The 100 Year Debt-Supercycle Is Coming To An End: "Facing Greatest Crisis In Human History"

ORIGINAL LINK

The government deal on the debt ceiling is coming to an end next month, and there is about to be a great deal of noise about it. But, as SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo notes, while the system is most likely to simply pass the buck around again, things may have finally reached the point where the road cannot be stretched further out ahead. The Federal Reserve system has acknowledged that QE stimulus reached its theoretical limit, and had crippled the economy; it has acknowledged that the law of boom and bust has put us into a double-bind, and that there will be economic pain one way or another. The experts, critics and Cassandra’s have all screamed about the massively vulnerable system we are all part of, but the biggest question of all is when? Have the debt levels, and monetary schemes simply reached the point of no return? Are they ready to sacrifice public order and stability in order to collect on what is there’s? These things move in century-long cycles, and it is time to assess where we’re at, at what point in history we have reached. Central banking has enslaved us all, and doomed us to the next crisis, and there may be nothing we can do to stop it...

March 2017: The End Of A 100 Year Global Debt Super Cycle Is Way Overdue

via Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

For more than 100 years global debt levels have been rising, and now we are potentially facing the greatest debt crisis in all of human history.  Never before have we seen such a level of debt saturation all over the planet, and pretty much everyone understands that this is going to end very, very badly at some point.  The only real question is when it will happen.  Many believe that the current global debt super cycle began when the Federal Reserve was established in 1913.  Central banks are designed to create debt, and since 1913 the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 6800 times larger.  But of course it is not just the United States that is in this sort of predicament.  At this point more than 99 percent of the population of the entire planet lives in a nation that has a debt-creating central bank, and as a result the whole world is drowning in debt.

When people tell me that things are going to “get better” in 2017 and beyond, I find it difficult not to roll my eyes.  The truth is that the only way we can even continue to maintain our current ridiculously high debt-fueled standard of living is to grow debt at a much faster pace than the economy is growing.  We may be able to do that for a brief period of time, but giant financial bubbles like this always end and we will not be any exception.

Barack Obama and his team understood what was happening, and they were able to keep us out of a horrifying economic depression by stealing more than nine trillion dollars from future generations of Americans and pumping that money into the U.S. economy.  As a result, the federal government is now 20 trillion dollars in debt, and that means that the eventual crash is going to be far, far worse than it would have been if we would have lived within our means all this time.

Corporations and households have been going into absolutely enormous amounts of debt as well.  Corporate debt has approximately doubled since the last financial crisis, and U.S. consumers are now more than 12 trillion dollars in debt.

When you add all forms of debt together, America’s debt to GDP ratio is now about 352 percent.  I think that the following illustration does a pretty good job of showing how absolutely insane that is…

If your brother earns $100,000 in annual income and borrowed $10,000 on his credit card, he could consume $110,000 worth of stuff.  In this example, his debt to his personal GDP is just 10%.  But what if he could get more credit year after year and reached a point where his total debt reached $352,000 but his income remained the same.  His personal debt-to-GDP ratio would now be 352%.

 

If he could borrow at super low interest rates, maybe he could sustain the monthly loan payments. Maybe?  But how much more could he possibly borrow?  What lender would lend him more?  And what if those low rates began to rise?  How much debt can his $100,000 income cover?  Essentially, he has reached the end of his own debt cycle.

The United States is certainly not alone in this regard.  When you look all over the industrialized world, you see similar triple digit debt to GDP figures.

When this current debt super cycle ultimately ends, it is going to create economic pain on a scale that will be unlike anything that we have ever seen before.  The following comes from King World News…

That is the inevitable consequence of 100 years of credit expansion from virtually nothing to $250 trillion, plus global unfunded liabilities of roughly $500 trillion, plus derivatives of $1.5 quadrillion. This is a staggering total of $2.25 quadrillion. Therefore, the question is not what could go wrong since it is guaranteed that all these liabilities will implode at some point. And when they do, it will bring misery to the world of a magnitude that no one could ever imagine.

 

It is of course very difficult to forecast the end of a major cycle. As this is unlikely to be a mere 100-year cycle but possibly a 2000-year cycle. It is also impossible to forecast how long the decline will take. Will it be gradual like the Dark Ages, which took 500 years after the fall of the Roman Empire? Or will the fall be much faster this time due to the implosion of the biggest credit bubble in world history? The latter is more likely, especially since the bubble will become a lot bigger before it implodes.

And there are certainly lots of signs that a global slowdown is already beginning.  For example, global trade growth has fallen below 2 percent for only the third time since the year 2000.  On each of the other occasions, we witnessed a horrible recession take place.  For more signs that economic conditions are deteriorating, please see my previous article entitled “Recession 2017? Things Are Happening That Usually Never Happen Unless A New Recession Is Beginning“.

Of course much of the globe is already in the midst of a horrible economic crisis.  Brazil is in the middle of their worst recession ever, and people are literally starving in Venezuela.  A new round of debt problems has erupted in Europe, with Greece, Portugal and Italy being the latest flashpoints.

Just like in 2007, many are mocking the idea that the a major economic downturn is coming to the United States.  They believe that the ridiculously high stock market valuations of today can stick around indefinitely, and they are putting their faith in politicians.

But it won’t be too long before a new economic crisis begins in America and the kind of civil unrest that I portray in “The Beginning Of The End” erupts all across the country.

I just don’t understand why more people cannot see this.  Government debt, corporate debt and consumer debt have all been growing much, much faster than the overall economy.  Can someone please explain to me how that could possibly be sustainable in the long-term?

Someone that I considered to be a mentor but that has since passed away once said that things would seem like they would be getting better for a little while before the next crash comes.

And it turned out that he was precisely correct.  We are in a season of time when economic conditions have appeared to be getting a little bit better in the United States, and this has blinded so many people to the truth of what is about to happen to us.

 

via IFTTT

“Peer Reviewed:” Science Losing Credibility As Large Amounts Of Research Shown To Be False

ORIGINAL LINK

Science today, in all fields, is plagued by corruption. Yet, more often than not, attempts to create awareness about scientific fraud — an issue that few journalists have been willing to address — are met with the response, “Well, is it peer-reviewed?”

Although good science should always be reviewed, using this label as a form of credibility can be dangerous, causing people to dismiss new information and research instantaneously if it doesn’t have  it, particularly when that information counters long-held beliefs ingrained into human consciousness via mass marketing, education, and more.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that we are being lied to about the products and medicines we use on a daily basis.

If you’re one who commonly points to the “peer-reviewed” label, then you should know that there are many researchers and insiders who have been creating awareness about the problem with this label for years.

Who Says So? And From What Fields?

• Climate Science

Many people have spoken up against the corporatization and politicization of science. For example, Professor Lennart Bengtsson, a Swedish climatologist and former director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, has voiced his concern that some scientists are, according to an interview given to the Daily Mail, “mixing up their scientific role with that of climate activist.” He claims that there are multiple indicators for how “science is gradually being influenced by political views.” (source)

Professor Joanna D. Haigh, a British physicist, professor of atmospheric physics at Imperial College London, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change, and former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, has also spoken up about the politicization of climate science. (source)

The Australian prime minister’s chief business advisor has done the same, and so have other politicians, like Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. You can read more about that story here.

Unfortunately, the mainstream vilifies such people, and to great effect.

Below is an excellent snippet of a lecture given by Richard Lindzen, one of the world’s top experts in the field and lead author of “Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,” Chapter 7 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Third Assessment Report on climate change. He knows that all climate science we receive is IPCC United Nations science. One of the scientists mentioned on the senator’s list, in this video, he talks about the politics of climate science and the manipulation of data — something that plagues all fields of science today.

• Medical Science/Health Science/Food

In the case of medicine, a lot of information has emerged showing just how much corruption really goes on. The Editors-in-Chiefs of several major medical journals have been quite blunt, with perhaps one of the best examples coming from Dr. Richard Horton, the current Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet, who says, “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.” (source)

Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor-in-Chief of the New England Medical Journal (NEMJ), also considered one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, alongside The Lancet, has said that “it is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”  (source)

John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine, published an article titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False,” which subsequently became the most widely accessed article in the history of the Public Library of Science (PLoS). (source)

Here is another great quote:

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”

– Arnold Seymour Relman (1923-2014), Harvard professor of medicine and former Editor-in-Chief of The New England Medical Journal  (source)

As you can see, this has been a problem for quite some time.

A Couple of Examples:

• GMOs

One of the best examples of political influence over scientific publication comes from an episode involving Genetically Modified Maize. Monsanto published a study a few years ago which purported to demonstrate the effects of GMO maize on rats over a 90 day period. They reported no ill effects on the rodents from this diet. Given the fact that there are no long term studies examining the health risks associated with GMOs, independent researchers then decided to conduct the same study, with one difference: Their study lasted over a year rather than a mere three months. Researchers found instances of severe liver and kidney damage, as well as hormonal disturbances, alongside the development of large tumours and mortality among the treatment groups. The study was published in November of 2012, in the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, and then instantly retracted. After hundreds of scientists condemned the retraction, the U.S. did not publish it. The study was then re-published in multiple peer-reviewed scientific journals (in Europe last year [2014]), like Environmental Sciences Europe. This is why it shouldn’t be a surprise that so many countries in Europe have  banned the growing of genetically modified crops. Many also have bans and/or severe restrictions on importing GM products, citing health and environmental concerns.

This fact was also made clear by WikiLeaks documents:

Resistance to the advent of genetically modified foods has been pronounced across Europe. The continent features some of the strictest regulations governing the use and cultivation of GMO products, and public skepticism about biotech goods is quite high – a fact not lost on American diplomats. In a lengthy report dating from late 2007 , a cable issued by the State Department outlined its “Biotechnology Outreach Strategy, ‘which, among other things, recognized the European Union’s ‘negative views on biology’ and committed as a national priority to limiting them (O7STATE160639).

Initial attention paid to the State Department’s part in pushing industrial manufactures on its allies obscured the even bigger role it played in assuring a place for genetically modified agricultural products (GMOs) in a region that largely wanted nothing to do with them. The American campaign promoting biotech products was a worldwide effort. In all, some 1,000 documents from the Cablegate cache address this effort, a significant number of which originate in Europe. U.S. diplomats on the continent gave considerable attention to insuring the interests of American biotech firms in Europe – Whether through “education” programs, government lobbying, or outright coercion – as well as stripping down European Union regulations designed to act as a bugger against them. Available cables published by WikiLeaks suggest that the United States invests considerable time, effort, and expense in its operations on behalf of the American biotech firms.

Read more about it from The WikiLeaks Files: The World According To U.S. Empire.

In 1996, Steven M. Druker, being a public interest attorney and the Executive Director of the Alliance For Bio-Integrity, initiated a lawsuit in 1998 that forced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to divulge its files on genetically engineered foods.

He’s recently published a book on the lawsuit that provides details of his experience. He has also released the documents on his website, showing the significant hazards of genetically engineering foods and the flaws in the FDA’s policy.

It’s called Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government, and Systematically Deceived the Public.

• Pharmaceutical Drugs

There are a number of examples to choose from here, but antidepressants make the top of the list. Irving Kirsch, a lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School, published a study pointing out how “analyses of the published data and the unpublished data that were hidden by drug companies reveals that most (if not all) of the benefits are due to the placebo effect.” (source)

Another study published in the British Medical Journal by researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Center in Copenhagen showed that pharmaceutical companies were not disclosing all information regarding the results of their drug trials. Researchers looked at documents from 70 different double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) and found that the full extent of serious harm in clinical study reports went unreported.

Tamang Sharma, a PhD student at Cochrane and lead author of the study, said: “We found that a lot of the appendices were often only available upon request to the authorities, and the authorities had never requested them. I’m actually kind of scared about how bad the actual situation would be if we had the complete data.” (source)

Another co-author of the study, Dr. Peter Gotzsche, who co-founded the Cochrane Collaboration (the world’s foremost body in assessing medical evidence), found in a separate analysis that 100,000 people in the United States die each year from the side effects of correctly used prescription drugs, noting that “it’s remarkable that nobody raises an eyebrow when we kill so many of our own citizens with drugs.” He has published many papers arguing that our use of antidepressants is causing more harm than good, and taking into consideration the recent leaks regarding these drugs, it seems he is correct.

Below is a brief video of him elaborating on this problem:

• Vaccines

Vaccines are getting more attention now than ever before. In fact, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Chairman of the World Mercury Project (WMP), recently announced a $100,000 challenge aimed at putting an end to the inclusion of mercury, a neurotoxin that is 100 times more poisonous than lead, in vaccines administered in the U.S and globally.

It’s offered to anybody, including journalists and scientists, who can provide a study showing that it is safe to inject mercury into babies. This will be difficult, as hundreds of studies (that were also present at the press conference in print form) show it is absolutely unsafe, and can significantly increase the risk of developing neurodegenerative disorders.

You can read more about this here.

Multiple cases of vaccine fraud have been uncovered, but this is something you might not know given the fact that the mainstream media completely ignores these facts, and vaccines are heavily marketed.

For example, Lucija Tomljenovic, who has a PhD in biochemistry and is a senior postdoctoral fellow in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, as well as a medical investigator, uncovered documents that reveal vaccine manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and health authorities have known about multiple dangers associated with vaccines but chose to withhold them from the public. (source)

But perhaps one of the biggest revelations in medical history, also unfortunately ignored by mainstream media, came only a couple of years ago and is still making noise, as it should.

Dr. William Thompson, a longtime senior CDC scientist, published some of the most commonly cited pro-vaccine studies, which showed that there was absolutely no link between the MMR vaccine and autism (Thompson, et al. 2007, Price, et al. 2010, Destefano, et al. 2004). However, Dr. Thompson recently admitted that it was “the lowest point” in his career when he “went along with that paper.” He went on to say that he and the other authors “didn’t report significant findings” and that he is “completely ashamed” of what he did. He was “complicit and went along with this,” and regrets that he has “been a part of the problem.” (source)(source)(source)

A  study with revised information and no data omitted was published by Dr. Brian Hooker (a contact of Dr. Thompson) in the peer reviewed journal Translational Neurodegeneration, and it found a 340% increased risk of autism in African American boys receiving the Measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. The study has since been retracted, around the same time this controversy arose.

You can read the full study here, although, unsurprisingly, it has since been retracted.

Thompson’s attorneys, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Bryan Smith of Morgan & Morgan, also released a statement from Dr. Thompson, which mentioned Hooker: “I have had many discussions with Dr. Brian Hooker over the last 10 months regarding studies  the CDC has carried out regarding vaccines and neurodevelopmental outcomes including autism spectrum disorders. I share his belief that CDC decision-making and analyses should be transparent.” (source)

 He had to invoke whistleblower protection and turned extensive agency files over to Congress. He said that, for the past decade, his superiors have pressured him and his fellow scientists to lie and manipulate data to conceal a causal link between vaccines and brain injuries, including autism.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, scientific fraud is a big problem across the board, and this article has only provided a few examples. The problem is not just with GMOs and vaccines — it affects cosmetics, food, cleaning supplies, and so much more. How have so many products, which cause so much harm, been approved by the agencies that are tasked to protect us?

There are so many books on this topic, but they don’t get the attention they deserve, since the major mainstream media shareholders are identical to those of the entire health industry. Why would they bash their own products on their own national television networks?

The power of corporate America has taken over almost every aspect of our lives. If you’re wondering what we can do about it, well, I believe the first step is awareness. There is still a plethora of information that the general public is completely unaware of, but if we backtrack to a decade ago, information that used to be considered a conspiracy is now simply fact. A great example is the corporate takeover of science, as discussed in this article, but another one could be the Snowden Leaks on mass surveillance, or 9/11. Studies are now being published by physicists and engineers regarding that event.

Awareness makes it harder for the elite to manipulate us. Once we become aware of something, we can stop it. For example, look at Genetically Modified Foods and the pesticides that go with them. As soon as the masses became aware of their dangers, they began to change their shopping habits. Now, most countries around the world have completely banned these foods.

It’s difficult to accept that there are unseen powers, motivated by their own greed and lust for power, that are doing us harm disguised as good. It is only when we become aware of how we are being harmed and change our shopping habits — hurting their bottom line — that they change their tactics.  On the other hand, it’s encouraging to know that once we do come together for a common goal, anything can be accomplished, and we actually do have the potential and power to change our world.

 

via IFTTT

The #Chromebook Classroom #Podcast: conversation on how Chromebooks are impacting the Classroom bit.ly/2kT2rCT #GoogleEDU

ORIGINAL LINK

John R. Sowash @jrsowash

The #Chromebook Classroom #Podcast: conversation on how Chromebooks are impacting the Classroom bit.ly/2kT2rCT #GoogleEDU

via IFTTT

When Presidents Drink Their Own Kool-Aid

ORIGINAL LINK

For years, Barack Obama has been (rightly) mocked for these grandiose promises shortly after he secured the Democratic nomination in 2008:

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

But here's Donald Trump in his address to the joint session of Congress today:

Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds—families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns. But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus—as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country. Finally, the chorus became an earthquake—and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first. Because only then can we truly make America great again.

Dying industries will come roaring back to life. Heroic veterans will get the care they so desperately need. Our military will be given the resources its brave warriors so richly deserve. Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our very, very beautiful land. Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and ultimately stop. And our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety and opportunity.

This weirdly grandiose rhetoric is a reflection of a weirdly grandiose bipartisan conception of the powers of the president.

So here's your handy reminder: Presidents do not make the earth move. They do not turn back tides. They do not heal the sick, or eliminate vice, or remake the nation. They are humans with human failings, and one of those failings is the inability to resist taking a big slup of their own Kool-Aid in moments of triumph.

via IFTTT

White Meat May Be as Cholesterol-Raising as Red

ORIGINAL LINK

In light of recommendations for heart healthy eating from national professional organizations encouraging Americans to limit their intake of meat, the beef industry commissioned and co-wrote a review of randomized controlled trials comparing the effects of beef versus chicken and fish on cholesterol levels published over the last 60 years. They found that the impact of beef consumption on the cholesterol profile of humans is similar to that of fish and/or poultry—meaning that switching from red meat to white meat likely wouldn’t make any difference. And that’s really no surprise, given how fat we’ve genetically manipulated chickens to be these days, up to ten times more fat than they had a century ago (see Does Eating Obesity Cause Obesity?).

There are a number of cuts of beef that have less cholesterol-raising saturated fat than chicken (see BOLD Indeed: Beef Lowers Cholesterol?), so it’s not so surprising that white meat was found to be no better than red, but the beef industry researchers conclusion was that “therefore you can eat beef as part of a balanced diet to manage your cholesterol.”

Think of the Coke versus Pepsi analogy. Coke has less sugar than Pepsi: 15 spoonfuls of sugar per bottle instead of 16. If studies on blood sugar found no difference between drinking Coke versus Pepsi, you wouldn’t conclude that “Pepsi may be considered when recommending diets for the management of blood sugars,” you’d say they’re both equally as bad so we should ideally consume neither.

That’s a standard drug industry trick. You don’t compare your fancy new drug to the best out there, but to some miserable drug to make yours look better. Note they didn’t compare beef to plant proteins, like in this study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. As I started reading it, though, I was surprised that they found no benefit of switching to a plant protein diet either. What were they eating? You can see the comparison in Switching from Beef to Chicken & Fish May Not Lower Cholesterol.  

For breakfast, the plant group got a kidney bean and tomato casserole and a salad, instead of a burger. And for dinner, instead of another burger, the plant protein group just got some boring vegetables. So why was the cholesterol of the plant group as bad as the animal group? They had the plant protein group eating three tablespoons of beef tallow every day—three tablespoons of straight beef fat!

This was part of a series of studies that tried to figure out what was so cholesterol-raising about meat—was it the animal protein or was it the animal fat? So, researchers created fake meat products made to have the same amount of saturated fat and cholesterol by adding extracted animal fats and cholesterol. Who could they get to make such strange concoctions? The Ralston Purina dog food company.

But what’s crazy is that even when keeping the saturated animal fat and cholesterol the same (by adding meat fats to the veggie burgers and making the plant group swallow cholesterol pills to equal it out), sometimes they still saw a cholesterol lowering advantage in the plant protein group.

If you switch people from meat to tofu, their cholesterol goes down, but what if you switch them from meat to tofu plus lard? Then their cholesterol may stay the same, though tofu and lard may indeed actually be better than meat, since it may result in less oxidized cholesterol. More on the role of oxidized cholesterol can be found in my videos Does Cholesterol Size Matter? and Arterial Acne.

Just swapping plant protein for animal protein may have advantages, but if you really want to maximize the power of diet to lower cholesterol, you may have to move entirely toward plants. The standard dietary advice to cut down on fatty meat, dairy, and eggs may lower cholesterol 5-10%, but flexitarian or vegetarian diets may drop our levels 10 to 15%, vegan diets 15 to 25%, and healthier vegan diets can cut up to 35%, as seen in this study out of Canada showing a whopping 61 point drop in LDL cholesterol within a matter of weeks.

---

You thought chicken was a low-fat food? It used to be a century ago, but not anymore. It may even be one of the reasons we’re getting fatter as well: Chicken Big: Poultry and Obesity and Infectobesity: Adenovirus 36 and Childhood Obesity.

Isn’t protein just protein? How does our body know if it’s coming from a plant or an animal? How could it have different effects on cardiovascular risk? See Protein and Heart Disease, another reason why Plant Protein [is] Preferable.

Lowering cholesterol in your blood is as simple as reducing one’s intake of three things: Trans Fat, Saturated Fat, and Cholesterol: Tolerable Upper Intake of Zero.

What about those news stories on the “vindication” of saturated fat? See the sneaky science in The Saturated Fat Studies: Buttering Up the Public and The Saturated Fat Studies: Set Up to Fail.

In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.

PS: If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my free videos here and watch my live, year-in-review presentations:

• 2012: Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death
• 2013: More Than an Apple a Day
• 2014: From Table to Able: Combating Disabling Diseases with Food
• 2015: Food as Medicine: Preventing and Treating the Most Dreaded Diseases with Diet
• 2016: How Not To Die: The Role of Diet in Preventing, Arresting, and Reversing Our Top 15 Killers

Image Credit: Pixabay. This image has been modified.

via IFTTT

Vaccine Safety Commission: 50 studies the AAP failed to send President Trump

ORIGINAL LINK

A new organization launched this morning calling themselves “Vaccine Safety Commission”, a nonprofit organization that was formed by “concerned scientists, doctors, journalists, and parents.” For now, the group has chosen to remain anonymous, but I certainly hope that changes soon. The group has no formal affiliation to either Robert F. Kennedy or President Trump, but wholeheartedly endorses the formation of a Vaccine Safety Commission, and claims to be actively seeking additional members.

(Article by J.B. Handley, Jr., republished in part from GreenMedInfo.com)

In my opinion, we are in the dark ages of having honest conversations about vaccine injury where truth-tellers are still routinely destroyed, and I hope this group is another step in the right direction towards honest dialogue. Consider the case just this week of science journalist and Harvard educated Mish Michaels:

Mish Michaels, who lost her job as a science reporter at WGBH News this week after questions were raised about her anti-vaccine views, issued a statement Thursday night saying her personal beliefs ‘have been positioned inaccurately.’

At issue are comments Michaels made before the Massachusetts Legislature in 2011 on behalf of a bill to add parental choice to the list of reasons children without immunizations may attend school. (Currently, children who aren’t immunized may only attend school if they have documentation from a doctor, or if a parent submits a written statement declaring that immunization conflicts with their religious beliefs.)

At least one group of doctors are going public: a group called Physicians for Informed Consent recently launched in California, speaking up about the importance of keeping vaccines as a voluntary medical procedure.

Physicians for Informed Consent

Regarding President Trump’s desire to look more closely at vaccine safety, I was emboldened by an excellent editorial last week in the British Medical Journal by their Associate Editor, Dr. Peter Doshi, which should really be read by everyone. Here’s an excerpt:

It does matter if the vast majority of doctors or scientists agree on something. But medical journalists should be among the first to realize that while evidence matters, so too do the legitimate concerns of patients. And if patients have concerns, doubts, or suspicions — for example, about the safety of vaccines, this does not mean they are “anti-vaccine.” Anti-vaccine positions certainly exist in the world, but approaches that label anybody and everybody who raises questions about the right headedness of current vaccine policies — myself included9 — as “anti-vaccine” fail on several accounts. Firstly, they fail to accurately characterize the nature of the concern. Many parents of children with developmental disorders who question the role of vaccines had their children vaccinated. Anti-vaccination is an ideology, and people who have their children vaccinated seem unlikely candidates for the title.

Secondly, they lump all vaccines together as if the decision about risks and benefits is the same irrespective of disease-polio, pertussis, smallpox, mumps, diphtheria, hepatitis B, influenza, varicella, HPV, Japanese encephalitis-or vaccine type-live attenuated, inactivated whole cell, split virus, high dose, low dose, adjuvanted, monovalent, polyvalent, etc. This seems about as intelligent as categorizing people into “pro-drug” and “anti-drug” camps depending on whether they have ever voiced concern over the potential side effects of any drug.”

Thirdly, labeling people concerned about the safety of vaccines as “anti-vaccine” risks entrenching positions. The label (or its derogatory derivative “anti-vaxxer”) is a form of attack. It stigmatizes the mere act of even asking an open question about what is known and unknown about the safety of vaccines.

Fourthly, the label too quickly assumes that there are “two sides” to every question, and that the “two sides” are polar opposites. This “you’re either with us or against us” thinking is unfit for medicine. Many parents who deliberate on decisions regarding their children’s health ultimately make decisions — such as to vaccinate or not vaccinate — with lingering uncertainty about whether they were right. When given a choice, some say yes to some vaccines and no to others. These parents are not zealots, they are decision makers navigating the gray, acting under conditions of uncertainty in perpetual flux.

The AAP Letter

On February 7, 2017, the American Academy of Pediatrics sent a letter to President Trump protesting the establishment of a Vaccine Safety Commission, and included a list of 41 published studies which the AAP believes prove that vaccines are “safe and effective”, and couldn’t possibly be causing American children any harm whatsoever, as they state in their letter:

“Claims that vaccines are unsafe when administered according to expert recommendations have been disproven by a robust body of medical literature.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

What I find interesting about the AAP’s choice of words is that they often seem to be mixing up their words when it comes to “vaccine safety.” On the one hand, they make statements that are simply unsupportable like expressing their “unequivocal support for the safety of vaccines.” What does that mean, “unequivocal support”? Does that mean whatever harm they cause is simply worth it, or that absolutely no harm is ever caused? By engaging in generalized hyperbole, the AAP makes it hard to have an honest conversation about the risks vs. benefits of vaccines.

In certain ways, I think the AAP’s letter is laughable. The AAP claims that vaccines are “safe”, but most of the studies they include only address one very specific condition: autism. What about the growing body of evidence relating the aluminum adjuvant in vaccines to the chronic food allergies our children are experiencing? Never mentioned. What ahout the new HPV vaccine with an alarming rate of adverse events reported? Silent. What about the data showing that children receiving multiple vaccines have much higher rates of emergency room visits? Not a word. Are vaccines “safe” so long as they don’t cause autism, or does “safety” mean something much broader?

My personal opinion about this whole mess is that we’ve traded a reduction in certain acute illnesses (measles, chicken pox) for an explosion in many chronic illnesses, particularly neurological and auto-immune disorders, all of which are now epidemic in our children. Let me ask you a simple question to test my hypothesis:

If you have a child between the ages of 4–15, do you know a single classmate of theirs who doesn’t have one or more of the following conditions: autism, ADHD, asthma, anaphylactic food allergy, diabetes, a learning disability, or a sensory processing disorder?

What’s wrong with our kids, why are they so sick, and why isn’t a massive uptick in the number of vaccines given a reasonable hypothesis for what’s happened? I like this blog post yesterday from author, journalist, and nutritionist Catherine J Frompovich where she asks many of these questions:

If the Rand Corporation found strong evidence vaccines cause Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), myalgia, seizures, meningitis, encephalitis and other adverse health problems, and Robert F Kennedy Jr., Esq. is revealing more and more research — almost daily — this time from the Yale School of Medicine and Penn State College of Medicine about an association between vaccines and brain disorders, then what’s all the ‘tap dancing’ about? Let’s get to some serious conclusions.

Like tap dancing that makes a lot of noise, so too are vaccine studies peripherally pointing to real vaccine concerns about which the U.S. federal health agencies (HHS, CDC and FDA) and state health departments probably won’t do anything to correct, i.e., eliminate vaccines, as some countries are doing with some vaccines. The ever-increasing — “growing like Topsy” — CDC vaccine schedule has to stop! With almost three hundred new vaccines in production, how many will infants, toddlers and teens be mandated to receive when those vaccines obtain licensure? Furthermore, aren’t vaccines Big Pharma’s annuity products, so what should consumers expect?

A whistleblower, a wanted felon, and a paper acknowledging that vaccines cause neurological tics

The American Academy of Pediatrics is a trade union for pediatricians. Pediatricians make most of their income from vaccinating babies. They are encouraging President Trump NOT to study making vaccines safer, even though our government has paid out more than $3.5 billion to Americans to compensate them for vaccine injury. Something isn’t adding up!

We really can’t make vaccines ANY safer?

Can you imagine if the Automakers lobbied President Trump against forming a commission to make safer cars?

As I already mentioned, the “science” the AAP sent President Trump deals exclusively with the subject of whether or not vaccines cause autism. Oddly, they sent the President several papers authored by a Whistleblower scientist at CDC who has confessed to throwing away data implicating the MMR vaccine in autism, a wanted felon, and a paper that clearly explained that vaccines WERE causing neurological tics (I don’t think that’s “safe’). Here’s the Vaccine Safety Commission’s slides addressing these three studies. (Note that Dr. Thompson — CDC Whistleblower — and Poul Thorsen — wanted felon — are actually co-authors to many of the studies the AAP sent President Trump):

The Whistleblower:

 

The Wanted Felon:

The Study showing vaccines cause neurological tics (written by the CDC whistleblower, William Thompson):

50 Studies the AAP Forgot

My favorite part of the Vaccine Safety Commission website are the 50 studies they provide that the AAP “forgot” to include in their letter to President Trump. Note that the complete study is available by clicking on each study title (and here’s a pdf with every study in one place). I hope you enjoy reading these studies from all over the world, and I hope they make you think or say the thing I keep thinking and saying:

“Who wouldn’t want safer vaccines?”

1. YALE SCIENTISTS FIND STRONG ASSOCIATION BETWEEN VACCINATIONS AND ANOREXIA, OCD, AND ANXIETY DISORDER

Temporal Association of Certain Neuropsychiatric Disorders Following Vaccination of Children and Adolescents: A Pilot Case-Control StudyFrontiers in Psychiatry, January 2017, Douglas L. Leslie, Robert A. Kobre, Brian J. Richmand

Summary: “Subjects with newly diagnosed anorexia nervosa were more likely than controls to have had any vaccination in the previous 3 months [hazard ratio (HR) 1.80, 95% confidence interval 1.21–2.68]. Influenza vaccinations during the prior 3, 6, and 12 months were also associated with incident diagnoses of AN, OCD, and an anxiety disorder. Several other associations were also significant with HRs greater than 1.40 (hepatitis A with OCD and AN; hepatitis B with AN; and meningitis with AN and chronic tic disorder). This pilot epidemiologic analysis implies that the onset of some neuropsychiatric disorders may be temporally related to prior vaccinations in a subset of individuals.”

2. ITALIAN SCIENTISTS FIND UNEXPECTED CONTAMINANTS IN ALL PEDIATRIC VACCINES, INCLUDING LEAD, STAINLESS STEEL, TUNGSTEN, IRON, AND CHROMIUM

New Quality-Control Investigations on Vaccines: Micro- and NanocontaminationInternational Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, January 2017, Dr. Antonietta M. Gatti, Stefano Montanari

Summary: Scientists found contaminants in all vaccines that are not listed on the label of the vaccines. “The analyses carried out show that in all samples checked vaccines contain non biocompatible and bio-persistent foreign bodies which are not declared by the Producers, against which the body reacts in any case. This new investigation represents a new quality control that can be adopted to assess the safety of a vaccine. Our hypothesis is that this contamination is unintentional, since it is probably due to polluted components or procedures of industrial processes (e.g. filtrations) used to produce vaccines, not investigated and not detected by the Producers. If our hypothesis is actually the case, a close inspection of the working places and the full knowledge of the whole procedure of vaccine preparation would probably allow to eliminate the problem.”

3. ISRAELI AND ITALIAN SCIENTISTS WARN THAT VACCINE ADJUVANTS (ALUMINUM) ARE CAUSING A WIDE-RANGE OF AUTOIMMUNE CONDITIONS, INCLUDING SJOGREN’S SYNDROME

Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants and Sjogren’s SyndromeIMAJ VOL 18, March-April 2016, Serena Colafrancesco, Carlo Perricone, Yehuda Shoenfeld

Summary: “Several case reports have suggested that both vaccines and silicone may trigger the development of SS [Sjo?gren’s syndrome, a chronic systemic autoimmune inflammatory condition involving the exocrine glands]. Aluminum is one of the principal adjuvants used in vaccine formulation and may be responsible for the development of ASIA syndrome. It seems that its ability to behave as an adjuvant might be related to evidence that aluminum salts seem to both induce the activation of dendritic cells and complement components and increase the level of chemokine secretion at the injection site… other vaccines including Bacillus Calmette Gue?rin (BCG), hepatitis A and/or B and human papillomavirus, should be avoided or considered only in selected patients… There is considerable evidence raising the possibility of vaccine-triggered autoimmunity”

4. INFANTS VACCINATED WITH MULTIPLE VACCINES AT ONCE HAVE MUCH HIGHER HOSPITALIZATIONS AND DEATH RATES THAN INFANTS WHO RECEIVE FEWER SIMULTANEOUS VACCINES

Combining Childhood Vaccines at One Visit Is Not SafeJournal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Summer 2016, Neil Z. Miller

Summary: “Our study showed that infants who receive several vaccines concurrently, as recommended by CDC, are significantly more likely to be hospitalized or die when compared with infants who receive fewer vaccines simultaneously. It also showed that reported adverse effects were more likely to lead to hospitalization or death in younger infants. The safety of CDC’s childhood vaccination schedule was never affirmed in clinical studies. Vaccines are administered to millions of infants every year, yet health authorities have no scientific data from synergistic toxicity studies on all combinations of vaccines that infants are likely to receive. National vaccination campaigns must be supported by scientific evidence.”

5. ISRAELI, CANADIAN, AND COLOMBIAN SCIENTISTS SHOW THAT GARDASIL VACCINE TRIGGERS BRAIN INFLAMMATION AND AUTOIMMUNITY IN MICE

Behavioral abnormalities in female mice following administration of aluminum adjuvants and the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine GardasilImmunol Res, July 2016, Rotem Inbar, Ronen Weiss, Lucija Tomljenovic, Maria-Teresa Arango, Yael Deri, Christopher A, Shaw, Joab Chapman, Miri Blank, Yehuda Shoenfeld

Summary: “Vaccine adjuvants and vaccines may induce autoimmune and inflammatory manifestations in susceptible individuals. To date most human vaccine trials utilize aluminum (Al) adjuvants as placebos despite much evidence showing that Al in vaccine-relevant exposures can be toxic to humans and animals…It appears that Gardasil via its Al adjuvant and HPV antigens has the ability to trigger neuroinflammation and autoimmune reactions, further leading to behavioral changes…In light of these findings, this study highlights the necessity of proceeding with caution with respect to further mass-immunization practices with a vaccine of yet unproven long-term clinical benefit in cervical cancer prevention”

Read the other 45 studies at: GreenMedInfo.com

via IFTTT

The Cultural Purge Will Not Be Televised

ORIGINAL LINK

Via Mark Jeftovic of EasyDNS.com,

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

– Edward Bernays, Public Relations

I’ve been trying not to write this post, because really, who needs a bunch of shrill, hysterical snowflakes calling you a racist nazi for committing the egregious sin of pointing out the many contradictions in the #deleteshopify boycott and the wider witch hunt mentality that pervades social discourse these days?

The main factor holding me back is not cynicism but actually fear. For the first time in my life I’m afraid to speak my mind. The possible ramifications of exercising my inalienable right to free speech frighten the crap out of me. So much so that I really don’t want to do it. I’ve become known as the type of person who speaks candidly and frankly about some tough issues and I’ve never had a problem doing that in the past. I’ve gone up against some pretty intimidating forces such as the City of London IPCU and the US FDA, but I’ve never been as scared as I am now to speak out.  For that reason I’m just going to have to suck it up and do it.

There is a cultural purge in progress.

It is directed against not only those who are perceived as “pro-Trump” (which as a card carrying Libertarian I am not. I think that he’s no friend to free speech, privacy or the internet), but targeting even those who are not “anti-Trump enough”.

This cultural purge has a two-pronged approach, from one side, from elements within the corridors of power (or those recently ejected from it) who have successfully floated the concept that free speech is not inviolable and that it would be a good thing for “truth” to be curated by “somebody” who knows better:

“We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to… There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world…That is hard to do, but I think it’s going to be necessary, it’s going to be possible,”

— Barack Obama in speech at Frontiers Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct 13, 2016 (emphasis added)

The other half comes from the trenches, comprised of manic flashmobs directing enmity against, literally, anything remotely connected to those deemed responsible for the greatest political upset of our time.

The mainstream media, outlets like Washington Post and the New York Times, among others, are complicit, providing the glue or the lubricant between this pincer movement and its chilling effects. The combination gels into an echo chamber drowning out all rationality and renders differing philosophies and legitimate dissent as blasphemous.

Let me explain my choice of title for this post and how it captures what I see going on here:

This post title is obviously a riff on Gil Scott-Heron’s song ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, and the backstory behind this song is quite instructive to times like these:

Gil Scott-Heron saw first hand how altruistically motivated social activism can turn ugly when a campus protest action he initiated went horribly overboard. After the death of one of Gil-Heron’s schoolmates, he started a grass roots movement with the goal of improving the medial conditions on his campus, including making the college infirmary operate 24×7, something he felt would have saved his friend’s life.

The laudable aim of improving conditions on campus with the possibility of saving future lives derailed into a menacing fracas. A mob congregated on the front lawn of the infirmary’s doctor’s home where they proceeded to burn him in effigy:

“The protest grew angry, culminating with some students hanging the doctor in effigy from a tree in his front yard and setting it on fire. The doctor came out of his house and swore that he wasn’t responsible for the deaths. As he proclaimed his innocence, he had tears in his eyes.

 

When Gil arrived at the protest, he stood between the students and the doctor, looking at the doctor’s children staring out the window in fear. ‘A cold flash scampered across the back of my neck, ‘ wrote Gil later to describe his sudden fear that events could spiral out of control into violence, a fear which was allayed only when the students went back to their dorms.

 

The realization that radical action sometimes leads to unintended consequences and violent overreactions haunted Gil, and that image of a distraught Dr. Davies lingered in his mind for months to come. The experience reinforced Gil’s instinct to avoid violence and militant action in the struggle for social change.”

One should easily concede that today there are many reasons to petition for change. Our governments still have us all under wholesale surveillance, we are still involved in numerous unsanctioned wars, continue to provoke toward new ones, and the government continues to methodically destroy the economy via financial repression.

But we should all take Gil Scott-Heron’s lesson to heart and try to keep in mind that we are all human beings. We all have rights, we should all be secure in our ability to speak and associate freely.

But that isn’t what’s happening.

Today, the mainstream media, rather than objectively and rationally report on facts, are instead complicit in a sustained, wide-ranging campaign of demonization of “all things non-Democrat”. There is blanket categorical denial of any valid basis for why the citizenry worldwide are rejecting what they increasingly see as an “Establishment Elite” agenda.

Greece, Brexit, Trump and quite possibly soon, Marine Le Pen in France are all continuations of a theme. These events are referendums unto themselves and those “Global Elites” are on a losing streak. Instead of trying to understand the basis of these rejections (that the populace are sick and tired of having a two-tiered society in which their civil rights are eroded and they get saddled with all the debt, while the elites get to operate under a different set of rules and gobble up all the assets); they have mounted a concerted campaign of outright propaganda and mind-numbingly nonsensical narratives to dismiss away these acts of “defiance”.

As alt-market.com’s Brandon Smith commentary  observes:

“One of the most favored propaganda tactics of establishment elites and [those] they employ … is to relabel or redefine an opponent before they can solidly define themselves. In other words, elites [and their media] will seek to “brand” you (just as corporations use branding) in the minds of the masses so that they can take away your ability to define yourself as anything else.” (emphasis added)

And this is exactly what’s happening. For example, when you say “Breitbart”, your average person is so inculcated from the repetition of the words “white supremacist”, “racist”, and “ nazi” that people just assume that’s what it is. From there people think that it’s ok to #boycottshopify simply for supplying basic online ecommerce services to them (where does it stop? Btw, Breitbart derives 100% of it’s revenues from the internet, perhaps everybody in a twist about it should do us all a favour and boycott that too).

Is Breitbart really white supremacist, racist nazi hate site? Actually, no it isn’t. Most people think it is however, because they’ve been conditioned to believe it, and they’ve never actually gone there to see for themselves.

How do I know that Breitbart isn’t really the white supremacist, neo-nazi hate-site that we are incessantly brainwashed  to believe it is? Well for one thing, I’ve seen the real deal. They look like this:

This place is called “Shitskin Plantation”. They wound up on easyDNS (my company’s system ) for about a week by the time we kicked them. The fact that we did eject a real honest to god racist, neo-nazi hate site doesn’t bolster the #boycottshopify movement for three reasons:

#1) Shitskin is clearly racist and contains actual language condoning violence toward an identifiable group. It was right there for anybody to see. Here in Canada such material is codified into law as “hate speech” under the Criminal Code.

 

#2) We chose. We assessed our AUP, found them in violation and kicked them. Specifically we found them in violation of “the Non-Aggression Principle” in our plain english Terms of Service. The NAP has grey areas and subjective rabbit holes. Libertarians debate it relentlessly. But the important thing is that nobody else forced us to do it in the absence of due process. We made our own determination, and that’s important. Sacrosanct, in fact.

 

And #3) Breitbart is an ultra-conservative, hard-right political opinion site. That’s all. They seem also have a penchant for inflammatory, click-bait headlines (who doesn’t these days?) You may not like it, I may not like it, but they absolutely have the right to be online and to publish.

That anybody who has even the most tenuous affiliation with them is fair game for having their rights curtailed, their livelihood sanctioned or sabotaged is indefensible. The only legitimate mechanism for these people to suffer in their fortunes is through the failure of their ideas in the marketplace of thought. By being rejected, not through being repressed (see below).

It is entirely reasonable for Shopify, or  any other vendor to keep supplying services to Breitbart (at present they have no services with easyDNS)

It is also reasonable for any of those vendors to choose not to supply services to them of their own volition (you can’t have it both ways folks, you can’t force Shopify to dump Breitbart and simultaneously force some Bible-thumping redneck to bake a cake for a gay wedding).

What isn’t reasonable is to coerce or compel anybody else to take any action they would not themselves take under their own judgement. It’s truly frightening that there is a growing sentiment that this is acceptable behaviour.

Do you really want to live in a world where people sever business and personal relationships because a literal flash mob demands it? Where mobs get to pick and choose who you are allowed to associate with?

Shopify has over 300,000 customers. You honestly expect them to sort through those and kick out the ones that you think are morally objectionable?

In 2010, when easyDNS was itself embroiled in the Wikileaks debacle I was absolutely appalled when ranking politicians applauded the vendors for severing ties with them. Senator Lieberman congratulated Amazon and Paypal by name for “breaking their contracts”, he literally used those words. A ranking politician applauding behaviour that should rightly get you sued. The public backlash then was huge and pro-Wikileaks. In our own small way, we stood up for Wikileaks then, we maintain a congruent position now. I applaud Shopify for standing firm and refusing to sever their ties for the same reason.

The “Right Side” of History

Whenever I hear a lot of activists whining about the current situation I frequently hear references to being “on the right side of history”. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that. Actually that’s a nonsensical statement since history is amoral, or as Winston Churchill famously observed, “One damned thing after another”.

However there is one rule of thumb I’ve formulated over the years which I think can keep one onside of the grand currents sweeping through time and society and helped me understand my sympathy with Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. That is to know the fine line between rejecting an idea that one finds immoral, unethical, obsolete or otherwise objectionable and repressing it.

Morality is largely subjective. Very few people act in a way they themselves consider immoral. Almost everybody thinks that whatever they’re doing, they’re on the side of the angels. The tiny sliver of participants who are fully cognizant of their own immoral action and proceed anyway are criminals and sociopaths (the majority of them gravitate into politics).

When enough people’s ethical compasses align you get a cultural or societal norm. One of the cultural norms that we fought hard for over the ages was that people have a right to free speech and free association. You can disagree with what I have to say but respect my right to say it.

These rights were so hard won that they were codified into universal laws and into the very Constitutions that govern most civilized nations. I believe one of the more well-known words for it was “inalienable”.

Until now. Now people are putting conditions around “free speech” and “free association”.

The idea that free speech has its limits somewhere around the point where it hurts somebody’s feelings is beyond idiotic and dangerous.

Tweet of person exercising her free speech to encourage economic harm to others…

The world is not one big foam insulated, bubble wrapped safe space. This may come as a shock to you but there is a widespread sentiment, a backlash dare I say, against the idea that a Saviour State should watch over everything and smooth out all the world’s sharp edges.

Besides…

Boycotts usually backfire.

Back in the mid-90’s, Bob Rae was the Premiere of Ontario and I was in a failed metal band out of London, Ontario. Mr. Rae wrote a nice song about multiculturalism called “Same Boat Now” and submitted it to various record labels who promptly rejected it and told him not to quit his day job. My band recorded a power-pop version of his song and released it on 7” vinyl. Our label  put an open letter to Mr. Rae on the back sleeve that was highly critical of his socialist political platform (albeit quite tame by today’s standards). I was mortified, fearing a media backlash but felt trapped. I called Jack Richardson, my former college prof from Fanshawe College’s Music Industry Arts program and widely credited with having single-handedly created the Canadian music industry and asked his advice.

Before I finished relaying the details he was laughing. “Mark”, he said, “The only thing that truly matters is that they spell ‘Landslide’ right. That’s it”.

This has been bourne out countless times since that event. I could list them here but the point is, boycotts usually invoke The Streisand Effect and actually bolster the target of the boycott. We can cite a couple brief examples:

• During the Bob Parsons era of Godaddy, when he shot the elephant, or when he aired some super-sexist Super Bowl commercial, Godaddy numbers, in terms of net-new domains-in or registered usually  went up not down, in the face of consumer outrage and boycotts.

• Wikileaks, again – when we did help their mirror sites get back online there was a counter-reaction against that. Every once in awhile I check the emails from the customers who sent me extremely hostile emails telling me they were leaving, and almost all of them remained (and some still do) customers to this day.

• Shopify itself, who is publicly traded, has been on a tear in share price for most of the year, and it’s continued unabated since  #deleteShopify began.

So what can you do?

You can only govern yourself. Your only recourse is whether to associate or disassociate with somebody. Yes, you are perfectly within your rights to #boycottshopify but as I’ve outlined, you’re being naive doing so and will likely have the exact opposite effect if you’re enough of a loudmouth about it .

But if this Cultural Purge proceeds we will actually, for real, lose what used to be inalienable rights. Our right to free speech, our right to free association and our rights to our own minds. If something you say is considered “hurtful” (which will more closely resemble dissent or criticism of the Official Narrative than anything else) you will be sanctioned. You will tow the line or you will be penalized – contracts severed, vendors disassociate themselves, boycotts ensue. Whatever you do, just don’t say or think the wrong thing, because not going along with the crowd will make you a pariah.

If you want to prevent that:

1) you have the duty to look at the issue first hand and decide for yourself if it has any merit. Don’t ever come to me and tell me “XYZ is white supremacist, neo-nazi hate speech” unless you can show me an article that has the hate speech in it. Show me the white supremacist rhetoric. If you tell me you believe it simply because that’s what Wapo told you then you are a fool. You are Wapo’s useful idiot. A Wapobot.

2) you have to be prepared to call b/s whenever some whining snowflake demands safety from any contrary opinion, whenever some pundit robotically repeats the “white supremacist, hate speech, homophobe, Russian hackers” mantra, and whenever you’re asked to jump on some witchunt bandwagon against someone who dares to dispute the Official Narrative.

3) you have to be able to take the heat. Guess what? You’ll be next. Speak out against this nonsense and you’ll be subjected to hysterionics, character assassination, guilt by the most tenuous of associations, distortions of fact and a co-ordinated piling on by mobs of unquestioning ideological berserkers.

• You’ll be Peter Thiel (there was a popular outcry to remove him from Facebook’s board, why? Because he endorsed Trump.)

• You’ll be Scott Adams (his crime? Correctly predicting that Trump was going to win)

• You’ll be Ivanka Trump (facing a co-ordinated attack on her livelihood for her transgression of being born a Trump).

That is a cultural purge.

Hell, I’m probably next just for writing this piece. So be it. My credibility as a non-racist, free-speech Libertarian are unassailable and am categorically unaffiliated with Russian intelligence. My duty is to speak out precisely because it is becoming more dangerous to speak out.

“In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. — Unknown

via IFTTT

Vitamin D Is More Effective Than Flu Vaccine

Vitamin D Is More Effective Than Flu Vaccine:



'via Blog this'

Trump’s Ambassador to UN: We Must Sanction Assad Over Chemical Weapons!

ORIGINAL LINK
Recently, we had a look at the ways President Trump’s Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, is making her predecessor, “humanitarian bomber” Samantha Power, look like a model diplomat by comparison. It turns out Haley’s ghastly performance at the UN…

via IFTTT

Intellectual Intolerance - Stunning Speech From Stanford University Provost Exposes "The Threat From Within"

ORIGINAL LINK

In a remarkable - for its honesty and frankness - statement on the intellectual rot within America's Ivory Towers, Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy lay bare the challenges that higher education face in the coming, increasingly divisive, years.

The Threat From Within

Universities are a fundamental force of good in the world. At their best, they mine knowledge and understanding, wisdom and insight, and then freely distribute these treasures to society at large. Theirs is not a monopoly on this undertaking, but in the concentration of effort and single-mindedness of purpose, they are truly unique institutions. If Aristotle is right that what defines a human is rationality, then they are the most distinctive, perhaps the pinnacle, of human endeavors.

 

I share this thought to remind us all why we do what we do – why we care so much about Stanford and what it represents. But I also say it to voice a concern. Universities are under attack, both from outside and from within.

 

The threat from outside is apparent. Potential cuts in federal funding would diminish our research enterprise and our ability to fund graduate education. Taxing endowments would limit the support we can give to faculty and the services we can provide our students. Indiscriminate travel restrictions would impede the free exchange of ideas and scholars. All of these threats have intensified in recent years – and recent months have given them a reality that is hard to ignore.

 

But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

 

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve.

 

It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

 

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

 

But we must do more. We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.

 

I fear that the next few years will be difficult to navigate. We need to resist the external threats to our mission, but in this, we have many friends outside the university willing and able to help. But to stem or dial back our academic parochialism, we are pretty much on our own. The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. It is only when we start with this assumption that rational discourse can begin, and that the winds of freedom can blow.

We wish John well in his future endeavors as we are sure there will be a groundswell of hurt feelings demanding his resignation for dropping another truth bomb on their safe space.

via IFTTT