The President's Daily Brief - January 4th, 2023. European Journalism Committee Warns of Ukraine's Trend Towards Dictatorship

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

It’s January 4th. You’re listening to the President’s Daily Brief. Your morning intel starts now. ------ A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I’ve got five briefs for you this morning that are shaping America — and the world. First, allegations this morning by European journalists that Ukraine is slipping into a dictatorship.  Second, the country of Norway just reached a milestone on electric vehicle sales. Some are saying America should do the same. We’ll discuss. Third, the Governor of Colorado announced that he’s shipping illegal migrants from his state to the cities of Chicago and New York. The Mayors there are not happy. Fourth, we’ve got some arrests to talk about related to that attack on the electrical substations in Washington State. Finally, some good news for farmers in California, and that means good news for our grocery bills. Later, we close out the podcast with a comment from a listener who said that I’m not the right person to be questioning medical science, including on COVID.  ------ Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of the President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. It's January 4th.

You're listening to the President's Daily Brief. I'm your host and former CIA officer Brian Dean Wright. Your morning intel starts now. A good day to you, ladies and gentlemen. I've got five briefs for you this morning. that are shaping America and the world. First, allegations this morning by European journalists that Ukraine is slipping into a dictatorship. Second, the country of Norway just reached a milestone on electric vehicle sales.

Some are saying that America should do the same. We'll discuss that. Third, the governor of Colorado announced that he is shipping illegal migrants from his state to the cities of Chicago and New York. The mayors there are not happy. Fourth, we've got some arrests to talk about related to that attack on the electrical substations in Washington State. Finally, some good news for farmers in California, and that means good news for our grocery bills. Later, we close out the podcast with a comment from a listener who said that,

I'm not the right person to be questioning medical science, including on COVID. But before we get to that, we got to get started with this. Media watchdogs in Ukraine and throughout Europe this morning are saying that President Volodymyr Zelensky is a dictator or coming close to it, all because he signed a controversial new law that gives him and his party total control over Ukraine's media. So here's what we know. Last Thursday, President Zelensky signed into law an expansion of powers for a governmental body called the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council. So under this new law, that council now has the power to regulate, fine, and suspend all media outlets in Ukraine, including newspapers, television, and digital websites, including YouTube and other social media platforms. The council can also restrict content from search engines like Google. And what's more, the council can shut down a media outlet without a court order.

In other words, they have total authority, total power. Now, listen to this. The council will be appointed by Zelensky himself and Ukraine's parliament, where Zelensky's party has an absolute majority. Well, you might not be surprised to learn that critics are absolutely outraged at this new law and feared that Zelensky will use it to abuse power. One group of critics, the Ukraine's National Union of Journalists, said that the law was, quote, the biggest threat to free speech in Ukraine's independent history.

adding that the law will, quote, cast the shadow of a dictator on Zelensky himself. Others are in agreement with that assessment. That includes the Committee to Protect Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists. They're saying that it moves Ukraine away from European standards and is a violation of European values. For what it's worth, Zelensky has kept pretty quiet

about the controversy of this law since signing the bill last week, though previously he and his part, have said that it's an attempt to meet EU standards for journalism, which doesn't seem quite accurate, but nevertheless, that is their response. No matter what, I will keep a very close eye on this, folks, and I will keep you posted. With that, let's take off from Ukraine this morning and head towards the country of Norway. It is an absolutely beautiful place. It's known for lots of things to include its incredible outdoors, world-class skiing, and now it is the capital of electric vehicles. And that's because on Monday, the Norwegian Road Federation announced that

about 80% of new vehicles sold in Norway last year were electric. Now, it is true that most older and used cars in Norway are still gas and diesel, in fact, the overwhelming majority, but the trend towards electric cars, especially these new ones, is very clear. Now, the reason that this is happening is a fewfold. First, the Norwegian government has deeply subsidized electric vehicles and given people all sorts of goodies to buy these things, like cheap parking and low tolls on highways. The government has also increasingly taxed gas and diesel cars all to create penalties for those owners. So, in other words, that's incentivized people to buy electric. Well, as you would probably expect, Norway's Electric Vehicle Association is crowing about this

moment and their success, saying on Monday that, quote, our message to the rest of the world is crystal clear. Now there is no excuse for the internal combustion engines unnecessary pollution, especially when the climate crisis is so urgent to solve. In other words, they're saying if they can do it in Norway, it can be done anywhere. And in fact, that is what I'm seeing on social media and other mainstream outlets who are applauding Norway's big accomplishment. But it does beg a bit of a question. How are those cars powered in Norway? What is their source? of energy when it comes to time to recharge. Well, according to the Norwegian government, 91.5% of their electricity comes from hydroelectric power. So, yes, they are damming their rivers.

And that means that America, quite frankly, is not going to be able to do it the Norwegian way. And that's because, as PDB listeners know from previous briefs, environmental groups and Native American tribes are demanding that we take hydroelectric power out of America because those dams are bad for fish, especially salmon in the Pacific Ocean. So I bring this to you because I anticipate even more folks in the media and politics will say that America ought to follow Norway's example and buy electric. And look, if you decide that we should or that you should, fine, your choice as always. But the conversation wouldn't be fair or complete unless we note that America gets about 6% of our electricity from hydro. That's according to.

to the Department of Energy. And that number, by the way, will drop in the coming years if folks in the native environmental communities get their way. In other words, if we really want to be Norway on this, then we've got to power those cars with 91% hydro energy, and that means we're going to need to build a lot more dams. And apparently, send some condolence cards to those fish. With that, ladies and gentlemen, let's take a quick break.

When we come back, I've got three more critical pieces of news for you. So hang tight. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the PDB. I've got three more critical pieces of news for you this morning. And for all of them, we are coming back from Norway to the United States of America. First up, the state of Colorado has had enough of those illegal migrants in their state. The Democrat governor there named Jared Pulles has announced that he's shipping those illegal folks to other places in America, getting rid of his problem, by dumping them off in New York City and Chicago. So here's what we know. On Monday, New York City's mayor Eric Adams was on a local radio station, and he said, quote,

we were notified yesterday that the governor of Colorado is now stating that they are going to be sending migrants to places like New York City and Chicago, end quote. He then went on to complain that, quote, this is just unfair for local governments to have to take on this national obligation. Multiple media outlets then reached out to Colorado's governor to figure out exactly what was going on. and he clarified that actually he and Denver's mayor Michael Hancock had been shipping the illegals out of Colorado for weeks now to include New York City and Chicago, but because of a series of snowstorms, the buses they were using had been stuck.

Said Governor Paulus, quote, there's a lot of pent-up demand, end quote, of illegals wanting to leave. So now, with better weather in Colorado, the governor is saying that there will be a noticeable uptick in illegals leaving Colorado for greener, pastures in New York and Illinois. Now, if this sounds familiar, yeah, it should.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been doing largely this same thing for some time now, busing illegals to sanctuary cities and states like New York, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. Interestingly, Governor Abbott has been slammed for doing what Governor Polis is now doing. For instance, Chicago's mayor, Lori Lightfoot has said that busing illegals into her town is a political stunt, and that Abbott was, quote, a man without any morals, humanity, or shame. By the way, I'm scouring the news for these kinds of same reactions directed at Governor Paulus, but so far nothing, including none from his fellow Democrats,

which is curious. Some might say hypocritical. Anyway, I'll let you decide. Next up this morning, we leave the fine state of Colorado, and we head west out to Tacoma. Washington where we've got an update on that attack of electrical substations from a couple weeks ago. But to refresh our memories here, the attack in Washington appear to be part of a pattern that we're seeing in Oregon, South Carolina, and North Carolina of substations being targeted

for whatever reason by mysterious culprits. Lots of rumors going around about this. Well, this morning, we have some more answers, along with a few more questions. Federal prosecutors announced yesterday that they had arrested two men for the attacks on four electrical substations just outside of Tacoma, Washington. That, of course, knocked out power for 15,000 people. All right, then, who were the culprits? Well, turns out it's a Matthew Greenwood and a Jeremy Crayhan. They were the ding-dongs that did it. Greenwood, by the way, told investigators that the men wanted to disrupt the power supply so that they could burglarize a local business. And in fact, while the power was out, that's exactly what they did. The men went to that local business. They drilled into the lock on the door,

and then they stole cash from the register. That's all according to Bloomberg News. Now, what's curious is that about a year ago, both men were apparently under FBI surveillance, although we don't know for what. Writers News Service is speculating that it's something to do with domestic terrorism, but that's just speculation. Anyway, I think that the key takeaway here, folks, is, as before, our energy infrastructure is vulnerable to these kinds of vandals. And it's going to be a very important issue to address, most especially as we embrace dirty green energy in the next number of years and become ever more reliant on electricity to power,

not just our economy, but the millions of electric vehicles that consumers will soon be required to buy. Finally, this morning, let's stay out west, but head down south just a little bit to California, where we are going to talk about something good for a change, especially in that state. The California Department of Water Resources reported yesterday that the state's mountain snowpack is often one of its best starts in the last 40 years. In fact, one measuring station near Lake Tahoe.

They're saying that they are up 177% of normal with water content in that snow, already at 72% of what they need by summertime. And we've still got months to go until then, obviously, with a big storm headed to California in the next couple of days. So all in all, this is very welcome news for not just California, but all of America. And that's because the water and the snow that we're talking about irrigates the food supply that grows in the Central Valley out there. But unfortunately, much of that food supply has been put at risk these past few years

because of a very nasty drought, one of the most severe ones, in fact, and some say going all the way back to the year's 1600s, anyway. To underline the point on the severity of this drought, even after all of the rain and the snow over the past couple of weeks, the state's two largest reservoirs are still only at about one-third full. In other words, we need more moisture from Mother Nature to keep those crops growing and our food bills decreasing. And by the way, there is some more good news on this Mother Nature front that I want to tell you about. A band of heavy storms should be hitting California today and throughout the week, which forecasters say, to add a substantial amount of rain and snow to the state, especially in the all-important snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Now, it will be an intense set of storms. There are, in fact, some flood warnings out for Northern and Central California this morning. So heads up to everybody out west. Keep yourselves safe. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude your morning brief. But I've got one more very important thing before I let you go. We'll be right back. Own it all.

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Welcome back to the PDB folks. I've got one more thing before I let you go. Over the past couple of days, I've spoken with you about the Twitter files, to include yesterday, on how the U.S. government banned certain speech from doctors on Twitter, who dared to challenge the CDC and NIH about things related to COVID. I've also spoken with you these past months about COVID in general and the vaccines specifically. So, for instance, you may recall that we talked about something called sterilizing. versus therapeutic vaccines. It was actually one of my favorite episodes back on August 29th. At any rate, Kathy from Gary Indiana wrote in asking me this question.

She said, Brian, I mean, no disrespect. I love your show. But don't you think we should put a little bit more faith in doctors and scientists and the CDC about COVID rather than you or your podcast? I just think that they know more about what they're talking about than you do, respectfully. Well, Kathy, I earnestly appreciate you writing in and the question, because it's fair. And it's why I have long said that ultimately what you choose to do with, say, a COVID vaccine, it really comes down to your body, your risk, and your choice.

But I do want to challenge you on something. Your statement suggests that America's medical system and the many doctors and scientists and companies that comprise it are largely correct. and virtuous, and that we should simply defer to them. Well, I'm going to tell you a story of why I think that assumption is dead wrong, and why sometimes an entire field of medicine can be so wildly wrong that it puts people's lives at risk, all because the doctors and scientists that hospitals and companies involved were too stubborn or ignorant or downright greedy to admit that they were wrong.

and it all has to do with the stomach. For a very long time, from really all the way back in 1800s through the early 1990s, the doctors that studied and treated ulcers called gastroenterologists, they believed that ulcers were caused almost always, if not exclusively, by stress. So for decades, you could not find anyone who would tell you otherwise. Truly, the entire field of belly doctors around the world had convinced themselves and everybody else, that ulcers were caused by stress. Now, the way to treat that stress, they said, was either to find peace, reduce the acids in your stomach, or have surgery.

Now, that thinking, that absolute certain science helped give birth to the billion-dollar anti-acid business and hospital surgical centers around the world. So that's what all doctors in the entire field of gastroenterology believed that stress, causes ulcers. Although, I should say, all doctors in the world except one. He lived in Australia. His name was and is Dr. Barry Marshall. In 1981, he and a colleague named Robin Warren noticed that the gut of ulcer patients and stomach cancer victims seemed to be populated with a bacteria. It was called H. Pylori. And they guessed that perhaps it wasn't just stress that causes these things, but rather a bacterial infection. So as an example, he had a patient come in,

Dr. Marshall said this. The fellow, the patient was about 80 years old and he had severe stomach pains. And so they diagnosed him with an ulcer. So they decided to put him on an antibiotic. And guess what? Here's how Dr. Marshall described what happened next. Quote, so the patient goes off and two weeks later he comes back. He's got a spring in his step. He's practically doing somersaults in the consulting room. He's healed. Clearing out the infection had cured him. So Dr. Marshall and his colleague did what any good doctors do. They set up a trial. That was in 1982, and it involved 100 patients. And it strongly suggested that, yes, ulcers are and were largely caused by this H. pylori bacteria. And that means, he said, we can cure them with cheap antibiotics.

and so he presented his results to an association of gastroenterologists and guess what kathy guess what they told him well here's how dr marshall described their reaction quote to gastroenterologists the concept of a germ causing ulcers was like saying that the earth was flat so after i got that reaction i realized that my paper my study was going to have difficulty being accepted now you think that it's science, it has to be accepted, but it's not an absolute given. The idea was too weird. But it wasn't just that it was weird. As Dr. Marshall explained, it was that the cure, the antibiotics, were so cheap. Meanwhile, the other drugs for ulcers, something called Xantac and Taggament, well, those were billion-dollar businesses. And for hospitals, they had reason not to believe Dr. Marshall

because they too relied on the income from stomach surgeries. So Dr. Marshall, believed that he was stuck. Too many powerful people and institutions did not want him to be right. Until a company came along that made a product sort of like Peptobysmal, it had an active ingredient called Bismuth. Now that company's studies showed that their product healed ulcers faster and better than just removing acids like Tagamint and Xantacted. But they just didn't know why. So Dr. Marshall did a quick study and found that Bismuth killed the H. Pylori bacteria. That's why the product was so effective. Well, by March of 1983, Dr. Marshall knew exactly the problem and the cure. But year after year after year, the entire world of gastroenterologists and hospitals and the drug industry,

they wouldn't listen because all were incentivized to ignore him and his very cheap and very simple cure. So what to do? Well, he wanted to do another more advanced experiment, but this time, he said, people would actually have to drink the bacteria. He wanted to give them an ulcer, but then he wanted to quickly treat them with an antibiotic. And thus he would prove his theory beyond all shadow of a doubt. But he could not do that trial, not ethically. So he did the study on the one person.

that medical ethics allowed him to study, and that was him himself. He drank the bacteria himself. Now, his wife was not very happy about that. She was afraid that she and the kids would get some sort of strange bug, but she reluctantly agreed to give him the weekend to conduct his science experiment, and then straight away to the antibiotics, please. That's what she told him. Well, much to the pleasure of both the doctor and his wife,

that experiment worked. just as his previous evidence told him. And by the way, no strange bugs for the wife and kids. So he published his results in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1985 about his fantastic finding. And guess what, Kathy? Nothing happened. Once again, the entire field of gastroenterology still would not believe him.

Too much money was still at stake. But they were growing nervous because they knew or suspected that he was onto something. But they didn't like it. either because of their hubris, their ego, or that incentive structure didn't line up. Once again, the doctors and hospitals and companies needed treatments and surgeries, not simple cures. And that's why Proctor and Gamble, who was making Pepto-Bismol at the time, hired a public relations firm to put out hit pieces on the doctor all throughout the media.

Articles and places like Readers Digest, even the National Enquirer, you name the outlet and that doctor got smeared. and that meant that he had a hard time finding funding partners and fellow doctors to work with him. But finally, by the mid-1990s, the data were so compelling that America's NIH agreed to fund additional studies. And by 1996, the science was indisputable. Virtually all ulcers are caused by H. pylori bacteria. And wonderfully, they can be cured, not just treated, with very cheap antibiotics. and that meant no more surgery revenue for hospitals,

no lifelong tagging or Zanthak pills for patients, and no more billion dollar revenues for big pharma companies and their corporations. In other words, the hubris and the greed, it all lost in the end. As for Dr. Marshall, he won a Nobel Prize for his work back in 2005. So, Kathy, I tell you this story because it's important as we wrestle, with whether simple people like me or you can have informed debates and conversations that might run contrary to some or even all of what doctors or even an entire field of medicine might say, should we be disallowed from doing so? Should we just simply trust doctors or hospitals

or vaccine companies with 100% of our unthinking minds and bodies? Or if I can remind you of the briefs that we've had over the past couple of days. Should the U.S. government tell Twitter to ban the voices of doctors who have the audacity or courage to speak against prevailing wisdom? Well, Kathy and everybody else, you all can answer those questions as you'd like, because ultimately it's your body and your risk and your choice. But as for me, I'm going to keep doing my part to educate myself, have conversations outside of this podcast with doctors that I trust and to admire. And then as appropriate and with great care, I am going to bring those conversations and that counsel to you. Because I think, just like Dr. Marshall discovered, we all deserve it. And then whatever

I come up with, whatever I offer, you can promptly take that or leave it as always. Folks, if you'd like to read an interview with Dr. Marshall where he talks about his incredible life story, check out an article in Discover magazine. It's entitled, The doctor who drank infectious broth gave himself an ulcer and solved a medical mystery. And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes your morning brief. As always, we close out the show, reminding each other of why we are here, talking about our country and our world. It's the creed of every good spy and every smart American.

It's from John, Chapter 8, verse 32. And you shall know the truth. and the truth shall make you free. Good day.