This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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There’s a disturbing dynamic that occurs on every Manhattan street corner — virtually every minute of every day. By simply watching the typical New York City pedestrian as they reach the corner at a red light, you get a pretty good idea of what it’s like to deal with an overcrowded, rancorous metropolitan area on a daily basis. No one waits on the sidewalk.
Even if a thousand cars are racing by, practically every single New Yorker insists on stepping a few steps out into the street while waiting for the light to change. They’ll even go as far as squeezing themselves past other impatient street-crossers just to get to the front of the pack.
We are so hyped up, so overstressed, and so programmed to do everything quickly that we can’t even endure waiting 30 seconds for a traffic light. We’ll risk death by stepping off the curb in order to get a head start when the light turns green.
With this in mind, here’s a little thought experiment: Let’s say I’m on such a corner as a pedestrian pushes past me — too harried to realize that he is stepping directly into the path of an oncoming SUV. I reach out, grab ahold of his jacket, and yank his back to safety…only to realize it was none other than former NIAID director, Anthony Fauci.
How might that make me feel?
Reflexively, I’d likely be relieved and gratified to have saved a fellow earthling’s life. But what if that earthling is responsible, in part, for an incalculable number of deaths (with no end in sight)?
What if I would’ve known in advance it was Fauci whose life was in danger? Would I have acted to save him?
Sure, it’s so easy to publicly and hypothetically virtue signal and brag about how I would never help such a pernicious beast and would celebrate his demise.
In the heat of the moment, however, I’m aware that something very human in me might kick in to challenge the black-and-white of it all.
Dr. Fauci, in my estimation, has been a terrible, destructive force for decades — part of the much larger culture of relentless destruction. Saving his life (or the life of any other major political/corporate player) is, by definition, dooming countless others to more misery and death.
Meanwhile, if I didn’t react swiftly to pull Fauci to safety, surely his passing would cause sadness. Friends and family would mourn. People close to him would understandably be devastated and heartbroken.
However, Fauci’s efforts have spread global sorrow and mourning on a far greater scale. Has he, I wonder, ever considered the myriad of family and friends whose lives have been shattered thanks to his handiwork?
Also, of course, we can’t forget: he’s replaceable. There’s always another commissar ready to step in and keep the murderous machine running…with or without Fauci. Hence, those most victimized by this soulless structure would theoretically not even notice the change.
So, I return to the earlier question: If you knew in advance it was Dr. Anthony Fauci whose life was in danger on that NYC street corner, would you reach out— on purely instinctual, human-to-human terms — to save him?
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The post How Could You? first appeared on Dissident Voice.
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This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.
• Wang Yi met with Putin
The post Wang Yi Met with Putin first appeared on Dissident Voice.
• Provinces to employ more people
• Guangzhou to set up high-tech support fund
• 40 years of Chinese medical team in UgandaThis post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Children play in the Rostock housing development, which, like all housing developments in the DDR, was required to include large open spaces for children.
Credit: Jürgen Sindermann,Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archive.A few years ago, a minor medical problem took me to the Hospital Alemán-Nicaragüense in Nicaragua’s capital, Managua. While I was being treated, I asked the doctor, a kindly older man, if the hospital had been built in association with a German missionary organisation, given its name (in Spanish, alemán means ‘German’). No, he said: this hospital used to be called the Carlos Marx Hospital, and it was built in collaboration with the German Democratic Republic (DDR), or East Germany, in the 1980s. The DDR worked with Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to build the hospital in the working-class area of Xolotlán, where three hundred thousand people lived without access to health care. A massive solidarity campaign in the DDR helped raise funds for the project, and East German medical professionals travelled to Xolotlán to set up a camp of provisional medical tents before beginning construction. The brick-and-mortar hospital opened on 23 July 1985.
When the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) took power in 1979, the revolutionaries inherited a country where infant mortality rates had skyrocketed to 82 per thousand live births (which would be the highest rate in the world today) and where health care was a privilege restricted to a small minority of the population. Besides, by the time the FSLN rode into Managua, whatever health care apparatus had been built by the regime of the Somoza family during their 43-year rule had been shattered: the 1972 earthquake destroyed 70% of the city’s buildings, including the military and Baptist hospitals and most of its health care facilities. The Carlos Marx Hospital was an act of immense solidarity by the socialists, built in Managua on the ruins of a society brutalised by the country’s oligarchy and by their enablers in Washington (as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1939 of the dictator at the time, ‘Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’). Socialist internationalism, from the DDR’s assistance to the efforts of Cuban medical personnel, along with the development of the Sandinista health campaigns, markedly improved the lives of Nicaraguans.
In this article, the Nicaraguan press reports on the construction of the Carlos Marx Hospital, which started as a triage tent and was soon expanded into a fully functioning hospital.
Credit: Personal collection of Dr Rüdiger Feltz.I was reminded of the Carlos Marx Hospital by the newest edition in our series Studies on the DDR, jointly produced by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Internationale Forschungsstelle DDR (IFDDR) and entitled ‘Socialism Is the Best Prophylaxis’: The German Democratic Republic’s Health Care System. The information about the Carlos Marx Hospital comes from a brief section in the study on the DDR’s international medical solidarity, which also included, among many other examples, building a hospital in Vietnam during the US war on that country and training thousands of doctors from across the Third World in the DDR. But the study is not focused on medical solidarity, which was a part of the DDR’s wider socialist internationalism that will be taken up in a later edition in the series.
The study is about the DDR’s attempt to create a humane and just health care system in a country devastated by World War II, with few resources available (and a population one-third the size of West Germany’s). The title of the study, ‘Socialism Is the Best Prophylaxis’, comes from a statement made by Dr. Maxim Zetkin (1883–1965), the son of the communist and international women’s rights activist Clara Zetkin (1857–1933). Zetkin’s words became a widely propagated slogan in the DDR and the leitmotif for the public health care system that the DDR sought to build with and for its population, emphasising that health care must be preventative, or prophylactic, and not reactive, or merely concerned with treating illness and injury after they occur. Truly preventative care did not reduce health to medical treatment but focused on the general well-being of the population by continuously improving living and working conditions. The DDR recognised that health must be understood as a social responsibility and a priority in all policies, from workplace safety to women’s universal access to reproductive care, nutrition and check-ups in kindergarten and school, and the need to guarantee holidays for the working class. But Zetkin’s quote also highlights how preventive care can only be realised by a system that eliminates the profit motive, which inevitably results in the exploitation of care workers, inflated prices, patents on life-saving medication, and artificial scarcity.
The DDR created a network of medical institutions that worked to improve diet and lifestyle as well as to identify and treat ailments early on rather than wait for them to develop into more severe illnesses. All of this had to be built in a heavily sanctioned country where the physical infrastructure had been destroyed by the war and where many doctors fled to the West (largely because roughly 45 percent of German physicians had been Nazi Party members, and they knew that they would be treated leniently in the West while they would likely be prosecuted in the DDR and in the Soviet Union).
Medical students train at the Dorothea Christiane Erxleben Medical School, named after Germany’s first female medical doctor, which drew roughly 2,000 students from more than 60 states and national liberation movements during its 30-year existence.
Credit: Thomas Lehmann, Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archive.The DDR’s commitment to comprehensive health care was based on the idea of social medicine (Sozialhygiene), developed by the founder of modern pathology Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) to examine the socio-political determinants of health, and on the Soviet Semashko ‘single payer’ health care system, developed by Nikolai Semashko, People’s Commissar for Health in the Soviet Union from 1918 to 1930.
Among the key aspects of the DDR’s health care system detailed in our study are polyclinics and the community nurse system. When a person in the DDR felt sick, that person would go to a polyclinic, which would be located within their neighbourhood or workplace. Any person could walk into the polyclinic, inform the staff of their ailment, and see a doctor, who would, in turn, direct them to one of the clinic’s many specialist departments (such as internal medicine, oral medicine, gynaecology, surgery, paediatrics, and general medicine). Medical professionals were publicly employed and remunerated and could thus focus on healing the patient rather than on prescribing unnecessary tests and medicines simply to overbill insurance companies or the patients. The different medical professionals and specialists who worked in a single polyclinic consulted each other to find the best course of treatment. Furthermore, on average, 18 to 19 doctors worked in each clinic, allowing for extended hours of operations.
The DDR was not the only place to build a health care system based on this kind of socialist polyclinic format: two years ago, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research published dossier no. 25 on the polyclinics run by communists in the Telugu-speaking regions of India, entitled People’s Polyclinics: The Initiative of the Telugu Communist Movement. The most vital aspect of these polyclinics for our time is that no money was exchanged for care (which is particularly notable in India, where there are extraordinarily high out-of-pocket expenses for health care).
The community nurses used to make their rounds by moped to reach the more remote areas.
Credit: Paetzold, Wolfried. District of Gadebusch, community nurse. 1 October 1982. Wikimedia Commons / German Federal Archive.One paragraph in our study stopped me in my tracks:
In order to extend preventive care to rural areas and scattered villages, rural outpatient centres were built and staffed with up to three doctors, with the number of these facilities rising from 250 in 1953 to 433 by 1989. In many towns, physicians worked in public medical practices or temporarily staffed field offices to provide residents with consultation hours and home visits, while mobile dental clinics visited remote villages to provide all children with preventive care. In addition, the profession of the community nurse was developed in the early 1950s to alleviate the initial shortage of doctors in the countryside, with the number of community nurses expanding from 3,571 in 1953 to 5,585 by 1989. This extensive rural infrastructure helped to provide less densely populated regions with medical services comparable to what was available in urban areas.
In 2015, the International Labour Organisation published a report that found that 56 per cent of rural population worldwide lacks health coverage, with the highest deficit found in Africa, followed by Latin America and Asia. Meanwhile, in the DDR – which lasted a mere forty-one years, from 1949 to 1990 – the socialist project built a rural health care system that linked every resident to the polyclinics in nearby towns through the Gemeindeschwester (community nurse) system. The nurse would get to know every one of the residents in the village, give preliminary diagnoses, and either offer treatments or await the weekly visit of a doctor to each village. When the DDR was dismantled and absorbed into unified Germany in 1990, the community nurse system was disbanded, all 5,585 community nurses were laid off, and rural health care in the country collapsed.
We hope you will join us in an online panel discussion on February 28 to discuss how socialist systems of the past and present have transformed health care to serve the needs of the people rather than profit.
The DDR’s advances in health care built upon Germany’s progressive tradition of public health, including the Proletarian Health Service (PGD), a self-organised health care service that operated from 1921 to 1926.
Credit: Internationale Forschungsstelle DDRNorthwest of Managua, in the city of León, lived the poet Alfonso Cortés (1893–1969), who had been declared ‘mad’ at the age of 34 and chained in his bedroom. Another of Nicaragua’s great poets, Ernesto Cardenal (1925–2020), grew up not far from the home of Cortés. As a child, Cardenal said he used to walk by the Cortés home from the Christian Brothers School and once he saw the ‘poeta loco’ in his chains. A lack of health care condemned Cortés to this humiliation. On one occasion, on his way to see a doctor in Managua, Cortés was driven past a thousand-year-old Genízaro tree in Nagarote, a tree to whom the ‘poeta loco’ wrote a beautiful poem of hope:
I love you, old tree, because at all hours,
you generate mysteries and destinies
in the voice of the afternoon winds
or the birds at dawn.You who the public plaza decorate,
thinking thoughts more divine
than those of man, indicating the paths
with your proud and sonorous branches.Genízaro, your old scars
where, like an in an old book, it is writtenwhat time does in its constant falling;
But your leaves are fresh and happy
The post The True Test of a Civilisation Is the Absence of Anxiety About Health first appeared on Dissident Voice.
and you make your treetop tremble into infinity
while humankind goes forward.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
A citation has been issued by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia against Dr. Hoffe for (allegedly) publicly spreading misleading information by recommending Ivermectin for Covid-19, “Open Letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia re Dr. Charles Hoffe, February 6, 2023.”
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After being ignored and scoffed at for generations, there is now growing awareness of the legitimacy and seriousness of mental health illness; of the debilitating, often suffocating, impact conditions such as depression and anxiety have on individuals, as well as the broader societal impact.
Mental health illness is a modern-day tragedy of global proportions; while individual patterns and circumstances vary, widespread interwoven causes within contemporary society function as major trigger of unhappiness, low self-esteem and discontent. Values, so-called, socio-economic and educational methodologies, including competition, comparison and conformity, the relentless agitation of desire, the importance of ‘success’ and focus on pleasure, all create insecurity, discontent and division; and where there is division of any kind, within the individual or society, conflict inevitably follows.
In June 2022 the World Health Organization (WHO) published its most detailed report on the topic: ‘The World mental health report: Transforming mental health for all’, designed, “To inspire and inform better mental health for everyone everywhere.” The data shows that around one billion people suffer from some form of mental health illness, or one in eight of us; “a staggering figure” [rising annually] which the UN agency rightly illustrates, “is even more worrying, if you consider that it includes around one in seven teenagers.”
Shocking as they are, these figures serve as little more than pointers to the scale of the problem. Most people do not live in developed countries with relatively well-resourced health services, but in poor or desperately poor nations, where little research is carried out and where there is often no mental health support. WHO report that, “around half the world’s population lives in countries where there is just one psychiatrist to serve 200,000 or more people.”
Where treatment is available, it is often unaffordable or inaccessible; consequentially “most people with diagnosed mental health conditions go completely untreated,” and so they suffer, often agonizingly, and in many cases for decades. Mental health illness destroys lives, feeding employment, education and relationship issues or failures; alcohol and drug addiction, and in extreme cases self-harm and suicide. According to WHO (2019 figure), every 40 seconds, of every day, someone somewhere in the world dies of suicide, many more attempt it; among under 25 year olds it’s one of the leading causes of death.
A perpetual state of agitation
Parallel with growing awareness of mental health, there is a good deal of talk in western nations now (commonplace in the Orient for eons) about meditation; and the Buddhist inspired discipline of mindfulness; of focusing completely on the task or activity at hand.
Meditation (from the Sanskrit dhyana) is, strictly speaking, not an activity or a practice: it is a direct experience of reality, in which the division between experiencer and experience has ceased to be. However, what is commonly regarded as mediation is more often than not some form of concentration or visualization exercise. Concentration on the breath, on an imagined form or a particular word/form of words – a mantra of some kind. All of which, whilst perhaps not qualifying as ‘meditation’, is extremely positive for mental fitness.
In the same way that physical health requires our active engagement (exercise, diet, sleep etc.), if we are to create a healthy mind, particularly given the enormous stresses and demands of life, we need to take responsibility for it. To pay attention to the activity of the mind and learn to focus. This means becoming aware of the movement of thoughts, which much of the time takes place unconsciously and is saturated in conditioning. Psychological/sociological conditioning is ubiquitous; beginning from birth – before in fact – and continuing relentlessly until, or unless we wake up and realize that what we take to be ‘I’ or ‘me’, is nothing more than a conditioned structure, an image, built around a set of accumulated ideas; opinions and views – about the world, other people and ourselves, poured into the mind and unconsciously absorbed.
Such constructs are inherently inhibiting and divisive, adding to the erroneous belief that we are separate, from one another, from the natural environment, and from that which we call God. The socio-economic ideology of the age strengthens this sense of separation; cruel, violent and unjust it denies compassion, promoting values based on selfishness, personal ambition/achievement at the expense of the collective good, and the health of the natural world. Economic insecurity is, for the majority, the daily reality, how to pay the rent/mortgage, for instance, and avoid destitution; separation and isolation creates an environment in which fear, most commonly experienced as anxiety or stress, can and does flourish.
Consumerism, which constitutes the life blood of the economic system, is offered as a way to alleviate the inflicted pain. Poisonous on numerous levels it requires discontent and desire to be constantly maintained, ensuring that the mind is kept in a perpetual state of agitation; driven by longing, moving from one feeling induced thought to another, never settled. In order to move beyond the endless buffeting of fluctuating, often painful feelings and transient thoughts, we need to create mental fitness and strengthen the mind. A powerful way of doing this is through meditation and mindfulness.
The impact of meditation on stress
Over the years various studies have been conducted investigating the impact of meditation. In October 2022, Practical Psychology discussed research showing “that meditation can help thicken the prefrontal cortex of the brain,……[which], not only increases our ability to complete tasks…but also reduces aging in the brain.” In addition, “Meditation reduces chatter in the monkey mind. We stop focusing on our problems and start observing what is happening around us,” thus reducing mental agitation; a 2020 study undertaken by the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on a Buddhist monk, found that his brain was ‘eight years younger’ than his 41 years; adding “to a growing pile of evidence that meditative practice may be associated with slowed biological ageing… [which] makes sense biologically, because stress is a thing that causes ageing,” and meditation helps to reduce stress.
New research, reported in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which looked at the impact of meditation on the gut health of 37 Tibetan Buddhist monks, and 19 secular residents, revealed that gut bacteria associated with the alleviation of mental illness “in the monks differed substantially from those of their secular neighbors……suggesting that meditation can influence certain bacteria that may have a role in mental health.”
Becoming mentally aware, learning to consciously work with the mind, to focus on the task at hand, and not allowing the mind to wander off; strengthening and expanding one’s ability to concentrate, facilities mental fitness, reduces the impact of daily stress and worry, and, as the Buddha taught, creates joy: “it is a great good to control the mind; a mind self-controlled [focused] is a source of great joy.” The simple act of sitting quietly for 15 minutes or so, once or twice a day, shifting our focus away from the external chaos and turning within, has been demonstrated (by CHM and others) to aid this process.
Like all exercise regimes, discipline and consistency is needed, but once a rhythm of reflection is established, it quickly becomes part of the daily routine. In choiceless observation, the great Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti maintained, “every form of conditioning is dissolved,” allowing transformation within the brain to take place; healing, in which, as the study on the 41 year old monk demonstrated, the brain cells themselves are rejuvenated, allowing clarity of mind and action to spontaneously come about.
The world we are living in, with its constant noise, demands and pressures; the destructive ideologies, divisions and unjust systems, works against such inner quiet and mental well-being. Indeed, contentment and unconditional happiness is the enemy of the dominant corrupt economic paradigm, founded and reliant as it is on consumerism and desire. Constant longing is its aim and is the guarantee for misery, depression and anxiety/stress. Within such a mentally and physically unhealthy environment, it is crucial that individually we recognize the dangers, which are real and potent, and, where possible and within our own limitations, act to safeguard our own well-being, mental and physical, and of course, the two are inextricably connected.
The post Mental Health Illness: A Global Tragedy by Design first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.
Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.
Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.
Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.
The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.
The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home. America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.
Deepfakes, AI and virtual reality are blurring the line between reality and a computer-generated illusion. Powered by AI software, deepfake audio and video move us into an age where it is almost impossible to discern what is real, especially as it relates to truth and disinformation. At the same time, the technology sector continues to use virtual reality to develop a digital universe—the metaverse—that is envisioned as being the next step in our evolutionary transformation from a human-driven society to a technological one.
Advances in technology are outstripping our ability to protect ourselves from its menacing side, both in times of rights, humanity and workforce. In the absence of constitutional protections in place to guard against encroachments on our rights in the electronic realm, we desperately need an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from predatory surveillance and data-mining business practices.
The courts have aligned themselves with the police state. In one ruling after another, the courts have used the doctrine of qualified immunity to shield police officers from accountability for misconduct, tacitly giving them a green light to act as judge, jury and executioner on the populace. All the while, police violence, the result of training that emphasizes brute force over constitutional restraints, continues to endanger the public.
The nation’s dependence on foreign imports has fueled a $1 trillion trade deficit. While analysts have pointed to the burgeoning trade deficit as a sign that the U.S. economy is growing, it underscores the extent to which very little is actually made in America anymore.
World governments, including the U.S., continue to use national crises such as COVID-19 to expand their emergency powers. None are willing to relinquish these powers when the crisis passes. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, the U.S. government still has 42 declared national emergencies in effect, allowing it to sidestep constitutional protocols that maintain a system of checks and balances. For instance, the emergency declared after the 9/11 has yet to be withdrawn.
The nation’s infrastructure is rapidly falling apart. Many of the country’s roads, bridges, airports, dams, levees and water systems are woefully outdated and in dire need of overhauling, and have fallen behind that of other developed countries in recent years. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that crumbling infrastructure costs every American household $3,300 in hidden costs a year due to lost time, increased fuel consumption while sitting in traffic jams, and extra car repairs due to poor road conditions.
The nation is about to hit a healthcare crisis. Despite the fact that the U.S. spends more on health care than any other high-income country, it has the worst health outcomes than its peer nations. Experts are also predicting a collapse in the U.S. health care system as the medical community deals with growing staff shortages and shuttered facilities.
These are just a small sampling of the many looming problems that threaten to overwhelm us in the near future.
Thus far, Americans seem inclined to just switch the channel, tune out what they don’t want to hear, and tune into their own personal echo chambers.
Yet as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, no amount of escapism can shield us from the harsh reality that the danger in our midst is posed by an entrenched government bureaucracy that has no regard for the Constitution, Congress, the courts or the citizenry.
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“Coronavirus vaccine makers are shielded from liability.” Is this normal? Should one consider this procedure as protecting the rights of those mandated to be vaccinated?
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Using GoFundMe for their “gender-affirming” surgeries
You may wonder if the “trans” madness is as nefarious and widespread as some say. To help address that contemplation:
Click here to see the deluded and manipulated souls seeking “bottom surgery.”
Click here to see the deluded and manipulated souls seeking “top surgery.”
You may also wonder if it’s any of your business what adults do to their bodies. When their insane decisions impact your legal protections and infringe on the rights and safety of females everywhere, it sure is.
But, for the sake of this post, I wanna focus on a very crucial point: It’s not just about adults.
From an October 2022 article published by Reuters (part of the very pro-trans legacy media):
“Thousands of children in the United States now openly identify as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth … As the number of transgender children has grown, so has their access to gender-affirming care, much of it provided at scores of clinics at major hospitals.”
From the same article:
“A total of 17,683 patients, ages 6 through 17, with a prior gender dysphoria diagnosis initiated either puberty blockers or hormones or both during the five-year period. Of these, 4,780 patients had initiated puberty blockers and 14,726 patients had initiated hormone treatment.”
For more details, listen to my interview with Brandon Showalter here.
Children as young as 6 are being manipulated and eventually mutilated by complicit members of the Medical-Industrial Complex to fulfill a transhumanist agenda.
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This won’t go away until we get informed and fight back together. Spread the word and get loud…This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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So, there are no other ways to look at the lab-generated, multivariant SARS-2 than through the lens of mass murdering complicit media and the charlatans of propaganda, all in the employ of billionaires, millionaires and high income folks in this Big Pharma-Big Medicine-Big Feat triage of destruction? Who the hell with a normal-functioning mind believes that?
It’s a great piece here, at Gray Zone — Amid rising reports of vaccine-related menstrual disruptions, the CDC and FDA are dismissing women’s concerns and denying them information while corporate media pathologizes them in sexist fashion.
The writer drills down into the vaccine loving industries (ipso facto, thoughtful and investigative critical thinking maligning industries), and how women were not a big part of the mRNA trials (sic), and that the disruption of the reproductive system of a female ain’t no big thing, according to the FDA and Saint Fauci and Company. Imagine, the adverse effects of these shots, on everyone, and no fetuses. This Gray Zone article focuses on women, and the writer, Marcie Smith Parenti, looks from a feminist point of view, albeit, one flawed since she equates feminism USA style with supporting the Democratic party, AKA, War-Banking-Poverty Pimping Party, as equal in its profane treatment of humanity as the Republican party. Here, a quote:
I have five female friends who, after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, experienced disruption to their menstrual cycles. Their symptoms have included hemorrhagic bleeding lasting more than a month; heavy intermittent bleeding for four months; passing golf-ball size clots of blood; and extreme cramping, serious enough to land one friend in the ER.
Most of these women are in their 20s and 30s, and at least one of them thinks she might want to have children. She now worries that her symptoms might be the harbinger of long-term fertility problems. At least two of my friends have symptoms that have not resolved. All are feminists and have throughout the years been consistent Democratic Party voters.
Other women of childbearing age have reported becoming temporarily “postmenopausal” after their second mRNA shot; conversely, women in menopause are reporting suddenly beginning to bleed again; trans men on hormone therapy have also reported sudden bleeding. Apparently, the number of vaccinated women around the world reporting alarmingly disrupted menstruation is, to be conservative, in the tens of thousands.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, does not warn women who get the shots that they may experience a disrupted menstrual cycle.
The big issue and concern with this piece is that Parenti does not go into detail around the OTHER jabs that do not use mRNA DARPA-Mengele wizardry as the undergirding of the treatment protocols–
mRNA vaccine
A mRNA vaccine is made using mRNA that gives your cells instructions for how to make the spike protein found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus. After vaccination, your immune cells begin making the spike protein and displaying them on cell surfaces. This causes your body to create antibodies that can fight the COVID-19 virus.
Viral vector vaccine
A viral vector vaccine is made when genetic material from a COVID-19 virus is inserted into a unrelated, harmless virus. When the viral vector gets into your cells, it delivers genetic material from the COVID-19 virus that gives your cells instructions for how to make the spike protein found on the surface of the COVID-19 virus. Once your cells displace the spike proteins on their surfaces, your immune system creates antibodies that can fight the COVID-19 virus.The Mayo Clinic lies here about the mRNA vaccine, and even this site doesn’t give the information on the alternative “vaccines.” But here, on this flagging blog, more information in a short screed than all of Mainstream Mush and Murdering Media:
1) WHOLE VIRUS VACCINE
Vaccines include: Sinopharm, Sinovac
Number of doses required: 2 doses, intramuscular
Other licensed vaccines that use this type of technology: Hepatitis A, polio, rabies (all inactivated type)
What to know: The whole virus vaccine uses a weakened or deactivated form of the pathogen that causes COVID-19 to trigger protective immunity to it.
The two vaccines mentioned above – Sinopharm and Sinovac – both use inactivated pathogens, therefore they cannot infect cells and replicate, but can trigger an immune response.
3) NON-REPLICATING VIRAL VECTOR
Vaccines include: Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik V (Gamaleya Research Institute)
Number of doses required: 2 doses, intramuscular
Other licensed vaccines that use this type of technology: Ebola
What to know: This type of vaccine introduces a safe, modified version of the virus – known as “the vector” – to deliver genetic code for the antigen. In a COVID-19 vaccine, the “vector” is the spike proteins found on the surface of the coronavirus.
Once the body’s cells are “infected”, the cells are instructed to produce a large amount of antigens, which in turn trigger an immune response.
Benefits: Viral vector-based vaccination is another well-established technology that can trigger a strong immune response as it also involves both B cells and T cells.
4) PROTEIN SUBUNIT
Vaccines include: Novavax
Number of doses required: 2 doses, intramuscular
Other licensed vaccines that use this type of technology: Hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, pneumococcal disease, shingles
What to know: The protein subunit vaccine contains purified “pieces” of a pathogen rather than the whole pathogen to trigger an immune response. It is thought that by restricting the immune system to the whole pathogen, the risk of side effects is minimised.
Benefits: The protein subunit vaccination is also a well-established technology that’s advantageous for those with compromised immune systems.
But reading Parenti’s piece, you can sense her socialism, her radical (root, fair, smart) belief that the wool has been pulled over the eyes of USA and Western societies Big Time by the war profiteers, and in this case, the war profiteers are those in this so-called war against a virus — Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Double Dealing. The planned pandemic that is, thanks to DARPA and the gain of function viral Mengele shit, is now an endemic — variants will come hell or highwater. What are we going to do about that? Boosters, straightjacket medicine — the resisters are the enemy. One Minute of Hate by Biden, that’s the ticket!
To many, this probably seems wrong-headed; and indeed, growing “scientific evidence” indicates it is a mistake. A recent University of Chicago and UC-Berkeley study found that women suffer higher rates of adverse reactions to pharmaceutical products than men, even when dosage is calibrated for differences in body weight. This is likely due to the more subtle dance of hormones that dictate women’s well-being, but the issue is very rarely studied.
It was not until 1993 that the federal government began requiring pharmaceutical companies to include women in their drug studies. And only in 2016 did the NIH begin to formally request that researcher grantees consider “sex as a biological variable” and specifically report on such findings.
Yet the fast-tracked Covid vaccine research skipped these provisions. Women were included in the initial Covid vaccine trials, however, none of these studies disaggregated research findings by sex.
Unfortunately, this is all tied to mind-stripping, and that Google guy, that celebrity in the movie, The Social Network, is being paraded around by lefties like Russel Brand. In that interview, Brand or the celebrity don’t look at what mind-stripping really does — not just scraping data and thoughts and emotions from people, the targets, but using that data to sway entire sectors of our lives, changing up to down, reality to fiction when it comes to regime change, the lies of Empire, the financial-AI-Wall Street thugs who want Cuba do go down, want Syria in flames, want Iran imploded by Israel’s nukes and alleged biological/viral/chemical bombs.
Russel Brand sometimes appears to be milquetoast, maybe, I don’t know, part of his UK roots, really, and this dude, Tristan Harris. You may recognize him from the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.
Here Tristan explains how our attention is being mined and that we have now become the product.”
I watched the The Social Network. Bad all around, geared to a 6th grade reading level, really, and this Harris guy is quite the multimillionaire charlatan. He’s in the film, about 1/3 of the total running time. Now, big tech is a million times worse than this shit-show demonstrates, and then when you see take-downs on Harris, on the film, we get those other misanthrope elite thinking Ayn Rands piling on their own libertarianism, and some equate questioning the main thrust of The Social Network — that big tech kills — to those who pushed the movie, Reefer Madness — trying to emote fear into citizens against pot smoking fellow citizens. Wrong comparison — apples to pig skins.
Techies are more than just smart arbiters of tech-surveillance capitalism; there is something highly broken in many of them, and they should never be in a position of power, legal or otherwise, that is, many of us believe. They are their own demigods, and they believe that Digital Tech is no different than the technology that brought us the bicycle. Look at this mind numbing stuff here criticizing the documentary for all the wrong reasons, I believe — “The Social Dilemma Manipulates You With Misinformation As It Tries To Warn You Of Manipulation By Misinformation.”
Note: Netflix, the company which produced, distributed and widely promoted the documentary, is also arguably the first big internet company to spend time, money, and resources on trying to perfect the “recommendation algorithm”! That’s capitalism, folks!
Taking this to the next stage, Ollie, the violent video games.
Yeah, so violent, murder-seeped, war-mongering, racist interactive X-box games, come on, they have zero effect on the brains of punks and not-so-punky kids and adults who play them, and live them, and spend countless human life hours joy sticking with them (Not). Look at this spin, “We present you our “TOP 10 Brutal FPS Games of 2021 & 2022” for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, STADIA & PC” ranking list. Hope you enjoy it!”
That is the big smoke and mirrors, propaganda, lie of capitalism. This is not a lie:
The results showed that there was a significant positive correlation between exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression; normative beliefs about aggression had a mediation effect on exposure to violent video games and adolescent aggression, while family environment moderated the first part of the mediation process. For individuals with a good family environment, exposure to violent video games had only a direct effect on aggression; however, for those with poor family environment, it had both direct and indirect effects mediated by normative beliefs about aggression. This moderated mediation model includes some notions of General Aggression Model (GAM) and Catalyst Model (CM), which helps shed light on the complex mechanism of violent video games influencing adolescent aggression. (“The Relation of Violent Video Games to Adolescent Aggression: An Examination of Moderated Mediation Effect”)
Yeah, so 4 G, cell phones to the ear, all the EMF’s, now Internet of Things, Internet of Nano-Things, Internet of Biological Things, none of that create negative effects on humans, plants, animals. This is how these charlatans of the Mengele Brand work. However, let’s see where this takes us, RFK Jr.:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit published its decision Aug.13. The court ruled that the FCC failed to consider the non-cancer evidence regarding adverse health effects of wireless technology when it decided that its1996 radiofrequency emission guidelines protect the public’s health.
The court’s judgment states:
“The case be remanded to the commission to provide a reasoned explanation for its determination that its guidelines adequately protect against harmful effects of exposure to radiofrequency radiation…”
CHD Chairman and attorney on the case Robert F Kennedy, Jr. said:
“The court’s decision exposes the FCC and FDA as captive agencies that have abandoned their duty to protect public health in favor of a single-minded crusade to increase telecom industry profits.” (Source)
“The FCC will finally have to recognize the immense suffering by the millions of people who have already been harmed by the FCC’s and FDA’s unprecedented failure to protect public health. Finally the truth is out. I am hopeful that following this decision, the FCC will do the right thing and halt any further deployment of 5G.” 
So, now, break out the masks, in my state, Oregon. Absurdity, and I have volunteer jobs, and the mandate is to have the masks on at interpretive centers, everywhere the public may walk into. I know for a fact after thousands of hours of research on the topic of mask efficacy and tertiary topics that these masks do not stop a virus. Truly. Alas, though, I can chuck everything by sticking to my guns and my knowledge base, or put up with a mask that I pull over (off of my nose) to breathe. Now, just applying for work, the vaccine passport will be mandatory. No passport, no job, no food, nothing. And these Democrats didn’t see this coming (bs), and now that it is here, Bring on the Stasi. No different than the white supremacist Republicans and their stupidity about racism, structural racism, structural violence, and the mis-history of their pathetic souls believing Young George Shall Not Tell a Cherry-Tree Chopping Lie. This country is diseased with infantilized thinkers, and putridity on both sides of the Apple Pie Red-White-Blue manure pile of political parties wafts in my air.
Danny does it well here, in the article at Black Agenda Report, “Critical Race Theory Debacle Signals the Collapse of the American Empire.” Old Stan and Ollie would be proud:
The GOP’s entire identity is shaped by white supremacy.
The question that must inevitably be answered is: where do correct ideas come from? It is clear they do not come from General Mark Milley. The U.S. military will not become less racist if it studies “white rage” because white supremacy is baked into the fabric of its very purpose as an institution. Correct ideas also do not come from the GOP, as its opposition to Critical Race Theory is based on the equally faulty and racist premise that “culture wars” are destroying what makes the United States “special.” Correct ideas are inevitably lost on dueling sections of a ruling class seeking to stabilize an illegitimate empire.
The people’s struggle to liberate themselves from systems of exploitation is the primary generator of correct ideas. Critical Race Theory’s growing influence correlates with the emergence of Black Lives Matter protests dating back to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2011. The growth in the popularity of “socialism” can be traced back to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the struggle against union busting and austerity in Wisconsin, Chicago, and elsewhere. The history of class struggle, whether in the case of Black America or liberation movements abroad, is characterized in part by masses of people being propelled into a lifelong search for the correct alignment of ideas and actions that will bring qualitative changes in their conditions of life.
“Critical Race Theory’s growing influence correlates with the emergence of Black Lives Matter protests.”
The debate over Critical Race Theory will not resolve the contradictions that ensure Black Americans make less than sixty cents for every white American dollar , the U.S. military receives trillions to bomb Black and brown people abroad, and racist New Cold War tropes continue to be recycled to justify policies such as the extremely counterproductive sanctions on China’s solar energy sector . Super exploitation and war are all the American Empire has left to offer. A huge challenge for the class struggle in the United States is the fact that there are more corporate consultants and Democratic Party operatives posing as “anti-racist” than grassroots leaders and organizations prepared to take on the urgency of the political moment. Liberal elites, even when they tolerate criticisms of capitalism and racism, ultimately suppress or smear the revolutionary leaders and movements that inform revolutionary struggle. This is why establishment adherents to Critical Race Theory can offer anti-capitalist critique while scantly supporting organizations fighting to free U.S. political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal whose activities remain criminalized by the state.
The collapse of the condominium in Florida serves as an apt metaphor for the system of imperialism as a whole. Our search for correct ideas exists within the confines of the crumbling edifice of the American Empire. Conditions continue to worsen for the majority, which will inevitably lead to graver and more acute crises as demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The American Empire offers no answers, just platitudes and lies. Social transformation rests upon the ability of the oppressed to look beyond the narratives of their oppressor, seek truth from facts, and build a mass movement that can sustain radical and revolutionary debate and organization.
Of course, the word “critical” comes from a bedrock of critical thinking, looking beyond the looking glass, tossing all those the rose tinted shit Capitalism glasses to the crusher, and stopping the feeding tube filled with lies and historical fictions into our babies on through the K12 system. The amount of stupidity coming from many K12 teachers and administrators and curriculum dictators is reflected in the amount of deficits in thinking and knowledge and compassion and ethics and vital questioning of authority many of these 18 year old’s are plagued with once they graduate (sic). Yep, you are what you do not know, what you do not think, what you do not speak, what you do not hope for, what you are not exposed to, what you do not eat, drink, breathe, consumer, buy, do, believe, hope for, imagine, create, grow, what you do not read or discuss or debate.
Here it is, black and white, what you do or do not ask, what you do or do not investigate, what you do or do not study scientifically, what you do or do not engage in, that’s the Kurtz horror in our Heart of Darkness. These elite MDs, et al. are Mengele on a very sophisticated level.
When it comes to the Covid-19 vaccine and “fertility,” the official talking points have been dizzyingly contradictory. On the one hand, one regularly encounters passionate and categorical insistence that there is no evidence of any negative impact on fertility, short or long term, attending any Covid-19 vaccine. As of yesterday, the CDC now states, “There is currently no evidence that any vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, cause fertility problems in women or men.”
In the Guardian article from April, Dr. Gunter sneeringly invokes the age-old, disingenuous, sexist, and murderous conflict between male “scientists” and female “witches,” saying, “No, the Covid-19 vaccine is not capable of exerting reproductive control via proxy. Nothing is. This is because it is a vaccine, not a spell.” Brumfiel of NPR asks, “Can vaccines cause infertility, miscarriages? The answer to all this is no.” Concerns to the contrary, he says, are nothing more than “a persistent set of lies.” The New York Times states, “Scientists have said there is no evidence that the vaccines affect fertility or pregnancy.” Dr. Brian Levine, founding partner of a reproductive health clinic, says, “No one has been able to say that there are any untoward outcomes on anyone’s reproductive potential or reproductive future as a result of receiving the Covid-19 vaccine or the sequence of vaccines.”
A widely quoted male gynecologist told the BBC that there was “no evidence to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines will affect fertility.” Alan Copperman, MD, of the Mt. Sinai Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science, claims “the evidence shows that the vaccines will not affect anyone’s fertility.” Just yesterday, from the Boston Globe, we are told there is “conclusive evidence that the vaccine has no negative impacts on reproduction.”
Such statements give the unmistakable impression that the matter of Covid-19 vaccination and fertility is resoundingly decided.
But, here’s what is confusing. The menstrual cycle – and please, someone do correct me if I’m wrong – is a fertility cycle, consisting of a follicular phase, the ovulation phase, the luteal phase, and then the passing of the menses itself. If a woman accepts a Covid-19 vaccine and begins to suddenly and hemorrhagically bleed, for weeks or months or end, this by no means necessarily suggests she is permanently sterilized, but nevertheless indicates her cycle has been thrown off track, which is a fertility-related side effect – one which is particularly salient to a woman trying to conceive.
Indeed, when one reads the medical literature and official corporate and government statements with the uncharitable eye of a lawyer (which I am), the medical establishment’s position on Covid-19 vaccination and fertility is strikingly more circumspect than that which appears in the press.
It turns out that the lack of “scientific evidence” that Covid-19 vaccines affect fertility has at least something to do with the lack of actual scientific research on the question.
Again, Capitalism runs on chaos, confusion, patriotisms, false gods, scientism, divide and conquer technique, and much much more, but also relies on the head in the sand proposition; on overload, general anxiety disorder on steroids; and through the super-charged world of Social (sic) Media. To the point of most humanity in these United States of America having no conversations about masks, the mRNA, vaccinations forced while you are held down by the thugs of capitalism: banks, mortgage holders, landlords, employers, the cops/pigs, authorities, state, local and county boards. Mandates are marching orders. Mandates are, well, this: “If you don’t see, hear or speak the evil, then, we are dead, the living dead, when the evil is in the corporations, in the courtrooms, in the cop shops, in the various branches of government, in the military, in the Social Network brain zapping, mind stripping systems of oppression.”
There are evil forces out there, Mister Ostrich, and I ain’t talking lions and leopards. The evil is the banality of it, the Eichmanns, the folks wearing lab coats, the uniformed military, civilians and such in DARPA who are just regular people working on the next and the next evil virus that can’t be taken down by normal methods.
Now this is evil suppression of a theraputic — SaNoTize, it should have been approved March 2020! Imagine that, nasal spray, to cut down on viral load. Guaranteed to work better than social distancing, masks and endless antimicrobial spays and foams that are not creating AMR — antimicrobial resistance on steroids.
The self-administered nitric oxide spray, developed by Vancouver biotech firm SaNOtize, is said to have yielded promising results in its UK and Canada clinical trials, including against the UK variant. The company is preparing submissions to worldwide regulators for emergency approval.
“We are currently working to find the right partner in India and hoping it will be approved as a medical device in India to prevent Covid-19,” said CEO and co-founder of SaNOtize Dr Gilly Regev.”What I would have loved right now is to go and give this to a whole town in India and show that everyone using it is not getting infected,” she said. “We would have saved millions of lives if we could have brought it to market last year.”
Again, you are what you are not allowed to see, not allowed to read, not allowed to hear, not allowed to watch, not allowed to speak:
Mere discussion of the drug has resulted in big-tech censoring or deplatforming thought leaders in collaboration with the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, Merck Co. – which manufactured the drug in the 1980s, has come out big against the use of ivermectin to treat Covid-19. In February, the company’s website read: “Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note that, to date, our analysis has identified no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”
As the Post points out – Merck has not launched a single study of its own on ivermectin.
“You would think Merck would be happy to hear that ivermectin might be helpful to corona patients and try to study it, but they are most loudly declaring the drug should not be used,” said Schwartz.
“A billion people took it. They gave it to them. It’s a real shame.”
In closing, the research team writes that “Developing new medications can take years; therefore, identifying existing drugs that can be re-purposed against COVID-19 [and] that already have an established safety profile through decades of use could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.”
“Using re-purposed medications may be especially important because it could take months, possibly years, for much of the world’s population to get vaccinated, particularly among low- to middle-income populations.“
‘Oh say can you say, by the dawn’s early propaganda/censoring/book-internet burning’: You can’t view this on YouTube or Facebook. Now that’s a crime against humanity.
The post If We Ever Needed George Carlin first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
“It makes me sick that they were heralded as ‘heroes’ while they allowed people to suffer and die alone.” (I didn’t realize it was “part 1” but I posted this last week. It’s short so please give it a look before continuing.)
Part 2 was inspired by comments that appeared after the first post. A nurse named Laura V. laid out the details of life in an inhuman digital healthcare state. Here’s some of what Laura said:
“I’m a nurse and there has been a steady progression to automated, patient-directed, convenience ‘healthcare’ for well over decade — minute clinics, telehealth, and the like. If doctors accept insurance or Medicaid/Medicare their hands are essentially tied. Those entities dictate what doctors can do. If they deviate too drastically from what insurance companies recommend or what the current ‘best practice’ standards are, they get their wrists slapped and I don’t think they get reimbursed as much.
“So, there really isn’t an art to medicine anymore unless you seek a doctor who is in private practice or an alternative practitioner. The way healthcare is now you really don’t need a human because all doctors do is check off boxes on the computer that are an algorithm based on the symptoms/diagnosis. Not much thought is involved.
“When I worked at an urgent care clinic 15 years ago, the medical director instructed the doctors to ‘just give the patient a prescription and if they’re not better, they’ll come back.’ At that clinic, doctors were reprimanded if they spent ‘too much time’ with patients. Some doctors at that clinic would literally never even touch patients. They would get their prescription ready, stand in the doorway and talk with the patient for a couple of minutes, hand them the Rx and move on to the next victim.
“Medical practices have been steadily degrading for decades, but now with the COVID fraud, it is so in our faces now. And society as a collective is mostly to blame because people want instant results, and they equate ‘health’ with prescriptions. They just want to pop a pill instead of doing the hard work to be healthy.”
“It seems like a big part of the COVID agenda was to speed this process up by collapsing the allopathic medical industry with a mass exodus of doctors and nurses; thus rationalizing the urgent need for the ‘benevolent’ and almighty Amazon clinic. What a lifesaver!
“After seeing the egregious crimes and fraud that doctors and nurses actively perpetrated against trusting patients during COVID, I decided not to renew my nursing license anymore. I will never support such a vile industry. It makes me sick that they were heralded as ‘heroes’ while they allowed people to suffer and die alone.
“I had such high hopes when I became a nurse and after the FIRST day on the job, I wondered what I got myself into — and that was long before COVID.”***** Through it all, Laura closed with:
“I am still hopeful that people will finally see that our healthcare system is woefully broken and they will turn back to natural healing.”
Amen, Laura, and thank you.
The post Healthcare without the Health or Care first appeared on Dissident Voice.
Someone forwarded me an email they got. It starts out with the image above and then continues with this:
We’re the prey. “Convenience” is the bait. And they never stop collecting data.
But the choice is still ours.
The post “Amazon Clinic” is Here first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
I have a newly-discovered health problem, where during the day, my blood pressure readings are quite normal, or we might even say somewhat on the low side, 105-65. During the night, when I am sleeping, however, the very same indicators are just too high, 168-92.
My doctor, a very dedicated physician and caring human being has no idea why. She has asked around, but the responses have been few, and certainly not very encouraging. To be honest, most doctors don’t know the answer, and as far as the patients, how many of them do you know, that measure and record their blood pressure readings while they are asleep? We have tried different types of blood pressure medication, and I have rejected some for their harsh side-effects (skin bruises or cancer). The results have not been any different. Both myself and my doctor are aware that, unless we achieve some success, the final result could be a heart attack or a stroke for me, which neither one of us wants.
What should we do to find the answer? Quite obvious, further research, consultation, and testing.
The problem is our physicians are often overworked and have no more time than 15 minutes (or 20 per patient), for the really good ones. In order to satisfy the neo-liberal system’s appetite for more profits, they are every day given a bigger list of patients assigned to them. To the blood-thirsty CEOs of insurance companies and healthcare outfits, their earnings are never sufficient. In my case, I volunteered to do some further research on my own, but my physician has already indicated to me that she will not be able to satisfy her quota, if we continue down the same path, and I don’t blame her. It’s her job that’s on the line.
What I described to you is just one of the destructive aspects and outcomes of this neo-liberal system of “profits before the people”. Each aspect is alone capable of bringing the system down to its knees. There are many more components that define the characteristics of the broken system. From the greed and desires of the drug companies for a bigger bottom-line, to the victimization of the public every year in order to sign them up, often for no reason at all, with a different insurance network — we are all set up for the big fall. Yes, the invisible hand of the neo-liberal capitalism might eventually adjust itself, but when and at what price? Just look at the healthcare industry’s statistics on COVID-19: number of people lost, the private sector’s profits.
No worries, down the road to perdition, but is America going to be great again!?
The post American Healthcare System first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
It has been reported that many elite athletes and celebrities appear to be succumbing to what is claimed to be the effects of the COVID-19 vaccinations. Are these high-profile injuries and deaths out of the ordinary? Whether ordinary or not, what is undeniable is that people were coerced and put at risk by governments to be jabbed with a so-called vaccine that had not undergone safety testing.
The post Big Names Dropping in Larger Numbers? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
“When COVID swept the planet, a moral injury crisis arose as ethically wrenching dilemmas became the new normal.” “In an atmosphere of rationed care, doctors, nurses and other health care workers must admit a few patients and turn many away,” to die.
Moral injury is a specific and devastating trauma that arises when people face situations that deeply violate their core values. Such violations of morality can result in shame, guilt, and hopelessness, raising the risk of substance abuse, depression, and suicide. When society allows the uncontrolled spread of a deadly virus, millions are afraid they may become infected and transmit the virus to their family.
How did we arrive at this point of moral degradation?
For thousands of years, physicians took oaths to always act in the patient’s best interest when providing care. At the heart of medical ethics, this moral code was passed down through the centuries and reaffirmed by The World Medical Association (WMA) in 1949 and again in 2006. Additionally, the WMA specified:” A physician shall not allow his/her judgment to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination,” and “shall not receive any financial benefits or other incentives solely for referring patients or prescribing specific products”.
Ethics ran headlong into The HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) Act of 1973.
The passage of this act set the stage for the undermining of long-established medical ethics. The HMO Act was designed specifically to reduce costs, by charging patients a monthly fee for a set package of health care. The Act was passed with the knowledge that there had been no systematic analysis done to show that it would not negatively impact health care. Nonetheless, the Government gave millions of dollars in direct financial assistance to develop the HMO which was designed to be a profit-making business.
This HMO economic arrangement put physicians and other healthcare providers’ financial interests into conflict with the needs of their patients. The monthly pot of money must provide for profit, salaries, wages, and health care. If too much is spent on the patients, there is less available for profit and wages. So began the Health Insurance, Corporate Medicine assault on medical ethics. By 1980 this Wall Street strategy had crystallized into a worldwide approach to health care.
In 1980 the World Bank Acts
Publishing a new healthcare sector policy in 1980, the World Bank advocated reducing public health infrastructure and opening the door to rampant privatization of health services and pharmaceutical supply.
This policy was adopted by the US government. The Federal Government’s share of public health expenditures plummeted from 60% in 1968 to 10% in 1983, where it has remained for forty years. This silent war on our Public Health Infrastructure carried out under both Democratic and Republican administrations has drained hundreds of billions of dollars from our Public Health Services, jeopardizing the health, safety, and welfare of the population. Since 2009 alone, some $150 Billion has been defunded, along with the loss of some 60,000 jobs.
Tragically the Medical Profession succumbed to the rise of Corporate Health Care by betraying their core medical ethic and became complicit “stewards” of an economic system that puts profits before people. The AMA’s (American Medical Association) Principles of Medical Ethics:V11, gives the following ethical guidelines for physicians: “Mitigate possible conflicts between physicians financial interests and patient interests by minimizing the financial impact of patient care decisions and the overall financial risk for individual physicians.”
We have experienced four decades of HMO’s negative effects on health care while they became the darlings of Wall Street earning billions of dollars for investors as health care was rationed by: denial of service, restricted benefits, cost cutting, patients dumping, overworked and underpaid staff, and plunging physician’s incomes.
The author D.H. Lawrence (1880-1930) appears to have anticipated these horrors, when he wrote: “The mosquito knows full well, small as he is he’s beast of prey. But after all he only takes his bellyful, he doesn’t put my blood in the bank.”
Fast Forward to the ACA (Affordable Care Act) of 2010
One of its chief goals was to “reduce the cost of health care” by giving “financial incentives” to providers for the “Value” they provide in health care. A value-based payment incentive was to be established by bundling payment for certain types of care. Forbes magazine, advertised as ‘The Capitalist Tool’ stated, “Bundled payments are just price controls by another name—and as such will yield subpar care by encouraging insurers and providers to put their own financial interests above the medical needs of patients.”
The ACA was passed with very little known about its effectiveness or risks to Patient Care.
Once again it is all about cost-cutting. But now with the so-called “Value-Based Purchasing”, it is no longer about making profits for corporations, but spending less government money — it is about getting more for the Governments shrinking dollars going to health care spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security Disability. The politicians want to “save” money, which in reality means to redistribute money, but the economics is similar. With some ten trillion dollars in tax cuts for the rich over the last two decades, the US treasury has less available for social services as politicians continue to redirect a trillion dollars per year to the military — war industry without concerns that it is “costing the government too much.”
The Tax Reform Act of 12/2017 will suck an estimated thirty billion dollars out of Medicare. Bundled payments will shrink and the giant vice of shrinking payments, combined with rising costs (hospital profits, rising prices for supplies, drugs, medical equipment, etc.) will inevitably squeeze the lifeblood out of both the patients and the healthcare providers.
Tragically, this became a reality in 2020 with Covid-19, when the elderly were allowed to die as the state of Arizona rationed health care using “Crisis Standards of Care,” to decide who lives and who dies.
This policy was founded upon the ethics promoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
JAMA called for “A Framework for Rationing Ventilator and Critical Care Beds during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” JAMA accommodated itself to this brutal betrayal of the people’s health. The journal advocated a policy to ration and deny care that will fall most heavily on those over 60 years of age. The JAMA article of March 27, 2020, recommends who should be DENIED care:
1) Those least likely to survive treatment. Statistics show that the death rate increases over the age of 60. (the elderly, with a higher risk for minorities)
2) Those with other medical conditions. More common over age 60. (the elderly, with a higher risk for minorities)
3) Those who are working and “intrinsically more worthy” will be given priority and those who are retired will be denied. (the elderly)
4) Those who are younger will be given priority and the elderly will be denied.
The exsanguination of medical ethics has helped bring us to this dangerous moment in history.
We have witnessed a craven transformation of medical ethics when physicians and other health providers are clamoring to sign up for “Value-Based Bundled Care.” The AMA has betrayed their ancient oath as healers, in service to an economic system that puts profits before people.
The Covid pandemic President Biden declared was over, and the lifting of all restrictions against its spread, have killed a quarter of a million US citizens in 2022, 95% are age 65 and older. Our parents and grandparents continue to die, while vaccine-evasive and transmittable Covid variants constantly emerge as the pandemic has become one of the leading causes of death in the US. Moral injury continues to spread across the land. We have been led into a partnership with Dracula.
How do we escape from this public health catastrophe of Moral Injury?
“Unless your employer hires more staff or supplies more resources, chances are you’ll have to keep making decisions that violates your ethics, compounding your trauma.” The causes of Moral Injury require “systemic solutions on a much broader level.”
This is the road to cure and prevention.
The post Moral Injury: An Epidemic Fueled by Political Economy first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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For those wondering what to expect from the government in 2023, it looks like we’re going to be in for more of the same in terms of the government’s brand of madness, mayhem, corruption and brutality.Digital prisons. Unceasingly, the government and its corporate partners are pushing for a national digital ID system. Local police agencies have already been given access to facial recognition software and databases containing 20 billion images, the precursor to a digital ID. Eventually, a digital ID will be required to gain access to all aspects of life: government, work, travel, healthcare, financial services, shopping, etc. Before long, biometrics (iris scans, face print, voice, DNA, etc.), will become the de facto digital ID.
Precrime. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies are being used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating is being done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. AI predictive tools are being deployed in almost every area of life.
Mandatory quarantines. Building on precedents established during the COVID-19 pandemic, government agents may be empowered to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect of posing a medical risk to others without providing an explanation, subject them to medical tests without their consent, and carry out such detentions and quarantines without any kind of due process or judicial review.
Mental health assessments by non-medical personnel. As a result of a nationwide push to train a broad spectrum of so-called gatekeepers in mental health first-aid training, more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported by non-medical personnel and detained for having mental health issues.
Tracking chips for citizens. Momentum is building for corporations and the government alike to be able to track the populace, whether through the use of RFID chips embedded in a national ID card, microscopic chips embedded in one’s skin, or tags in retail products.
Military involvement domestically. The future, according to a Pentagon training video, will be militaristic, dystopian and far from friendly to freedom. Indeed, all signs point to the battlefield of the future being the American home front. Anticipating this, the government plans to have the military work in conjunction with local police to quell civil unrest domestically.
Government censorship of anything it classifies as disinformation. In the government’s ongoing assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.
Threat assessments. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.
War on cash. The government and its corporate partners are engaged in a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal.
Expansive surveillance. AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude. Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer. With every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.
Militarized police. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are moving into the next phase of the transformation, turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.
Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Police brutality and the use of excessive force continues unabated.
False flags and terrorist attacks. Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party is in power: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.
Endless wars to keep America’s military’s empire employed. The military and security industrial complexes that have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that will continue to profit the most from America’s expanding military empire abroad and here at home.
Erosions of private property. Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.
Overcriminalization. The government has increasingly adopted the authoritarian notion that it knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives. Overregulation and overcriminalization have been pushed to such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair.
Strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Individuals—men and women alike—continue to be subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.
Censorship. First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”
Taxation Without Any Real Representation. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors—have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.
Year after year, the government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms, and yet year after year, “we the people” allow ourselves to be suckered into believing that politics will fix what’s wrong with the country.
Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the very definition of insanity.
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Desperately malnourished Yanomami children, Surucucus region. © URIHI – Associação YanomamiA devastating new report has revealed the full extent of the crisis in the Yanomami territory caused by a massive invasion of illegal goldminers:
– Yanomami children are dying from malnutrition at a rate 191 times greater than Brazil’s average.
– Deaths of Yanomami children under five from preventable diseases are 9 times the national average.
Other data published recently emphasize the scale of the emergency afflicting the Yanomami:
– A study by UNICEF and Fiocruz reveals that eight out of ten Yanomami children under the age of five in the regions of Auaris and Maturacá have chronic malnutrition.
New photos released by the Yanomami health organization Urihi show desperately malnourished children and adults in villages of the Surucucus region. Just two weeks ago, goldminers attacked and destroyed a health clinic serving several Yanomami communities – it had already been abandoned by health workers, who feared an attack.
Desperately malnourished Yanomami woman, Surucucus region. © URIHI – Associação YanomamiJunior Hekurari Yanomami, President of the Yanomami Health District, says this is a “humanitarian crisis” and that the Yanomami “are weeping [for their dead] every day and every night. They have been mourning for months…. There are no medicines and no permanent health care.”
Survival International’s Director of Research and Advocacy Fiona Watson, who has worked with the Yanomami for more than thirty years, said today: “It’s impossible to overstate just how unprecedented and appalling the situation in the Yanomami territory is now.
“The Yanomami rarely suffer from malnutrition in normal circumstances. Their forests are bountiful; they are experts at growing, gathering and hunting everything they need, and they enjoy excellent health.
“This is a deliberate, man-made crisis, stoked by President Bolsonaro, who has encouraged the mass invasion and destruction of the Yanomami’s lands. Their rivers and fish are now polluted with toxic levels of mercury, criminal gangs control access to many of the communities, the Yanomami are being attacked, raped and killed, and their children are literally starving to death.
“It’s absolutely vital that as soon as he takes office President-elect Lula acts immediately to prevent the Yanomami from being wiped out. He needs to send in emergency health teams, and evict the miners. And then ensure they don’t come back. There is absolutely no room for delay.”
***** 1. The first two health statistics above come from a new report by A Publica, using official health data obtained through Freedom of Information laws.
2. Illegal gold miners have also been spotted very near a community of uncontacted Yanomami, and a newly-constructed illegal mining road has also been discovered.
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“Why Vaccine Passports Are Not Going Anywhere”
The post Getting Along first appeared on Dissident Voice.
If you thought Vax Passports were over — think again — they’re just getting started.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario.
What if there was a time when the general population was being relentlessly coerced into taking a particular drug? How would you know what to do? Where would you turn for the necessary context? Surely you wouldn’t just take the shot without doing your homework… right? That would be irrational. And you wouldn’t blame others for being hesitant… right? That would be even more irrational. Logically, you’d look up a relatively recent, similar scenario to see what you can learn from it… right?
Well, in case you wind up in such an ugly situation, I’m happy to share such relevant context in advance:
The human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection. There are over 200 types of HPV and virtually everyone who has had sex will get it at some point. HPV has no cure but it self-clears 98 percent of the time. In very rare instances, it can cause cancer — usually cervical cancer.
This minor cancer risk can be prevented by regular pap smears. Still, a vaccine was developed anyway. Since cancers usually take years to develop, the vaccine’s effectiveness is unclear at best. As for safety, take a look at this:
This is a good time to introduce Josh Mazer of Maryland. Josh is not a radical and certainly not an “anti-vaxxer.” He wrote in a 2018 Capital Gazette article:
I am concerned about the marketing strategies being used statewide to aggressively promote Merck’s HPV vaccine. In January, a career public school nurse approached me to discuss her role in promoting the vaccine. She said that was being ‘forced’ to market it to 11- and 12-year-old kids at her school. She produced a set of letters outlining the policy, one on Maryland Department of Health (DOH), the other on Montgomery County Schools, letterhead.
Slide from HPV Symposium Ten Oaks, Maryland March 2018Mazer went to work and learned that every school superintendent in Maryland received the DOH letter. It included phrases like:
- “There is a critical public health issue of under-vaccination Maryland’s adolescents against Human Papillomavirus (HPV)”
- “14 million people get infected each year posing a significant public health risk”
- “It is imperative for age-eligible children to complete the HPV vaccination series while obtaining school-entry required vaccinations”
- “There are 13,248 females and 13,796 males in Montgomery County that are of eligible age, 11 to 12 years old”
Mazer was told that “the letters are supported by data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)” but the CDC denied any knowledge of the letters. Mazer filed a Public Information Act request with the Prevention and Health Promotion Administration and here is some of what he learned:
- Maryland’s rates of cervical cancer were in decline for years prior to the introduction of the vaccine
- The vaccine itself has never been proven to prevent cancer
- The vaccine — if it worked — would only protect against only 9 (out of 200+) strains of HPV
- Cervical cancer incidence in Maryland is up 8 percent since the vaccine policy was enacted
- 44 percent of girls who get the shot are more likely to develop cervical lesions than those who do not
Finally, Mazer learned that the state health department received $91.6 million just since 2012 from pharmaceutical-funded non-profits to promote the HPV vaccine in Maryland.
Take a second and go back to read that last sentence one more time: The state health department received $91.6 million just since 2012 from pharmaceutical-funded non-profits to promote the HPV vaccine in Maryland.
Big Pharma bribed Maryland officials to use an “anti-cancer” vaccine that INCREASES the chances of young girls getting cancer. Related: A couple of the images I placed in this article are slides from a 2018 Maryland HPV Symposium. The slides show how physicians are financially rewarded for pushing the HPV “vaccine” on children.
Here is Mazer speaking at a Maryland school board meeting in late 2019 (3 minutes):
So, just a heads up: If you — by some unexpected fluke — find yourself being coerced into taking a vaccine, you might wanna ask a few questions before lining up for a jab.
It turns out that major pharmaceutical corporations along with licensed physicians are capable of lying to you — even if it can damage your health. Who knew?
So, keep this in mind. You’ll probably never have an injection imposed upon you without informed consent but hey, ya never know.
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Increased consumption of ultraprocessed foods (UPFs) was associated with more than 10% of all-cause premature, preventable deaths in Brazil in 2019. That is the finding of a new peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
The findings are significant not only for Brazil but also for high income countries such as the U S, Canada, the UK, and Australia, where 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 estimated impact would be even higher in richer nations.
UPFs are ready-to-eat-or-heat industrial formulations made with ingredients extracted from foods or synthesised in laboratories. These have gradually been replacing traditional foods and meals made from fresh and minimally processed ingredients in many countries.
The study found that approximately 57,000 deaths in one year could be attributed to the consumption of UPFs – 10.5% of all premature deaths and 21.8% of all deaths from preventable noncommunicable diseases in adults aged 30 to 69.
The study’s lead investigator Eduardo AF Nilson states:
To our knowledge, no study to date has estimated the potential impact of UPFs on premature deaths.
Across all age groups and sex strata, consumption of UPFs ranged from 13% to 21% of total food intake in Brazil during the period studied.
UPFs have steadily replaced the consumption of traditional whole foods, such as rice and beans, in Brazil.
Reducing consumption of UPFs by 10% to 50% could potentially prevent approximately 5,900 to 29,300 premature deaths in Brazil each year. Based on this, hundreds of thousands of premature deaths could be prevented globally annually. And many millions more could be prevented from acquiring long-term, debiltating conditions.
Nilson adds:
Consumption of UPFs is associated with many disease outcomes, such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers and other diseases, and it represents a significant cause of preventable and premature deaths among Brazilian adults.
Examples of UPFs are prepackaged soups, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals, hot dogs, sausages, sodas, ice cream, and store-bought cookies, cakes, candies and doughnuts.
And yet, due to trade deals, government support and WTO influence, transnational food retail and food processing companies continue to colonise markets around the world and push UPFs.
In Mexico, for instance, these companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.
Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35% and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37%. Some 29% of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35% of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.
The North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.
NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49% of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments.
By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.
US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.
A spoonful of deceit
Turning to Europe, more than half the population of the European Union (EU) is overweight or obese. Without effective action, this number will grow substantially by 2026.
That warning was issued in 2016 and was based on the report A Spoonful of Sugar: How the Food Lobby Fights Sugar Regulation in the EU by the research and campaign group Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO).
CEO 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, such as vegetables and fruit, and relatively poor families with children purchase food primarily to satisfy their hunger.
The report argued that more people than ever before are eating processed foods as a large part of their diet. And the easiest way to make industrial, processed food cheap, long-lasting and enhance the taste is to add extra sugar as well as salt and fat to products.
In the United Kingdom, the cost of obesity was estimated at £27 billion per year in 2016, and approximately 7% of national health spending in EU member states as a whole is due to obesity in adults.
The food industry has vigorously mobilised to stop vital public health legislation in this area by pushing free trade agreements and deregulation drives, exercising undue influence over regulatory bodies, capturing scientific expertise, championing weak voluntary schemes and outmaneuvering consumer groups by spending billions on aggressive lobbying.
The leverage which food industry giants have over EU decision-making has helped the sugar lobby to see off many of the threats to its profit margins.
CEO argued that key trade associations, companies and lobby groups related to sugary food and drinks together spend an estimated €21.3 million (2016) annually to lobby the EU.
While industry-funded studies influence European Food Standards Authority decisions, Coca Cola, Nestlé and other food giants engage in corporate propaganda by sponsoring sporting events and major exercise programmes to divert attention from the impacts of their products and give the false impression that exercise and lifestyle choices are the major factors in preventing poor health.
Katharine Ainger, freelance journalist and co-author of CEO’s report, said:
Sound scientific advice is being sidelined by the billions of euros backing the sugar lobby. In its dishonesty and its disregard for people’s health, the food and drink industry rivals the tactics we’ve seen from the tobacco lobby for decades.
ILSI industry front group
One of the best known industry front groups with global influence is what a September 2019 report in the New York Times (NYT) called a “shadowy industry group” – the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI).
The institute was founded in 1978 by Alex Malaspina, a Coca-Cola scientific and regulatory affairs leader. It started with an endowment of $22 million with the support of Coca Cola.
Since then, ILSI has been quietly infiltrating government health and nutrition bodies around the globe and has more than 17 branches that influence food safety and nutrition science in various regions.
Little more than a front group for its 400 corporate members that provide its $17 million budget, ILSI’s members include Coca-Cola, DuPont, PepsiCo, General Mills and Danone.
The NYT says ILSI has received more than $2 million from chemical companies, among them Monsanto. In 2016, a UN committee issued a ruling that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s weedkiller Roundup, was “probably not carcinogenic,” contradicting an earlier report by the WHO’s cancer agency. The committee was led by two ILSI officials.
From India to China, whether it has involved warning labels on unhealthy packaged food or shaping anti-obesity education campaigns that stress physical activity and divert attention from the food system itself, prominent figures with close ties to the corridors of power have been co-opted to influence policy in order to boost the interests of agri-food corporations.
As far back as 2003, it was reported by The Guardian newspaper that ILSI had spread its influence across the national and global food policy arena. The report talked about undue influence exerted on specific WHO/FAO food policies dealing with dietary guidelines, pesticide use, additives, trans-fatty acids and sugar.
In January 2019, two papers by Harvard Professor Susan Greenhalgh, in the BMJ and the Journal of Public Health Policy, revealed ILSI’s influence on the Chinese government regarding issues related to obesity. And in April 2019, Corporate Accountability released a report on ILSI titled Partnership for an Unhealthy Planet.
A 2017 report in the Times of India 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 – seven of 13 members were from the industry or linked to it (Mondelez, Mars, Abbott, Ajinomoto, Hindustan Unilever and Nestle) and the treasurer was Sunil Adsule of Coca-Cola India.
In India, ILSI’s expanding influence coincides with mounting rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes.
In 2020, US Right to Know (USRTK) referred to a study published in Public Health Nutrition that helped to further confirm ILSI as little more than an industry propaganda arm.
The study, based on documents obtained by USRTK, uncovered “a pattern of activity in which ILSI sought to exploit the credibility of scientists and academics to bolster industry positions and promote industry-devised content in its meetings, journal, and other activities.”
Gary Ruskin, executive director of USRTK, a consumer and public health group, said:
ILSI is insidious… Across the world, ILSI is central to the food industry’s product defence, to keep consumers buying the ultra-processed food, sugary beverages and other junk food that promotes obesity, type 2 diabetes and other ills.
The study also revealed new details about which companies fund ILSI and its branches.
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.
ILSI’s draft 2013 Internal Revenue Service form 990 shows that it received $337,000 from Coca-Cola, and more than $100,000 each from Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer Hi-Bred, Bayer Crop Science and BASF.
Global institutions, like the WTO, and governments continue to act as the adminstrative arm of industry, boosting corporate profits while destroying public health and cutting short human life.
Part of the solution lies in challenging a policy agenda that privileges global markets, highly processed food and the needs of ‘the modern food system’ – meaning the bottom line of dominant industrial food conglomerates.
It also involves protecting and strengthening local markets, short supply chains and independent small-scale enterprises, including traditional food processing concerns and small retailers.
And, of course, we need to protect and strengthen agroecological, smallholder farming that bolsters nutrient-dense diets – more family farms and healthy food instead of more disease and allopathic family doctors.
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“… Public Health administrators [are] being obscenely compensated for their efforts in purportedly fighting Covid.” See “Public Health Officials Cash in on Covid“
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Heloisa Hariadne (Brazil), Com uma gota já se faz oceano pra sede se matar em mergulho (‘A drop of water becomes an ocean to quench a diver’s thirst’), 2021.
In the last week of October, João Pedro Stedile, a leader of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brazil and the global peasants’ organisation La Via Campesina, went to the Vatican to attend the International Meeting of Prayer for Peace, organised by the Community of Sant’Egídio. On 30 October, Brazil held a presidential election, which was won by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, affectionately known as Lula. A key part of his campaign addressed the reckless endangerment and destruction of the Amazon by his opponent, the incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro. Lula’s victory, helped along by vigorous campaigning by the MST, provides hope for our chance to save the planet. This week’s newsletter contains the speech that Stedile gave at the Vatican. We hope you find it as useful as we do.
Ricardo Stuckert, Lula visits the MST in Espírito Santo, 2020.
Today, humanity is at risk because of senseless social inequality, attacks on the environment, and an unsustainable consumption pattern in rich countries that is imposed on us by capitalism and its profit-seeking mentality.
Part 1: What are the dilemmas facing humanity?
- Climate change is permanent, and its impacts manifest every day with intense heat waves, global warming, torrential rains, tropical cyclones, and droughts in different regions across the planet.
- The number of disasters/crimes has increased five-fold in the last 50 years, killing 115 people and causing economic losses of $202 million per day.
- Environmental crimes have increased, such as deforestation, the burning of tropical forests, and attacks on all biomes, especially in the Global South. In 2021 alone, the world lost1 million hectares of tropical forests.
- The Amazon rainforest, which stretches across nine countries, has already lost 30% of its vegetation cover as a result of encroaching deforestation caused by the push to produce timber and make way for cattle ranching and soybean production, which are exported to Europe and China.
- All biomes in the Global South are being destroyed to produce raw agricultural materials for the Global North.
- Predatory mining affects the environment, water, and land as well as Indigenous and peasant communities as thousands of garimpeiros (illegal miners) mine gold and diamonds using hazardous materials such as mercury in Indigenous lands.
- Never have so many agrotoxins (agricultural poisons) been used in agriculture in the South, affecting soil fertility, killing biodiversity, polluting groundwater and rivers, and contaminating what is produced and even the atmosphere.
- Glyphosate is scientifically proven to cause cancer. Some 42,700 US farmers who contracted cancer won the right to compensation from the companies that produce, sell, and use the glyphosate to which they were exposed.
- Across the planet, more and more genetically modified seeds are being planted, including, as of 2019, a total of nearly 200 million hectares concentrated in 29 countries. These seeds cause genetic contamination in non-GMO seeds, affecting human health and destroying the planet’s biodiversity because they require the use of agrotoxins.
- The oceans are polluted by plastics and other human waste, killing many species of fish and marine life. The massive use of chemical fertilisers has also caused ocean waters to acidify, putting all marine life at risk. Evidence of this can be seen in the large garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean, which covers over a million square kilometres.
- The carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossils fuels and by individual transportation in automobiles causes pollution in large cities, which in turn causes the death of thousands of people, with 7,100 in the northeast and Mid-Atlantic region of the United States alone dying as a result of vehicle emissions in a single year.
- Humanity is suffering under a public health crisis that is also inextricably connected to nature. Epidemics and pandemics have increased, creating a massive global health crisis that puts millions of people at risk. This phenomenon, often propelled by the increased transmission of diseases from animals to human beings (known as zoonoses), is a result of the simultaneous destruction of biodiversity alongside the expansion of the agricultural frontier by agribusiness and energy, mining, and transportation megaprojects as well as urban and large-scale livestock farming.
- Many areas on our planet are protected by peasant and Indigenous communities. Capital attacks and seeks to destroy them in order to take control of the natural goods they protect.
- We are undergoing an ecological-social crisis of the Earth system and of the balance of life. This global crisis affects the environment, the economy, politics, society, ethics, religions, and the meaning of our own life.
- The billions of the world’s poorest people are the most impacted by the lack of food, water, housing, employment, income, and education. Deteriorating living conditions have forced them to migrate and have killed thousands of people, especially children and women.
- This generalised crisis is endangering human life. Without bold action, the planet, which is under attack, could still regenerate, but without human beings.
Eduardo Berliner (Brazil), House, 2019.
Part 2: Who is responsible for putting humanity at risk?
- Capitalism is facing a structural crisis. It is no longer capable of organising the production and distribution of goods that people need. Its logic of profit and capital accumulation prevent us from having a more just and egalitarian society.
- This crisis manifests itself in the economy, in increasing social inequality, in the state’s failure as a guarantor of social rights, in formal democracy’s failure to respect the will of most people, and in the propagation of false values based solely on individualism, consumerism, and selfishness. This system is economically and environmentally unsustainable, and we must put it behind us.
- The main parties directly responsible for the environmental crisis are large transnational corporations, which do not respect borders, states, governments, or the rights of peoples. Some of these corporations, such as Bayer, BASF, Monsanto, Syngenta, and DuPont, manufacture agrotoxins, while others run the mining, automobile, and fossil fuel-run electric energy sectors, and yet others control the water market (such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Nestlé) and the world food market. Associated with all of them are banks and their financial capital. In the last decade, these corporations have been joined by powerful transnational technology corporations, which control ideology and public opinion (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook/Meta, and Apple). The owners of these companies are among the richest people in the world.
- However, corporations are not the only ones to blame for the environmental crisis; they are aided by:
- governments that cover up and protect corporate crime;
- the mainstream media, which seek profit and serve corporate interests all whilst deceiving the people and hiding those who are responsible; and
- international organisations formed by governments and captured by large corporations under the cover of phantom foundations, which directly influence these organisations and only repeat rhetoric and hold ineffective international meetings such as the Conference of the Parties (COP), which has now met 27 times. This is even the case with the United Nations and the Food and Agricultural Organisation.
All of these entities must respect the law.
- I welcome the courageous position taken by Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2022 and the encyclicals of Pope Francis. Both are a wake-up call to the entire world.
Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil), O Vendedor de frutas (‘The Fruit Vendor’), 1925.
Part 3: What solutions are we calling for?
There is still time to save humanity, and, with it, our common home, planet Earth. For this we need to have the courage to implement concrete and urgent measures on a global level. On behalf peasants’ movements and people’s movements in urban peripheries, we propose:
- Prohibiting deforestation and commercial burning in all native forests and savannas across the world.
- Prohibiting the use of agrotoxins and genetically modified seeds in agriculture, as well as antibiotics and growth promoters in livestock farming.
- Condemning all decoy solutions to climate change and geoengineering techniques proposed by capital that speculate on nature, including the carbon market.
- Prohibiting mining in the territories of Indigenous peoples and traditional communities as well as environmental protection and conservation areas and demanding that all mining be publicly controlled and used for the common good – not for profit.
- Strictly controlling the use of plastics, including in the food and beverage industry, and making it mandatory to recycling them.
- Recognising nature’s goods (such as forests, water, and biodiversity) as universal common goods at the service of all people that are immune to capitalist privatisation.
- Recognising peasants as the main caretakers of nature. We must fight against large landowners and carry out popular agrarian reforms so that we can combat social inequality and poverty in the countryside and produce more food in harmony with nature.
- Implementing an extensive reforestation program, paid for with public resources, that ensures the ecological recovery of all areas near springs and riverbanks, slopes, and other ecologically sensitive areas or areas that are experiencing desertification.
- Implementing a global policy to care for water that prevents the pollution of oceans, lakes, and rivers and that eliminates the contamination of surface and subsoil drinking water sources.
- Defending the Amazon and other tropical forests of Africa, Asia, and the Pacific Islands as ecological territories under the care of the peoples of their countries.
- Implementing agroecology as a sociotechnical basis for food sovereignty, including the production of healthy food that is accessible to all.
- Subsidising the financing needed to implement solar and wind energy systems, which will be under the collective management of populations worldwide.
- Implementing a global investment plan to provide public transportation based on renewable energies that makes it possible to reorganise and improve living conditions in cities, allowing for urban decentralisation and making it possible for people to remain in the countryside.
- Demanding that the industrialised countries of the North guarantee the financial resources to implement all of the necessary actions to rebuild the relationship between society and nature in a sustainable manner, understanding that these countries are historically responsible for global pollution and continue with unjust and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption.
- Demanding that all governments stop wars, close foreign military bases, and halt military aggression in order to save lives and the planet, rooted in the understanding that peace is a condition for a healthy life.
Anita Malfatti (Brazil), Tropical, 1917.
For these ideas to materialise, we propose an international pact between religious leaders and institutions, environmental and people’s movements, decision-makers, and governments, so that we can carry out a programme that raises the consciousness of the entire population. We propose that an international conference be held so that we can bring together all collective actors who defend life. We must encourage people to fight for their rights in defence of life and nature. We must demand that the media assume its responsibility to defend the interests of the people and to defend equal rights, life, and nature.
We will always fight to save lives and our planet, to live in solidarity and in peace with social equality, emancipated from social injustices, exploitation, and discrimination of all kinds.
Emiliano Di Cavalcanti (Brazil), Projeto de Mural (‘Mural Project’), 1950.
This text from João Pedro Stedile is a clarion call from the MST, which Noam Chomsky calls ‘the most important mass movement on the planet’. We hope to hear from you about these proposals, and we hope that movements around the world will take them up in their work.
The post The Attack on Nature Is Putting Humanity at Risk first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
