on an ancient indigenous recipe. The Native-owned company was small, but successful, until corporate competitor Epic Bar/General Mills, with its huge bankroll, media-attractive creation tale, and inflated sustainability story jumped into the niche.

As a result of the article, Tanka Bar’s founders say they saw sales explode in the last month of 2018, more than 300 percent in Whole Foods alone. But the sales increase had an unexpected and negative effect on the already cash-strapped company. It couldn’t keep up with demand, and eventually Whole Foods ended their relationship.

Bison graze on the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands, just north of the Pine Ridge Reservation

Arlo Iron Cloud

After it was published, the Tanka Bar story reached Jeff Tripician, at the time the general manager of Niman Ranch, a network of more than 740 independent family farmers and ranchers across the country. (He’s now the president of Perdue Premium Meats, Niman’s parent company.) Tripician reached out to Tanka Bar co-founder and president Mark Tilsen, scheduled a meeting, and drove the seven hours from Denver to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home of the Oglala Sioux people—and of the Tanka Bar. Since that initial session, executives at the two companies have spent nearly a year building relationships, brainstorming, and exploring options for collaboration.

In an era when much of the corporate consolidation in food and agriculture is driven either by a desire for a highly marketable story—whether true or not—or, in the case of private equity, a quick return on investment, partnerships based on mutual success and truly aligned social missions are rare.

This weekend, Niman Ranch and Native American Natural Foods (NANF), maker of the Tanka Bar, will formally announce a unique collaboration between the two companies. No money will change hands; it’s not a merger or acquisition. Instead, it’s an operational partnership. Niman Ranch will provide NANF with technical expertise in marketing, supply chain development, and distribution management, and NANF will help Niman create a new source for bison and organic and grass-fed beef.

“We’re bringing the foods back to our people and building an ecosystem, bridging the gap between the brand and the Nation.”

In addition, NANF has secured a round of financing that will allow Tanka Bar and its related entities, the non-profit Tanka Fund and Tanka Resilient Agriculture Cooperative (TRAC), a producer co-op, to explore new ways of achieving the ultimate mission: restoring the buffalo to its revered place in Lakota society and regenerating prairie, while building economic opportunities on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Tilsen calls it a “blended capital solution,” with the three legs of the NANF stool each contributing to the ultimate success of the whole organization. Chris Oliviero, Niman Ranch’s general manager, refers to it as the virtuous cycle, where the closed loop of investments, production, profits, and savings all feed each other and create a strong, thriving operation.

Dawn Sherman, NANF’s CEO, says Tanka Bar is more than just another brand marketing a product. “We’re bringing the foods back to our people and building an ecosystem, bridging the gap between the brand and the Nation. Niman Ranch is helping us keep the ecosystem going.”

“The mission is everything for these two companies,” adds Oliviero. “If we can help Tanka Bar regain their momentum, then they can take it from there.”

Tanka Fund helps with more than just financial support. Here, Mark Tilsen (left) and Dawn Sherman work with Ed Iron Cloud (right foreground) to rig a makeshift device that’ll help them get water from the top of a hill to the buffalo down below

Arlo Iron Cloud

The importance of the buffalo and the Tanka Bar to the Pine Ridge community can’t be overstated. In a study released early last year, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis detailed the present-day consequences of the federal government’s 19th century extermination of bison and the near-genocide of bison-reliant indigenous people. Once some of the tallest and richest people in the world, the Northern Plains tribes are now some of the shortest and poorest. Per capita income is 20 to 40 percent less than that of other Native American tribes.

Much of the land on the Pine Ridge Reservation is leased to non-Native cattle ranchers

Arlo Iron Cloud

The Pine Ridge Reservation sprawls over 2 million acres of mostly virgin prairie. It’s an iconic landscape of the West—ragged, forbidding buttes; horizon-to-horizon sky; and miles of largely vacant, rolling grasslands. It would seem to be the perfect place to reintroduce the buffalo to its native habitat. But, as with many other things in Indian country, the situation is not so simple.

Native Americans in general capture only about 10 percent of the agricultural revenue generated on their lands.

Most of the land on Pine Ridge and its neighboring reservations is tied up in a hodge-podge of allotments, leases, and trusts overseen and administered by the federal government. Much of it is leased to non-Native cattle ranchers, and has been for generations. According to David Bartecchi, executive director of Village Earth and lead researcher for The Lakota Lands Recovery Project, Native Americans in general capture only about 10 percent of the agricultural revenue generated on their lands, based on data from the USDA Agriculture Census in 2012 and 2017. The other 90 percent goes to non-Native farmers and ranchers, a situation he terms “agricultural apartheid.”

NANF CEO Dawn Sherman and her family are a perfect example. They own allotments on several Pine Ridge parcels, but they’re not adjacent, and they’re “landlocked”—that is, leased to a third-generation, non-Native cattle rancher as part of a larger surrounding tract and inaccessible to her family. Also, as allotments have been passed down through generations, some parcels may have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of owners. That fractionation makes the land essentially worthless in a capitalist system and precludes access for would-be tribal buffalo ranchers. Land issues aren’t unique to Pine Ridge—most of the tribal lands in the country are tied up in similar knotty situations—but Bartecchi says there’s a lack of will on both the part of the federal government and the tribes to fix it, and it makes NANF’s goal of restoring the buffalo and building a thriving bison economy on the reservation difficult, at least in the short term.

Monica Terkildsen, tribal liaison to the World Wildlife Fund, recently conducted a survey of tribal members regarding land use on the reservation. She says that, overwhelmingly, respondents want to see buffalo restored to the land, but it’s hard to define what that looks like. She’s convened a working group to deal with the politics, history, and rumors and to begin the conversation about how to bring the buffalo back. “When the buffalo come back, so will the people,” she says.

The Knife Chief herd escaped from their pasture, so they’re temporarily confined to a holding pen on the ranch until the fence can be repaired

Arlo Iron Cloud

Tilsen and his business partner, Karlene Hunter, are social entrepreneurs committed to making life better for the Oglala Lakota people. Before they began NANF and Tanka Bar in 2006, Tilsen had founded KILI Radio, the largest reservation radio station on the continent, and the pair had built Lakota Express, a successful direct marketing business on Pine Ridge that raised more than $21 million dollars for Oglala Lakota College. Even though they were successful, their efforts weren’t enough to spur substantial economic growth across the reservation. Their intentions with NANF were to not only respectfully and appropriately restore the buffalo and grow the Pine Ridge economy, but to introduce other tribal foods to a national audience as well.

With no background in the food business, they were admittedly naïve. “We were too dumb to know we couldn’t do it, and we learned lots of hard lessons,” says Hunter. “But we had some really good triumphs when the product went national and got national media and exposure. It wasn’t just our company. It was a Native product, and Native people were so proud. And that’s what we wanted. We wanted people to take ownership and to really participate in it.”

“We didn’t know we were going to be fighting off major conglomerates. I mean, we’re a small Native company.”

Business was good the first few years, but then the big corporate guns rolled into town. “We didn’t know we were going to be fighting off major conglomerates, I mean, we’re a small Native company,” says Hunter. “And these conglomerates came in full-force. We didn’t know that would happen. We were naive.”

The cultural synchronicities between Niman and Tanka lend an air of predestined inevitability to their story: both were founded by entrepreneurs who saw not only a business opportunity, but a chance to do social good. Both have struggled financially, and both are mission-driven, committed to rebuilding rural communities and successful family farms. Both believe in good stewardship of the land, animals, and people, and in bringing young farmers back to agriculture. And both have new, younger leadership at the helm—Sherman as CEO of NANF, and Oliviero as GM of Niman Ranch.

When Niman Ranch was acquired in 2015 by Perdue Farms, one of the largest vertically integrated poultry companies in the world, its financial challenges came to an end, but the corporate memory of those lean days of struggle to pay employees and distributors is still present. That history appeals to NANF’s leadership, who have shared the same set of sleepless-night-inducing difficulties, only magnified by the lack of access to affordable and ready capital typical of Native-owned businesses.

NANF co-founder Karlene Hunter at the Tanka headquarters in Kyle, South Dakota. The company is situated in the middle of the Pine Ridge Reservation

Arlo Iron Cloud

Niman Ranch’s Oliviero says the early discussions about collaboration were discouraging. “We were afraid they were too close to the edge of the cliff,” he says. Then, NANF started to gain traction with funders attracted by Niman’s offer of technical help. So far, the commitments from industry and social impact investors are relatively small, but the hope is that as the partnership evolves and grows, the money will follow.

Hunter says, “A lot of the time people will come in and say, ‘Well, sure, we can help you out with money.’ But a lot of the time we need the technical expertise. We’re excited about all these new opportunities and new partnerships. It’s great to see passion, that there’s somebody who understands what we’re doing in the business.”

Niman Ranch has built a network of family farms that produce pork, lamb, and beef. The company offers contracts to its producers, all of whom are Certified Humane, and some of whom have certifications from Global Animal Partnership and/or the USDA organic program. That expertise in building farmer relationships is invaluable for TRAC. With NANF’s ability to extend contracts to members of the TRAC producer group and assist them with certifications, marketing, and other best practices, Tilsen hopes that eventually, Tanka Bar will be able to build a 100-percent Native supply chain for buffalo. And because the company uses only a portion of each carcass, the other premium cuts can provide a fresh bison supply to Niman Ranch, which has long been interested in adding bison to its product line.

“We have to pay close attention to the cultural aspects of it all and approach it with respect and mindfulness for the spiritual, ecological, economic, and physical pieces of it.”

Last year, Panorama Beef, an organic grass-fed beef program, joined the Perdue Premium Meats group, and working with TRAC and Native cattle producers creates another layer of symbiosis with the NANF/Niman partnership. “Panorama adds to the story,” says Oliviero, “and gives us a chance to do something much sooner to demonstrate [to tribal producers] what it’s like to do business with Niman Ranch.”

Tilsen also sees TRAC as a means of offering other services to producer members. Finding lenders, supply forecasting, ranch planning, and capital investments in equipment and infrastructure could all be benefits of co-op membership. That’s where the Tanka Fund plays a role. Dr. Trudy Ecoffey is the incoming executive director. She says her first steps will be “to do some serious listening and learning what’s needed by producers. We have to pay close attention to the cultural aspects of it all and approach it with respect and mindfulness for the spiritual, ecological, economic, and physical pieces of it.” She’ll then develop a strategic plan and a capital campaign to raise funds. The nonprofit has already provided grants to ranchers for infrastructure, like solar wells and fencing, and contributed to the construction of Charging Buffalo Meat House, the only processing facility on Pine Ridge.

Charles “Bamm” Brewer, Jr. details the challenges of raising buffalo on the reservation

Arlo Iron Cloud

Charles “Bamm” Brewer, Jr. manages the food program for One Spirit, a social services organization on the reservation. He’s also a buffalo rancher, outfitter, and self-proclaimed badass butcher. He runs the processing plant, which was funded by One Spirit. It’s a small facility, but Brewer and his employees butcher beef, buffalo, and game meats for the food program, the tribe, and individuals. The plant is what’s known as custom exempt, meaning it doesn’t yet have a commercial license or USDA inspection, but demand has already outpaced the space.

RelatedTribal food sovereignty for the price of a pickup

Now in its second year of operation, the plant has provided an on-the-job education for Brewer and the crew. He’s learning how to charge appropriately for services, work efficiently (the plant layout has a few issues with the way the carcasses are moved through), and how to provide for the community. But running a processing plant that’s hours from the nearest city is challenging.

Brewer, an effusive bear of man with a hearty laugh, tells us how his walk-in cooler went on the blink the day before. He ended up on a ladder outside the building on a 20-degree day in the frigid wind, Facetiming with a technician in another state and holding his phone over his head so the tech could see the inner workings of the control box. He couldn’t diagnose the problem, so it would be several days before someone could show up to fix it, providing that the unpredictable winter weather allowed somebody to get there.

Brewer is passionate about and committed to raising buffalo. He has what he describes as a sharecropper relationship with the tribe. He gets cows from the tribal herd and he returns 40 percent of the calves back to the tribe. It’s a program that works well on his 800 acres, until he has problems with the fence. A wildfire took out the fence that separates his buffalo from the tribe’s, and he lost all of his animals. His sons encouraged him to start over with buffalo and not cattle. “I was never so proud of them,” he says. “I took my family back into the buffalo world, and now I want to bring it to the people. I’d rather be known as the guy who brought the buffalo back to the people, instead of the burritos and hotdogs.” The Tanka Fund helped him build a double fence to replace the one that was lost. “Next time we’re gonna build a wall,” he laughs.

One of Ed Iron Cloud’s goals is to educate the community about the buffalo’s cultural and spiritual significance to their lives

Arlo Iron Cloud

Ed Iron Cloud is another beneficiary of Tanka Fund’s grant program. He leases 900 acres for his cultural herd, although he does sell some of his animals commercially to raise money for his nonprofit, The Knife Chief Buffalo Nation Society. His goals are to restore the relationship between Pte Oyate, the Buffalo Nation, and the Oglala Lakota Nation and to educate the people about the buffalo’s cultural and spiritual significance to their lives. Tanka Fund helped him build solar wells and fencing.

The day we visited, his small herd was in a pen because they had broken through a section of the pasture fence the day before—buffalo are notoriously hard to confine—and he had to round them up from his neighbor’s land. Lacking a way to haul them himself, he relied on a friend with a horse trailer who brought them in two loads down the rutted and snow-covered track that euphemistically could be called a road. The cows and their calves seemed somewhat agitated at their fate, but until the fence is made buffalo-proof, they’ll stay in the pen. Iron Cloud said it will give him a chance to sort them and decide which to sell.

The trough at the solar well on the hill above the pen was frozen solid, but, using a maul, Iron Cloud broke through the ice to free the pump, and then, using an empty plastic bottle and several miles of duct tape—and the help of the Tanka crew—he rigged a hose system to get water to the animals below.

That juxtaposition of modern technology with farmer ingenuity and teamwork, under the watchful eyes of an ancient keystone species of animal, is an apt metaphor for the restoration of the buffalo to Lakota lands. Technology, ingenuity, and teamwork can help both the buffalo and the people thrive again, but there’s still one big obstacle, the 2,000-pound bison in the room, if you will: Access to land, with its attendant benefits, like capital and the ability to build infrastructure, are a critical piece for both TRAC and tribal citizens.

Arlo Iron Cloud Technology, ingenuity, and teamwork can help both the buffalo and the people thrive again, but there’s still one big obstacle: access to land and capital

Arlo Iron Cloud

Aner Ben-Ami is the co-founder of the Candide Group, an impact investment advisor that’s bringing funding from the Libra Social Investment Fund to NANF. He cites several reasons that NANF and Tanka Bar are attractive: The management team is small, but dedicated and resilient; the product is the best in the meat snack category; and the story of Tanka Bar is authentic and compelling, with Native ownership, a product based on a Native recipe, and a mission to drive economic revitalization in some of the poorest counties in the country. He also feels that Niman’s contribution of expertise, especially in telling the story of the brand, is important to the success of NANF and its three entities.

“We believe Tanka should be able to re-build its market presence and become a strong brand in the meat snack category,” he wrote in an email. “TRAC may be a slower process as it implies getting ranchers who are currently raising cattle to start ranching buffalo. I imagine that’s not a quick/easy decision for some folks. But, as Tanka Bar grows and is able to show ranchers that it is a reliable buyer/off-taker for their bison, we believe TRAC will grow. This (TRAC’s expansion) is one of the most exciting elements of the Tanka’s long-term vision from an impact perspective. It means that more bison are coming back to the land and more Native ranchers are participating in the success of Tanka Bar. And, with the way our investment is structured, it also means that TRAC can buy our shares over time and become part-owner of Tanka Bar.”

“When people buy bison they become a part of the story, because when they buy it, they help restore it and save the prairies.”

Bob Dineen of Rocky Mountain Natural Meats, the largest bison processor in the country and a long-time supplier for Tanka Bar, has also joined this round of investment. “Our hope is that Tanka becomes a bigger part of the grocery landscape as a part of the meat snack niche. We would like to see Tanka on the top shelf. That’s our goal,” he says. He also believes that the success of the Tanka Bar brand will enable the company to achieve its other goals: employment on the reservation, successful bison ranchers, and the restoration of the bison and the prairie. “It’s the greatest conservation story ever,” he adds. “When people buy bison they become a part of the story, because when they buy it, they help restore it and save the prairies.”

The Counter contributing writer Marilyn Noble spent several days in mid-January with Tilsen, Hunter, Iron Cloud, and Brewer, learning about their work

Arlo Iron Cloud

Clearinghouse CDFI was an early supporter and funder in the nascent years of Tanka’s existence. CEO Doug Bystry says, “This loan is one of the most important in our portfolio, and our relationship with Tanka Bar is one of our most important. I’m so proud of Mark, Karlene, and Dawn. Most businesses would have thrown in the towel by now, but you won’t find people who have worked harder and sacrificed more.”

Hunter and Sherman credit the partnerships and relationships they developed along the way with customers like REI and Natural Grocers, vendors like Rocky Mountain Natural Meats, and investors like Clearinghouse CDFI for keeping them afloat and helping them learn the vagaries of the food business. With the addition of the Tanka Fund and TRAC, along with the partnership with Niman Ranch, Hunter believes the company is turning a corner. “We’re hoping we can get it rolling,” she says.

Oglala Lakota women are learning how to forage for and cook with indigenous foods and butcher bison according to tradition

Arlo Iron Cloud

With a new generation of leadership in place at NANF—Sherman as CEO and Ecoffey as the executive director of the Tanka Fund, Hunter and Tilsen are able to focus on growing the various components of the business.

Everyone I talked with agrees that restoring the bison has benefits both tangible—economic growth, soil restoration, new supply chains—as well as intangible for Pine Ridge. A regenerated and renewed Tanka Bar is one key to that restoration. The efforts of NANF and the success of Tanka Bar have already inspired other young entrepreneurs like Nick Hernandez, founder and CEO of Makoce Agricultural Development, in his efforts to bring farms and food hubs to Pine Ridge to establish food sovereignty. Lisa Iron Cloud is building a business teaching Oglala Lakota women how to forage for and cook with indigenous foods and butcher bison according to tradition. Brandon and Kim Braveheart have created a Rapid City, South Dakota catering business that features local and Native foods.

Sherman sees good things ahead for NANF. As the Tanka Bar regains its place in the retail landscape, she sees the possibility for NANF to market additional Native food product lines, both from Oglala Lakota companies and other tribes. She sums it up: “The buffalo is resilient. It puts its head down and faces into the storm until it passes. The same is true for the people, and the same is true for Tanka Bar. We’ve been facing into the storm, but now it’s passing, and we’re resilient.”