While America struggles to buy groceries, President Joe Biden has a green slush fund worth billions of dollars, and he’s not afraid to use it.
Recent revelations uncovered that the CEO and lobbyists of Rivian, an electric vehicle manufacturer, held a quiet meeting at the White House with Biden’s Climate Czar, John Podesta. That’s right, the same John Podesta who served as chairman of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated 2016 presidential campaign before being pulled from the ranks of profitable green consulting to oversee distribution of $369 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Biden selected a political operative with green company ties to dole out the goodies from one of the largest slush funds in history. Now green CEOs who are hemorrhaging cash are beating a path to his White House office, presumedly with hat in hand.
According to media reports, Rivian is deep in the red. Last year, they lost $6.8 billion. In 2021, it was $4.7 billion, which is in addition to the $1 billion lost in 2020. These massive losses happened as EV manufacturers enjoyed large subsidies both to build and sell their vehicles. In fact, President Biden went out of his way to praise Rivian in early 2022, even though their stock had already lost half its value on its way to losing 87% of its value since 2021. Losing over $12 billion in less than three years would normally be a problem in the business world, but in the upside-down reality of Biden’s green agenda, that gets you a meeting at the White House.
Tax dollars are flowing from the IRA so quickly that the Department of Energy’s Inspector General (IG) may be running out of adjectives. Earlier this month in testimony before the Senate, the IG said, “the current situation brings tremendous risk to the taxpayers.” Red flags about American dollars flowing to foreign companies or just being wasted here at home are going up, yet according to budget watchdogs, their concerns are met with deaf ears by senior Biden Administration officials. The IG notes there were “billions and billions of dollars lost or stolen” from federal Covid funds, and Biden’s slush fund is even bigger. To put it bluntly, the green vault is wide open and the grifters are lining up.
Here’s a particular galling example. One little known aspect of the IRA are so-called “green banks.” For greenies, the scheme is simple: regular banks will not fund their boondoggles, so they need a taxpayer backed entity to dole out cash. Unlike regular banks, these green banks do not need to make a profit to stay afloat because the government is their funder.
New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham was caught trying to set up a green bank without the trouble of going through the elected legislature. The board of the bank will be green non-profits who will be in charge because as the New Mexico climate czar put it, “We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars… This greenhouse gas reduction fund is a remarkable little beast.” Recently, Grisham announced the green bank anyway. The slush fund is open for business, and everyone has their hand out.
Congress is watching the “green bank” scheme because they know it is ripe for abuse. The problem is clear: The White House put a political operative in charge of what is nothing more than a political fund. For Barack Obama, they were too big to fail, but Joe Biden is taking it further. When it comes to his failed agenda, his green boondoggles are “too favored to fail.”
In the interest of privacy, and with the aim to combat overreaching surveillance, the work of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has raised several concerns.
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P) revealed through its Research Manager, Corinne Worthington, and research intern, Aaron Greenberg, that the NYPD has been employing surveillance technologies that track civilians unnoticed. This type of tracking includes the use of drones for aerial surveillance, GPS locators for tagging vehicles, and even robots for tracking movement within the subway system.
The implications of these findings go beyond just privacy invasion. With no accountability, these intrusive practices can result in unchecked power dynamics, which can subsequently compromise the justice system and individual rights.
The Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology (POST) Act was introduced to curb such instances by making the NYPD more transparent about surveillance practices. The POST Act demands detailed disclosure of technology usage and data-sharing policies, along with impact assessments to ensure surveillance is commensurate with justice.
Regrettably, it appears that the NYPD has disregarded the POST Act’s regulations since its inception three years ago. Worthington and Greenberg argue that city council’s approval should be a requisite before the NYPD can renew contracts or acquire new technology. This suggestion comes in light of the failure of existing oversight mechanisms to hold the NYPD accountable for compliance with the POST Act.
In its report, the NYPD failed to adequately provide specifics about the technology it employs for surveillance, thereby failing to comply with the POST Act. They strategically exploited loopholes, presenting new technologies as enhancements of current ones to dodge the need for justifying these additions. Furthermore, the NYPD’s report on the technologies’ impact is not sufficiently detailed, and it suppresses key information such as their technology vendors.
Ukraine and some European countries are ramping up a lobbying push in the US to get Americans to back more aid to Kiev. Ukrainian officials are seeking new long-range rockets and accelerated training programs. The propaganda push comes after a Time Magazine article portrayed Kiev in disarray and a hotbed for corruption.
According to Politico, “Ukrainian officials and allies in Europe are ramping up their lobbying campaign in the US for new weapons and training.” The authors cite a recent Ukrainian delegation that toured America with a wishlist that included: “US Marine Corps training on conducting ship-to-shore operations; new air defenses to take down the Russian glide bombs that are devastating Ukrainian forces; and the long-range, single-warhead version of the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) the Biden administration secretly shipped to Ukraine last month.”
The representatives of the Ukrainian government are attempting to adapt their message to the current American political landscape. Roman Tychkivskyy, a former Ukrainian marine and current defense official, compared Russians to Hamas.
The White House is attempting to package support for the proxy war against Russia, Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, and the massive military buildup in the Asia Pacific into a massive $105 billion aid bill.
Tychkivskyy went on to dub Russia, North Korea, and Iran an “axis of evil.” Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson recently referred to Russia, China, and Iran as the new “axis of evil.” However, Representative Johnson is vowing to package aid for Israel in a stand-alone bill, a blow to Kiev that was hoping to get the bulk of the $105 billion aid bill.
Politico additionally reports a European delegation will visit the US to lobby Americans, they will argue that spending billions of dollars on arming Ukraine will create jobs at home. William D. Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, says the notion that weapons spending creates jobs is a myth.
“There are many ways to create more and better jobs without resorting to increased weapons spending,” he explained. “Virtually any other form of government outlay, or even a tax cut, yields greater employment than military spending.”
One item on Kiev’s wishlist is long-range ATACMS rockets with conventional warheads. The White House recently approved sending Ukraine the cluster variant of the missile. The Department of Defense is reluctant to send the unitary warhead because the US lacks surpluses in its stockpiles. However, Washington no longer uses the cluster variant of the weapon.
Additionally, Kiev is seeking to accelerate the F-16 training program for Ukrainian pilots. The soldiers began training on the advanced aircraft this week. The Pentagon said the pilots will take several months to complete the program and did not provide a clear timeline.
An article published by Time earlier this week portrayed Kiev as a dysfunctional government with the Ukrainian military in disarray. A close aide to President Zelensky said that the leader had become dogmatic in his view that Kiev could reconquer all of Ukraine by military force even as failures mounted.
Ukrainian forces reported receiving orders that they lacked the military capabilities to complete. If the West comes through on weapons deliveries, “we don’t have the men to use them,” a Ukrainian official explained.
Still, Tychkivskyy is pushing for training on maneuvers to cross the Dnieper River. Kiev believes a successful operation can be used to set up a campaign to retake Crimea. “Once we are able to cross the river successfully and move the troops to the other side, there’s not many obstacles for us to move fast, closer to Crimea,” he said.
The conflict in Israel-Gaza illustrates perfectly how the United States government runs on corruption, with the deep pocketed Jewish and Israeli lobbies able to buy every national level politician that matters to give the loathsome Benjamin Netanyahu a carte blanche both in terms of a free pass on committing war crimes while also having unlimited access to the US Treasury and the contents of military arsenals. Given that the media is also in the hands of the same malefactors the poorly informed American public can only respond to the pablum that they are being fed about what is going on the world, i.e. Ukraine and Israel good, Russia and Palestine bad.
I am certainly not the first observer of politics in the United States who has noticed how this deterioration has come about in my lifetime, where a country that once upon a time believed in meritocracy has now been corrupted by money, with a ruling class, such as it is, that seems to be wallowing in the green stuff even as it pretends to be promoting policies that help the average American. Right now, the witless President Joe Robinette Biden is working on his latest fraud, consisting of bundling all the money that will be dumped on Israel and Ukraine into a package with Taiwan so it will pass effortlessly through Congress given its hostility both to Russia and China and its deep abiding love for all things Israeli. $100 billion is all Joe wants, $10 billion for Israel immediately and the rest to be doled out, mostly to good old boy Volodymyr Zelensky and a bit for the Taiwanese.
And it might be observed that part of the vast ocean of money somehow seems to stick to the fingers of the pampered residents of Capitol Hill. How, one might ask, did Biden, a blue-collar boy from Scranton Pennsylvania who has spent his entire adult life in government employment and who is married to a school teacher wind up with a net worth in the $9 million dollar range? Of course, it now appears that he received a notable assist from a son named Hunter who is something like a one-man cocaine snorting corruption machine who was more than willing to share his largesse with dad in exchange for a little assistance with foreign despots here and there.
One recalls how back in the seventies there was at least some speculation regarding how President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who spent his entire working life in government, started out raised in poverty and wound up being worth an estimated $15 million at his death in 1973 after he left the presidency, at a time when that was serious money, equal to about $100 million today. He was known to be well-wired into Texas Jewish and pro-Israel circles and appeared to have all the right contacts for making private investments that he did not have to publicly declare.
But no one figured out how to milk the system like the Clintons and I still chuckle when I recall how they tried to take the White House silver with them when they departed the residence. Upon leaving the presidency in 2001 they claimed to be completely broke and even in debt, but adroit manipulation of their Clinton Foundation since that time has produced a windfall of more than $300 million in today’s dollars. It was a pattern imitated by Barack Obama who left office with more cash in hand through the usual mechanism of largely unreadable books ghost written on their behalf that were then hawked in large numbers to Democratic Party constituents to support the cause. Barack’s cash value is now estimated to be in the $70 million range and he also owns substantial properties in Washington, Chicago and, of course, on Martha’s Vineyard, where he has a 29 acre estate valued at $12 million.
Of course, to a certain extent the misbehavior of presidents, at least while they are still in office, is not as egregious as it is for members of Congress and even Supreme Court Justices. Presidents are very visible and surrounded by staff and media witnesses of whatever they are up to while the sins of other senior government officials are more anonymous and they can engage in practices like taking bribes and insider trading based on their prior knowledge of legislation or expenditures that are pending that might produce a windfall profit if one is canny enough to buy the right stock. Congressmen are also well placed to use family members to carry out the trades, avoiding scrutiny of their own banking and investment activities. That has, indeed, been claimed in a number of cases where government officials have been able to accumulate large fortunes while holding office.
And there is no doubt that corruption of one form or another is the game that is played in Congress and elsewhere including at state and local levels. In a sense, it is all around us. The recent exposure of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey’s apparent tendency to accept bribes was a particularly lurid tale in part because much of the loot consisted of $480,000 in cash stuffed into jacket pockets, closets and in a safe, along with 13 gold bars, two of them marked as 1 Kilogram in weight to the value of more than $100,000. In the garage was an upscale $60,000 Mercedes-Benz convertible that was a gift to Menendez’s then girlfriend, who had wrecked her own vehicle in an accident in which she had struck and killed a pedestrian. The car came from one of the New Jersey businessmen currently involved in the corruption and bribery investigation and no one can quite explain how an accident in which someone had died was never properly investigated by police. Menendez had allegedly helped the businessman by arranging to block a criminal investigation into his company’s activities.
Menendez, a Cuban American regarded as a political hardliner from his bully pulpit as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been investigated before over charges of possible corruption, but he has beaten the rap each time. He has currently resigned his chairmanship but has refused to leave the Senate and he claims he is innocent, of course. And as he’s inevitably been a major promoter of Biden’s war on Russia the White House will presumably do everything it can to protect him, but only up to a certain point.
There has been some discussion of the wealth of certain congressmen due to the recent death of 90 year-old Dianne Feinstein, Senator from California, who was regarded as both the wealthiest and oldest of all Senators. She was, in fact, born into a prominent Jewish family in San Francisco and acquired even more money and property from her three husbands, all of whom were also wealthy. It has never been suggested that she exploited her positions as Mayor of San Francisco and in Congress to illegally or otherwise obtain more money, to her credit, possibly because she was already rich. Nevertheless, her death was preceded by some high tone media coverage of the nature of her fortune and the family quarrel that is taking place regarding how all the money and the multiple high end properties will be divided up. By some accounts, Feinstein became a billionaire upon the death of her final husband financier Richard C. Blum in 2022, though who is entitled to what remains of the estate will now undoubtedly be determined through either litigation or negotiation involving her own daughter Katherine and the three daughters sired by Blum in a previous marriage. Far from getting rich off of politics, Blum and Feinstein were major donors to the Democratic Party.
More to the point if one is asking “How did they get so rich?” is the trajectory of former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul Pelosi. Nancy was one of six children born and raised in an intensely political environment, though having otherwise modest circumstances, in Baltimore. Her father was Baltimore mayor and congressman Thomas D’Alesandro, who was at one time investigated by the FBI but never convicted regarding association with criminals.
Nancy Pelosi and Hubbie Paul moved to California in 1969 after college and six years spent in New York City. She quickly became involved in local Democratic Party politics while he established himself as a businessman, specializing in real estate and high-tech investment, aided by his brother Ronald Pelosi who was a member of the San Francisco city and county Board of Supervisors. Nancy and Paul have five children. Nancy, who is 83 years old, initially won her congressional seat in a special election in San Francisco in 1987. She became first woman Speaker, though she lost her position recently as a result of the swing of the House to the Republicans in the 2020 election. She has announced that she will not be running for office in 2024 and will retire. She and her husband have indicated that they will live in their mansion in the upscale Pacific Heights district of San Francisco, though they have a vineyard in Napa Valley and additional properties in San Francisco. They are staying in the city in spite of an incident in October 2022, while Pelosi was in Washington, DC, in which an intruder entered their home demanding to know her whereabouts. He then attacked Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. Police arrested the attacker, 42-year-old David DePape, and he has been charged with assault and attempted kidnapping.
As of 2021, Pelosi’s net worth, as revealed by her government financial disclosure forms and other sources, was estimated to be at $120 million, more than doubling her $58 million valuation in 2009 and making her the 6th richest person in Congress. She indicated on her disclosure form that her principal source of income was her government salary, which peaked at $223,500 when she was speaker. She and her husband hold properties “worth at least $14.65 million, including the St. Helena vineyard in Napa Valley worth at least $5 million” and commercial properties.
According to investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, the Pelosis have traded $33 million worth of tech stocks over the past two years, including Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. In May and June 2021, Pelosi’s husband purchased stocks in tech companies such as Alphabet, Amazon, and Apple, netting a gain of $5.3 million, while Nancy was working on anti-trust legislation to better regulate the tech industry, which many considered to be a clear conflict of interest as well as a case of potential insider trading. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, had actually called Pelosi to lobby her in opposition to the new proposed regulations and, in their discussion, she openly opposed increasing regulations on stock trades by members of congress, stating that “we’re a free market economy” and congresspeople “should be able to participate in that”.
This comment attracted strong criticism including from some Democrats: “Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) tweeted: ‘No. It cannot be a perk of the job for Members to trade on access to information.’ Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) – one of the wealthiest members of Congress thanks to his business career that included leading his family’s distillery as well as the gelato brand Talenti – echoed: ‘I disagree with the Speaker.’ And Rep. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who represents one of the most competitive districts in the nation, wrote that ‘I disagree strongly’ with Pelosi’s stance. ‘Americans are losing trust in government and we need to show we serve the people, not our personal/political self-interest.’ Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has said that she doesn’t hold individual stocks or digital assets, reiterated late Friday that she thinks letting members of Congress trade individual stocks is a bad look. ‘There is no reason members of Congress should hold and trade individual stock when we write major policy and have access to sensitive information,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘There are many ways members can invest w/o creating actual or appeared conflict of interest, like thrift savings plans or index funds.’”
So evidently Nancy Pelosi and many other congressmen believe that it is just fine to be regulating industries and also allowing the regulators to benefit materially when it is anticipated that the measures taken will improve those industries’ stock market standing or profitability. Doing so is a well-established principle referred to as insider trading and hers is an interesting viewpoint. It perhaps explains why there are so many multi-millionaires and possibly even a billionaire or two in Congress!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Dr. Kulvinder Kaur Gill is a pediatric allergist in Toronto. She condemned COVID rules as irrational, political, harmful, and inconsistent with scientific data. In the eyes of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO), Gill was dangerous.
In 2021, the CPSO issued three “cautions” (formal warnings) against her. In 2022 it began disciplinary proceedings. The College alleged that she was undermining confidence in public health measures. Its senior counsel wrote that her communications were unprofessional and unbalanced. In its persecution of Gill, the CPSO has made the case for its own demise. Self-regulated monopolies do not work. The CPSO and other professional regulators need competition.
Gill’s inquisition was not an isolated case. Like other medical regulators in North America, the CPSO forbade its doctors from publicly contradicting COVID orders and recommendations. Its Discipline Tribunal revoked the licence of Patrick Phillips, one of several Ontario doctors pursued for their COVID dissent.
The Nova Scotia medical college investigated Dr. Chris Milburn for writing an op-ed on the death of personal responsibility in the criminal justice system. The Ontario College of Psychologists ordered Jordan Peterson to undergo re-education on the use of social media for tweeting about politics. The BC College of Nurses seeks to discipline Amy Hamm for believing in the biology of two sexes.
The Law Society of Ontario compelled its members to state their concurrence with the ideology of “equity, diversity, and inclusion” until a group of rebel lawyers (of whom I was one) managed to repeal it, although the agenda remains. In British Columbia and Alberta, law societies are instituting politically laden “cultural competency” requirements. Teachers, occupational therapists, engineers, and accountants cannot safely voice doubts about transgenderism or “anti-racist” agendas.
This regulatory bullying is occurring within self-regulated professions. Like “ordinary” regulation, self-regulation is coercive. The state delegates authority to their governing bodies. Some doctors rule over other doctors. A licence from the CPSO is voluntary only in the sense that a driver’s licence is voluntary. You don’t get fines or prison time if you don’t get one, but then you can’t drive or practice medicine. Gill’s livelihood was on the line.
Civil servants do not run self-governing professional bodies, but they are part of the executive branch of government nonetheless. Legislation creates them and they are subject to the constitution. Self-regulation exists only for as long as the legislature says that it does.
Legislatures delegate authority, the theory goes, because professionals have the expertise to ensure competence and ethical practice in the public interest. Your surgeon should know how to cut. Your corporate lawyer should be able to draft articles of incorporation and not skim funds off your trust account. But focusing on technical competence and honest conduct no longer satisfies professional regulatory bodies.
We live in a managerial age. As C.S. Lewis wrote:
“The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid ‘dens of crime’ that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices.”
Professions have become managerial cartels. Governing bodies are their godfathers, permitting only proper people and perspectives. Their purpose is not to ensure public access to a variety of professional opinions. Instead, they seek to herd people into “correct” attitudes and behaviors. Propaganda is not evil, but merely a tool to facilitate right results.
Ironically, managerial cartels turn out to be terrible managers. They excel at exercising control but not at producing good outcomes. During COVID, even propaganda was patently incoherent. Yet Gill was one of a scant few doctors and scientists to decry the public health debacle unfolding in front of them. As her lawyer Lisa Bildy wrote in response to the College’s accusations, Gill provided the public with substantiated facts on lockdowns, masking, and COVID vaccines, relying on credible and respected scientific sources and opinions.
The College had scheduled a two-week disciplinary hearing for early 2024. But in September 2023, it abruptly cancelled the hearing with no explanation. Gill’s disciplinary ordeal had come to an end, although her formal warnings remain. Bildy will challenge their validity by judicial review in spring 2024.
Self-regulation protects professions from government interference. That is ironic, given the CPSO’s insistence that their members toe the government line. But self-regulation does not protect individual professionals from the oppression of their peers. A different model beckons: multiple, private regulators competing for members, credibility, and public trust.
Professional cartels benefit the bullies who run them. There’s no reason to grant them the power of monopoly.
Bruce Pardy is executive director of Rights Probe and professor of law at Queen’s University.
Dr. Malik writes:
My name is Ahmad Malik and I am an honest surgeon passionate about free speech and medical ethics.
I have been suspended without pay and cancelled because I dare to challenge the Government narrative, defend informed consent, oppose mandates and lockdowns, question experimental jabs and insist that there are only two biological sexes.
I am raising funds to take legal action against the hospital to lift my suspension and stop the attempts by organisations to censor me.
It will set a precedent that organisations cannot bully, harass and censor those that speak up for medical ethics, and encourage others to speak out.
I am up against large organisations and my case is complex. Legal costs will easily run into the thousands. I need a decent fighting fund which will give me the best chance of being successful.
The various EU institutions’ “entanglement” with the bloc’s own idea to try to substantially and dangerously undermine online encryption via a legislative effort known colloquially as “chat control” seems to be nearing a (positive for the internet) resolution – but the bureaucrats who support it appear to be unwilling to go down without a fight.
On Wednesday, European Parliament member (MEP) from Germany Patrick Breyer posted on his blog about EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson laboring to downplay concerns that lobbyists were reportedly part and parcel of drafting the regulation, supposedly there to protect children (stop the proliferation of CSAM content) – but in the process, thanks to its aggressive anti-encryption provisions, destroy the privacy of everyone on the web – including children!)
A day later, Breyer announced that the EP (European Parliament) negotiators had a majority to push through not what the EU Commission wanted – said to be indiscriminate bulk scanning of private communications – but to instead allow “only for a targeted surveillance of specific individuals and groups reasonably suspicious of being linked to child sexual abuse material, with a judicial warrant.”
Even with this development, it’s well worth taking a look at what the likes of Johansson had in mind just a day earlier (which they still could find some of the many EU loopholes to push through, mind you) – and how they justified it.
So, on Wednesday, the LIBE (European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) grilled Johansson on the issue of the alleged lobbying, in the context of “chat control.”
Reports about this first emerged in the press in September, and implied that the EU Commission was basically in cahoots with what’s described as “a foreign network” while coming up with what the critics dismiss as at once dangerous, and not even a smart scheme.
However, Johansson, as Breyer put it – “insisted no mistakes had been made.” (And here you see what it apparently takes to become a high-ranked EU official – the ability not to even wince when faced with overwhelming facts).
But for every bureaucrat speaking in circles, there are representatives of the public unwilling to mince their words.
“It was only to be expected that Johansson would respond to the revelations with her usual propaganda, such as citing a biased and suggestive Eurobarometer survey that violates the rules of good public opinion research,” Breyer spelled it out on Wednesday.
“In order to really hold Johansson accountable for her foreign-influenced bill and her lobbying in office, my committee, on our initiative, has demanded full access to all correspondence of her office with lobbying organizations – such as the secret letters of the dubious US foundation Thorn. Only then can we see the full extent of the entanglement with our own eyes” – he added at the time.
One of the world’s most powerful corporations is on the ropes as Johnson & Johnson is looking at its third attempt at leveraging bankruptcy to avoid an onslaught of lawsuits over asbestos-laced baby powder, which they allegedly hide the dangers from consumers for decades.
Recently, our golden retriever, Bailey, got kennel cough. She hasn’t been in a kennel in years, but that’s what they called it: kennel cough.
Please forgive my ignorance in the matter. You see, I’m just a people-doctor. I’m not a veterinarian like, say, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla. I can’t claim to be an expert on kennel cough.
But as far as I can tell, “kennel cough” appears to be vet-speak for a nonspecific respiratory tract infection in dogs. It seems to be a term veterinarians use much as I would “bronchitis.”
Do you know what a golden retriever with kennel cough sounds like? After all, people-doctors have historically described kids diagnosed with croup as having a “barking” cough.
Well, based on my limited experience, a golden retriever with kennel cough sounds like a Canada goose. Bailey was repeatedly emitting a medium-pitched grunt/honk, lower in register than a duck’s quack but higher than one of those old-fashioned ah-oo-ga automobile horns.
It’s kind of a Honk! Honk! Honk! with the H’s partially dropped. It’s actually quite alarming. Trust me, you don’t want to hear your golden retriever sounding like something it retrieved.
Now, Bailey is a good girl, and I love her dearly. But my wife loves that dog more than life itself. Sometimes I wonder if she’d donate her own liver if it were necessary to save her.
So my wife calls Bailey’s veterinarian, and she tells them about her symptoms.
I should mention that my wife is a doctor, too. Just a people-doctor like me, mind you, not an expert on kennel cough like Albert Bourla. But a medical case presentation is a medical case presentation, and she knows how to present a case.
So what did Bailey’s Primary Care Provider tell my wife after hearing the medical history from a fellow medical professional? Well, they told her that it sounds like kennel cough, and that they can see Bailey in 2 or 3 weeks.
Incidentally, this veterinary practice – I am not making this up – had recently been bought out by some kind of veterinary investment firm which, over the past couple of years, also bought multiple other practices in the area, including the only veterinary emergency room in town. Soon after those acquisitions, they closed down the emergency room.
My wife says to them, “2 or 3 weeks? Bailey will either be fully recovered or dead by then.”
“Well, we’ve been chronically short-staffed,” they replied. “We’re blocked up for urgent appointments…etc., etc.”
A brief, polite back-and-forth ensued, but ultimately Bailey’s “provider” didn’t offer an urgent appointment.
In their defense, this veterinary group knows what really is important. A couple of months earlier, at Bailey’s routine checkup, her doctor noted concerning “plaque buildup” on her teeth.
Do you know what Bailey’s doctor recommended? Doggie dental cleaning. Under general anesthesia. Seven hundred dollars, cash on the barrelhead.
They also have never delayed care when it comes to Bailey’s vaccines.
You see, according to the American Animal Hospital Association Guidelines (generously supported by Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health, Elanco Animal Health, Merck Animal Health and Zoetis Petcare), all dogs should be vaccinated for:
Distemper
Adenovirus
Parvovirus
Parainfluenza
Rabies
while many or most dogs, depending on “lifestyle and risk”, should be vaccinated for
Leptospirosis
Lyme disease
Bordetella
Canine influenza
and some should even be inoculated with Rattlesnake Toxoid.
I will add, these vaccines are not one-and-done shots. Most of them are recommended to be boosted annually, or at minimum every 3 years.
But again, the experts know what is really important. For example, while Bailey has fortunately avoided any major orthopedic problems to date, we know at least one golden retriever who has had both ACLs reconstructed, and other dogs who have had total hip replacements. Advanced orthopedic surgeries, while admittedly costly, are an essential component of the golden retriever’s healthcare armamentarium.
(This probably sounds selfish, but I just hope and pray Bailey doesn’t develop gender dysphoria. I don’t think we can afford to take her down to Cornell to have them surgically construct a neophallus for her.)
Whew. Let’s step back and review. As I said, I’m no expert on these matters, like Albert Bourla. I want to make sure I’ve got all this correct.
Our golden retriever must navigate a healthcare system that cares so much for her health and well-being that it’s willing to intubate and anesthetize her for a tooth cleaning. Cha-ching!
In the name of vaccination, it will repeatedly inject her with numerous inoculations, up to and potentially including rattlesnake toxoid. Cha-ching!
It offers any number of extensive and expensive Orthopedic surgeries – as long as Bailey’s owner pays. Cha-ching!
And yet, when she gets sick with an acute respiratory infection, it tells her to stay home and wait, offers no treatment, and refuses to see her. Even though, should she become severely ill, her emergency health care system has been decimated by corporate profiteers.
Do I paint an accurate picture, or do I exaggerate?
Fortunately, Bailey’s story has a happy ending.
As so many other concerned patients and family members do, we consulted Dr. Internet. I know, I know, patients are supposed to trust the experts, and refrain from doing their own research – but you’ll have to forgive us. After all, it’s the family dog we’re talking about here. And we did discover some interesting information.
According to our research, the most common first-line treatment for kennel cough is doxycycline, an inexpensive, generic, people-antibiotic that’s been around since the 1960’s. The primary purpose of prescribing it here is to treat against Bordetella, the most common bacterial cause of the disease.
Incidentally, Bailey is up to date on all her recommended vaccines, so the fact that she got kennel cough in the first place raises its own set of questions. I won’t head down that rabbit hole here, except to ask:
If a disease doesn’t merit the patient being seen, assessed, and treated when they contract it, why is obsessive vaccination against it so necessary?
My wife called back, and in her very polite but insistent way, explained that if they weren’t going to see Bailey, we were ‘requesting’ a prescription, which in the end they wrote. I half expected them to say, “Doxycycline, but that’s human paste!” To their credit, they didn’t.
You’ll be glad to hear that after commencing empirical, early treatment with a cheap, decades-old, repurposed drug, Bailey improved almost immediately. Whether this was due to the doxycycline, her own immune system (God gave her one too, we must not forget), or both, we cannot be certain. Anyway, the goose honk is gone, her appetite is back, and she’s got the frequent zoomies again.
But the whole episode left me with a lingering, uneasy, even unhealthy feeling. It’s not exactly déjà vu, but rather the sensation that I’d been through something very similar – and similarly unpleasant – before.
Whatever could that be?
C.J. Baker, M.D. is an internal medicine physician with a quarter century in clinical practice. He has held numerous academic medical appointments, and his work has appeared in many journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine. From 2012 to 2018 he was Clinical Associate Professor of Medical Humanities and Bioethics at the University of Rochester.
Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson has been hired by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a Washington, DC think-tank notoriously bankrolled by the US government, NATO and Western military contractors.
Johnson will be a member of CEPA’s International Leadership Council, described as “a high-level advisory group,” the think-tank announced this week.
According to CEPA’s head Alina Polyakova, Johnson’s “commitment to Ukraine’s victory” makes him an “invaluable addition to this distinguished group of thought leaders,” at what she described as a “pivotal moment for the transatlantic alliance.”
Johnson himself issued a statement about the move, calling the “transatlantic bond” more important than ever, “not just for the freedom and independence of Ukraine but for freedom across the world.”
CEPA describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan, public policy institution” that is “focused on strengthening the transatlantic alliance.” Among its fellows and experts are former Economist editor and anti-RT crusader Edward Lucas; former US envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker; and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
The think-tank’s own website lists among its major supporters military-industrial complex companies such as BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Leonardo, as well as NATO, the US State Department and the US European Command.
Johnson has been one of the loudest champions of Kiev in the West, infamously torpedoing the peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in April 2022. According to Ukrainian media, Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev and informed the government that it would lose all support from the West if it made peace with Moscow.
Just three months later, in July, Johnson faced a cabinet revolt over appointing a party official accused of sexual misconduct. He announced his resignation as prime minister and stepped down in September 2022. In June this year, Johnson also resigned as the member of Parliament for Uxbridge & South Ruislip, a post he’d held since 2015, citing the parliamentary investigation into the so-called Partygate scandal related to misconduct during the Covid-19 lockdowns. His next public appearance was a trip to Ukraine in September, where he was received by President Vladimir Zelensky and granted an honorary doctorate from the Lviv National University.
Best years of their lives, or society-induced teenage trauma? In the second decade of this century, mainstream media gave much attention to a ‘mental health crisis’ in young people. Children and adolescents were a huge growth area for psychology, psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry. This campaign was interrupted by Covid-19, when concern for the impact of lockdown, social distancing and school closure was overridden by the priority of pandemic control.
Until the turn of the millennium, youth had been a vast untapped potential for Big Pharma. A child starting on antidepressants is a customer for life.
My research at King’s College London showed that the ‘mental health crisis’ was mostly contrived: despite the constant barrage of fearful messages in the mass media, there was no sharp rise in psychiatric admissions or suicides. This was an application of the problem-reaction-solution strategy: people are persuaded of a pressing problem (mental health crisis), provoking a reaction (clamour for something to be done) leading to a solution (expanded surveillance and treatment).
This strategy was blatant with Covid-19. Experimental mRNA vaccines were pumped into arms, with only a steadfast minority refusing the injections which proved neither safe nor effective. The entire industry of vaccination is based on deception. The official story is that deadly diseases of the past, such as poliomyelitis, were eradicated by vaccines. The truth is that the contagious killers which ravaged industrialised society had faded by the mid-twentieth century thanks to sanitation and smaller broods of healthier kids. Mortality plummeted.
The same dubious causality was used in psychiatry. In the 1950s the resident population of mental institutions reached its peak. Although asylums had been renamed hospitals earlier in the century, there was no effective treatment for insanity, and conditions in antiquated and overcrowded wards were shameful. In the 1930s an onslaught of physical interventions (insulin coma therapy, shock treatment and frontal lobotomy) failed to fulfil the promise of heroic medicine.
In the mid-1950s antipsychotic drugs were discovered and for the first time the delusional and behavioural symptoms of schizophrenia could be effectively controlled.
Chlorpromazine (brand name Largactil) had profound impact: wards were calmer, rehabilitation units were created and rows of beds were removed as patients were discharged. The drug revolution led to legislative reform: in England and Wales, the Mental Health Act 1959 required review of all certified patients, and within five years, fewer than a quarter were detained. The signs were so promising that the minister for health Enoch Powell declared in 1961 that the mental hospitals would become obsolete, replaced by care in the community.
Yet the major tranquillisers of chlorpromazine, haloperidol and thioridazine, while transformational, were not the only impetus for the decline in the mental hospital population. It began to fall in 1954, before the brown syrup appeared. As with the vaccination myth, the ‘wonder drugs’ of psychiatry went down in history as a sudden turning point, overlooking the social conditions for change after the Second World War. The anti-psychotic drugs caused problems of their own in debilitating side-effects.
In the 1960s mental health was declared a new frontier for medicine. The message was that mental illness was no different from physical health problems, and deserved the same level of resources. The pharmaceutical industry was keen to destigmatise mental health and change attitudes so that people perceived nervous disorders as common and curable. The drug companies worked with the psychiatric profession to revise and expand the classification of diseases, defining illnesses on the basis of emerging treatment, rather than the other way round.
With the growth of therapy in the US, the drug companies focused on middle-class neuroses and in 1961 Merck distributed 50,000 copies of a book Recognizing the Depressed Patient. As the early classes of antidepressant drugs had toxic effects, doctors prescribed anxiolytics such as Valium, which was doled out in great quantity for neurotic disorders (one of the first was thalidomide, but that’s another story). Valium was notorious for addiction.
In 1987 a new antidepressant entered the market. Prozac was an instant success, heralding the era of mass antidepressant therapy. With direct consumer advertising in the USA, Prozac was described by psychiatrist Peter Kramer as ‘a feminist drug – liberating and empowering’. Kramer hosted a popular health programme on National Public Radio, funded by Eli Lilly, featuring numerous ‘key opinion leaders’ promoting antidepressants as a panacea for life’s ills.
In my experience as a psychiatric nurse, these drugs did not deserve the promise given to patients. I cringe on remembering colleagues spouting the line that the tablets will ‘kick in after about ten days’. Gradually I discovered that treatment was not really evidence-based, but an enterprise controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. I worked for a health informatics company, dealing in pharmacovigilance. It found drug company researchers buying data from a licensed primary care database to show that reported adverse effects of new products such as statins were caused not by the pills but by the disease. Seroxat, an antidepressant, was thus excused blame for suicides: it was their depressive symptoms rather than the drug.
Although naïve at the time, I found the Andrew Wakefield controversy troubling. Much effort went into allaying public concerns about the MMR jab, introduction of which Wakefield and 16 fellow researchers had found correlated with autism and inflammatory bowel disease. If Wakefield was wrong in his assertions, surely science would correct his error with refuting evidence? But he was made a pariah, and booted out by the General Medical Council. A charismatic figure, Wakefield was a danger to Big Pharma because he threatened the lucrative vaccine business.
Years later, I wrote a critical appraisal of antidepressants, drugs now taken by about one in eight adults in the UK and an increasing proportion of teenagers. I submitted a carefully researched review to the only journal likely to consider it. The new British Journal of Mental Health Nursing was edited by Professor Peter Nolan, an Irishman who had worked as a personal aide to the Libyan leader Gaddafi after the revolution. Peter was a true radical, a rarity these days. He agreed with my concern about Big Pharma, but had been forced to take drug company advertising. My article was published but with a lengthy retort by another mental health scholar, who poured scorn on my objective analysis.
What is to be done? The problem-reaction-solution structure of mental health care must be dismantled. Instead of increasingly relying on technology which feeds corporate profits on a false curative premise, care must return to human endeavour.
If they are really antidepressants, why are people taking them for months, years or decades?
The US is going further into the red with as it arms its client states for a series of conflicts. Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, said the strategies to avoid a default would only prove to be a “time-bomb.”
US President Joe Biden’s appeal for cash to arm Ukraine and Israel could meet resistance from Congress thanks to the runaway federal budget.
Treasury department figures released late last week showed the government deficit had hit almost £1.7 trillion, up from £1.37 trillion a year earlier, a 23 percent increase in the public debt — although lower than the $2.78 trillion left by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.
The news was worse than it sounded however. The 2022 deficit included the budget for Biden’s student loan repayment program, money that was never spent as the Supreme Court struck it down. The treasury then claimed those unspent public funds as a “saving” in 2023 — meaning the true deficit doubled from $1 trillion in 2022 to $2 trillion this year.
That news came a day before Biden asked Congress for a $106 billion emergency foreign military aid budget. The lion’s share, $61.4 billion, is earmarked for Washington’s proxy conflict with Russia in Ukraine, while another $14.3 billion is to arm Israel for its latest attempt to destroy the Hamas movement in the besieged Gaza Strip.
That request dwarfs the $77 billion in arms and cash gifted to the Kiev regime since the start of Russia’s de-Nazification operation in February 2022.
Economist Sergio Rossi told Sputnik that the mounting deficit would make it harder for Biden to persuade Congress to approve his $100 billion budget request for more arms to Ukraine and Israel “in light of the problematic economic situation and outlook for the US stakeholders, namely, households, firms, and a variety of financial institutions.”
“Usually, when the domestic economic situation worsens, these stakeholders and their political supporters reduce the volume of foreign aid, to focus on supporting their own national economy first of all,” Rossi said.
He said the funding the conflict in Ukraine — while preparing for a Pacific showdown with China over Taiwan — had already put too much strain on Washington’s finances before the Palestinian Hamas movement launched a surprise attack into southern Israel.
“The US government cannot continue financing two military conflicts, particularly if the latter will continue without any foreseeable peaceful agreement before long,” Rossi stressed. “There are already signs that the political consensus for such a financial support is diminishing across the US economy, notably where both the labour and the product markets are in a difficult situation for a number of middle-class workers and several small or medium-sized firms.”
The state of the US economy was “worrying,” he said, and the outlook for the next two years was “even worse,” thanks to “global macroeconomic issues related to different geopolitical problems.”
The “mushroom” of ensuing inflation has badly affected consumer purchasing power. “As a result, firms’ investment is discouraged, both because of this inflationary pressure and the Fed’s repeated increases in the policy rates of interest.”
“The US economy is even closer to a recession than it was one year ago,” Rossi warned, although “there is no potential risk of a default of the US federal government.”
He pointed out that Congress could simply raise the public debt ceiling and the US Federal Reserve could buy up government bonds as an effective loan.
“This, however, is a time bomb that eventually can burst, particularly once some viable and credible alternative to the US dollar will emerge across the global economy,” Rossi said. “The BRICS community could provide such an alternative in a not-too-distant future.”
There are numerous one-liners like “wag-the-dog” that constitute a long running joke about how Israel exploits Jewish power in the United States to limit and control Washington’s options in foreign policy as well as in many other aspects of international interaction. This has been accomplished by a cleverly executed neoconservative takeover of the foreign policy instruments of both major parties based on a series of nonexistent “threats” coupled with media control and billions of dollars in political donations that have bought the numerous politicians willing to be bought, which clearly constitutes a majority of Congress.
President Joe Biden and those who surround him are all about Israel and many of them are Jewish. His Secretary of the Treasury Janice Yellen claims that the US “can afford” two wars simultaneously and the Chuck Schumer led Senate has voted unanimously 97-0 pledging full and unconditional support for the Jewish state. Biden’s somewhat pathetic fifteen-minute speech last week justifying throwing another $105 billion of deficit spending at Ukraine and Israel could have been written by a neocon scribe in its attempt to demonstrate that the US is threatened by developments in those two countries. It is not, even Biden knows that, and his assertions were as hollow as the rhetoric used to support the false premise. My favorite argument being made by the president was that “American leadership holds the world together….and is necessary to keep freedom alive in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe… Hamas and Putin represent different threats, but they share this in common: They both want to completely annihilate a neighboring democracy.” As it turns out, Biden was wrong on every point. Opinion polls suggest that the world overwhelmingly sees the United States as the most disruptive and dangerous nation on the planet, so Biden’s unwillingness or inability to discern that he is presiding over the death throes of America’s global leadership is particularly troubling. And Joe even fails to realize that Russia is more democratic by most measures than is Ukraine, which is consistently rated as the most corrupt country in the world, while Israel is not a democracy at all unless one is a Jew.
Biden was certainly motivated to speak to the American public in prime time, only the second time he has done so, by his overriding concern to express and obtain absolutely total support for Israel no matter what it does. He is willing to lie, cheat and steal for Israel. In the wake of the devastating October 17th blast at al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, a Christian-run medical complex in central Gaza City, which killed at least 500 people and injured hundreds more, he immediately jumped on the protect-Israel bandwagon and declared that Israel had not done it, which is far from being demonstrated and is being hotly disputed by eyewitnesses and forensic specialists. Ukraine is a secondary issue but it too is a war supported overwhelmingly by international Jewry for various reasons, most notably visceral hatred of Russia.
Nevertheless, the control by the Israel Lobby aside, one is at a loss to understand the actual rationale behind the recent trips to Israel in the wake of the Gaza uprising made by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and “they beheaded the babies” Joe Biden since the United States has no genuine national interest that compels it to get involved in either war, even less so in Gaza where Israel has been indisputably the source of nearly all the trouble. Lest anyone be confused over what signal was being sent, two US aircraft carrier strike groups were also dispatched to the Eastern Mediterranean together with orders to prepare to deploy 2,000 Marines, suggesting that Washington was itself preparing for war. And the Muslim world, convulsed by what it is seeing happen to Gaza, is also heeding a call to arms. As of last Friday there have been seven separate drone and rocket attacks on US military bases in Iraq and Syria. Journalist Caitlin Johnstone has neatly summarized the legitimate rage on the ground in Palestine that the White House and Congress make no attempt to appreciate: “The status quo in Israel has been one of continually escalating violence, tyranny and abuse for generations… Stand on someone’s face for long enough and one day it will surprise you if he eventually bites your foot. You might even feel like you were the victim, because that’s just what you’d gotten used to.”
Blinken, citing his ancestors and the holocaust, presented himself as a Jew to his Israeli audience, which meant that no further justification was required as he totally rolled over to comply with the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s interpretation of what had taken place on October 7th. Reports suggest that Blinken had initially sensibly supported a cease-fire on social media just after the Hamas attack, writing that he would be “encourage[ing] Turkey’s advocacy for a cease-fire and the release of all hostages by Hamas immediately.” Presumably under pressure from Biden and the Israel Lobby, he then deleted that and wrote, “Israel has the right to defend itself, rescue any hostages, and protect its citizens.” The State Department got the message and circulated instructions to staffers to not use the terms “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm” in regard to the Gaza/Israel situation, giving Netanyahu a free hand to do whatever he would choose to do.
Blinken was thus converted to fully support massive and indiscriminate Israeli retaliation against the civilian population, a war crime, and his reward was being stiffed by the Saudi Crown Prince, forced to wait in attendance all night before being allowed a short and non-productive audience. Biden outdid his colleague in being completely stonewalled by Saudi, Jordanian, Egyptian, Iraqi and Palestinian heads of state and government, which leads to the question “What did Biden seek to achieve apart from demonstrating that the United States was owned by Israel which is committing a war crime by its collective punishment of Gaza? Did he think the Arab and Muslim states would react positively to a developing massacre of the Gazans, which he specifically supported?”
So why were Biden and Blinken so willfully ignorant as to be unable to appreciate that they were bearing a message that could only succeed in infuriating their hosts? Israel, after all, is by law a Jewish state which not only does not provide equal rights to the non-Jewish citizens and residents, it also has a government that has senior officials and some leading religious figures describing Palestinian Arabs as something less than human or even “animals” and who, in some cases, openly consider it perfectly acceptable to exterminate them. It is the same government with a different cast of characters that has been stealing, killing and inflicting a host of war crimes and crimes against humanity on its captive and largely helpless Palestinian Christian and Muslim minority for the past 76 years.
Biden’s nice package of $105 billion, which will likely sail through Congress because it is “for Israel,” will include $14 billion for Netanyahu to buy some new heavy ordnance to exterminate the Palestinians, which guarantees that the Muslim world will hate the United States for the foreseeable future. The money is also funding the war in Ukraine for the next year and arming Taiwan with some shiny new weapons to ward off China. Ironically, a new CBS/YouGov poll finds that most Americans don’t want the US providing Israel with weapons and supplies in this war, but, of course ordinary voters are never asked their opinion when the White House chooses to demonstrate “American exceptionalism” towards the country that it loves beyond all others. Oh, and the bill will also include some cash to “fortify” America’s Mexican border, a sweetener that runs completely contrary to what Biden has been doing for the past three years. All this will be piled on to the United States government debt which, at just short of $33 trillion, is considered to be unsustainable and weighs in at $350,230 for every American family. And it is all being done for no good reason whatsoever in terms of genuine American interests, and probably illegally too as proxy wars run by the Executive Branch would seem to go against the Constitution’s separation of powers as well as the time constraints in the War Powers Act of 1973. Congressman Michael McCaul from Texas, the Israel firster fanatic who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is currently pushing legislation that would provide an in-advance authorization to go to war on Iran and on Lebanon if Hezbollah were to come in to support the Gazans when Netanyahu starts his potentially genocidal ground attack. Another Congressional clown, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is already calling for an attack on Iran under the presumption that it assisted the Gazans.
Fortunately for all of us who care for such issues as life and death, some cracks are appearing in the wall surrounding total subservience to Israel and its interest. Some even suspect that the “US-based Middle East system,” which mandates blind support for Israel, has become so abusive that the public is becoming reluctant to support it. Indeed, public opinion polls suggest that support for the Palestinians is increasing while that for Israel is growing weaker as atrocities against the Arabs multiply with Israel new ultra-conservative government. The resignation letter of senior State Department official Josh Paul, who recently quit over the Biden administration’s position on the Gaza War, makes for interesting reading. Paul described the Hamas attack as a “monstrosity of monstrosities” but continued: “This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy and bureaucratic inertia. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security nor peace, The fact is that blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”
Paul was responding to the latest arms package being rushed through congress for Israel, which he described as “shortsighted, destructive and unjust,” and the US veto early last week of a Russian proposal in the UN Security Council to call for a ceasefire. The US permanent representative to the UN Linda Thomas Greenfield submitted the veto and then erupted with “By failing to condemn Hamas, Russia is giving cover to a terrorist group that brutalizes innocent civilians. It is outrageous, it is hypocritical, and it is indefensible.” She is the hypocrite in that she obviously does not recognize or does not care that Israel’s record is far worse than Russia’s in “brutalizing innocent civilians” for the past 76 years.
There are also other reports of general “discomfort” and dismay among civil servants over what is happening vis-à-vis the US role in Gaza out of concern for Israel not being urged to show restraint and the White House lack of any genuine concern over the developing humanitarian crisis. It also appears that several of the few Muslim federal government officials have been removed from positions having anything to do with Middle East policy. The US media likewise has been transferring many of its Muslim journalists who were on the ground in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East for fear that they will actually try to tell the truth about what is going on and who is doing what to whom.
On a next to last final note, it has often been noted that the first victim of war is truth. The US government in its various guises has been lashing out at social media and other sites that have been making available material that can be construed as favorable to Gaza. So far, they have been less than successful, but the efforts persist and could lead to legislation. Also, there have been the usual claims regarding “antisemitism” which can be exploited in “hate crimes” prosecutions as well as the existing legislation in 35 states that protect Israel with potential criminal and civil penalties as well denial of jobs and services to applicants who are critics of the Jewish state’s behavior. In Israel itself, al-Jazeera journalists have now been detained and expelled as a consequence of legislation criminalizing the activity of journalists who report “facts” that are not approved by the Israeli government.
But some of the most bizarre lashing out by the Israel lobby and its friends is taking place in the United States. In Florida the state Attorney General has told prosecutors to “exercise zero tolerance” when dealing with the “anti-Jewish hate crimes” engaged in by college students who have been demonstrating in support of the Gazans. At Harvard, major donors who are mostly Jewish have cut off donations to the university due to its tolerance of pro-Gazan student demonstrators. A so called “conservative group” Accuracy in Media headed by one Adam Guillette, who is Jewish, has led the response to a coalition of more than 30 Harvard student groups that posted an open letter on the night of the Hamas attack, citing Israel as “entirely responsible” for the violence that killed more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians. The letter was posted on social media and did not include the names of the individual students in the groups. But within days, students connected to those groups were being identified together with their personal information, all of which was posted online. Families back home were threatened while presumed Harvard alumni businessmen and executives demanded a list of the student names to ban their hiring. And a truck with a digital billboard paid for by Accuracy in Media circled Harvard Square, flashing student photos and names, under the headline, “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.” The students now have to deal with “people’s lives being ruined, people’s careers being ruined, people’s fellowships being ruined” because they opposed a certainly controversial war being fought. Guillette said his organization’s next move, which has already started, is to create online domains using the students’ first and last names to create sites identifying them as antisemites. Guillette boasted that “I think it’s incredibly important for people to know who the antisemites are on their campus and in their community.”
And on a final note, if you have wondered where the money is coming from to fund Israel’s wars and crimes beyond what Joe Biden and his buddies are willing to hand them, there is an interesting story out of Georgia. Republican Governor Brian Kemp has ordered his state treasurer to use tax revenues to purchase $10 million in Israel Bonds. The bonehead then issued a statement: “Israel is one of Georgia’s strongest allies and greatest friends, and our support for its people as they endure horrific attacks from terrorists is unwavering. Purchasing these bonds is just the latest expression of that support.” It is not clear if the purchase is completely legal and someone should have advised the governor that buying Israel bonds is in the nature of a gift as they lack liquidity and are generally regarded as a terrible investment. So it is a rip-off of the Georgia taxpayer. I wonder if anyone will notice!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Soybeans generate approximately $80 million annually in mandatory producer assessments alone, funding a marketing apparatus that has transformed an industrial commodity into one of America’s most trusted “health foods.” The campaign succeeded. Soy milk lines supermarket shelves beside dairy. Soy protein fortifies everything from infant formula to energy bars. Vegetarians rely on tofu and tempeh as dietary staples. Doctors recommend soy to menopausal women. School lunch programs serve soy-based meat substitutes to children. An estimated 60 percent of processed foods contain soy derivatives. The premise underlying this proliferation—that Asians have thrived on soy for millennia and that modern science validates its health benefits—has been repeated so often it functions as established fact.
Kaayla T. Daniel’s The Whole Soy Story dismantles this premise through systematic examination of the scientific literature. The book documents that traditional Asian soy consumption averaged roughly one tablespoon daily, consumed as fermented condiments after processing methods that neutralized inherent toxins—a pattern bearing no resemblance to American consumption of industrially processed soy protein isolate, soy flour, and soy oil. Daniel catalogs the antinutrients that survive modern processing (protease inhibitors, phytates, lectins, saponins), the toxic compounds created by industrial methods (nitrosamines, lysinoalanine, hexane residues), and the heavy metals concentrated in soy products (manganese, aluminum, fluoride, cadmium). She traces the mechanisms by which soy isoflavones—plant estrogens present at pharmacologically significant levels—disrupt thyroid function, impair fertility, and interact with hormone-sensitive cancers. The evidence emerges from peer-reviewed journals, FDA documents, and industry sources themselves.
The stakes extend beyond individual dietary choices. Infants fed soy formula receive isoflavone doses equivalent to several birth control pills daily, with blood concentrations 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than their natural estrogen levels. Soy protein isolate—the ingredient in formula, protein bars, and thousands of products—has never received GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) status; its only pre-1960s use was as an industrial paper sealant. Two senior FDA scientists formally protested their own agency’s approval of soy health claims, citing evidence of thyroid damage and reproductive harm. The Honolulu Heart Program found that men consuming tofu twice weekly showed accelerated brain aging and increased dementia. These findings have not penetrated public awareness because the institutions responsible for consumer protection have been compromised by the industry they regulate. The Whole Soy Story presents the evidence that has been systematically excluded from mainstream health messaging, enabling readers to evaluate for themselves what the soy industry prefers they never learn. … continue
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