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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Capitalism gathered resources — land, labor, and capital to start an industrial revolution that brought prosperity and elevated standards of living to much of the earth’s inhabitants. Once in motion, it generated additional capital that gathered more labor and more resources in a perpetual cycle of increased production that constantly benefitted populations. The achievements did not occur smoothly, sputtering from periodic recessions that eventually solicited government policies to recharge the system.
Soviet-style socialism did not patiently wait for capitalism to provide capital formation, industrial development, allocation of resources, and prosperity for its population. The Soviets struggled to house, clothe, and feed, in a short time, a deprived population that had barely survived World War II, which led to mismanagement, demotivation, shoddy construction, and misallocation of resources. By not following Karl Marx’s observations, which praised capitalist development and urged its necessity before socialist constructions, the Soviet system doomed itself to failure.
Capitalism has neared a peak, mostly using capital to generate more capital, unable to comprehend the challenges faced by its actions, going as far as it can go without intensifying the major problems it has created. Slowly and inexorably, the socio-economic system refutes a counter-productive capitalism, that is taking more than it is giving, that is destroying more than it is creating, and that has become more irresponsible than responsible. In the coming decades, cooperation will be preferred to competition, sharing preferred to taking, responsibility to all preferred to irresponsibility to one, socialization preferred to capitalization.
The anticipated changes do not arrive from ideological, economic, social, or political considerations; they arrive from the realization that the earth is on fire and only a strong-willed and collective community can dampen the conflagration. They come from realizing that private and civic initiatives cannot and will not resolve the forecasted problems, each will protect what they have and deny the challenges — greenhouse gas emissions that heat the atmosphere and petition a handover from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources; climate change that modifies coastlines and arable lands; robotics and artificial intelligence that change the factory floor, its administration, and the composition of the workforce; possibility of nuclear war in an atmosphere of intense international hostility and growing arms races; pandemics from new disease microbes that replicate quickly, defy conventional medicine, and spread beyond borders; security enhancements due to internal conflicts and external hostilities; political, economic and social polarizations that have stimulated populist movements; and population migrations that cause cultural conflicts and reassignment of resources.
These challenges have subsidiary challenges that each creates – reallocation of food sources and possible shortages in food supply; economic upheavals due to bankruptcies of resource and transportation industries and nations dependent upon fossil fuels; re-orientation of the workforce to prevent severe unemployment; forced arms controls to prevent global wars; sharing of resources to lessen predicted large scale migrations; international supervision and collective research to prevent the spread of disease; and more equal distribution of income to assure all have basics for survival in a quickly changing economic landscape.
Despite public awareness and concern for all the challenges, inertia is apparent. By default, escaping human extinction will require government intervention in all aspects of the socio-economic system.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The alarm has sounded. “Higher concentrations of greenhouse gases, and carbon dioxide (CO2) in particular, are causing extra heat to be trapped and average global temperatures to rise. For most of the past 800,000 years the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere was roughly between 200 and 280 parts per million.” In 2022, the global CO2 concentration was recorded at 417.2 ppm.
Containing carbon emissions demands regulation of all energy sources and severe changes in the air, sea, and ground transportations that use the energy sources. The latter change can be partially fulfilled by a shift to electric vehicles, which, due to elevated costs, will require government subsidies. Substitutes for the engines that drive air and sea transportation are not easily available and these transportation systems may face restrictions. Severe reductions in international transport and other industries that use fossil fuels for locomotion may occur.
Failure to limit carbon emissions leads to climate change.
Climate Change
NASA confirms climate change. “While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years.” Predictions of heavier rainfall in some areas, droughts in other areas, loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves are already happening.
Linked to addressing the effects of climate warming is the addressing of severe economic problems due to population, agriculture, and labor shifts, and a possible economic decline. The latter might result from lower and changing demand for products in companies engaged in fossil fuel extraction, petroleum refining, fossil energy transport, pipelines, and associated equipment manufacture. Fisheries, tourism, airlines, shipping, animal husbandry, recreation, investment, and plastics industries will also be affected. In directing investments so they factor climate change into their capital distribution, investment powerhouse, Black Rock, has already considered a makeover of the economic system.
Earth and its inhabitants have proved adaptable, surviving catastrophes and climate changes in previous epochs. The predicted rapidity of this climate change and the scientific analysis that attributes it to carbon emissions make it unlikely that, without more centralized planning and regimentation, the earth will be sufficiently prepared to ameliorate the climate shifts.
Food Supply
A UN Report states that “In the next 30 years, food supply and food security will be severely threatened if little or no action is taken to address climate change and the food system’s vulnerability to climate change.” Shifts in arable lands, increases in desert lands, a dwindling fish supply, and possible limits to meat production, due to less grasslands and restrictions on methane gas release from herds, will re-orient the food supply. Warmer water temperatures will cause changes in habitat ranges of many fish and shellfish species. Unless food production and distribution are carefully monitored and controlled, famines will occur. Sustainable farming will become a rule.
Water Resource
The United Nations World Water Development Report 2018 concludes,
The global demand for water has been increasing at a rate of about 1% per year over the past decades as a function of population growth, economic development and changing consumption patterns, among other factors, and it will continue to grow significantly over the foreseeable future….At the same time, the global water cycle is intensifying due to climate change, with wetter regions generally becoming wetter and drier regions becoming even drier. Other global changes (e.g., urbanization, de-forestation, intensification of agriculture) add to these challenges. At present, an estimated 3.6 billion people (nearly half the global population) live in areas that are potentially water-scarce at least one month per year, and this population could increase to some 4.8–5.7 billion by 2050.
Will private industry be able to regulate and equitably distribute available water resources? Only governments, acting in concert with one another and with international agencies will determine who gets what, when, and where.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) plus Robotics
Robotics clears the factory floor of workers and AI, by replacing much administration, clears the offices of managers who solve problems, clarify work schedules, and prepare and manage budgets.
New software and manufacturing industries will emerge, but will the tools of the new industrial age be used to satisfy the wants and needs of the populace or mainly the profits of entrepreneurs? Will the self-operating machines be able to generate income for all those who have left the factories; will there be sufficient income in the system to purchase all goods in the expanded market? Will supply exceed demand and profits become a mirage? Will AI and extensive Robotics be suitable companions to the workers of a new and less profit-oriented system, where wages can be coupons for a more equitably distributed national income? Arrangement between humans and the new machines reorders democracy and the social order; reorders society into Democratic Socialism.
Population Migrations
Already a major problem that has reached crisis proportions, a 2018 World Bank Group report has climate change enhancing the problem. The report “estimates that the impacts of climate change in three of the world’s most densely populated developing regions—sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America—could result in the displacement and internal migration of more than 140 million people before 2050.” A mass movement of that scale will need cooperative government actions and international agreements to prevent political and economic strife and enable continued development in the affected regions.
Nuclear war
Nations that rely on fossil fuel exports to maintain their economic system — Middle East, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and others — and nations destabilized by the effects of climate change — water scarcity, agriculture losses, food depletion — that cannot effectively compete and re-orient themselves in the changing world may become aggressive and seek opportunities by engaging in warfare, which could lead to use of weapons of mass destruction. A byproduct of the switch to renewable fuels and climate change — nations unable to compete or adapt in the new economic environment — behooves a means to accommodate those who might resort to military operations to survive. Arms controls and peaceful cooperation will replace arms races and aggressive behaviors.
Disease and Pestilence
The spread of the COVID-19 virus serves as a warning for future pandemics. Local actions can contain the pandemic but cannot prevent its spread. Centralized programs that mobilize agencies, institutions, and the public are necessary to coordinate activities and defeat the pandemic. National health plans, which enable every citizen to have adequate medical coverage, will ensure that everyone will be able to seek medical assistance quickly and halt the spread of diseases. Trends to increased isolation, remaining home, and ordering goods and foods online have changed lifestyles and affected commercial activities of retail stores, restaurants, entertainment, sports arenas, local transportation, and suburban malls. With more work from home, rather than from offices, rapid changes in urban environment, industry composition, and employment have appeared and necessitated government assistance to prevent business collapses and severe unemployment.
The COVID-19 virus pandemic is only the first of other forecasted toxic leaps from animals to humans. The planet has responded well to lifestyle changes and the socio-economic effects induced by the pandemic. The next wave or waves may be more toxic and create more demands on the governing institutions to supply relief to trapped populations.
Security Enhancements
Upheavals, scarcities, and economic shifts create masses of marginal and alienated peoples. Those who are not empathetic to the plights of others become their enemies. Terrorism and mass shootings from those who are mentally ill, feel estranged from society, and have been coopted by extremists will grow. Tighter law enforcement, increased surveillance, and privacy invasions will follow. Protection of others will replace self-protection. The placating phrase, “Big brother is watching for you,” will replace the chilling phrase, “Big brother is watching every part of you.” This will be a positive rearrangement of the surveillance that Google and a myriad of Internet-based companies, who acquire vast information about the birth, life, and habits of American citizens, perform daily. Store cameras, street cameras, doorbell cameras, garage cameras, office-building cameras, and public place cameras will be replaced by one big camera, an eye for moral and social obedience.
Political and Social Polarization
Modern democracies have given people freedom and hope, more of the air to breathe. In the process, groups have taken advantage of the freedoms and increased their concentration of wealth and power, which has led to oligarchies. Those who feel dominated, unable to express their longings, and feel they have been unfairly sidetracked from prosperity have sought refuge by gathering together in nationalist organizations and populist politics. The coming socialization poses a solution by implementing workplace democracy in which workers have a stake in corporate management and are able to receive a more equitable share of income and wealth. Grassroots politics will take hold; governance from ground up, rather than from top down, will prevail.
Conclusions
Natural disaster problems have always sought government intervention. A study found that climate-related disasters in ancient Mesopotamia “forced greater cooperation and a more widespread distribution of power across social sectors.” The convergence of several perils at one time strikes a new chord in domestic and international relations — cooperation before competition, survival of all before the survival of the fittest, limited material wealth before unlimited natural catastrophes.
From a constant badgering of the soul that associates socialism with central authority and mind control, a resistance to socialized governance has arisen. The words are internalized and their utterance brings a visceral response of scorn and doubt. Central authority? Isn’t the United States dollar the central and primary reserve authority for the global economy, which facilitates the United States borrowing money and arbitrarily imposing painful financial sanctions on Russia, Iran, and any adversary of the U.S. Don’t the U.S. and Western nations control SWIFT, the centralized Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, “a secure financial messaging service used to execute international transactions among banks,” and gives the U.S. economic and political clout? Mind control? Isn’t that what nationalist governments, such as the United States, do in their education system and the media giants do as purveyors of misinformation? Those caught in the grip of misinformation can choose between a path that may offend them but allows them to survive or a path that leads them to water up to their chins, figuratively and literally.
The MAGA contingent, that exclaims “Better Dead than Red” needs to transpose to “Better Pink than Sink,” the new slogan for the Democratic and Socialist communities, pushed to leadership in order to prevent Capitalism’s latest offering — human extinction.
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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Colonialism has as its aim gaining ownership/control of the land and its resources regardless of whether or not the land was already populated by an Indigenous people. Morality aside, colonialism has been very successful in the context of Turtle Island. This is also true in northwestern Turtle Island, where the colonies designated “Vancouver Island” and “British Columbia” (merged in 1866) were created through the dispossession of First Nations.
Dispossession of a people is a thoroughly nasty business, and it blatantly violates one of the biblical ten commandments, one that is encoded in law around the world, namely, “Thou shalt not steal.” Those who have gained property and wealth, and their progeny who continue to profit from the dispossession of Others, would like to paint a prettier picture of colonialism.
Sam Sullivan, a former mayor of Vancouver and former cabinet minister in the BC legislature, is the easy-to-listen-to narrator of Kumtuks, a series of historical videos which are usually interesting and informative. However, Kumtuks often presents a gussied-up narrative around the history of colonialism. Usually omitted from the discussion is that the land that settler-colonialists came into possession of was stolen from Original Peoples who had their own laws, beliefs, economies, and culture.
The Kumtuks video “1862 Smallpox Epidemic: British Columbia’s First Major Contagious Outbreak” claims to be based in the oral history of the Haida. The source given is the book Raven’s Cry (1966, 1992) by American author Christie Harris. Both versions of the book are interesting and informative for the historical perspective they shine on the Haida and the interactions they had with the Iron Men (as the Haida called the White men). The versions differ little, but the 1992 version is preferable because of the respect shown for the names and designations used by the Haida. Bill Reid, whose mother was Haida, is a renowned artist who illustrated Raven’s Cry and was a mentor to Harris. Harris also spent time with the family of Haida artist Charles Edenshaw. Harris, Reid, and Edenshaw are all deceased. So I will refer to Harris’s book to ascertain the verisimilitude of what Sullivan says in his narration.
What does Raven’s Cry indicate about Haida feelings toward the presence and behavior of the Iron Men?
Haida hostility, as well as the stormy moat around the Haida islands, discouraged American miners. Nevertheless, James Douglas, Chief Factor for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s western district and Governor of the little colony of Vancouver Island, advised Her Majesty Queen Victoria that it would be well to maintain a gunboat on the northwest coast to protect British rights. (p 102) [Italics added.]
Harris indicates the priority of Douglas. Douglas is not said to be protecting Haida rights. This was about colonialism: protecting rights claimed by the British, rights that presumably included sailing a gunboat in Haida waters.
The Haida did not acknowledge British rights. When the Company sent its schooner Recovery in with a group of Company miners in 1852, it was thwarted. The Haida simply waited for the white men to blast. Then they rushed in and grabbed the treasure. It was their gold. Let anyone else try to take it! (p 102)
Clearly, Douglas’s priority was objectionable to the Haida.
The “native chiefs” objected to colonialism:
“What we don’t like about the [White man’s] government is their saying this, ‘We will give you this much land,’ ” they protested. “How can they give it when it is our own? We cannot understand it. They have never bought it from us or our forefathers. They have never fought and conquered our people and taken the land that way, and yet they say now they will give us so much land — our own land!” (p 134)
Sdast’a·aas Saang gaahl Eagle chief chief 7indansuu felt likewise:
“By what right do the King George men claim this land?” 7indansuu demanded of Governor Douglas. “There are no treaties with the tribes. There was no conquest by warriors.” (p 115)
What comes across strongly in Raven’s Cry is what Raven’s cry was about. A Haida legend tells that humans were coaxed from a clamshell into the world by Raven; these people were the first Haida. With the arrival of the greedy colonialists, Raven saw his Haida robbed of their land and lifeways.
The Raven and the First Men by Bill Reid
In a lighter vein, Harris wrote,
Unfortunately, Governor Douglas retired that year, though not before making a strong case for generous treatment of Indians, or before setting aside many reservations. The Queen had honored him with a knighthood. (p 132)
Harris generally comes across as respectful and sympathetic to the Haida, but she still seems mired in a colonialist mindset. Why is taking the land of a people and setting aside some reservations for them considered “generous”? If a thief steals my library and returns a few of the books, is the thief generous?
***** Author Tom Swanky has a background having studied journalism, political science, and holding a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree. Therefore, he has the bona fides to listen to the Original Peoples and research what the evidence is for the oral histories. In his latest book, The Smallpox War against the Haida (review), he relates how the Haida were wary of smallpox.Because the narrative in “1862 Smallpox Epidemic: British Columbia’s First Major Contagious Outbreak” is starkly at odds with the narrative in The Smallpox War against the Haida, I turned to Swanky to discuss the different narratives. I also reached out to Sam Sullivan through the Global Civic Policy Society which produces the Kumtuks videos, but have yet to hear back.
***** Kim Petersen: Sullivan narrates, “Dr John Helmcken vaccinated 500…. Douglas had Helmcken send vaccine around the province.” Yet, from a reading of your book, there is so much more to say about Helmcken and how “vaccination” was carried out.
Tom Swanky: The Police Commissioner advised a journalist that Helmcken personally had administered a procedure to 500 natives on April 26, 1862, in a context where multiple observers reported that the disease – as of that date – remained confined to just one of the People represented at Victoria and these observers believed the disease still could be contained among that one People. However, within a few days after the disclosure of Helmcken’s program, witnesses then began reporting that some noticeable number of the natives who he supposedly had “vaccinated” were seen to have the disease. Also, within ten days of Helmcken’s vaccination program being disclosed, that is, within the time usually required for an infection to become visible, the disease suddenly exploded so that it was now no longer visible among only one People, it was everywhere. This evidence is consistent with Helmcken’s program having been all or in part, not “vaccinations” but inoculation with actual smallpox. And thereby creating the opportunity for the disease to become rooted among new Peoples and spread widely as a result of inoculation epidemics. It was because of the risk of inoculation creating epidemics that Parliament had outlawed inoculation in 1840. To administer inoculations in 1862 was a violation of British law, and so any use of the procedure would have to be concealed.
There is substantial other evidence of inoculation being used to spread the disease in the North Pacific during 1862. The Oweekeno said in 1862 that the medicine the colonists sold them started the disease. Numerous other cases can be documented where doctors administered what was advertised as a “vaccination” program, but after which the disease exploded among the targeted population. In fact, there is little to no evidence that “Douglas had Helmcken send vaccines” around the colonies. At Kamloops, the HBC post manger reported administering a procedure to the surrounding natives all summer – however, by late fall, independent observers were reporting that the indigenous residents in the Kamloops area had been virtually exterminated.
Once can draw two lessons from Helmcken’s advertised “500 vaccinations.” The first lesson is that each stage of the disease undergoing an advance – beginning with its original importation in 1862 – was accompanied by some sort of public relations campaign that subsequent events would show was misdirection by those advancing the disease. The second lesson is that historians who come to this material unaware of their own colonial predispositions, or of the phenomenon of confirmation bias, seize on the first thing they read without doing the painstaking work of then seeing how events actually unfolded.
KP: The Kumtuks video mentions numerous conflicts among the Northern First Nations and the Southern First Nations, but he omits mention of any conflicts between First Nations and settler-colonialists. Instead the colonial administration of Vancouver Island is portrayed as a peacemaker in having the Northerners towed up island past Nanaimo. In Raven’s Cry, Harris wrote:
More than ever before, futile rage against the overpowering white man turned on fellow Indians. Understandably, it turned most fiercely on the Haida, the lords of the coast. Centuries of resentment burst out, especially among the northern neighbors.
The native people raged with resentment at these white men; but the rage turned on their ancient rivals. On June 12th, a thousand Haida reinforcements arrived at Victoria. (p 117-118)
The Kumtuks video seems not in concordance with Raven’s Cry or what you have written of the oral history presented to you by knowledge keepers of The People?
TS: If a researcher is unaware of the issues concerning the means through which the Crown asserted control among many of the indigenous Peoples – which diverse knowledge keepers allege was through a smallpox assisted genocide – then the researcher is unlikely to be attuned to the challenges presented by the sources.
On the one hand, among the colonial sources are the multiple efforts at misdirection – which were an integral part of the smallpox program executed by the colonial authorities – and, after 1862, there followed the usual post-genocide or post-criminal activity of denying the shameful or wrongful thing done.
On the other hand, among the indigenous sources there is the necessity of coping with having been purposefully targeted for destruction by the colonial authorities and the incoming colonial community. For the indigenous Peoples, the post-1862 task became walking a fine line so as not to offend a community that has shown a propensity to destroy you and yet wanting to work on the political task of undoing the loss of control brought about by what is understood to have been a smallpox genocide. So, for example, one will see praise offered for Douglas – politely overlooking his smallpox policies to focus on the time before April/June of 1860 when he had set a precedent of colonial respect for indigenous customs in inter-community relations and before he had begun the process of displacing indigenous authority. In addition, in things published primarily for the benefit of a colonial audience, one will see a desire not to be offensive but to cater to the colonial mythology concerning indigenous relations.
Very early in my work, I was advised by more than one elder that if I truly wanted to learn about the teaching in indigenous communities, I would learn by listening to what elders and knowledge keepers told each other or their communities and not by asking questions for someone to tell me something – for members of the colonial community often are told what they want to hear or a version satisfying some political need.
KP: The video depicts Douglas lamenting that some Indigenous peoples did not accept the preventative measures against smallpox. However, in your book, you noted how Douglas had tried to scare Haida by warning of a fake outbreak of measles. (Swanky, p 84-86) Harris in Raven’s Cry wrote:
Alarmed at the thought of what might happen next, Governor Douglas tried to banish all the natives with a measles scare, which had often worked before. But the native people weren’t frightened by it now. (p 118)
TS: This is all just fiction by someone who is not very familiar with the actual record. Nowhere does Douglas do any such lamenting. In fact, Bishop George Hills reported that the indigenous Peoples where the smallpox first broke out at Victoria were ready to do anything asked of them. Nowhere were natives reported to resist vaccinations – at least until the problems associated with inoculation began to emerge – but there are several accounts of natives going out of their way to become vaccinated.
Douglas used the false threat of an imminent outbreak of measles in June of 1860, in conjunction with his first attempt to assert control over the autonomous indigenous Peoples operating around Victoria. Dr. Helmcken proposed this plan and the hope was that all the autonomous communities would flee and then, when they returned, they would be assigned to spaces and come under the Police Commissioner’s control. Helmcken made this proposal in the Assembly and it was reported in the newspapers. Since Capt. John, the Haida leader who led the resistance to Douglas’s policies – and some other natives – were fluent in English, they would have learned from the newspapers that the threat was part of a dishonest plan to assert control over them. There was every reason not to be frightened and to be resentful of this dishonest trick.
KP: Douglas is portrayed as a defender of First Nations. The video gives Douglas a pass for having been away on the mainland when police towed Northerners into the ocean to return home. But the Kumtuks video states that the oral history of elders tells of Douglas trying to save lives by having the Haida towed home.
TS: This is not true. In another case of what turned out to be misdirection, the Police Commissioner advised the newspapers that he and a colonial gunboat would accompany north the Haida expelled on June 11 so that they would have safe passage past their enemies in Georgia Strait. British law in 1862 was that those with the custody of smallpox carriers had a legal duty to keep a safe distance between the infected people and any nearby healthy people. On this trip north, the Cowichan fired on this convoy to keep it from leaving infected people among them, the convoy did leave infected Haida at Nanaimo, and, rather than safe passage, the Police Commission delivered the Haida to the doorstep of some enemies at Cape Mudge who could be expected to kill them. This plan failed only because the enemies of the Haida at Cape Mudge already had attacked a previous Haida convoy, became infected and were dying.
The actual oral tradition is of Douglas executing a smallpox genocide “holding hands with the HBC.” This tradition is conveyed in “The Story of Bones Bay” and the next generation of knowledge keepers was instructed in the oral tradition during a formal ceremony and pole raising in 2008. The “Story” can be found in the March 2009 edition of Haida Laas, an official publication of the Council of the Haida Nation.
KP: This brings up many questions. Why did the video mention that the police removed the Haida when Douglas was away in the lower mainland? How could he attempt to save lives from the other side of the Salish Sea? Was it an eviction or a life-saving attempt? Also, I could find no mention of the oral history of Haida elders (in either the 1966 or 1992 edition of Raven’s Cry) that testifies that Douglas was trying to save Haida lives by having them removed. After all, this is illogical at best, or at worst genocidally racist, given that 1) the video relates a Victoria newspaper editorial that settler lives were at risk from the camps, in which case gathering all Haida together without discerning who was ill or not would put some Haida potentially at risk from each other, and 2) the question of why the Northerners should be removed all the way up the long water highway, especially since the video stated that it takes 12 days for signs of smallpox to manifest and become infectious. Why send them 800 km to Haida Gwaii and not to a nearby uninhabited island of which there are many around Vancouver Island?
TS: Most serious people recognize that Douglas’ 1862 smallpox policies in the ordinary course would have been considered as criminal offences under British law. That is, everyone recognizes that it was easily foreseeable that his policies would increase dramatically the native death toll. Douglas’ apologists are left to contend that his policies – and these additional deaths – were justified because the presence of smallpox among even one of the autonomous Peoples operating in the Victoria area constituted an emergency threatening the colonial population. On examination, this turns out to be another case of misdirection. The Police Commissioner planted the theory of an emergency in the newspapers at Victoria and Douglas planted the theory at New Westminster. Douglas already had used the concept of an emergency in 1860 to justify his first attempt to assert control over the autonomous Peoples operating in the Victoria area, rather than to deal through the existing native leadership as British policy usually required. The theory of an emergency would be advanced again in a bizarre way when colonists advanced the disease to the Nuxalk and Tsilhqot’in territories.
However, there was never any emergency that constituted an existential threat to the colonial community – vaccine was readily available from San Francisco or the Catholic missions in Oregon, and most of the colonial population already had been vaccinated before the theory of an emergency had been raised. The threat to the colonial community was economic. The fear in the colonial community was that prospective miners or settlers would stay away because ordinary human beings prefer not to witness suffering on a grand scale.
If the Douglas administration had wanted to decrease the death toll from smallpox in 1862, it would have carried out the three control measures that it advertised in the newspapers: vaccinations, a pest house for isolating carriers and sanctuaries to quarantine the disease among infected communities. Instead, the administration perverted each control so that it became another means by which the disease would spread.
KP: The character of James Douglas is wrapped up very much in the colonial history of Vancouver Island and British Columbia and the attempts to extinguish Indigenous title. There are plenty of quotations that attest to Douglas being a morally centered person, but they are several quotations that point to a racist streak. Few humans are white or black. In To Share, Not Surrender: Indigenous and Settler Visions of Treaty Making in the Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia (UBC Press, 2022), the contributors have varying viewpoints on Douglas. Keith Thor Carlson, Canadian research chair in Indigenous and Community-Engaged History at the University of Fraser Valley captures the lack of consensus in his piece, “‘The Last Potlatch’ and James Douglas’s Vision of an Alternative Settler Colonialism,” pointing out that Douglas is less racist than others. This is neither laudatory or condemnatory. Nonetheless, relying on quotations seems to contravene the admonition that actions speak louder than words. Overall, Douglas appears lauded by contemporary academia, cultural depictions, and wider society. With the emerging acceptance of First Nations oral history, will a purported genocidaire such as Douglas continue to elude an honest rendering of history?
TS: In his correspondence with the colonial office in London, Douglas freely refers to the Haida as barbarians and savages. He seems an average representative of the British colonial culture in the North Pacific, which culture imagines anglo-saxons as a superior race – to use Dr. Helmcken’s words. However, it is a distraction to use “race” as a point of departure when seeking to understand the transition of sovereign authority that accompanied colonialism in the North Pacific. The problem facing Douglas and the colonists was to dispossess the indigenous Peoples of their communal or “national” resources through the most cost-effective means. Douglas and others make frequent references to the “great number” of natives occupying strategic locations, pointing to the projection of overwhelming political power that is inherent in great numbers. The implicit motive for this genocide, then, is not reducing another race per se, but reducing the native voice and the capacity of native authority to defend the integrity of its sovereign control.
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.
Should they be taking them? Ukraine is desperate for any bit of warring materiel its armed forces can lay their hands on, but depleted uranium shells would surely not be a model example of use. And yet, the UK, in an act of killing with kindness, is happy to fork them out to aid the cause against the Russians, despite the scandals, the alleged illnesses, and environmental harms.
An outline of the measure was provided by Minister of state for defence Baroness Annabel Goldie’s written answer to a question posed by Lord Hylton: “Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium. Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armoured vehicles.”
The response from the Kremlin was swift. “If all this happens,” warned Russian President Vladimir Putin, “Russia will have to respond accordingly, given that the West collectively is already beginning to use weapons with a nuclear component.” Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu also foresaw “nuclear collision”.
The statement from Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the Russian lower house, shifted the focus from potential nuclear catastrophe to the field of medical consequences, reminding his fellow members that the use of such ammunition by the US in former Yugoslavia and Iraq had led to “radioactive contamination and a sharp rise in oncological cases.”
News networks were left trying to convey a picture to the public, much of it skimpy on the perilous consequences arising from using such munitions. The BBC’s characteristic language of understatement notes that such uranium, stripped of much of its radioactive content, “makes weapons more powerful, but it is feared those weapons could be a threat to people in areas where they are used.”
Sky News had its own benign interpretation of the dangers, suggesting that DU, in emitting alpha particles, did not “have enough energy to go through skin, so exposure to the outside of the body is not considered a serious hazard.” An admission as to the dangers had to follow. “It can be a serious health hazard, however, if it is swallowed or inhaled.”
The US Department of Veterans Affairs outlines a few points on the matter in greater detail. “When a projectile made with DU penetrates a vehicle, small particles of DU can be formed and breathed in or swallowed by service members in the struck vehicle. Small DU fragments can also scatter and become embedded in muscle and soft tissue.”
Since their use in the Gulf War (1991), the Kosovo War (1999), the Iraq War (2003) and Afghanistan, the curriculum vitae of such weapons has become increasingly blotchy. The use of such shells has been contentious to the point of being criminal, said to be carcinogenic and a cause of birth defects. A study examining a civilian population sample from Eastern Afghanistan, published in 2005, revealed that “contamination in Afghanistan with a source consistent with natural uranium has resulted in total concentrations up to 100 times higher than the normal range for various geographic and environmental areas throughout the world.”
Subsequent field research, notably in Iraq, has found instances of serious birth defects, including congenital heart disease, paralysis, missing limbs and neurological problems. While some of these outcomes can be attributable to other activities of the US military and its allies, the role of DU looms large.
The nature of such weaponry is also indiscriminate. As a law firm representing US war veterans acknowledges, those involved in campaigns, notably in Iraq, “may have been exposed to depleted uranium as a result of being in a vehicle that was hit by a projectile, being exposed to burning depleted uranium, or salvaging the wreckage of a vehicle that was hit by a depleted uranium projectile.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs has also admitted that DU is a “potential health hazard if it enters the body, such as through embedded fragments, contaminated wounds, and inhalation or ingestion.” It prefers, however, to treat each claim for disability that might have been the result of DU poisoning “on a case-by-case basis.”
The claimed lack of unequivocal evidence linking such projectiles to adverse effects on the environment and humans has been a consistent theme in investigations – and a boon for militaries using them. A committee of review established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that covered, among other things, the use of these shells by NATO forces in the Kosovo campaign, proved less than satisfactory.
In recommending that no investigation be commenced regarding the bombing campaign – hardly a surprise – the members had to concede that NATO’s responses to any queries were “couched in general terms and failed to address specific incidents.” The Committee also found no consensus on whether the “use of such projectiles violate general principles of the law applicable to use of weapons in armed conflict.”
The UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights proved more forthright on the issue, claiming in a resolution that DU are weapons with indiscriminate effects and should therefore be prohibited under international humanitarian law. The UN General Assembly’s latest resolution on the matter, however, suggested a distinct lack of backbone, noting that “studies conducted so far by relevant international organizations have not provided a detailed enough account of the magnitude of the potential long-term effects on human beings and the environment of the use of armaments and ammunitions containing depleted uranium.”
Little wonder, given such a muddled frame of mind, that the use of DU projectiles has persisted with some relish, despite an avalanche of studies warning of their dangers. Nature abhors a vacuum and fills it accordingly with the mean and ghastly. In November 2015, 5000 rounds of DU ammunition were used in an air raid on oil trucks used by Islamic State forces despite assurances from the US military that it had stopped using such weapons. As to whether it will supply Kyiv with this hazardous product remains unclear – the Pentagon is proving reticent on the subject.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has attacked the UK’s decision. Its General Secretary, Kate Hudson, outlined her concerns in a statement: “CND has repeatedly called for the UK government to place an immediate moratorium on the use of depleted uranium weapons and to fund long-term studies into their health and environmental impacts.”
Short of a clear treaty on the subject, preferably one with teeth, this is much wishful thinking. The Ukrainian forces, however, should give the whole matter a second thought: the effects of such weapons will not distinguish between the users, the targets, and the civilians. In the long run, it will also prove unsparing to the environment, which promises to be richly contaminated by the toxicity of such lingering munitions.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The post The Theatrics of COVID first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A new report by the EPA’s internal watchdog has exposed Trump administration appointees that meddled in the agency’s science to weaken “the toxicity assessment of PFASs.” If not for the Biden administration, which discovered this egregious complicity by political appointees and the chemical industry to weaken standards of toxicity, Americans would be unnecessarily exposed to dangerous chemicals beyond the abhorrent levels of exposure already extant.
Shortly after taking the oath of office, Trump grabbed a baseball bat and waddled over to EPA, eviscerating the agency created under President Richard Nixon’s administration in 1970 to protect the country from too much toxicity and carefree abuse/dumping anything and everything into the environment, e.g., Lake Erie considered a “dead lake” in the 1960s.
Trump chased many EPA senior scientists out, some fled to France. “The nation’s top environmental agency is still reeling from the exodus of more than 1,200 scientists and policy experts during the Trump administration.” (“Depleted Under Trump, a ‘Traumatized’ E.P.A. Struggles With its Mission,” New York Times, Jan. 23, 2023)
As research continues to expose the dangers of PFASs, it’s become the new symbol of toxicity in America. A recent study by Environmental Working Group scientists uncovered disturbing levels of PFASs in America’s freshwater fish found throughout the country from coast-to-coast. Every citizen of America is already subject to exposure to this dangerous chemical that Trump wanted to let loose beyond established principles of science on the public.
According to numerous studies, PFASs accumulate in human tissue, showing up years later potentially as testicular, kidney, or pancreatic cancer, weakened immune systems, decreased fertility, endocrine disruption, elevated cholesterol, increased risk of asthma, thyroid disease, and puzzling weight gain. PFAS chemicals have contaminated drinking water for nearly one-half of America’s population. American cases of chronic illnesses at nearly 50% of the general population support that fact.
According to the EPA: “PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals that have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s because of their useful properties. There are thousands of different PFAS, some of which have been more widely used and studied than others… PFAS can be present in our water, soil, air, and food as well as in materials found in our homes or workplaces.”
While the Trump administration feverishly worked to weaken the foundation of EPA rules and regulations, the EU was considering a much stronger stance on PFASs. According to the Health and Environment Alliance/Europe: “PFAS pollution is out of control and exposure to several forever chemicals have been linked to an array of adverse health impacts, from liver damage to reduced response to routine vaccination by children and certain cancers. PFASs have contaminated the entire planet and are found in the bodies of most people around the globe.”
Meanwhile, according to an expose in the Guardian, March 23, 2023, regarding the Trump administration: “Scientists say the episode is part of larger rot at the agency.” EPA scientists claim that several employees “willingly worked with the Trump appointees to weaken the assessment.” Ibid. EPA insiders claim career staff worked hand-in-glove with industry to weaken EPA standards.
“The controversy centered around a 2021 toxicity report for PFBS, a type of PFAS compound that is toxic at low levels. Research has linked the chemical to kidney disease, reproductive problems and thyroid damage, and it has been found throughout the environment,” Ibid.
“In its recent report, the EPA’s office of inspector general described ‘unprecedented’ interference by former Trump-appointed EPA chief Andrew Wheeler and other political appointees, who ordered the alteration of the PFBS toxicity value just as the assessment was about to be published in late 2020,” Ibid.
Trump changes would have resulted in less costly but insufficient cleanup by industry allowing “higher levels of the chemicals in the environment.” Scientists say it would have put human health at risks that could otherwise be prevented.
It’s nearly impossible to overstate how significant it is to the health and welfare of the country that Biden defeated Trump for the presidency. In February 2021, the Biden administration pulled the Trump-based EPA assessment, declaring it was “compromised by political interference as well as infringement of authorship” and republished the assessment using what it said is “sound science” and declared the issue resolved.
The election of Trump opened a doorway to a mecca of interference by industry in cahoots with politically appointed Trump EPA administrators to water-down long-established regulations by the EPA that were specifically constructed to safeguard Americans. Now, Trump wants to be president once again.
Can the environment vote?
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Bill Gates is not a medical doctor, not a virologist, not a scientist and not even a college graduate, yet we as a society hang on his every word when it comes to proper response to a viral pandemic. Why? It probably has something to do with the millions of dollars he’s “donated” to the World Health Organization and otherwise spent to become a go-to mouthpiece for a range of financial interests, from food to vaccines. Jimmy and guest Robert F. Kennedy jr. discuss how Gates made $500 million off of the COVID vaccines he was wildly promoting, then cashed out and started acknowledging that the vaccines aren’t actually all that great.
Follow Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertKennedyJr
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