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The global pandemic preparedness accord (‘pandemic treaty’) currently being put in place by the World Health Organization (WHO) will pave the way for “a fascist approach to societal management.” The beneficiaries will be unscrupulous corporations and investors whom the COVID‐19 response served well. This will result in the loss of human rights and individual freedom.
So says Dr David Bell, a clinical and public health physician with a PhD in population health and former WHO scientific and medical officer. The treaty represents a terrifying power grab that, if successful, will give the WHO a central directing role and monopoly power in global health governance.
As currently drafted, the treaty will hand the WHO the authority to order measures, including significant financial contributions by individual states, lockdowns, travel restrictions, forced medical examinations and mandatory vaccinations during a public health emergency of its own declaring.
The WHO will have sole and extensive power to declare Public Health Emergencies of International Concern (PHEIC) for any potential or real threat for extended areas, whether these threats are biological, climate or environment related. And it will do so without proper proof and solely decide measures and medical substances to be imposed on the public without informed consent.
Its powers will also include the official censorship of information, including free speech — views opposing the official narrative put out by the WHO — and it will be accountable to no national parliament or be limited by any constitutional safeguards.
A group of prominent lawyers, doctors and concerned citizens have written to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Health and Family Welfare Shri Mansukh L Mandaviya urging them to reject the WHO’s global pandemic treaty. The signatories are listed at the end of this article, and the 10-page letter can be accessed in full with all relevant links and references on the Awaken India website: WHO Pandemic Treaty Ultra Vires of the Constitution).
The WHO released a Zero Draft of the WHO CA+ (this ‘pandemic treaty’ is now officially known as an ‘accord’) with 38 Articles on 1 February 2023 and, subsequently, another draft with 41 Articles on 2 June 2023. The accord marks a fundamental change in how the WHO will function. It seeks secretively, behind closed doors, sweeping powers under its director general.
The signatories make clear that, under the proposed accord, the WHO can, at will, call a pandemic, declare a PHEIC and then take over the authority of national governments to detain citizens, restrict their travel, require them to have vaccine passports (forced testing and vaccination) and increase social media censorship. The accord would also operate as a ‘framework convention’ that’s on-going, year after year, indefinitely. It facilitates a dictatorship role for the WHO as it moves to acquire unfettered power.
Two instruments, the accord itself and amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) 2005, are designed to operate in parallel to give draconian powers to the WHO. Both texts irremediably entail the transfer to the WHO of the power to threaten health freedom, thereby representing a fundamental threat to national, medical and bodily autonomy.
In their letter, the authors state that the WHO is an external, unelected body, which may not and cannot be appointed to such a dictatorship position. During the COVID-19 event, the WHO’s role in facilitating medical tyranny was clear to see.
It advocated enforced lockdowns, which destroyed the livelihoods of millions in India and across the world and created a surge in mental health problems. It shut down schools, putting back the education of a generation. It promoted incompletely tested and unapproved vaccines under EUA (Emergency Use Authorisation) that despite the claims of ‘safe and effective’ where nothing of the sort and caused a sharp rise in spike protein-induced heart and brain disease.
If adopted at the 77th World Health Assembly in May 2024 by a simple majority vote, the ‘pandemic treaty’ will come into force within 12 months for all countries, unless a country proactively files rejections or reservations within a 10-month period.
The letter to the prime minister and the health minister states that the accord and those pushing it are:
Manifestly violative of Fundamental Rights of the citizens of India and, therefore, Ultra Vires of the Indian Constitution. In their very intent, they cancel the fundamental right to bodily autonomy and integrity, through mandating medical procedures, coercion and further grossly illegal acts.
The letter adds:
This is a breathtaking and terrifying onslaught on fundamental civil liberties. It must be understood as fundamental, that the negation of bodily integrity of any human being means the loss of all human rights.
In making its point, the letter refers to the Nuremberg Code (1947) by stating:
The consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights resumed this ban against unintentional experimentation in its 1966 text, which states: no one may be subjected without his consent to medical or scientific experiment.
It also references the Geneva statement for doctors (1948):
I will respect the autonomy and dignity of my patient. I will not use my medical knowledge to infringe human rights and civil liberties, even under force. I will keep absolute respect for human life, from conception. I will consider my patient’s health as my first concern.
The signatories note that there is little alternative but to jettison the WHO from national life and implore the prime minister and the health minister to act to uphold the sovereignty of India and the rights of every citizen.
They add that unelected, unaccountable and largely unknown delegates from 194 countries meet in Geneva during World Health Assembly meetings, as they did in 2022 when they adopted amendments to the IHR. The process is fraught with secrecy, autocracy and impending tyranny, blatantly devoid of any transparent, democratic process.
These country delegates are unelected and do not represent the people of their country. The signatories ask:
How can they negotiate on behalf of nations, let alone an international/global health regulation binding on 194 countries?
If the ‘global pandemic treaty’ is forced through, we could see perpetual lockdowns. At the same time, corporate interests will dominate. Pandemics will become self-sustaining by creating a bureaucracy whose existence will depend on them.
People will be at the mercy of the police and bureaucrats who will be immune to any penalty for any acts carried out in ‘good faith’. These acts could take the form of mandatory medical procedures, forced entry into premises, forced isolation and quarantine.
It was bad enough in 2020 with the full force of the state lined up against the public, especially those who did not agree with COVID policies, but imagine the abuse of power that could occur if the WHO acquires the powers it seeks.
The seeds of totalitarianism were clear to see with Anthony Fauci saying that he is ‘the science’, former New Zealand PM Jacinda Arden declaring the government as the ‘single source of truth’ and social media companies working hand in glove with the deep state to censor and deplatform prominent figures and world-renowned scientists who questioned the official narrative.
We saw the suspension of fundamental civil liberties with the threat of state violence on hand, often resulting in citizens being abused by de facto paramilitary police forces for breaching ‘pandemic rules’ that had no scientific basis.
Governments declared that they were ‘following the science’, but what we saw were inflated death numbers, manipulated data and the fraudulent use of RT-PCR tests to help create the perception of a deadly pandemic in the minds of the public. Readers can consult the online article Stay Home, Save Lives: Uncovering the COVID Deception, which provides insight into the various deceptions that helped instill fear into the global population in 2020.
The WHO also provided a wrong projection of mortality. The exaggeration caused panic in the population — part of a carefully orchestrated ‘fear pandemic’ — and paved the way for lockdowns and the mass uptake of vaccines sold to the public based on false claims. The synthetic spike protein of the vaccines has resulted in clotting, bleeding, heart problems and brain blood clotting as well as neurodegenerative problems. And what we are seeing across so many countries since the vaccine rollout is significant excess mortality, which the media is silent about.
Moreover, the WHO operates within a biopharmaceutical complex, a complicated syndicate that has formed over time, which instructs world health policies. This complex involves the health agencies of national governments, including India, the US and the UK, the World Economic Forum, the Gates Foundation, the Welcome Group and major pharmaceutical companies. Revolving door arrangements between these organisations have resulted in regulatory capture.
Researcher and campaigner Yohan Tengra of the Awaken India Movement conducted a two-year investigation into how this works in India. Through his research, he exposed the billionaire cartel that controlled India’s COVID-19 Task Force. Tengra listed not just the names of those who sat on this task force, but he also detailed how they are financially connected to the pharmaceutical-vaccine industry.
The task force was responsible for the aggressive push to lockdown, mandatory mask requirements, forced testing of asymptomatic people, dropping ivermectin from the national protocol, suppressing vaccine adverse events and much more.
Tengra also exposed how India’s prominent public health personalities, who regularly appeared in the media and on TV, are connected to the Gates Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Welcome Trust, USAID, the World Bank and other aspects of the global deep state.
We have every right to be concerned about a ‘pandemic treaty’ shaped by powerful interests with stakes in closing down economies (see the online article Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation by Fabio Vighi), mandatory vaccination programmes and digital surveillance who are all too willing to strip away our fundamental rights for their own gain.
The letter to India’s prime minister and the minister of health makes clear that the WHO’s massive conflict of interest should disqualify it from any role in world health.
Signatories:
Dr. Jacob Puliyel, Delhi, MD, MRCP, MPhil, Paediatrician and Visiting Faculty International
Prashant Bhushan, New Delhi, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Colin Gonsalves, New Delhi, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India
Nilesh Ojha, Mumbai, President – Indian Bar Association, Advocate Bombay High Court and Supreme Court of India, Human Rights Activist
Author Dr. Amitav Banerjee, Pune, MD, Formerly Epidemiologist, Indian Armed Forces
Dr Aseem Malhotra, London (Overseas Citizen of India), MBChB, MRCP. Consultant Cardiologist
Aruna Rodrigues, Mhow, Lead Petitioner: GMO PIL in the Supreme Court and Member Iridescent Blue Fish (IBF)
Dr. Donthi Narasimha Reddy, Hyderabad, Public Policy Expert and Campaigner
Dr. Megha Consul, Gurugram, Paediatrics, Senior Consultant, Neonatologist
Dr. Pravin Chordia, Pune, MD Surgeon
Dr. Lalitkumar Anande, Mumbai, MBBS, PG Diploma in Clinical Research
Dr. Vijay Raghava, Bangalore, MBBS Dr. Veena Raghava, Bangalore, MBBS, DA
Dr. Kuldeep Kumar, Haridwar, MBBS MS (GENERAL SURGERY) Dr. Praveen Saxena, Hyderabad, Radiologist & Clinical metal toxicologist, MBBS, DMRD Osmania
Dr. Biswaroop Roy Chowdhury, Faridabad, Ph.D (Diabetes)
Dr. Gautam Das, Kolkata, MBBS, General Physician
Saraswati Kavula, Hyderabad, Documentary Filmmaker & Freelance Journalist, Awaken India Movement
Bhaskaran Raman, Mumbai, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering. Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Advocate
Ishwarlal S. Agarwal, Mumbai Advocate
Tanveer Nizam, Mumbai
Dr. Susan Raj, Chattisgrah, BSc Nurse, MSW(M&P), Doctorate Humanities, Behavior Specialist
Jagannath Chaterjee, Bhubhaneshwar, Social Activist
Dr. Abhay Chedda, Mumbai, BHMS, CCAH, FCAH
Dr. Gayatri Panditrao, Pune, Homeopathic Physician, BHMS, PGDEMS
Dr. Rashmi Menon, Mumbai, BHMS, ChT
Rossamma Thomas, Pala, Kottayam, Kerala, Freelance Journalist
Ambar Koiri, Mumbai, Awaken India Movement
Dr. G Prema, Tamil Nadu, Classical Homeopath, Aasil Health Care
Dr. S. G. Vombatkere, Mysuru, Human Rights Activist Advocate
Anand Singh Bahrawat, Indore, High Court of Indore Advocate
Vijay Kurle, Mumbai
Advocate L Shunondo Chandiramani, Indore, High Court of Indore
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Palestinians in Gaza are resorting to drinking from polluted agricultural wells that are almost as salty as seawater, posing an immediate health risk. Special thanks to 10Tooba for their work and partnership on this visual.
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Reflections on the psychological, moral and political implications of what we eat, and on prospects for non-violent social change.
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.
— Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, (Penguin Books, 1994): p.13.
Getting back into fasting after a break is difficult. In the past, I would fast for two days in every week, but occasionally challenged myself to extend that by a day or two, maybe three, until one day — evidently one day too many — I collapsed like a device unplugged and cracked my head on the sink and toilet bowl on the way down to the stone floor. Syncope is a lovely word, but I wouldn’t recommend the experience.
These days I opt for intermittent fasting, restricting food intake to an eight-hour window in every twenty-four. Thereafter, not even a wee measly sliver of dried mango, a peanut, a prune, a gherkin or grape is allowed through the gate. I don’t starve, but the tantalising whiff of someone’s bag of salt and vinegar-sprinkled chips occasionally tempts me to tap them on the shoulder and ask for one. I assure myself the craving will pass, but not before the prospect of finishing a whole bag alongside a slice of pizza topped with garlic, herbs and Kalamata olives floods the mind…adding a cake by way of dessert to complete the repertoire of gluttony.
Such efforts to control cravings for energy-dense foods are effectively attempts to discipline the savannah brain, more specifically the adaptive preferences for salt, sugars and fats inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. These nutrients are essential to human survival, but whilst they are in abundance for around seven of the eight billion people that currently inhabit the planet, they were most likely rather more scarce in our ancestral environment. Moreover, our ancestors did not live the sedentary lifestyle many of us have today, with all the calorific consequences this implies.
Anticipating famine further down the line, our ancestral urge would be to eat as much as possible of these essential foods whenever found in copious quantities. This inclination remains with us today, but converts to overdrive in circumstances where foods are widely available, made worse by being processed in forms that render them health-threatening and addictive. By imposing a limit on eating times, intermittent fasting therefore serves as a corrective to some of our evolved proclivities — those urges more in keeping with our ancestral environment — and if combined with a high quality diet a relationship with politics is necessarily established; it might not deliver a mortal blow to the ultra-processed food industry, but combined with a whole-food plant-based vegan diet it has a part to play in heightening resistance to some of the shadier tendencies of the food monopolists.
What does politics have to do with what we put in our mouths? Salt, fats, sugars and various additives are today produced in combined, and often concentrated forms by powerful multinational food corporations — global multi-billion dollar concerns that typically pound the public with adverts illustrating people looking like mindless zombies guzzling sugary drinks, emptying cardboard boxes of sugary cereal into breakfast bowls, and devouring unhealthy concoctions of deep-fried dead things from buckets. Their express aim is to maximise profit by exploiting the palatability of desired nutrients, the preference for calories, and the pleasure-seeking pathways — the latter being an increase in dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit, or to put it another way, the habit of liking something, getting a kick out of it, and wanting more. Many people are consequently undernourished, and in one sense starving, not because there is a scarcity of food in the category of good dietary quality, but because there is an abundance of cheap and available energy-dense foods.
The correlation between ultra-processed foods, obesity and food-related illnesses continues into the realm of food addiction. A glance at the criteria for determining addiction in the DSM-5, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), shows people who regularly consume foods rich in salt, fats and sugars conform to the stated criteria for addiction — a condition on a par with being hooked on cigarettes, though many self-report their experience to be far worse. These criteria include repeated consumption despite known harmful consequences, needing more of the substance to get the effect you want, wanting to cut down or stop but not managing to, craving to use the substance, and the experience of withdrawal.
It’s not difficult to find evidence that links highly-processed foods with obesity or illness among people of all age groups and all social classes, including their pets, but evidence does indicate a higher incidence of obesity and food addiction among lower income groups. That being said, not everyone suffering from food addiction or food-related illnesses is clinically obese. Whether we deem the continued use of highly processed foods the result of one factor, or a combination of several — biological, socioeconomic, behavioural or substance-related — it is perhaps unsurprising that many people, on becoming aware that they face life-threatening conditions, enter a 12-step recovery programme.
Food addiction and food-related illnesses are set to become our highest health concern. Setting a trend for the world, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 stated that over 40% of adults and 20% of children and adolescents in the USA are obese, whilst 70% of adults overall are overweight. Those rates are currently lower in Europe, but the trend is no less troubling. Obesity Statistics from the House of Commons Library in 2023 suggest UK obesity rates are running at 25% for adults and children, and that almost 40% of adults are overweight. The Scottish Government’s Health Survey of 2022 indicates that the highest rates of obesity and related illnesses in the UK are in Scotland, and those health risks include diabetes, strokes, sleep apnea, dyslipidemia, hypertension, coronary artery disease, fatty liver disease, a variety of cancers, and possibly cognitive dysfunction — such as poor decision-making and memory impairment.
In light of the individual suffering, the increasing strain on medical services, and what amounts to an impending societal if not global health catastrophe, the heavily-marketed campaign for intermittent fasting should have proved highly beneficial. The overwhelming focus of the programme, however, was not on individuals relinquishing highly processed foods, but simply on their reduction by restricting food consumption within set times. This was a widely-advertised lifestyle intervention, not a challenge to the dark side of the food industry, and as such it was hardly the worst outcome for the unsavoury food giants: continue eating rubbish, just less rubbish.
One might argue that any reduction in food intake, even at the level of basic survival mode, is welcome during an epidemic of obesity-related problems — an epidemic that is currently affecting a quarter of the world’s population. But endorsing highly-processed and addictive foods on the intermittent fasting programme, albeit in lesser quantities, not only leaves people ultimately facing failure and a range of health problems, it somewhat suspiciously sidesteps the chance to publicly condemn the food giants. When one considers the vast number of television programmes and magazine articles devoted to dieting, one can’t help but wonder if perhaps a parasitical connection exists between the dieting industry and the food giants, and whether they are in fact motivated to kill their host. Fat, after all, is a monetarist issue.
The effectiveness of intermittent fasting hinges on the extent to which it is allied to programmes of high dietary quality, otherwise it is no better than the ludicrous calorie-counting diets, some of which even allow chocolate bars and cakes to be counted. If they include foods that are correlated with health concerns, and with added sugars that render them potentially addictive, then even if they help people to lose excess weight, it is difficult to see how they could hope to clear a pathway to optimal levels of health and longevity. On the self-discipline front, speaking from personal experience, intermittent fasting combined with a high quality diet has worked well in the context of everyday circumstances. However, I must admit that when I’m out of the country, fasting all but goes out the window.
Wandering in foreign parts, as I often do these days, it’s easy to lose track of time and for fasting boundaries to become outrageously stretched. Being vegan, there is the additional challenge of finding suitable food, of laboriously checking ingredients, and of struggling to explain across the language barrier what should be left out of prepared meals. After a while it gets easier to navigate, and even in the once vegan-oriented but now notoriously meat-heavy Japan, I eventually located vegan restaurants in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, found options in restaurants that were otherwise a horror show, and eventually sampled the buddhist cuisine of shojin-ryori.
Although vegan alternatives are not always on advertised menus, they can often be conjured up if asked. Even in those obscure and in some respects forbidding narrow alleyways, some with vents of rising steam that one might imagine belong to a mythical underworld, people with a pot, a flame and a mix of ingredients will often cobble together something on the vegan front, and in fact I think many folk find the challenge fun. Food is frequently the lingua franca in interethnic situations, of which veganism has often proved to be a particular dialect that many of the people I met were curious to learn.
There have, however, been communication failures. By way of a well-meaning meat alternative, I’ve been offered a variety-bag of deep-fried long-legged bugs, a bowl of baby octopuses with quail eggs stuffed into their brains, and manure-scented peanut brittle; the latter I licked, causing a week-long bout of projectile vomiting and propulsive diarrhoea. I wanted to die. On the plus side, the food poisoning did render it a little easier to get back on the intermittent fasting track once home…not that I’m recommending that particular course for anyone.
Places where monks hang out are always a fair bet, and I’ve been offered vegan platters in or around Buddhist monasteries in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, Sikh gurdwaras, Jain basadis and Krishna temples across India, Taoist pagodas in Vietnam and Cambodia, and Hindu mandirs throughout Indonesia. The trend continued in Malaysia and Borneo, where the most edifying establishments, built from the ground up for moral instruction and intellectual nourishment, tend also to be the best eating joints…or to be neighbouring them.
Among several areas in which temple followers excelled and I failed was fasting. I have often been beckoned by the aroma of sizzling street food wafting through the tropical night air, and must admit to having devoured a wee Pad Thai at midnight — well outside my fasting hours. In my defence, it is difficult to stick rigidly to a fasting regime whilst wandering wildly for miles in vast areas ten thousand kilometres from home, and when uncertain where the next meal will come from. Stirring up the atavistic remnants of our distant ancestors, I’ve eaten heartily when food was in abundance in preparation for anticipated periods of scarcity, and occasionally compromised to the extent of eating highly processed foods that are potentially detrimental to health. Interrupted fasting might be a more apposite name for my version of intermittent fasting — when I’m abroad, at any rate — but at least I’ve not strayed from the vegan path.
On that side of things it was disheartening to learn that the Jainist, Hindu and Buddhist priests, monks and nuns I encountered — whilst at the level of rhetoric they avowedly adhere to the principles of ahimsa: of having respect for all living things, and the avoidance of violence towards others — were not in fact vegan. If not meat itself, monks and adherents to each of these religious orders, though there were some exceptions, use dairy, and consequently commodify nonhuman animals for personal benefit. Perhaps many would hope to find consolation in the fact that they are vegetarian, but this is no less barbaric than the exploitation of animals as things for clothes or meat and various products. Bizarrely, some Buddhist orders formally announced meat-eating to be at the discretion of the individual — a position that not only contradicts the principle of ahimsa, but effectively condones violence towards all.
One could no more tolerate violence selectively applied towards particular groups of sentient beings, than one could selectively condone human rights abuses, or selectively discriminate against particular religious or ethnic groups. Just as it is not possible to disentangle exploitation from violence, animal or human, there is an equivalence between speciesism and other forms of discrimination, such as sexism and racism. For their perception of ahimsa to be anything less than hypocrisy, they would need to stop eating, wearing, and otherwise using nonhuman animals. Breaking the rules of fasting, and even crossing the line for short periods into the terrain of ultra-processed foods, is one thing, but the moral injustice of exploiting sentient beings as objects of property, no less than human slavery, is quite another.
Becoming vegan does not mean that by definition one upholds the principle of non-violence towards all, but it is impossible to uphold that principle without first becoming vegan. There are many countries around the world with a relatively high percentage of vegans among their population, and occasionally we even hear boasts of a commitment to the extent that the uniforms and boots of their military are made of vegan materials, yet some have a reputation for oppression, war, ethnic cleansing, and a wide range of human rights abuses. Becoming vegan will not automatically render us any less the most murderous species on Earth, but we cannot hope to reverse that trend unless we become vegan.
Precisely because they participate in the exploitation of nonhuman animals, the meat-eater who professes a commitment to spiritual, ethical or indeed socialist principles is at best deeply flawed in their thinking, and at worst morally suspect. The fact that non-human animals are sentient beings that avoid pain, and have a desire to live their lives to the full, renders veganism a moral imperative. In other words — and quite apart from the benefits conferred by veganism with regard to personal health, the global climate, and world hunger — killing animals is clearly contrary to reason and to what is morally right. Whilst it is generally and somewhat misguidedly packaged and promoted as simply a consumer choice, personal preference or lifestyle option, veganism is at heart a moral and political way of life, one that by necessity fits with campaigns against violence, and with social movements against oppression in all its forms.
In the 1820s, the French politician and author of The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, cautioned, “The destiny of nations depends on the way in which they feed themselves.” It is a statement that implies the choices we make about the future begin with the next meal. To put it yet another way, to change the world, start with yourself.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Reflections on the psychological, moral and political implications of what we eat, and on prospects for non-violent social change.
Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.
— Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme, (Penguin Books, 1994): p.13.
Getting back into fasting after a break is difficult. In the past, I would fast for two days in every week, but occasionally challenged myself to extend that by a day or two, maybe three, until one day — evidently one day too many — I collapsed like a device unplugged and cracked my head on the sink and toilet bowl on the way down to the stone floor. Syncope is a lovely word, but I wouldn’t recommend the experience.
These days I opt for intermittent fasting, restricting food intake to an eight-hour window in every twenty-four. Thereafter, not even a wee measly sliver of dried mango, a peanut, a prune, a gherkin or grape is allowed through the gate. I don’t starve, but the tantalising whiff of someone’s bag of salt and vinegar-sprinkled chips occasionally tempts me to tap them on the shoulder and ask for one. I assure myself the craving will pass, but not before the prospect of finishing a whole bag alongside a slice of pizza topped with garlic, herbs and Kalamata olives floods the mind…adding a cake by way of dessert to complete the repertoire of gluttony.
Such efforts to control cravings for energy-dense foods are effectively attempts to discipline the savannah brain, more specifically the adaptive preferences for salt, sugars and fats inherited from our evolutionary ancestors. These nutrients are essential to human survival, but whilst they are in abundance for around seven of the eight billion people that currently inhabit the planet, they were most likely rather more scarce in our ancestral environment. Moreover, our ancestors did not live the sedentary lifestyle many of us have today, with all the calorific consequences this implies.
Anticipating famine further down the line, our ancestral urge would be to eat as much as possible of these essential foods whenever found in copious quantities. This inclination remains with us today, but converts to overdrive in circumstances where foods are widely available, made worse by being processed in forms that render them health-threatening and addictive. By imposing a limit on eating times, intermittent fasting therefore serves as a corrective to some of our evolved proclivities — those urges more in keeping with our ancestral environment — and if combined with a high quality diet a relationship with politics is necessarily established; it might not deliver a mortal blow to the ultra-processed food industry, but combined with a whole-food plant-based vegan diet it has a part to play in heightening resistance to some of the shadier tendencies of the food monopolists.
What does politics have to do with what we put in our mouths? Salt, fats, sugars and various additives are today produced in combined, and often concentrated forms by powerful multinational food corporations — global multi-billion dollar concerns that typically pound the public with adverts illustrating people looking like mindless zombies guzzling sugary drinks, emptying cardboard boxes of sugary cereal into breakfast bowls, and devouring unhealthy concoctions of deep-fried dead things from buckets. Their express aim is to maximise profit by exploiting the palatability of desired nutrients, the preference for calories, and the pleasure-seeking pathways — the latter being an increase in dopamine in the brain’s reward circuit, or to put it another way, the habit of liking something, getting a kick out of it, and wanting more. Many people are consequently undernourished, and in one sense starving, not because there is a scarcity of food in the category of good dietary quality, but because there is an abundance of cheap and available energy-dense foods.
The correlation between ultra-processed foods, obesity and food-related illnesses continues into the realm of food addiction. A glance at the criteria for determining addiction in the DSM-5, (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders), shows people who regularly consume foods rich in salt, fats and sugars conform to the stated criteria for addiction — a condition on a par with being hooked on cigarettes, though many self-report their experience to be far worse. These criteria include repeated consumption despite known harmful consequences, needing more of the substance to get the effect you want, wanting to cut down or stop but not managing to, craving to use the substance, and the experience of withdrawal.
It’s not difficult to find evidence that links highly-processed foods with obesity or illness among people of all age groups and all social classes, including their pets, but evidence does indicate a higher incidence of obesity and food addiction among lower income groups. That being said, not everyone suffering from food addiction or food-related illnesses is clinically obese. Whether we deem the continued use of highly processed foods the result of one factor, or a combination of several — biological, socioeconomic, behavioural or substance-related — it is perhaps unsurprising that many people, on becoming aware that they face life-threatening conditions, enter a 12-step recovery programme.
Food addiction and food-related illnesses are set to become our highest health concern. Setting a trend for the world, the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 stated that over 40% of adults and 20% of children and adolescents in the USA are obese, whilst 70% of adults overall are overweight. Those rates are currently lower in Europe, but the trend is no less troubling. Obesity Statistics from the House of Commons Library in 2023 suggest UK obesity rates are running at 25% for adults and children, and that almost 40% of adults are overweight. The Scottish Government’s Health Survey of 2022 indicates that the highest rates of obesity and related illnesses in the UK are in Scotland, and those health risks include diabetes, strokes, sleep apnea, dyslipidemia, hypertension, coronary artery disease, fatty liver disease, a variety of cancers, and possibly cognitive dysfunction — such as poor decision-making and memory impairment.
In light of the individual suffering, the increasing strain on medical services, and what amounts to an impending societal if not global health catastrophe, the heavily-marketed campaign for intermittent fasting should have proved highly beneficial. The overwhelming focus of the programme, however, was not on individuals relinquishing highly processed foods, but simply on their reduction by restricting food consumption within set times. This was a widely-advertised lifestyle intervention, not a challenge to the dark side of the food industry, and as such it was hardly the worst outcome for the unsavoury food giants: continue eating rubbish, just less rubbish.
One might argue that any reduction in food intake, even at the level of basic survival mode, is welcome during an epidemic of obesity-related problems — an epidemic that is currently affecting a quarter of the world’s population. But endorsing highly-processed and addictive foods on the intermittent fasting programme, albeit in lesser quantities, not only leaves people ultimately facing failure and a range of health problems, it somewhat suspiciously sidesteps the chance to publicly condemn the food giants. When one considers the vast number of television programmes and magazine articles devoted to dieting, one can’t help but wonder if perhaps a parasitical connection exists between the dieting industry and the food giants, and whether they are in fact motivated to kill their host. Fat, after all, is a monetarist issue.
The effectiveness of intermittent fasting hinges on the extent to which it is allied to programmes of high dietary quality, otherwise it is no better than the ludicrous calorie-counting diets, some of which even allow chocolate bars and cakes to be counted. If they include foods that are correlated with health concerns, and with added sugars that render them potentially addictive, then even if they help people to lose excess weight, it is difficult to see how they could hope to clear a pathway to optimal levels of health and longevity. On the self-discipline front, speaking from personal experience, intermittent fasting combined with a high quality diet has worked well in the context of everyday circumstances. However, I must admit that when I’m out of the country, fasting all but goes out the window.
Wandering in foreign parts, as I often do these days, it’s easy to lose track of time and for fasting boundaries to become outrageously stretched. Being vegan, there is the additional challenge of finding suitable food, of laboriously checking ingredients, and of struggling to explain across the language barrier what should be left out of prepared meals. After a while it gets easier to navigate, and even in the once vegan-oriented but now notoriously meat-heavy Japan, I eventually located vegan restaurants in Tokyo, Kyoto and Hiroshima, found options in restaurants that were otherwise a horror show, and eventually sampled the buddhist cuisine of shojin-ryori.
Although vegan alternatives are not always on advertised menus, they can often be conjured up if asked. Even in those obscure and in some respects forbidding narrow alleyways, some with vents of rising steam that one might imagine belong to a mythical underworld, people with a pot, a flame and a mix of ingredients will often cobble together something on the vegan front, and in fact I think many folk find the challenge fun. Food is frequently the lingua franca in interethnic situations, of which veganism has often proved to be a particular dialect that many of the people I met were curious to learn.
There have, however, been communication failures. By way of a well-meaning meat alternative, I’ve been offered a variety-bag of deep-fried long-legged bugs, a bowl of baby octopuses with quail eggs stuffed into their brains, and manure-scented peanut brittle; the latter I licked, causing a week-long bout of projectile vomiting and propulsive diarrhoea. I wanted to die. On the plus side, the food poisoning did render it a little easier to get back on the intermittent fasting track once home…not that I’m recommending that particular course for anyone.
Places where monks hang out are always a fair bet, and I’ve been offered vegan platters in or around Buddhist monasteries in Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, Sikh gurdwaras, Jain basadis and Krishna temples across India, Taoist pagodas in Vietnam and Cambodia, and Hindu mandirs throughout Indonesia. The trend continued in Malaysia and Borneo, where the most edifying establishments, built from the ground up for moral instruction and intellectual nourishment, tend also to be the best eating joints…or to be neighbouring them.
Among several areas in which temple followers excelled and I failed was fasting. I have often been beckoned by the aroma of sizzling street food wafting through the tropical night air, and must admit to having devoured a wee Pad Thai at midnight — well outside my fasting hours. In my defence, it is difficult to stick rigidly to a fasting regime whilst wandering wildly for miles in vast areas ten thousand kilometres from home, and when uncertain where the next meal will come from. Stirring up the atavistic remnants of our distant ancestors, I’ve eaten heartily when food was in abundance in preparation for anticipated periods of scarcity, and occasionally compromised to the extent of eating highly processed foods that are potentially detrimental to health. Interrupted fasting might be a more apposite name for my version of intermittent fasting — when I’m abroad, at any rate — but at least I’ve not strayed from the vegan path.
On that side of things it was disheartening to learn that the Jainist, Hindu and Buddhist priests, monks and nuns I encountered — whilst at the level of rhetoric they avowedly adhere to the principles of ahimsa: of having respect for all living things, and the avoidance of violence towards others — were not in fact vegan. If not meat itself, monks and adherents to each of these religious orders, though there were some exceptions, use dairy, and consequently commodify nonhuman animals for personal benefit. Perhaps many would hope to find consolation in the fact that they are vegetarian, but this is no less barbaric than the exploitation of animals as things for clothes or meat and various products. Bizarrely, some Buddhist orders formally announced meat-eating to be at the discretion of the individual — a position that not only contradicts the principle of ahimsa, but effectively condones violence towards all.
One could no more tolerate violence selectively applied towards particular groups of sentient beings, than one could selectively condone human rights abuses, or selectively discriminate against particular religious or ethnic groups. Just as it is not possible to disentangle exploitation from violence, animal or human, there is an equivalence between speciesism and other forms of discrimination, such as sexism and racism. For their perception of ahimsa to be anything less than hypocrisy, they would need to stop eating, wearing, and otherwise using nonhuman animals. Breaking the rules of fasting, and even crossing the line for short periods into the terrain of ultra-processed foods, is one thing, but the moral injustice of exploiting sentient beings as objects of property, no less than human slavery, is quite another.
Becoming vegan does not mean that by definition one upholds the principle of non-violence towards all, but it is impossible to uphold that principle without first becoming vegan. There are many countries around the world with a relatively high percentage of vegans among their population, and occasionally we even hear boasts of a commitment to the extent that the uniforms and boots of their military are made of vegan materials, yet some have a reputation for oppression, war, ethnic cleansing, and a wide range of human rights abuses. Becoming vegan will not automatically render us any less the most murderous species on Earth, but we cannot hope to reverse that trend unless we become vegan.
Precisely because they participate in the exploitation of nonhuman animals, the meat-eater who professes a commitment to spiritual, ethical or indeed socialist principles is at best deeply flawed in their thinking, and at worst morally suspect. The fact that non-human animals are sentient beings that avoid pain, and have a desire to live their lives to the full, renders veganism a moral imperative. In other words — and quite apart from the benefits conferred by veganism with regard to personal health, the global climate, and world hunger — killing animals is clearly contrary to reason and to what is morally right. Whilst it is generally and somewhat misguidedly packaged and promoted as simply a consumer choice, personal preference or lifestyle option, veganism is at heart a moral and political way of life, one that by necessity fits with campaigns against violence, and with social movements against oppression in all its forms.
In the 1820s, the French politician and author of The Physiology of Taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, cautioned, “The destiny of nations depends on the way in which they feed themselves.” It is a statement that implies the choices we make about the future begin with the next meal. To put it yet another way, to change the world, start with yourself.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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In order to sustain a friendship, there must be grounds for complicity. To know what these grounds might be, it is necessary to see the other as clearly as possible. Nonetheless, you seem to be interested not in finding out who I am but in making declarations about my character. Perhaps you want rebuttals. Maybe you want me to say, “Oh, no. I’m not right-wing. I’m not a kook. Here, I have proof.” The burden of proof does not lie with me but with you. And you have offered none.
So what kind of a response am I left with? Would you like me to proceed with declarations about your character, which you would then feel compelled to rebut, the waters getting muddier with each exchange, the gulf between us growing wider as you drag political binaries into the discussion of Covid, where they don’t belong, even as you profess to oppose the state’s divide-and-conquer strategies? No, I’m not taking that bait either.
So what is left? You suggest that we compare science, but that is the domain of peer review, and everything that I have ever published about Covid (or about anything else, for that matter, including 9/11) is supported by peer review. So what is there to compare? To take the simplest aspect of Covid (the masks), both the peer-reviewed studies and common sense (the pores of a mask being macroscopic and the virus being microscopic) tell us that the mask mandates were useless and did more harm than good. See, for instance, the March 2023 issue of Druthers, published in Alberta, which you may deem to be a right-wing province, but I assure you that science, when done and reported properly, is right-left blind.
Every part of the official Covid narrative is in fact false, from the masks to the PCR tests to the death rates to the safety and effectiveness of the “vaccines,” but since it is not my place to convince you of that, I will not burden you with web links in support of the point. Rather, I will lay out a comparison of two perceptions of reality, and you can tell me whether there are any grounds for complicity between us across this divide.
Official reality
Maskers protected themselves and others.
No existing remedies could treat Covid, so society needed to shut down until there was a “vaccine.”
Vaxxers protected themselves and others by helping to halt the spread of the virus.
Anti-vaxxers are selfish, irresponsible, and anti-science.
Unofficial reality
Maskers were duped into helping the state create an atmosphere of mass obedience, necessary for vaccine compliance.
Proven remedies for Covid were slandered to permit emergency use of the “vaccines.”
Vaxxers helped to create a false sense that the “vaccines” were safe and effective, paving the way for genocide.
Anti-vaxxers are courageous and clear-sighted, as demonstrated by the fact that the “vaccines” have led to horrible injuries, miscarriages, and infertility, along with a staggering increase in mortality – a genocide – among healthy, working-age people over the past two years.
By your account, I am a right-wing kook for embracing the unofficial reality. By my account, you are a do-gooder without a clue for embracing the official one. I don’t blame you for not having a clue. You have been subjected to relentless propaganda for more than three years. I have written elsewhere on the phenomenon of trance and how it can be triggered by fear, so I know what you’ve been up against. But the question remains of whether there can be any grounds for complicity between us when we are not living in the same world. Should we agree to disagree? Should we live and let live? Aren’t the stakes too high? What about the next “crisis”? The next false flag, the next plandemic? Will we have to go through this gut-wrenching dance again, friendships and families wrecked? Will we have learned nothing? I think that depends on you.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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One night in 1997, as Americans were parked on the couch in front of an episode of Touched by an Angel, they were touched by something else unexpected: an ad for a prescription allergy pill called Claritin®, promoted directly to the consumer!
Prescription drugs had never been sold directly to the public before, because, without a doctor’s recommendation, how could people know if the medication was appropriate or safe? Soon, ads for Xenical®, Meridia®, Propecia®, Paxil®, Prozac®, Vioxx, Viagra®, Singulair®, Nasonex®, Allegra®, Flonase®, Pravachol®, Zyrtec®, Zocor®, Flovent®, and Lipitor® followed. By 2006, the pharmaceutical industry (a.k.a. Pharma) was spending $5.5 billion a year on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising—as much as the US government was spending for an entire month on the Iraq War.”
Although DTC advertising was never illegal, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it was widely thought to be until the FDA issued guidelines for advertisers in 1997. A push for DTC advertising also came from AIDS patients who wanted greater involvement in their own care and to know what their doctors knew about the drugs they were taking. But, a funny thing happened as Americans viewed all these pill ads. People discovered they weren’t as healthy as they thought.
Suddenly, ad viewers suffered from seasonal allergies, social anxiety, high cholesterol, depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, erectile dysfunction, low testosterone, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), irritable bowel syndrome, dry eye, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, seasonal affective disorder (SAD), restless legs syndrome, and worse. In fact, the parade of symptoms and diseases was so all encompassing, comedian Chris Rock said he was ready for a DTC ad asking, “Do you fall asleep at night and wake up in the morning?”
“Yeah, I got that!” he joked.
Before the advent of DTC advertising, gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, was a hidden “epidemic” and often just heartburn and poor eating. But DTC advertising vaulted the condition vaulted to make Nexium® to the fourth-bestselling drug in the country by 2012.
“The implication in the direct-to-consumer ads is if you have heartburn you’re well on your way to cancer of the esophagus,” said Marcia Angell, MD, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine and author of The Truth about the Drug Companies. “For most people who have heartburn, the best way to treat it is probably to lose a little weight, get out and take a walk or drink a glass of milk, but that somehow is seen as less good than taking a prescription drug.”
The fact that DTC advertising debuted at the same time as the World Wide Web doubled its power. Even if ads and websites weren’t advertising drugs directly to consumers, the world of diseases and prescription drugs, once tucked into medical journal ads, was suddenly open to anyone who could operate a mouse. You could even buy drugs online, no doctor or prescription necessary.
Theoretically, all the newly and readily available medical information created a better-informed patient. It was the same reason the trailblazing feminist book Our Bodies, Ourselves was published thirty years earlier—patients have the right to know and be participants in their own healthcare. But three features of DTC advertising did more harm than good—unless you were Pharma.
Diseases were created or overplayed, sometimes called disease du jours. Risks of disease—fears of getting a condition or the condition getting worse—were whipped up to sell drugs. And extreme drugs were marketed when milder and cheaper drugs would do. The best example of this last point is Vioxx, which was billed as a “super-aspirin” for everyday arthritic or menstrual pain but ended up causing twenty-seven thousand heart attacks and sudden cardiac deaths before its removal from the market in 2004.29 Yet before Merck even settled the Vioxx cases, the dangerous epilepsy drugs Lyrica®, Topamax®, Neurontin, and Lamictal® and the antidepressant Cymbalta® were similarly marketed for simple pain, even though all carried suicide warnings and Topamax is also linked to birth defects. Finally, as drug advertisers became a major revenue stream for new media, news about drug risks, harms, deceptive marketing and high prices vanished overnight. Why bite the hand that feeds you?
It was obvious that no lessons had been learned from the Vioxx debacle which cost thousands of lives over 20 years ago.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The modern food system is responsible for making swathes of humanity ill, causing unnecessary suffering and sending many people to an early grave. It is part of a grotesque food-pharma conveyor belt that results in massive profits for the dominant agrifood and pharmaceuticals corporations.
Much of the modern food system has been shaped by big agribusiness concerns like Monsanto (now Bayer) and Cargill, giant food companies like Nestle, Pepsico and Kellog’s and, more recently, institutional investors like BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street.
For the likes of BlackRock, which invests in both food and pharma, fuelling a system increasingly based on ultra processed food (UPF) with its cheap and unhealthy ingredients is a sure-fire money spinner.
Toxic junk
Consider that fast food is consumed by 85 million US citizens each day. Several chains are the primary suppliers of many school lunches. Some 30 million school meals are served to children each day. For millions of underprivileged children in the US, these meals are their only access to nutrition.
In 2022, Moms Across America (MAA) and Children’s Health Defense (CHD) commissioned the testing of school lunches and found that 5.3 per cent contained carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting and liver disease-causing glyphosate; 74 per cent contained at least one of 29 harmful pesticides; four veterinary drugs and hormones were found in nine of the 43 meals tested; and all of the lunches contained heavy metals at levels up to 6,293 times higher than the US Environmental Protection Agency’s maximum levels allowed in drinking water. Moreover, the majority of the meals were abysmally low in nutrients.
As a follow up, MAA, a non-profit organisation, with support from CHD and the Centner Academy, recently decided to have the top ten most popular fast-food brand meals extensively tested for 104 of the most commonly used veterinary drugs and hormones.
The Health Research Institute tested 42 fast-food meals from 21 locations nationwide. The top ten brands tested were McDonald’s, Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, TacoBell, Wendy’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Subway, Domino’s and Chipotle.
Collectively, these companies’ annual gross sales are $134,308,000,000.
Three veterinary drugs and hormones were found in ten fast food samples tested. One sample from Chick-fil-A contained a contraceptive and antiparasitic called Nicarbazin, which has been prohibited.
Some 60 per cent of the samples contained the antibiotic Monesin, which is not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for human use and has been shown to cause severe harm when consumed by humans.
40 per cent contained the antibiotic Narasin. MAA says that animal studies show this substance causes anorexia, diarrhoea, dyspnea, depression, ataxia, recumbency and death, among other things.
Monensin and Narasin are antibiotic ionophores, toxic to horses and dogs at extremely low levels, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional. Ionophores cause weight gain in beef and dairy cattle and are therefore widely used but also “cause acute cardiac rhabdomyocyte degeneration and necrosis”, according to a 2017 paper published in Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology (Second Edition).
For many years, ionophores have also been used to control coccidiosis in poultry. However, misuse of ionophores can cause toxicity with significant clinical symptoms. Studies show that ionophore toxicity mainly affects myocardial and skeletal muscle cells.
Only Chipotle and Subway had no detectable levels of veterinary drugs and hormones.
Following these findings, MAA has expressed grave concern about the dangers faced by people, especially children, who are unknowingly eating unprescribed antibiotic ionophores. The non-profit asks: are the side effects of these ionophores in dogs and horses, leaving their hind legs dysfunctional, related to millions of US citizens presenting with restless leg syndrome and neuropathy? These conditions were unknown in most humans just a generation or two ago.
A concerning contraceptive (for
geese and pigeons), an antiparasitic called Nicarbazin, prohibited after many years of use, was found in Chick fil-A sandwich samples. The executive director of MAA, Zen Honeycutt, concludes:
“The impact of millions of Americans, especially children and young adults, consuming a known animal contraceptive daily is concerning. With infertility problems on the rise, the reproductive health of this generation is front and center for us, in light of these results.”
MAA says that it is not uncommon for millions of US citizens to consume fast food for breakfast, lunch or dinner, or all three meals, every day. School lunches are often provided by fast-food suppliers and typically are the only meals underprivileged children receive and a major component of the food consumed by most children.
Exposure to hormones from consuming concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) livestock could be linked to the early onset of puberty, miscarriages, increasing incidence of twin births and reproductive problems. These hormones have been linked to cancers, such as breast and uterine, reproductive issues and developmental problems in children.
So, how can it be that food – something that is supposed to nourish and sustain life – has now become so toxic?
Corporate influence
One answer lies in the influence of a relative handful of food conglomerates, which shape food policy and dominate the market.
For instance, recent studies have linked UPFs such as ice-cream, fizzy drinks and ready meals to poor health, including an increased risk of cancer, weight gain and heart disease. Global consumption of the products is soaring and UPFs now make up more than half the average diet in the UK and US.
In late September, however, a media briefing in London suggested consumers should not be too concerned about UPFs. After the event, The Guardian newspaper reported that three out of five scientists on the expert panel for the briefing who suggested UPFs are being unfairly demonised had ties to the world’s largest manufacturers of the products.
The briefing generated various positive media headlines on UPFs, including “Ultra-processed foods as good as homemade fare, say experts” and “Ultra-processed foods can sometimes be better for you, experts claim”.
It was reported by the Guardian that three of the five scientific experts on the panel had either received financial support for research from UPF manufacturers or hold key positions with organisations that are funded by them. The manufacturers include Nestlé, Mondelēz, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever and General Mills.
Professor Janet Cade (University of Leeds) told the briefing that most research suggesting a link between UPFs and poor health cannot show cause and effect, adding that processing can help to preserve nutrients. Cade is the chair of the advisory committee of the British Nutrition Foundation, whose corporate members include McDonald’s, British Sugar and Mars. It is funded by companies including Nestlé, Mondelēz and Coca-Cola.
Professor Pete Wilde (Quadram Institute) also defended UPFs, comparing then favourably with homemade items. Wilde has received support for his research from Unilever, Mondelēz and Nestlé.
Professor Ciarán Forde (Wageningen University in the Netherlands) told the briefing that advice to avoid UPF “risks demonising foods that are nutritionally beneficial”. Forde was previously employed by Nestlé and has received financial support for research from companies including PepsiCo and General Mills.
Despite what industry-backed scientists may say, increased consumption of UPFs was associated with more than 10 per cent of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019, according to a 2022 published peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
In high-income countries, such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia, UPFs account for more than half of total calorific intake. Brazilians consume far less of these products than countries with high incomes. This means the impact would be even higher in richer nations.
In a 2016 report by the research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), it was noted that obesity rates were rising fastest among lowest socio-economic groups. That is because energy-dense foods of poor nutritional value are cheaper than more nutritious foods.
At the time, key trade associations, companies and lobby groups related to sugary food and drinks were together spending an estimated €21.3 million annually to lobby the EU.
One of the best-known industry front groups with global influence is the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI). In January 2019, two papers by Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh in the BMJ and in the Journal of Public Health Policy revealed ILSI’s influence on the Chinese government concerning issues related to obesity.
A 2017 media report noted that ILSI-India was being actively consulted by India’s apex policy-formulating body – Niti Aayog. ILSI-India’s board of trustees was dominated by food and beverage companies. ILSI’s expanding influence coincides with India’s mounting rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
In 2020, a study published in Public Health Nutrition revealed details about which companies fund the group. ILSI North America’s draft 2016 IRS form 990 shows a $317,827 contribution from PepsiCo, contributions greater than $200,000 from Mars, Coca-Cola and Mondelez and contributions greater than $100,000 from General Mills, Nestle, Kellogg, Hershey, Kraft, Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Starbucks Coffee, Cargill, Unilever and Campbell Soup.
Professor Janet Cade told the recent media briefing in London that people rely on processed foods for a wide number of reasons; if they were removed, this would require a huge change in the food supply. She added that this would be unachievable for most people and potentially result in further stigmatisation and guilt for those who rely on processed foods, promoting further inequalities in disadvantaged groups.
While part of the solution lies in tackling poverty and reliance on junk food, the focus must be on challenging the power wielded by a small group of food corporations and redirecting the massive subsidies poured into the agrifood system that ensure massive corporate profit while fuelling bad food, poor health and food insecurity.
A healthier food regime centred on human need rather than corporate profit is required. This would entail strengthening local markets, prioritising short supply chains from farm to fork and supporting independent smallholder organic agriculturalists (incentivised to grow a more diverse range of nutrient-dense crops) and small-scale retailers.
Saying that eradicating UPFs would result in denying the poor access to cheap, affordable food is like saying let them eat poison.
Given the scale of the problem, change cannot be achieved overnight. However, a long food movement (leading up to 2045) could transform the food system, a strategy set out in a 2021 report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems and ETC Group.
More people should be getting on board with this and promoting it at media briefings. But that might result in biting the hand that feeds.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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It looks like the Trudeau government in Canada is preparing to mandate masking again, despite the science, in randomized control trials, revealing no prophylaxis effect of masking compared to non-masking against respiratory viruses.
Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, is setting up a return to enforced masking of Canadians.
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This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.
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This week’s News on China.
• Restrictions on US investment China’s tech sector
• Investment in R&D doubled in the last 5 years
• Anti-corruption campaign in healthcare
• Provincial renewable energy targetsThis post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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What did Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau repeat ad nauseam about COVID-19 and imposing mandates? That the “government has been focused every step of the way on following the best science”? And did he ever provide any scientific evidence to follow? Critical thinking demands that people demand evidence for questionable claims, and that is a sine qua non of science.
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This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Between 1991 and 2016, the population of Delhi and its suburbs increased from 9.4 million to 25 million. In 2023, the World Population Review website estimates Delhi’s population to be 32.9 million.
In the December 2016 paper Future urban land expansion and implications for global croplands, it was projected that by 2030, globally, urban areas will have tripled in size, expanding into cropland and undermining the productivity of agricultural systems.
Around 60% of the world’s cropland lies on the outskirts of cities. The paper states that this land is, on average, twice as productive as land elsewhere on the globe.
Africa and Asia will together bear 80% of the projected cropland loss due to rising urbanisation. The disappearance of this productive land will impact staple crops such as maize, rice, soya beans and wheat, which are cornerstones of global food security.
In South Asia, farmland can’t simply spread elsewhere because fertile land is already running out.
One of the paper’s authors, Felix Creutzig (currently, Professor of Sustainability Economics at the Technical University of Berlin), said at the time that, as cities expand, millions of small-scale farmers will be displaced. These farmers produce the majority of food in developing countries and are key to global food security.
However, what Creutzig says is not inevitable. Far from it. Urbanisation is being encouraged and facilitated by design.
According to the World Bank’s lending report, based on data compiled up to 2015, India was easily the largest recipient of its loans in the history of the institution. On the back of India’s foreign exchange crisis in the early 1990s, the IMF and World Bank wanted India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture: India was to embark on a massive rural depopulation/urbanisation project.
In addition, in return for up to more than $120 billion (accounting for inflation, this would be $269 billion in 2023) in loans, India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions, facilitate the entry of global players and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange.
The details of this plan appear in a January 2021 article by the Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE). In effect, it constitutes a massive urbanisation project and the opening of India’s agriculture sector to foreign agribusiness corporations.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Felix Creutzig predicted the following:
As peri-urban land is converted, smallholders will lose their land. The emerging mega-cities will rely increasingly on industrial-scale agricultural and supermarket chains, crowding out local food chains.
The RUPE says that the opening of India’s agriculture and food economy to foreign investors and global agribusinesses has been a longstanding project of the imperialist countries.
Industrial-scale agriculture is key to the plan. And integral to this model of farming is genetically engineered food crops – whether first generation genetically modified (GM) crops based on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or newer techniques involving the likes of gene editing.
Glyphosate/GM crop approval
According to a recent report in the Chennai-based New Indian Express (NIE), the Indian government is likely to allow the cultivation of herbicide-tolerant (HT) GM crops. These crops have not been legalised but have been growing in India for some years.
The government is creating a pool of more than 4,000 ‘progressive farmers’ and ‘rural educated youths’ who can help farmers spray glyphosate on GM crops that have been genetically engineered to withstand the herbicide. These pest control officers are to spray glyphosate on behalf of farmers.
Glyphosate is carcinogenic and, in India, its use is officially restricted to tea crops and non-cropping areas like barren land and roadsides. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans” in 2015.
The NIE quotes a source who implies that the drive to spray glyphosate on agricultural land seems like a precursor of legalising HT GM cotton (I would add – and HT GM food crops eventually).
At this time, only one GM crop – Bt (insecticidal) cotton – is legalised in India.
The legalisation of HT GM cotton would be a key step towards opening a multi-billion-dollar market for global agritech-agrochemicals firms which have a range of HT GM food crops waiting in the pipeline.
Much has been written on the devastating effects that glyphosate has on health and the environment. Glyphosate-based herbicides (GBH)s formulas affect the gut microbiome and are associated with a global metabolic health crisis. They also cause epigenetic changes in humans and animals – diseases skip a generation then appear.
These toxic chemicals have entered the food chain and human bodies at harmful levels and are even in a range of popular children’s cereals.
An April 2023 study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute measured glyphosate levels in the urine of farmers and other study participants and determined that high levels of the pesticide were associated with signs of a reaction in the body called oxidative stress, a condition that causes damage to DNA and a cancer biomarker.
The study findings appeared after the US Centers for Disease Control reported in 2022 that more than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults contained glyphosate. Similar figures are found in the EU. GBHs are the world’s most widely used agricultural weedkiller.
There are dozens of academic studies that indicate the deleterious and disturbing effects of GBHs on human health. Rather than presenting them here, for the sake of brevity, many are listed in the online article Bathed In Pesticides: The Narrative Of Deception (2022).
Attorney Robert F Kennedy Jr and current presidential candidate has been involved with some of the ongoing court cases in the US that have been brought against Bayer regarding the human health damage of Monsanto’s Roundup GBH (Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018).
Kennedy concludes that there is cascading scientific evidence linking glyphosate to a constellation of injuries that have become prevalent since its introduction, including obesity, depression, Alzheimer’s, ADHD, autism, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, kidney and inflammatory bowel disease, brain, breast and prostate cancer, miscarriage, birth defects and declining sperm counts.
He adds that strong science suggests glyphosate is the culprit in the exploding epidemics of celiac disease, colitis, gluten sensitivities, diabetes and non-alcoholic liver cancer which, for the first time, is attacking children as young as 10.
Researchers peg glyphosate as a potent endocrine disruptor, which interferes with sexual development in children. It is also a chelator that removes important minerals from the body and disrupts the microbiome, destroying beneficial bacteria in the human gut and triggering brain inflammation and other ill effects.
So, why do GBHs remain on the market? It’s because of the power of the agritech/agrochemical sector and the don’t look, don’t see approach of compromised regulatory bodies: see Glyphosate: EU assessment report excludes most of the scientific literature from its analysis (2021) by GMWatch and Glyphosate in the EU: product promoters masquerading as regulators in a ‘cesspool of corruption’? (2016) in The Ecologist.
Consider what veteran journalist Carey Gillam says:
US Roundup litigation began in 2015 after the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Internal Monsanto documents dating back decades show that the company was aware of scientific research linking its weed killer to cancer but instead of warning consumers, the company worked to suppress the information and manipulate scientific literature.
Over the years, Monsanto mounted a deceitful defence of its health- and environment-damaging Roundup and its GM crops and orchestrated toxic smear campaigns against anyone – scientist or campaigner – who threatened its interests.
In 2016, campaigner Rosemary Mason wrote an open letter to European Chemicals Agency Executive Director Geert Dancet. It can be accessed on the academia.edu site.
In it, she sets out how current EU legislation was originally set up to protect the pesticides industry and how Monsanto and other agrochemical corporations helped the EU design the regulatory systems for their own products.
There is much at stake for the industry. According to Phillips McDougall’s Annual Agriservice Reports, herbicides made up 43% of the global pesticide market in 2019 by value. Much of the increase in glyphosate use is due to the introduction of glyphosate-tolerant soybean, maize and cotton seeds in the US, Brazil and Argentina.
GBHs are a multi-billion-dollar money-spinning venture for the manufacturers. But this latest development in India is as much about the legalisation of a wide range of proprietary HT GM seeds and crops as it is about glyphosate because both are joined at the hip.
Regulatory delinquency
In India, five high-level reports have advised against the adoption of GM crops: the Jairam Ramesh Report (2010); the Sopory Committee Report (2012); the Parliamentary Standing Committee Report (2012); the Technical Expert Committee Final Report (2013); and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science & Technology, Environment and Forests (2017).
Given the health and environmental issues surrounding GM crops, as well as the now well-documented failure of Bt cotton in the country, it comes as little surprise that these reports advise against their adoption.
This high-level advice also derives, in part, from GM ‘regulation’ in India being dogged by blatant violations of biosafety norms, hasty approvals, a lack of monitoring abilities, general apathy towards the hazards of contamination and a lack of institutional oversight.
The ‘Technical Expert Committee Final Report’ was scathing about India’s prevailing regulatory system and highlighted its inadequacies and serious inherent conflicts of interest. As we have seen with the push to get GM mustard commercialised, the problems described by the TEC persist.
The drive to get GM crops commercialised has been relentless, not least GM mustard. The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the country’s apex regulatory body for GMOs, has pushed ahead by giving this crop the nod. However, the case of GM mustard remains stuck in the Supreme Court due to a public interest litigation lodged by environmentalist Aruna Rodrigues.
Rodrigues argues that GM mustard is being undemocratically forced through with flawed tests (or no testing) and a lack of public scrutiny: in other words, unremitting scientific fraud and outright regulatory delinquency.
This crop is also HT, which is wholly inappropriate for a country like India with its small biodiverse farms that could be affected by its application on nearby fields.
However, despite the ban on GM crops, in 2005, biologist Pushpa Bhargava noted that unapproved varieties of several GM crops were being sold to farmers. In 2008, Arun Shrivasatava wrote that illegal GM okra had been planted in India and poor farmers had been offered lucrative deals to plant “special seed” of all sorts of vegetables.
In 2013, a group of scientists and NGOs protested in India against the introduction of transgenic brinjal in Bangladesh – a centre for origin and diversity of the vegetable – as it would give rise to contamination of the crop in India. In 2014, the West Bengal government said it had received information regarding “infiltration” of commercial seeds of GM Bt brinjal from Bangladesh.
In 2017, the illegal cultivation of an HT GM soybean was reported in Gujarat. Bhartiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), a national farmers organisation, claimed that Gujarat farmers had been cultivating the HT crop.
As mentioned above, HT cotton is illegally growing in India.
In the 2017 paper – The ox fall down: path-breaking and technology treadmills in Indian cotton agriculture – Glenn Stone and Andrew Flachs note the tactic of encouraging farmers to abandon traditional on-farm practices, which coincides with the appearance of an increasing supply of HT GM cotton seeds.
This is a cynical attempt to place farmers on corporate seed and chemical (glyphosate) treadmills.
The authors write:
Although India’s cotton sector has been penetrated by various input- and capital-intensive methods, penetration by herbicide has been largely stymied. In Telangana State, the main obstacle has been the practice of ‘double-lining’, in which cotton plants are spaced widely to allow weeding by ox-plow… double-lining is an example of an advantageous path for cash-poor farmers. However, it is being actively undermined by parties intent on expanding herbicide markets and opening a niche for next-generation genetically modified cotton.
Stone and Flachs note the potential market for herbicide growth alone in India is huge. Writing in 2017, the authors note that sales could soon reach USD 800 million with scope for even greater expansion. Indeed, enormous expansion if HT GM crops become legal.
Friends in high places
Global agritech firms are salivating at the prospect of India being prised open for the introduction of GM crops. The industry has always had high-level supporters in India and abroad. And this leads back to what was stated earlier in the article – the plan to industrialise Indian agriculture at the behest of the World Bank and foreign agribusiness and the manoeuvring into position of compliant officials.
PM Modi proclaimed in 2014 that GM represents a good business-investment opportunity. Renowned environmentalist Vandana Shiva has highlighted the arm twisting that has gone on in an attempt to force through GMOs into India, with various politicians having been pushed aside until the dotted line for GMO open field-testing approval was signed on.
Back in late 2015, I co-authored a piece with then editor of The Ecologist Oliver Tickell – Rice, wheat, mustard… India drives forward first GMO crops under veil of secrecy.
Seventeen or more secret applications had been made to India’s GMO regulators for trials and release of GM crops, including rice, wheat, chickpeas, brinjal and mustard. In a violation of the law, regulators had released no information about the applications, raising fears that India’s first GMOs will be released with no health, safety or environmental testing.
It is not surprising then that calls have been made for probes into the workings of the GEAC and other official bodies, who seem to have been asleep at the wheel or deliberately looking the other way as illegal GM crop cultivation has taken place.
India’s first GM crop cultivation – Bt cotton – was discovered in 2001 growing on thousands of hectares in Gujarat, spread surreptitiously and illegally. Campaigner Kavitha Kuruganti said the GEAC was caught off-guard when news about large-scale illegal cultivation of Bt cotton emerged, even as field trials that were to decide whether India would opt for this GM crop were still underway.
In March 2002, the GEAC ended up approving Bt cotton for commercial cultivation in India. To this day, no liability has been fixed for the illegal spread. We could well be witnessing a rerun of this scenario for HT cotton and HT food crops.
The tactic of contaminate first then legalise has benefited industry players before. Aside from Bt cotton in India, in 2016, the US Department of Agriculture granted marketing approval of GM Liberty Link 601 (Bayer CropScience) rice variety following its illegal contamination of the food supply and rice exports. The USDA effectively sanctioned an ‘approval-by-contamination’ policy.
The writing could be on the wall for India.
Does India need GM?
A common claim is that GMOs are essential to agriculture if we are to feed an ever-growing global population. Supporters of GM crops argue that by increasing productivity and yields, this technology will also help boost farmers’ incomes and lift many out of poverty.
In a 2018 paper in the journal Current Science, eminent scientists P C Kesavan and M S Swaminathan (regarded as the ‘father of the Green Revolution’ in India) questioned the efficacy of and the need for GMOs in agriculture.
The performance of GM crops has been a hotly contested issue and, as highlighted in Kesavan and Swaminathan’s piece and by many others, there is sufficient evidence to question their efficacy, especially that of HT crops and their shocking, devastating impact in places like Argentina.
Kesavan and Swaminathan argue that GM is supplementary and must be need based. In more than 99% of cases, they say that time-honoured conventional breeding is sufficient. Too often, however, conventional options and innovations that outperform GM are sidelined in a rush by powerful interests to facilitate the introduction of GM crops.
Although India fares poorly in world hunger assessments, the country has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured there is enough food available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables and fruit.
People are not hungry in India because its farmers do not produce enough food. Hunger and malnutrition result from various factors, including inadequate food distribution, (gender) inequality and poverty; in fact, the country continues to export food while millions remain hungry. It’s a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance.
Where farmers’ livelihoods are concerned, the pro-GMO lobby says that GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income. Again, this is misleading: it ignores crucial political and economic contexts. Even with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress.
India’s farmers are not experiencing financial hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies, years of neglect and a deliberate strategy to displace most of them at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations.
But pro-GMO supporters, both outside of India and within, along with the neoliberal think tanks many of them are associated with, have wasted no time in wrenching the issues of hunger and poverty from their political contexts to use notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of their promotional strategy.
The knowledge and many of the traditional practices of India’s small farmers are now recognised as sophisticated and appropriate for high-productive, sustainable agriculture. It is no surprise therefore that a 2019 FAO high-level report has called for agroecology and smallholder farmers to be prioritised and invested in to achieve global sustainable food security. It argues that scaling up agroecology offers potential solutions to many of the world’s most pressing problems, whether, for instance, climate resilience, carbon storage, soil degradation, water shortages, unemployment or food security.
Available evidence suggests that (non-GMO) smallholder farming using low-input methods is more productive in total output than large-scale industrial farms and can be more profitable.
It is for good reason that the FAO high-level report referred to earlier along with the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Professor Hilal Elver and numerous other papers and reports advocate agroecology call for investment in this type of agriculture. Despite the pressures, including the fact that globally industrial agriculture grabs 80% of subsidies and 90% of research funds, smallholder agriculture plays a major role in feeding the world.
In the introduction to a recent article, I wrote that the prevailing globalised agrifood model is responsible for increasing rates of illness, nutrient-deficient diets, a narrowing of the range of food crops, water shortages, chemical runoffs, increasing levels of farmer indebtedness, the undermining and destruction of local communities and the eradication of biodiversity.
Do Indian citizens want a GM/glyphosate-drenched, industrial food system that brings with it all of the above?
I also wrote that the model relies on a policy paradigm that privileges urbanisation, global markets, long supply chains, external proprietary inputs, highly processed food and market (corporate) dependency.
The solution lies in a paradigm shift that abandons the notion that urbanisation equates with ‘progress’. A shift that prioritises rural communities, small independent retail enterprises (instead of global giants like Walmart-Flipkart and Amazon) and smallholder farms, local markets, short supply chains, on-farm resources, diverse agroecological cropping, nutrient-dense diets and food sovereignty.
A shift that rejects the ecomodernist techno-dystopia of hyper-urbanisation, genetically engineered crops, biosynthetic food and farmerless farms and a ‘food transition’ all under the control of a big data-agritech cartel that wraps all of the above in a veneer of fake green.
There are alternative visions, potential outcomes and resistance that can challenge the ecomodernist agenda.
Instead of their eradication, creating land markets to amalgamate their land for industrial-scale mono-cropping or using vital cropland to build on, smallholder farmers and rural communities should be placed at the centre of development policies. Moreover, inspiration can be taken from the worldviews of indigenous peoples and, as anthropology professor Arturo Escobar says, the concept of Buen Viver: promoting ways of living that stress the collective well being of humans and nature and recognising the inseparability and interdependence of both.
For instance, India’s indigenous peoples’ low-energy, low-consumption tribal cultures are the antithesis of capitalism and industrialisation, and their knowledge and value systems promote genuine sustainability through restraint in what is taken from nature.
This entails a fundamental transformation in values, priorities and outlooks and a shift away from predation, imperialism, domination, anthropocentrism and plunder.
That’s what a genuine ‘food transition’ and Buen Viver would really mean.
• Many of the issues mentioned in the article above are discussed in the author’s free-to-read e-book.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Colin Todhunter.
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Excitement around psychedelics continues to grow with thousands set to attend the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver this week. Proponents in the psychedelic space have promoted a strategy to focus on the “medicalization” to gain wider societal acceptance. But this could lead psychedelics to come under greater control, ensuring that they serve as profitable tools to maintain the status quo.
The Quest for Mainstream Acceptance: Magical Individual to Societal Healing
Today, in the effort to win mainstream acceptance of psychedelics, there are a number of voices in the room. Among them, the loudest are the ones who individualize illness through the medical lens while seeking legitimacy through access to powerful medical institutions, civil society, and the corporation in a proclaimed quest to “heal” those suffering in our society. We see anything from features in Forbes about 20-something tech billionaires microdosing to increase productivity, to 60 Minutes interviews with U.S. Iraq war veterans who report being cured from PTSD, to miracle stories of ketamine working with the poor and formerly incarcerated. Ironically, as this piece is being published, a number of these voices will be discussing and debating the path of the psychedelic renaissance at Psychedelic Science conference, taking place June 19–23 and being marketed as the largest conference on psychedelics in history.
Organizationally, some of the best-known names in the psychedelic space are the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), the for-profit System Fail 23 mental health company Compass Pathways, and the nonprofit Usona Institute. Many inside these organizations often promote a course of thought claiming psychedelics in and of themselves can “heal” anything from PTSD to societal conflict. It’s as if there is a search for a balm, a real-life soma, to dissociate from the horrors of race and class. For many, psychedelics are the answer to this search.
Of those who believe psychedelics could find their way to addressing greater structural issues plaguing society, the reasoning often goes that “once the individual heals, then we can work on healing society — or even the world.” In one TED talk for example, MAPS founder Rick Doblin — one of the most prominent names in the psychedelic space — claims that psychedelic experiences have “the potential to help be an antidote to tribalism, to fundamentalism, to genocide and environmental destruction.” During the 2021 Fantastic Fungi Global Summit — an annual summit of mushroom enthusiasts — speaker after speaker discussed how important it is to expand the availability of psychedelics to “help heal the world.” We can expect much of the same rhetoric from various presenters at the Psychedelic Science conference.
The result of this theory of individualized mental health supposes that people and their mental lives exist in a vacuum. Trauma happens to an individual, so use psychedelics to heal the individual. But depression, stress, anxiety, etc., are not a result of personal failures but oppressive, exploitative, and alienating conditions of life under capitalism. Doblin and others will have us believe that we can “heal people” without dealing with the conditions of their lives, but by simply using psychedelics to change how they see those conditions. Far from healing the world, this approach reinforces the conditions that lead to the suffering itself.
There is a naivete born of goodwill, good acid, and a lack of structural analysis that could be amusing if the current state of the world were not so dire. It’s a kind of “magical societal healing” mantra that is echoing through the most progressive sectors of the so-called renaissance, i.e., “we simply gain acceptance to powerful institutions, give these drugs to people, getting them into existing systems of oppression and the change will come” or even more then change, “a more just society” will come. But, as we will discuss, in this process the psychedelic community ultimately seeks to incorporate itself into powerful, controlling institutions, which will not only prevent these substances from helping heal the world but also enlist them in maintaining the systems harming us all.
Gramscian Hegemony and Psychedelic Medicine
Proponents of psychedelics seek to gain acceptance for these substances by medicalizing them. Article after article is published on how psychedelics can help treat various forms of psychological suffering. But medicalization could play a role in further entrenching ruling-class control of psychedelics. To further examine this process, it is important to revisit the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony.
Gramsci terms the control wielded by the ruling-class “hegemony.” Gramsci believed that if the ruling class was unable to maintain control over the masses, the masses may seek to change circumstances around their ongoing exploitation. For Gramsci, the ruling class does not always need to use domination or coercion to maintain its authority — and actually using these forms of control can sometimes be more destabilizing or fragile for the ruling classes. Instead, they can use “cultural, moral and ideological” leadership to gain a high level of consent among the general population. The ruling class manipulates language, culture, even morality itself to subtly convince the masses that the status quo is normal, natural, and the best course for everyone in society. This helps maintain power in capitalist society and make sure the interests of the capitalist state are represented in the minds of the ranks of the masses.
As Bruce Cohen notes in Psychiatric Hegemony: A Marxist Theory of Mental Illness, an institution continually used to impose ruling-class ideology today is the institution of medicine. Control through institutions such as medicine have proved quite effective for the ruling class because they provide a guise of perceived objectivity. Cohen notes,
These civic institutions are much more effective than direct, repressive organs of the state in manipulating the masses due to their perceived detachment from elite control. Hegemonic power is conducted under the guise of objective and neutral institutional practice, though it is in reality nothing of the sort. Instead, intellectuals and professionals are responsible for the legitimation of ruling-class ideas within the public sphere, articulating such values as seemingly natural and taken-for-granted knowledge about the world.
As we discussed in our previous piece, the medical system helps uphold the status quo by finding ways to reduce natural reactions to damaging systems to specific quantified diagnoses, which can be documented and billed for. This allows for the commodification of natural physical and psychological reactions to oppressive systems. Medical professionals can help in “depoliticizing inherently political problems” in the words of physician and activist Vicente Navarro, leading people to believe that individual action or improvement is the answer instead of collective action for societal change. In this way, the institution of medicine helps impose ruling-class ideology by misdirecting condemnation away from violent systems, which benefit the ruling class, and instead onto individuals.
The medicalization of psychedelics is so useful because it gives the guise of neutral exploration of the science for individual therapeutic purposes while at the same time funneling them into a more subtle form of control, which benefits the ruling class. By being presented as scientifically objective, medical professionals can be effective in the task of instituting ruling-class hegemony because as physician and activist Howard Waitzkin argues, “doctors may be more effective in enforcing societal norms than other social control agents; doctors are less accountable to the public and therefore freer to inject class and professional biases into their relationships with clients.”
But it goes further than shifting from system-based analysis to individual-based analysis. The process of medicalization also leads to material control of these substances by institutions that serve the ruling class. The medicalization of psychedelics means substances that can profoundly affect consciousness and one’s perception of society as a whole will be more likely to be “available” strictly through medical gatekeeping. This will lead to more control over how psychedelics are used, what the outcome of their usage is, all while ensuring a profitable market is created within the medical system that poses no threat to the status quo. Psychedelics in the hands of capitalist doctors, therapists, companies, will be used to reinforce capitalist ideology, individualized psychiatry, and a continued obfuscation of the social and structural factors affecting health and well-being.
Why Incorporate Psychedelics as Medicine?
This brings us to questions around why medical control of psychedelics would be useful. We can propose a number of ideas. One compelling theory is suggested by Caitlin Johnstone in her piece “‘Psychedelic Renaissance’ Entirely about Corporate Greed.” The author notes “the abusive nature of capitalism is causing a widespread mental health crisis that our rulers have a vested interest in preventing so the slaves will keep turning the gears of the machine.” The proposals range anywhere from treating alienation and depression resulting from workplace exploitation with psilocybin to giving MDMA to soldiers to make it easier for them to advance imperialist policy through killing and military violence. Could this latter example be why we see military personnel gathering to conferences like Psychedelic Science like moths to a flame?
Psychedelics themselves do not have an inherent right or left ideology built into them. They have the power to either break down or reinforce traditionally held beliefs around people’s relation to themselves, their loved ones, society, and even reality itself. They can threaten hegemonic ideologies, or they can reinforce and deepen the acceptance of ruling-class ideologies. For some, when combined with critical political analysis, psychedelics can reconnect the user to greater inner purpose, reconnect to community, reestablish the interconnectivity of all living things. With this reconnection could come the potential of a realization of the truly destructive nature of oppressive systems. This opens the possibility for one to see the destructive systems outside of him or herself as the true causes of suffering and develop resolve to fight to destroy those systems. When combined with revolutionary political analysis, this can give these substances revolutionary potential in some cases.
We saw at least some of this process play out in the “first psychedelic wave” in the ’60s as there were often direct connections made between psychedelic use and anti-establishment related political practice. It comes as no surprise, then, that now proponents of the medicalization of psychedelics fear a repeat of the hit the movement took at that time. It’s partially why there is a strong focus on not letting anything “go off the rails” and a condemnation of the connection between political practice and psychedelic use.
The political potential of psychedelic use is what makes it even more important for the ruling class to gain hegemonic control over how these substances are used and made available to the public. It makes it that much more important for medical professionals, for example, to help push bourgeois ideology by helping perpetuate individualization and internalization of psychological suffering, for example, ultimately misdirecting the gaze away from a critical, system-based analysis.
When Gramsci discussed hegemony, he saw the process of the ruling class maintaining ideological control as a constant battle in which ruling-class “norms” are constantly destabilized or questioned. This process of questioning ruling-class hegemony becomes heightened in times of crisis. Today, capitalism creates more and more crises around the globe. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the limits to the biomedical model of maintaining health and well-being. Now, postpandemic peaks, overdose deaths are increasing, and suicides are once again on the rise. We see increasing military conflicts around the globe and the current geopolitical landscape compounding things with rising inflation making it harder for people to make ends meet. These co-occurring crises can cause people to question whether ruling-class institutions such as medicine can actually help treat or alleviate the suffering of the masses. In this context, it is no wonder that medicine would naturally incorporate psychedelics as therapeutic modalities as it becomes even more crucial for capitalist class to restrengthen the legitimacy of ruling-class institutions at this time.
The Need for a Revolutionary Perspective in the Renaissance
By incorporating these substances into medicine and other mainstream institutions, proponents can claim that we are moving toward making these substances more available to help a greater number of people. At the same time, the trend will help keep psychedelics from playing any role in pushing the toiling masses to upend the entire system. As we argue above, hegemonic institutions such as medicine can help monitor and control the conclusions reached by those using these substances. And this obviously extends beyond the strict limits of medicine. For example, those acting as guides or doing integration work are going to be some of the most influential people in influencing the conclusions individuals come to from using psychedelics. This makes their political praxis that much more crucial toward influencing outcomes.
We can already see some of the outcomes of the quest for acceptance into hegemonic institutions in real time today — the venture capitalist, the investor bros, fresh from their journey with “my shaman,” having seen the creation and destruction of the universe, now emerge as new beings. And yet the capitalist capture is so complete, their only recourse is to commodify. They have created companies now traded on the NASDAQ — with all the typical bells and whistles of “fair trade,” “sustainability,” and “equity.” But, contrary to what some may hope, the power and money will not shift post-ayahuasca enlightenment. We should know that these drugs have been available to the rich and powerful for 70 years, many whom were the architects of neoliberalism.
We want to be clear, any possibility of psychedelics helping mitigate suffering under capitalism can be positive. But as these substances are incorporated into hegemonic institutions such as medicine, we should ask ourselves, What is our goal? Is our goal to simply blunt suffering, or is our goal to actually reduce and eliminate suffering? If we want to strive for both, we must question the structures these substances are being incorporated into and how they function to further entrench ruling-class control. We must understand how ruling-class hegemony functions through class institutions.
Overall, our hope is that psychedelics can meet their revolutionary potential and have a role in not only mitigating suffering caused by violent systems, but also help us eliminate those systems altogether. But if system-based analysis is absent from the growing renaissance, and if revolutionary politics are not central to our analysis, then the potential to actually fight systems which create suffering does not exist.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Mike Pappas and Dimitri Mugianis.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Since 1997, the U.S. is one of only two countries (the other being New Zealand) that allows direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for health products like medications and procedures. Such DTC advertising in the U.S. increased from $2.1 billion in 1997 to $9.6 billion in 2016 — and continues to rise.
And you wonder why two-thirds of the country literally trust Big Pharma with their lives.
In 2022, Harvard Health Publishing did something remarkable. They published this article which basically said the quiet part out loud.
Check out this excerpt:
Keep this in mind: the main purpose of DTC drug advertising is to sell a product, not educate consumers. The language of drug ads makes that clear. Consider these common examples.
- “A leading treatment for this condition.” Perhaps, but what if there are only two or three drugs available for that condition? When considering any treatment, it’s important to know what the other options are and how they compare, yet it’s unlikely this additional information will be mentioned.
- “No other treatment has been proven better.” This suggests that the advertised drug is great. Yet it might be only as good as — and no better than — older, less expensive, or even over-the-counter competitors. Plus, drug ads are unlikely to mention the option of taking nothing for the condition in question, even though many minor ailments get better on their own.
- “In clinical studies, this medication proved more effective than standard treatment.” So, how good is the standard treatment? If a drug helps only 20% of people with a disease and “standard treatment” helps 15%, the added cost and risk of side effects of the new therapy may not prove worthwhile.
- “I don’t care about studies… it works for me” or “This drug gave me my life back.” The power of the anecdote — one person’s story of near-miraculous improvement with a particular treatment — is undeniable. The problem is that studies do matter. Otherwise, we’d all be taking the advice of a proverbial “snake oil salesman” recommending unproven and potentially dangerous drugs because someone said it worked for them. And, of course, in ads promoting drugs or procedures, that “someone” is often a paid actor or spokesperson.
- “For some, one pill is all you need for 24-hour relief.” This sounds good, but how many is “some”? If one in 100 gets 24-hour relief, the drug may be less effective than the ad suggests. Also, what does “relief” mean? If a drug reduces pain by 10% for 24 hours, that’s a rather modest benefit; a competitor’s drug might reduce it by 80% or even 100%. These details are often left out of drug ads.
They have so little respect for you that they’re not even pretending to tell the truth.
A few reminders to everyone who thinks pharmaceutical companies are actually working to make you well:
- About 4,500 FDA-approved medications and devices are pulled from the shelves each year because they’ve been found to be neither safe nor effective.
- More than $2 billion a year is paid by Big Pharma directly to doctors and up to 80 percent of physicians have received such payments.
- Doctors and medicine are now the top cause of death in the United States.
Reminder: When we take responsibility for our own health and stop being so easily programmed to trust “experts,” we take back all the power from the Medical-Industrial Complex.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Allen Forrest.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
I think it is generally accepted that the practice of medicine has changed radically over the past fifty or so years. The medicalization and corporatization of life have “progressed” simultaneously as most doctors have become obedient servants of the corporate state.
But wait, one may object, and with some justification.
The development of micro-surgical techniques has significantly improved the methods of many operations that were formally very invasive and posed a great risk to the elderly and chronically sick. Many people have had knee, hip, and heart surgeries – to name a few – that would have been problematic or impossible in the past. Body part replacements are now common. Soon everyone will be half-mechanical on the way to full robotization with a bit of pig and cow thrown in for good measure. Whether this is good is debatable on many levels, but the “procedures” (a word that seems to have replaced the more gruesome sounding words “operations” or “surgeries”) have clearly become more efficient and less invasive. These micro-surgical techniques have surely saved lives and improved the quality of life for many.
So much for the technology. I have a little medical tale to tell.
My best friend, an athletic man in his mid-seventies in excellent health and athletic shape, went to a new doctor at a medical practice since his doctor of thirty-five years had retired. The visit was for an annual physical that was required under the practice’s rules. He had previously met this doctor for a required brief meet-and-greet introduction and all seemed copacetic.
This time, he was ushered into the examination room where he sat and waited for the doctor. A nurse took his blood pressure and pulse and departed. The doctor soon arrived with an iPad and sat down next to him. He put the man’s records up on the screen. He then proceeded to review a list of inoculations my friend did or didn’t have. My friend – let’s call him Joe – has always been a guy who took very little medicine and was rarely sick; at the most he would take an aspirin or a few ibuprofen after a vigorous workout.
“I see you had a tetanus shot,” said the doctor.
“Yes, after I cut my hand.”
“And at your age it’s good you had a pneumonia vaccine.”
“I did,” said Joe, “but I kind of regret it.”
“Oh no, at your age you are at great risk from dying from pneumonia,” replied the doctor. He added, “And you haven’t had your shingles vaccination, which I highly recommend. It’s covered by Medicare now. You don’t want to get shingles; it’s terrifying.”
Joe said nothing.
“And you are due for a flu vaccine.”
“I never had one and never will,” said Joe.
“At your age you can die from the flu. It’s very dangerous. I definitely recommend you get it.”
“No thanks.”
“You really should.”
His voice rising, the doctor said, “And I see you have not gotten any Covid vaccines. You are really risking your life by not doing so. You must get them.”
Joe then succinctly explained his deep knowledge about Covid, the “vaccines,” their lack of testing, the mRNA technique, the deaths and injuries, etc. – all the reasons he opposed them.
The doctor became agitated. He argued back; explained how he had gone to Yale and studied the mRNA process under Drs. F. Teufelmeister and A. E. Newman and that he knew the vaccines were very safe and effective blah blah blah.
Joe said, “It doesn’t matter that you went to Yale. I emphatically disagree.”
This incensed the doctor, who blurted out, “If it was allowed, I would hold you down and inject you right now.”
“Is that so?” said Joe, incredulous.
The annual physical ended soon thereafter.
The doctor never laid a hand on Joe to examine him. No stethoscope; no ear, throat or nose checks; no hands on any part of his body – the exam was exclusively about vaccinations, read off a screen. Technical in all regards. All about how Joe was so very vulnerable and could die without them. The doctor was Big Pharma’s mouthpiece. Death threats devoid of any human touch, cold and sterile, and a wish that he could hold Joe down and forcibly inject him, the touch of the fascist mind expressed in a wish.
When Joe told me this story, I, being a student of the sociology of medicine, was reminded of the history of eugenics and the sick minds of people who think they can cull the herd because of their power and prestige. The sordid history that continues under euphemisms such as genetic research. Here was a doctor who dared to say what others no doubt think as well: “I would hold you down and inject you right now,” if only I could. But since he can’t, the state must find other ways to coerce, such as compulsory medical requirements. Such are totalitarian dreams made of, when death has become a commodity used to sell the dreams of reason, and the healer’s art, once linked to working with nature, has become an adjunct of state propaganda.
When I later met Joe at the coffee shop, I brought him my copy of Ivan Illich’s Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, one of the great books of modern times.
Thumbing through it, Joe came to a page where I had underlined the following:
The ritualization of crisis, a general trait of a morbid society, does three things for the medical functionary. It provides him with a license that usually only the military can claim. Under the stress of crisis, the professional who is believed to be in command can easily presume immunity from the ordinary rules of decency and justice. He who is assigned control over death ceases to be an ordinary human. As with the director of a triage, his killing is covered by policy. More important, his entire performance takes place in an aura of crisis.
On my way home I stopped to pick up my sister’s mail. The AARP Bulletin was in the box with her letters. This is one of two publications of the AARP organization, a powerful lobbying group and medical insurance company with 38 million members for people fifty years-old and over. The AARP Bulletin and AARP The Magazine are the largest circulation publications in the United States with a combined distribution of approximately 67 million.
The cover story on The AARP Bulletin is:
How To Stay Safe This Summer
Extreme Weather Covid Concerns Tick-Borne Diseases Bad Drivers Food Poisoning Home-Repair Rip-offs Crazy Utility Bills
Is there anything not to fear in this morbid culture where crises are promoted faster than the therapeutic and hygienic “remedies” offered to deal with them? Create the diseases and all the bogeymen and then offer pseudo-solutions straight from the sorcerer’s playbook.
Build the fear and they will come, knocking at the sorcerers’ doors.
If it were allowed, I would lift you up with a simple truth.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Contrary to the vaccine hesitant crowd, retired professor Noam Chomsky opined, “People who refuse to accept vaccines, I think the right response for them is not to force them to, but rather to insist that they be isolated. If people decide, ‘I am willing to be a danger to the community by refusing to vaccinate,’ they should say then, ‘Well, I also have the decency to isolate myself.’”
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.