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A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.

By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020

New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.

A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.

Why is this happening? There are undoubtedly a number of factors at play here. Socio-economic status plays a significant part in many countries. Those with poorer educational attainment are more likely to be overweight, an association that is much stronger in women than men, for reasons that are not clear.

It is also fascinating to look at where obesity levels are highest in the US, essentially in the poorer southern States.

When you analyse the data, it is clear that obesity is not evenly distributed and there is a very clear difference between rich and poor. Why? That is probably beyond the scope of this article. Instead I am going to consider something else that I think is having a significant impact: dietary guidelines.

At one time, there was no such thing as a dietary guideline. The first was one was published in 1976, in the US. The UK followed suit, then much of the rest of the world. Before this, people ate pretty much whatever they wanted. Imagine that! There was no one to tell you what you should, or should not, eat. How on Earth did they survive?

The guidelines were not developed in an attempt to reduce the rates of obesity, which was not considered a major problem at the time. They were designed to protect against heart disease, which was the major killer. It still is, although the rates have fallen. The guidelines themselves promoted a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet.

Prior to 1976, there was not really a major problem with weight or obesity in the US. Then came the guidelines, and from that point onwards, things changed, as the rising obesity levels in the US demonstrated.

In the UK, there were no dietary guidelines until 1980, at which point exactly the same upturn in obesity occurred as was seen in the US. There was an immediate uptick, then an unstoppable rise.

As an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) noted, “Beginning in the 1970s, the US government and major professional nutrition organizations recommended that individuals in the United States eat a low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet, launching arguably the largest public health experiment in history. Throughout the ensuing 40 years, the prevalence of obesity and diabetes increased several-fold, even as the proportion of fat in the US diet decreased by 25 percent.”

The article went on to say that “a comprehensive examination of this massive public health failure has not been conducted.”

Has this been a case of cause and effect? One GP in the UK, Dr. David Unwin, has done a great deal of research in this area. He has managed to reverse type-2 diabetes in very nearly 50 percent of his patients by putting them on a diet which is the exact opposite of that promoted by the dietary guidelines. It is high in fat, and low on carbohydrates. Not only did he reverse diabetes, he also achieved significant and long-lasting weight loss.

A report on his findings stated: “It was observed that a low carbohydrate diet achieved substantial weight loss in all patients and brought about normalization of blood glucose control in 16 out of 18 patients.”

In a more recent and bigger study on nearly 200 patients, he achieved a combined weight loss of 1.9 metric tons (1,900kg) in weight.

There are reasons why a diet high in carbohydrates – sugar, bread, pasta, soft sugary drinks, crisps, chips and suchlike – can drive weight gain. These reasons are based on the fact that carbohydrate consumption drives insulin release. This, in turn, promotes energy storage, and traps energy in fat cells.

The higher insulin then causes blood sugar levels to fall, driving hunger, leading to more food consumption. So, people become trapped in a cycle of eating and hunger. It has to be acknowledged, though, that there is heated medical debate in this area, to put it mildly.

However, in my opinion, the evidence is pretty overwhelming. The levels of overweightness and obesity remained pretty much flat for decades. Then, along came the dietary guidelines promoting low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets. And at that point, problems with obesity and type-2 diabetes took off, firstly in the US and then the rest of the world.

Researchers such as Dr. David Unwin, who have been brave enough to push back against the guidelines, have had spectacular results by changing the diet to high-fat, low-carb. Time for a major rethink, in my opinion.

Malcolm Kendrick is a doctor and author who works as a GP in the National Health Service in England. His blog can be read here and his book, ‘Doctoring Data – How to Sort Out Medical Advice from Medical Nonsense,’ is available here.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Whoever Controls the Ideological Landscape Controls the world

By Dustin Broadbery | The Cogent | November 19, 2020

The following quotes are from the Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Neil Basu, published in the Evening Standard on 19th November . I have highlighted some keywords in capitals which I will refer to later in the analysis.

“Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer today called for a NATIONWIDE DEBATE on the introduction of new laws to punish people who spread ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORIES.”

“Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said that there should be a DISCUSSION about whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” people to spread “MISINFORMATION THAT COULD COST PEOPLE’S LIVES” as he responded to concern that false claims online could undermine the take up of Covid-19 vaccines.”

“There is a DEBATE FOR SOCIETY to have about FREE SPEECH and responsibility and people who are spreading misinformation that could cost people’s lives”

Do you see what they’re trying to achieve?

This propagandised message from the Met is attempting to reconstruct the ideological landscape, reframe the parameters of what a debate is, reclassify free speech, weaponise information, and obfuscate the important legal principle: ‘Innocent until proven guilty.’

In other words, the government is attempting to whitewash free speech towards the kind of one world ideology that was endemic in the former Soviet Union, where thinking contrary to the ideology of the Communist Party was criminalised.

But there is something even more odious concealed within this Goebbelsian public service announcement: here we have a senior police officer using threatening language to intimidate and shakedown the general population.

This is on the very same day that Boris Johnson flexed his own military muscle, announcing: record defence spending for laser guns, direct energy weapons, an artificial intelligence agency and the creation of a national cyber force (a group of computer hackers to conduct offensive operations).

Offensive operations against who exactly?

Britain is not currently at war, but according to the Assistant Commissioner of the MET, the government is waging an ideological war against anti vaccination conspiracy theorists. Ideological wars of this nature typically take place online, which is where much of the government’s military budget is being invested.

What does that tell us about who the government is at war with?

These strong arm tactics by a fledgling totalitarian regime, learning its trade, could be interpreted as coercion against the British public, and it is likely that the government is not only targeting dissenters, skeptics or those unwilling to wear the uniform of the Red Army, they are in fact threatening the entire population.

We can therefore interpret the stern warning from the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, as follows:

1), DEBATES and DISCUSSIONS are permissible only when it comes to determining the extent of punishment to be served on those publicly voicing concerns or questioning the legitimacy or safety of vaccinations.

2), Despite the fact that a DEBATE and DISCUSSION is being proposed and this DEBATE is apparently open to all (NATIONWIDE), ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS are not authorised to participate in this discussion. In other words: if your own set of ideologies conflicts with state doctrine, you effectively have no voice. In fact, your voice has already been criminalised, and it is only the extent of your punishment that is so far undetermined.

3), The proposed NATIONWIDE DEBATE is in fact a fiction, when the definition of debate is: ‘a regulated discussion between opposing views.’ What’s more, there can be no debate without FREE SPEECH, which it is implied, does not exist anymore, because the war on MISINFORMATION and the ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS has established that the principle of free speech is, as a result of the threat of COVID, no longer permissible. As the Met’s Assistant Commissioner points out: one side of the DEBATE has already been silenced and criminalised. Needless to say, the DEBATE does not involve the other side of the DEBATE. This in turn implies that what is being proposed here is in fact a witch hunt and not a DEBATE.

4), An important legal precedent has now been established that overrides the principle of ‘innocent until Proven guilty.’ due to the implied guilt of ‘ANTI-VACCINATION CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, without the enactment of legislation. In other words, this witch hunt commenced before the rule of law convened. We can therefore assume that some kind of Kangaroo Court has taken place behind closed doors, without scrutiny or DEBATE from the legislative or judicial branches of government. This in turn implies that the legal process for enacting laws is surpassed by arbitrary policing by preference.

5). Despite the word ‘NATIONWIDE’ implying an open and transparent culture of DEBATE for everyone, as we have already established: the DEBATE will be mediated and directed by a small constituent belonging to one side of the DEBATE. Namely, the executive branch of government (the police), and its public relations agency (the media).

6), The emergency powers which the government granted itself back in March, under the Public Health (Control of Disease Act) 1984 and the Coronavirus Act 2020, not only abolished debates and scrutiny in parliament, these measures dissolved parliament from 650 MP’s to 50 MP’s. Therefore, If the constitutional affairs of this country cannot be determined by lawmakers in parliament through DEBATE, it is improbable that the general population would be invited into such a DEBATE. Therefore what is implicitly meant by the word DEBATE is official diktat.

7). The notion that MISINFORMATION COULD COST PEOPLE’S LIVES, is one of the most dangerous legal propositions in the history of democracy. Implying the government has decreed a new category of criminal activity, equivalent to thought-crime. Granting the government powers to regulate our thoughts and communications. If it can be argued that a person could be killed by misinformation, then the very principles of ‘intent,’ ‘premeditation’, ‘motive’, and in turn ‘guilt’, are transformed into something else, and each of these parameters of guilt could be preceded by ‘thought’ or ‘word’, as an incitement to cause injury or death. This kind of legal precedent could therefore become an important weapon of censorship, the likes of which has not been attempted previously, and Orwell’s concept of Thought Crime might become a reality in the 21st century. The intervention of Britain’s top anti-terrorist officer in this debate is especially alarming, because it presents evidence that the state is looking to brand anyone questioning the official narrative, with what it deems MISINFORMATION, as a terrorist.

8). All systems of ideological control are concerned with dissolving the power of their opposition. Whether a political party looking to gain more seats in parliament or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) prohibiting other political parties altogether. The idea that a CONSPIRACY THEORIST presents a threat to people’s lives, grants unprecedented emergency powers to the government to censor, criminalise and prosecute its opposition. Unlike apartheid in South Africa – where a social segment was discriminated against because of the colour of their skin – a conspiracy theorist is not identifiable by any incontrovertible features, and is instead singled out on the basis of the government’s interpretation of their dissenting ideological stance.

It could therefore be argued that anyone disagreeing with the state, is in fact a CONSPIRACY THEORIST and open to prosecution.

November 25, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | | Leave a comment

UK Health Dept pilloried after issuing vague objection to Daily Mail article challenging govt’s Covid-19 narrative

RT | November 22, 2020

A Daily Mail piece that poked holes in the UK government’s approach to coronavirus prompted the country’s Department of Health to cry foul, but the complaint backfired after the government failed to say what the paper got wrong.

Published under the headline ‘Covid: What They Don’t Tell You’, the article took aim at the government’s terrifying estimate in July of 119,000 deaths from Covid-19 if a second wave coincided with winter flu, noting that the prediction has so far been wildly off the mark.

The Mail pointed out that the number of daily deaths being reported in the country is not unusually high for this time of year, adding that 95 percent of Covid-related deaths involved people with serious underlying conditions. The government’s fears of hospitals being overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients were also questioned, with the Mail reporting that only 31 percent of intensive care unit beds are currently occupied by patients that have tested positive for coronavirus.

The analysis caused a sensation on social media, and even caught the attention of the Department of Health and Social Care.

“This article is misleading. This is a global pandemic – national restrictions have been introduced to keep people safe and save lives,” the department’s official Twitter account wrote in a now-deleted reply to the piece. The message urged Britons to “follow the rules and continue to stay at home” so that the country can “get back to normality.”

The comments appear to have had the opposite of their intended effect, however, with journalists, politicians, and countless social media users challenging the Health Department to elaborate on the “misleading” nature of the piece.

“What specifically is misleading about it? It is not (yet) compulsory for the press to follow the government’s propaganda line,” journalist Peter Hitchens fired back at the department.

Radio host Mike Graham was similarly unimpressed by the department’s vague dismissal of the article.

Please address why it is misleading. Are the figures for hospital beds WRONG?Are the figures for death rates WRONG?Are the SAGE predictions not WRONG?Are the infection rates collected WRONG?Please explain #COVID19https://t.co/XCMzE0uMXU

— Mike Graham 🍾 (@Iromg) November 21, 2020

The condemnation was echoed by countless other social media users, who accused the government of desperately trying to control the narrative surrounding the virus, while having even “less credibility than the media.”

The Daily Mail ran its own scathing retort to the department’s tweet, accusing the UK government of using “Twitter as a propaganda tool” in an attempt to undermine the paper’s reporting.

The outlet published comments from several politicians who expressed regret over the government-sanctioned social media post.

Tory MP Sir Iain Duncan Smith said it was simply “good journalism” to “highlight the problems with the [official] figures that are being produced,” and urged the Department of Health to do its job rather than pick fights with news outlets.

Another Conservative MP, Sir Graham Brady, said that “the people tell government what it can do – not the other way round,” and stressed that it is “essential” that there is an open debate about how to best deal with Covid-19.

The UK government has come under increasing scrutiny for its Covid-19 restrictions, with critics arguing that lockdowns and curfews imposed across the country to deal with a second wave of the virus will have devastating economic, social, and health effects that will eclipse any potential benefits from the policies. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is currently isolating at Downing Street after meeting with an MP who tested positive for the illness. He is expected to release a “Covid Winter Plan” next week.

The country has recorded 1,493,383 positive coronavirus tests, linked to 54,626 deaths, since the start of the pandemic. Despite an increase in testing, new cases have been dropping over the past week. Hospitalizations and deaths are still far from the peaks seen at the start of the health crisis in April.

November 22, 2020 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

UK amends status of Israel and Jerusalem following pressure from pro-Israel lobby

MEMO | November 21, 2020

The UK government has responded to pressure from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Conservative Friends of Israel by listing Israel and occupied Jerusalem together as one country in its weekly update to COVID-19 related travel corridors.

Yesterday the Board condemned the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in a tweet which contained a screenshot of the revised FCDO list that had made a clear distinction between the status of Israel and Jerusalem by including the two territories on its list as separate countries.

Though the list was in line with US foreign policy, the Board, which over the years has adopted the hard-line positions of the Israeli far-right towards the Palestinians, slammed the UK Foreign Office.  “Absolutely inappropriate to list ‘Jerusalem’ as a separate country. We have taken this up with ⁦@FCDOGovUK⁩ this morning & they are urgently reviewing it” said the Board in its tweet.

Members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) Stephen Crabb and Eric Pickles and President Lord Polak also urged the government to make an immediate correction to the advice about Jerusalem.

“The announcement of a travel corridor with Israel is excellent news. However, the FCDO’s decision to define Jerusalem as a territory separate from Israel is offensive and hostile,” CFI is reported saying in the Times of Israel.

“Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. To describe Jerusalem as anything other than an integral part of Israel is a fiction divorced from reality and the travel advice must be immediately corrected”.

Following the complaint, the FCDO published a revised list which had Israel and Jerusalem down as the same country, even though there has been no change in the UK’s position over Jerusalem.

“The position of the UK government has remained constant since April 1950” the FCDO says on its website. “We recognise Israel’s de facto authority over West Jerusalem. In line with Security Council Resolution 242 (1967) and subsequent Council resolutions, we regard East Jerusalem as under Israeli occupation”.

MEMO has asked the FCDO to explain its reason for listing Israel and Jerusalem as the same country when hours before it had made a distinction between the two territories in line with its long-held position that East Jerusalem is occupied territory. No response has been received at the time of publication.  

November 21, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

If the ‘Great Reset’ really is so good for us, let’s hold a referendum on it, so it can have a democratic mandate (or not)

By Neil Clark | RT | November 20, 2020

The World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ and associated Fourth Industrial Revolution would, if implemented, mean far deeper changes to our everyday lives than Brexit, yet is being pushed through without any proper debate.

Compare and contrast. On the issue of whether Britain should leave the EU we’ve had:

  • A national referendum.
  • Four years of debates in Parliament on how/when/under what conditions we should leave.

In fact, for the period May 2016 until March 2020, it seemed MPs were talking about nothing else.

No one can say that Brexit, if it indeed finally happens at the end of this year, hasn’t been properly discussed, or that it hasn’t had democratic endorsement. The ‘Leave’ side won the referendum vote and then in 2019 the Tory government was re-elected on the promise of ‘Get Brexit Done’. Traditional ‘Red Wall’ Labour seats went Tory for the first time in 2019 largely because of Brexit.

Contrast this with the Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution. The UK government, like many others in the West, is clearly trying to implement the Klaus Schwab/WEF programme, under the guise of fighting a virus, but unlike Brexit, not only is there no public vote, there is not even a debate.

How can this be right? The Great Reset/4IR (and the closely linked UN 2030 Agenda) represents not only the most radical changes ever proposed in our lifetimes, but the most radical changes to everyday life IN HISTORY.

The Great Reset/4IR is actually about redefining what it means to be human.

For centuries, it has been accepted that man is a social animal. That meeting up with other people is good for us. That we have certain freedoms which are inalienable. But the Great Reset/4IR threatens all of this.

Klaus Schwab says “What the fourth industrial revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity.”

Wow. A fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity. That’s Transhumanism. Cyborgs. I Robot. That represents a slightly bigger change to our lives than anything argued about in the Brexit negotiations.

So will the abolition of private property, except for a privileged few. The WEF predicts that by 2030, “You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

Is this what the public really wants? Ditto a ‘cashless society’? Humans have been using cash banknotes and coins for millennia, now we’re told they have to go. The civil liberties repercussions of a cashless society are truly terrifying as they mean anyone can be ‘cut off’ from the system for non-compliance. Eliminate cash, and you eliminate freedom.

Then there are the draconian changes to our lives on the grounds of ‘sustainability’. The Conservatives had pledged to ban the sale of diesel and petrol cars from 2040. But this week, Prime Minister Johnson, again without any public debate, brought the date forward to 2030. Again, where’s the democracy here?

The Great Reset/4IR means that the golden age of travel for ordinary people will be at an end. The WEF has been promoting digital health passes raising the very real prospect that only those who have had Covid-19 vaccines or negative test results would be able to leave their country, or indeed attend a sporting or cultural event.

Combine that with the collapse of the airline industry, the mass closure of all but the most expensive hotels, the end of cheaper petrol-fuelled cars and the advent of ‘smart’ motorways where access can easily be restricted, and most people will be stuck in their homes. But not, of course, Davos Man. Davos Man doesn’t use Easy Jet. Davos Man uses Private Jet. He’ll still be flying to Switzerland to elite conferences where fellow billionaires discuss further how they can use hi-tech methods to restrict the travel of everyone else, to ‘save the planet’.

What life would be like in Britain under the Great Reset was laid out for us in Boris Johnson’s ‘socially distanced’ speech to the Tory Party Conference in October.

It was an oration which could easily have been written by Klaus Schwab. “From internet shopping to working from home, it looks as though Covid has massively accelerated changes in the world of work… as old jobs are lost and as new jobs are created… The Covid crisis is a catalyst for change,” Johnson enthused.

Previous generations were told that the world was their oyster, but under the Great Reset, horizons are much narrower. “Instead of being dragged on big commutes to the city,” people can “start a business in their home town… and bring up their children in the neighbourhoods where they grew up themselves,” Johnson went on. But of course, the elites will still be moving around, it’s just the plebs who will be grounded.

The premise of the Great Reset is that there is absolutely no going back to the lives we enjoyed prior to March 2020. “The people assume we are just going back to the good old world which we had and everything will be normal again in how we are used to normal in the old fashioned. This is, let’s say, fiction, it will not happen, the cut which we have now is much too strong in order not to leave traces,” says Schwab.

Now of course, some people might like the idea of working permanently from home (that’s if they’re lucky enough to have a job), ordering everything they need online (to arrive by drone), having to have a continually updated digitalised health pass to go anywhere, owning nothing and having their biological, physical and digital identities ‘fused’, but shouldn’t they be consulted about it first?

And what about those of us who actually miss the ‘old-fashioned’ normal of mixing freely with people, of paying in cash, of driving petrol-fuelled cars wherever we want to go, and being in crowded pubs? Most of us care about the environment, but are suspicious that, like Covid-19, ‘sustainable development’ has become a Trojan Horse to introduce regressive changes to our lives that most definitely are not to our benefit.

A referendum on the Great Reset/Fourth Industrial Revolution is urgently needed so that the ‘Build Back Better’ brigade can put their case directly to the electorate. If what they are proposing really is so great, then what on earth are they frightened of?

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer, broadcaster and blogger. His award winning blog can be found at http://www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. He tweets on politics and world affairs @NeilClark66

November 20, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , | Leave a comment

YouTube removes lockdown-sceptical interview with renowned immunologist Dr Mike Yeadon for ‘violating terms of service’

RT | November 20, 2020

Dr Mike Yeadon has argued that the British government is using “lethally incompetent” scientific advice in its Covid-19 response. YouTube has mysteriously taken down a video in which the immunologist explains his point.

The UK government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) has got many things about the Covid-19 pandemic wrong, says Dr Mike Yeadon. He is an expert in allergy, immunology, and respiratory diseases, with over three decades of experience, including working as Pfizer’s vice president and chief scientific officer. Apparently his credentials amounted to nothing, though, when digital ‘censors’ at YouTube noticed that he was criticizing the prevailing narrative on the necessity of lockdowns.

For its modelling, SAGE assumed that the entire population was susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 when it first emerged in China last year. And it now considers that only a fraction of the public has been infected so far, based on the detectable presence of antibodies in their blood. These premises are behind the harsh restrictions currently in place in the UK, which are designed to prevent a massive and deadly outbreak of Covid-19.

According to Dr Yeadon, the assumptions are totally wrong, and the worst of the disease is over, with Covid-19 falling into the background as a relatively nasty but otherwise ordinary seasonal respiratory disease. A significant part of the population was actually not susceptible to the virus, thanks in large part to cross-immunity from previously being exposed to other kinds of coronaviruses. Those range from the relatively exotic but closely related SARS-CoV-1, the pathogen behind the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak, to human coronaviruses causing the common cold.

The large number of positive Covid-19 tests is not indicative of the number of active cases, Dr Yeadon believes. The common PCR test detects RNA remnants of the coronavirus, but it cannot tell if they came from live viruses or those long conquered by the immune system. There are also false positives. Mass testing causes an increase in those, he says, as people less experienced in how to properly conduct tests are recruited to run them.

On the other hand, the percentage of people currently immune to Covid-19 is seriously underestimated because it is measured by the presence of antibodies in people’s blood, Dr Yeadon argues. Antibody levels rise when an organism reacts to an active infection, but immune response memory – which determines whether the immune system is trained to beat a disease – is stored in T-cells. So, a person perfectly capable of standing up to Covid-19 may test negative for antibodies, he concludes.

Dr Yeadon has made his case and explained why he believes SAGE’s advice to be “lethally incompetent” in a number of interviews, including a 30-minute sit in with Unlock UK, a lockdown-sceptical media outlet. The video was published on Friday and is available on Facebook, but for some reason it was banned by YouTube, which says it violated its terms of service.

Western tech giants have been relentlessly pressured by politicians and legacy media to fight against misinformation on their platforms. Their idea of what constitutes misinformation seems to be closely aligned with prevailing narratives, while complaints about censorship mount from those challenging the mainstream narrative.

This seems especially true for Covid-19 response coverage, as many people find restrictions at best controversial and at worst a government assault on liberties. Just this week, the UK’s top counter-terrorism police officer, Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, advocated punishing those who spread “misinformation that could cost people’s lives,” like anti-vaccination conspiracy theories.

Dr Yeadon, incidentally, argues that mass vaccination against Covid-19 would be unnecessary, because the outbreak has almost run its natural course before an efficient vaccine was even available.

View the video.

November 20, 2020 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

‘Conspiracy theories’ on Covid-19 come from BRAIN DAMAGE? Questionable science is being used to pathologize real dissent

By Helen Buyniski | RT | November 19, 2020

People who believe in so-called conspiracy theories about Covid-19 are actually suffering from “neuropsychological impairments,” says a neurologist, in what sounds more than a little bit like Soviet-era weaponized psychiatry.

‘Conspiracy theorists’ who refuse to wear masks and embrace lockdowns are the victims of their own scientific illiteracy, which has fundamentally damaged their brains to such an extent that they cannot understand the science of Covid-19, claims neurologist Bruce Miller from the University of California, San Francisco, in a paper published earlier this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Miller leverages his formidable credentials – he’s both director of the Memory and Aging Center and co-director of the Global Brain Health Institute at UCSF – to legitimize a baseless and frankly dangerous theory that could potentially be used to lock those same “conspiracy theorists” away in psychiatric facilities indefinitely. His questionable paper takes the pathologization of dissent even a step further than recent bogus “anti-maskers are sociopaths” studies, to a very dark, totalitarian place – ironically, the exact same endpoint feared by the conspiracy theorists he so glibly patronizes.

Dissent = brain damage?

Miller equates “anti-mask behavior,” “anti-vaccine beliefs,” and “conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19” with “denial of science,” blaming the whole package on low levels of science literacy rooted in poor-quality education. While the quality of US science education is certainly dismal, Miller’s reductionist viewpoint leaves no room for the many intelligent, educated people who hold these views. His area of expertise may be in delusional disorders, but writing off informed dissent as delusion born of ignorance is, well, ignorant and delusional.

Despite being published in JAMA, one of the most prestigious journals in medical science, Miller’s article cites very little actual science: two papers on the neurobiology of delusions (actual delusions, as in schizophrenia and dementia, not “differing views the writer doesn’t like”) and one comparing Covid-19 deaths in the US with those in other countries. While he liberally sprinkles medical terms throughout, hidden between his references to Capgras syndrome (the false belief that a loved one has been replaced by an impostor) and frontotemporal dementia (in which people falsely believe they are rich) are admissions that these paradigms do not necessarily apply to beliefs about Covid-19 that counter the establishment line.

It’s not that Miller himself isn’t a scientist – indeed, it’s his prestigious credentials that make him all the more dangerous, as the same scientific illiteracy he complains about makes people much more likely to be duped by his tactical deployment of neurological jargon. However, like most specialists, his expertise in neurology doesn’t necessarily translate to a deep understanding of politics. Or respiratory diseases, for that matter – he pooh-poohed the dirt-cheap malaria drug hydroxychloroquine despite scores of studies upholding its effectiveness in treating Covid-19, apparently believing every last one of them was conducted by delusional quacks (unlike, presumably, those that say it doesn’t work).

But what about the conspiracy theories?

In fact, the real science in most of the cases he cites favors the “conspiracy theorists” – or at least doesn’t rule them out. Take masks: the largest-ever randomized controlled trial of mask-wearing was finally published on Wednesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine after being blocked by JAMA and its fellow top-tier journals New England Journal of Medicine and the Lancet, showing face coverings do not protect against infection with the novel coronavirus.

There are dozens more, though most relate to other respiratory viruses and mask-wearing. Some have been mysteriously deleted for being “no longer relevant in our current climate” – a chillingly Orwellian explanation that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with control.

And vaccine hesitancy? Vaccine frontrunner Moderna claims its jab is 95 percent effective, but the company has not released the results of its latest clinical trials – and the last time it did, the data revealed that all participants who got two shots of the highest dose experienced side effects, many of them severe. Even with the Pfizer jab, there are reasons for caution, especially with the UK Labour Party preemptively calling for blanket censorship of all “anti-vaccine” content. The last time the UK rushed a vaccine to market in the middle of a much-hyped “pandemic,” thousands of people were permanently injured, and some died. Meanwhile, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock refuses to rule out making the jab mandatory, and several countries have floated making it a requirement for travel. Sound kosher?

As for the origins of Covid-19 itself, the official story has changed so many times (those darn Chinese and their wet markets! What, they didn’t sell bats at the Wuhan market? Well, the bat must have spent some intimate time with a pangolin, or maybe a snake… stop asking so many questions!) it’s no longer credible. Nobel laureate Luc Montagnier and US bioweapons expert Francis Boyle say it was created in a lab. The science is not settled, on this or any of the above issues, and it never will be if the establishment keeps smearing researchers who deviate from an increasingly threadbare orthodoxy as loony conspiracy theorists.

More than just public shaming

Miller’s paper goes one step beyond the usual establishment sneering, however. Tracing the origin of “conspiracy theories” to an organic brain defect reeks of the Soviet weaponization of psychiatry, a dark chapter in history that seems – if papers like this and another recent “study” out of Brazil are any indication – poised to repeat itself. During the 1960s and 1970s, the USSR weaponized psychiatry to institutionalize political dissidents, diagnosing them with mental illness – because after all, one would have to be crazy not to embrace communism! – and locking them away. The practice served to neutralize the targeted individual, marginalize others who shared his opinions, and terrify the rest of the population into keeping their doubts about the system to themselves.

The parallels to 2020 are impossible to ignore. If Miller’s scientifically baseless theory that belief in conspiracies represents an organic brain defect is embraced by the medical establishment (and there’s no reason to suspect it won’t be), dissidents could find themselves locked up indefinitely as incurable “cases.” Those who dismiss such a possibility need only look at the comparatively recent removal of homosexuality from the DSM-IV psychiatric manual. Many of the mindsets we now take for granted have been pathologized, and many which were once seen as normal (“oppositional defiant disorder,” “attention deficit disorder”) were created only recently.

Countries are also changing their laws to make it easier to institutionalize targets. One of the changes to UK law rammed through in its emergency legislation package reduced the number of medical professionals signing off on the decision to “section” (institutionalize) an individual from two to one. And now, American doctors are licking their lips at the possibility of sidelining those troublesome conspiracy theorists once and for all.

Are these the behaviors of governments that have nothing to hide? How long will it even be permitted to ask such a question?

Helen Buyniski is an American journalist and political commentator at RT. Follow her on Twitter @velocirapture23

November 20, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

UK terrorism chief calls for ‘national debate’ on criminalizing doubts about Covid-19 vaccine

RT | November 19, 2020

The UK’s top counter-terrorism cop has suggested society stop allowing people to question the wisdom of a rapid Covid-19 vaccine rollout, regarding such skepticism to be life-threatening “misinformation.”

Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu has pointedly questioned whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” the sharing of “misinformation that could cost people’s lives” — demonizing all doubts about quickly developed Covid-19 vaccines whose potential long-term effects are not yet known and tying them to extremist radicalization efforts.

While he didn’t go so far as to call for a law to be passed banning such content, his suggestion of a “national debate” will presumably light a fire under ministers already mulling such legislation.

Basu also expressed worries about a “sharp increase in extremist material online in the last few years” during Wednesday’s press conference, warning of a “new and worrying trend in the UK” of young people being radicalized. Officials told UK media that Islamic extremists and far-right groups were using “false claims about coronavirus” to radicalize their followers.

Social media users already wary of the rush to roll out the vaccine were disturbed by the attendant rush to criminalize criticism of it.

Some said that there were completely legitimate reasons to criticize the jab.

Im not anti vaccine. Im anti THiS vaccine. Experimental rushed and flawed, sold to us by the self same devious creeps and liars who stand to share trillions #WiSEUP

— Ian Brown (@ianbrown) November 18, 2020

Even some in favor of taking the jab thought the decision to do so should be a “personal choice” rather than a mandate.

I will take the vaccine but believe it’s a personal choice and debate important.The establishment have other ideas:Met Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said that there should be a discussion about whether it is “the correct thing for society to allow” https://t.co/TIv9RYeBvi

— Darren Selkus Ex PPC Epping Forest (@DarrenSelkus) November 19, 2020

Whatever happened to, ” my body, my choice”?

— alfred setian (@spats402) November 19, 2020

And others argued Basu’s suggestion should horrify anyone who believed in free speech, “no matter what [their] beliefs.”

I mean… literally the thought police. ! I don’t care if you want to marry vaccines…no matter what your beliefs this type of censorship should make your blood run cold! Without free thought, there is no freedom. Be careful what you support! https://t.co/zfhv37v9q4

— Emma Kenny (@emmakennytv) November 18, 2020

“Am I alone in finding this more worrying than the virus itself?” one user asked.

The counter-terrorism chief’s concerns have added to the growing chorus of government entities calling for the blanket censorship – or even criminalization – of vaccine scepticism. The Labour Party earlier this week demanded the government adopt emergency legislation to impose civil and criminal penalties on social media platforms that don’t immediately remove posts that question the safety of the jab and other “false” materials.

Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth demanded government “deal with some of the dangerous nonsense, nonsensical anti-vax stuff that we’ve seen spreading on social media, which erodes trust in the vaccine” even though no vaccine has yet passed review by UK health authorities and speculation from either “side” of the debate is fully hypothetical.

Meanwhile, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has refused to rule out making vaccination mandatory, and ministers are reportedly considering issuing QR codes to people who receive the jab that will allow them to attend sports, theatre, and other events.

November 19, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

Boris’s “Green Industrial Revolution” is Economic Lockdown, for ever…

The Global Warming Policy Forum | November 18, 2020

GWPF today described the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for a ‘Green Industrial Revolution’ as shallow gesture politics, but a gesture with severely negative economic implications from day one into the foreseeable future.

And we know that this will happen because all previous attempts to create a viable green economy have failed.

In March 2009, the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced his Labour government’s ‘industrial strategy,’ a term the Conservatives have also adopted, promising to create 400,000 jobs. Brown’s words are strangely reminiscent of today’s announcement:

“I want to create a global ‘green new deal’ that will pave the way for a low carbon recovery and to help us build tomorrow’s green economy today.”

Twelve years later Britain has green industries that are still dependent on huge handouts, now totalling £10 billion a year — and building nearly all their green equipment overseas. The recent Seagreen offshore wind farm, for example, has awarded its contracts to two countries with cheap energy, the UAE and China, bitterly disappointing BiFab and other Scottish manufacturers. Green miracles just don’t happen.

Chairman Boris’s Great Leap Forward will also fail to deliver the goods because, like all “economic planning”, it is an incoherent utopian dream unconstrained by economic and physical realities and a mess of unaffordable and incompatible goals.

For example, meeting the absurd offshore wind target of an additional 30 GW of capacity (giving a total of 40 GW in 2030), will have a total capital cost of £120bn–£130 billion for wind farms and offshore transmission grid, nearly all that expenditure going to overseas companies, just as it did with Seagreen.

Paying for that investment and all ancillary costs related to it will put something £27 billion a year on the UK electricity bill, roughly double the wholesale market value of the entire UK electricity sector at present, with horrific implications for electricity prices by the end of the decade.

Those high electricity prices will render utterly unaffordable the Prime Minister’s proposals for heat pumps and electric vehicles. This will cause anger, not only because UK consumers will be confined to their freezing homes, but because many will have spent a fortune on realising the PM’s green utopia.

Heat pumps cost between £10,000 and £20,000 each to install, so the Prime Minister’s aim of installing 600,000 Ground Source Heat Pumps a year by 2028 implies an annual cost of between £60 billion and £100 billion a year.

Dr John Constable, GWPF energy editor, said:

“These over-reaching proposals are technically absurd, economically deluded and politically disastrous. Does the Prime Minister have any competent advisors? One wonders?”

November 18, 2020 Posted by | Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

UK’s Labour Party suspends critic of Israel

Left-wing Labour newly elected NEC member Gemma Bolton who was suspended for calling Israel an apartheid state [screenshot]

Labour newly elected NEC member Gemma Bolton was suspended for calling Israel an apartheid state
MEMO | November 17, 2020

A left-wing member of the governing body of Britain’s Labour Party is under investigation for saying that Israel is an apartheid state.

Newly-elected National Executive Committee member Gemma Bolton, who was backed by left wing group Momentum, has been placed under investigation by the party for tweeting in 2018: “If I run the risk of getting suspended for calling Israel an apartheid state then so be it. Suspend me. Because that comrades, is a hill I am perfectly happy to die on.”

An article in the Jewish Chronicle article referred to Bolton’s views on Israel as “hard line” and attempted to shame her for previous posts completely unrelated to the issue. She was accused of being fond of “sexually explicit humour”; the pro-Israel community newspaper cited a social media post from 2015 in which she said, “I’m torn between wanting to be a high class Westminster politician or a porn star.”

In 2017, a UN report said that, “Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.” UN Under-Secretary-General Rima Khalaf said at the time that the report “clearly and frankly concludes that Israel is a racist state that has established an apartheid system that persecutes the Palestinian people.” Israel immediately expressed its outrage and dismissed the report as “anti-Semitic”.

The latest Labour suspension follows that of former leader Jeremy Corbyn MP, who was suspended after the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into alleged anti-Semitism in the party. Those opposed to such moves point out that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not the same thing, and that legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’s policies is not anti-Semitic per se.

Labour leader Keir Starmer sacked left wing Rebecca Long-Bailey from the shadow cabinet earlier this year for sharing an interview with actress Maxine Peake speaking out about police brutality in the wake of the George Floyd murder. Peake mentioned that US police forces receive training from their Israeli counterparts.

Starmer also reportedly gave backbench MP Stephen Kinnock a “dressing down” for suggesting that the government should stop buying goods from illegal Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land. Again, the reality is that such settlements and the movement of people to live on occupied land are illegal in the eyes of international law.

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian Court Holds First Session in Lawsuit against UK over Balfour Declaration

Palestine Chronicle – November 17, 2020

A Palestinian court yesterday held the first session to review a lawsuit filed against the British government over its crimes in Palestine during the British Mandate between 1917- 1948 and the Balfour Declaration which promised Palestine as a national home for the Jewish people.

The Court of First Instance in the city of Nablus, in the northern occupied West Bank, heard Palestinian witnesses who had been evicted from their villages in 1948 by Jewish militias and the crimes committed during that period.

The United Kingdom did not send a representative to attend the session.

The judge postponed the session until December 6.

One of the lawsuit initiators, Munib Al-Masri, said this is a serious and organized step to bring Britain to account for the damage caused by the Balfour Declaration, adding that after the Palestinian court issues its decision, they plan to go to the British judiciary and the international courts.

The lawsuit was filed by the International Commission to Support Palestinian Rights (ICSRP) on behalf of Palestinian families last October.

The lawsuit holds “the UK legally responsible for the consequences arising from violating rules, morals and international law and for the crimes it committed during the colonization of Palestine, including the Balfour Declaration.”

The Balfour Declaration refers to the letter sent by then British Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, in 1917 to Jewish Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, favoring a Jewish national homeland in Palestine.

November 17, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

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