Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the first of President Vladimir Putin’s strategic allies to leave him to make whatever exit from the Ukraine war he can negotiate with President Donald Trump.
Modi did this by saying as little as he could about Russia last week in Washington while preparing his own military, energy supply, sea lane and land route agreements with the US; altogether, according to Indian sources in Moscow, they enlarge India’s role in the escalating US war against C
Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India, is the first of President Vladimir Putin’s strategic allies to leave him to make whatever exit from the Ukraine war he can negotiate with President Donald Trump.
Modi did this by saying as little as he could about Russia last week in Washington while preparing his own military, energy supply, sea lane and land route agreements with the US; altogether, according to Indian sources in Moscow, they enlarge India’s role in the escalating US war against China across the globe, and diminish Russia’s role significantly.
“I have been in constant contact with both Russia and Ukraine. I have also visited both countries,” Modi said beside Trump at the White House on February 13. “And many people are mistaken and they feel that India is neutral. I would like to clarify: India is not neutral. We have taken a side, and we have taken the side of peace…Ultimately, you have to come to the negotiating table, and India has constantly made efforts that there are talks that take place where both parties are present. It is only then that we will find a solution. The efforts being made by President Trump — I support them, I welcome them, and I would like that President Trump is successful as soon as possible so that the world is on the path to peace once again.”
This isn’t a statement of India’s support for Russia, according to Russian sources. It is not even India’s acknowledgement of the wars which the US and its allies are waging against Russia simultaneously on its western and eastern, northern and southern fronts. It’s India’s declaration that it aims to be on the US side in the multi-front war India is waging against China from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean. It is also a proclamation by Modi against the Arab, Iranian and Muslim resistance to the US and Israel on the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf.
“The prime minister and I,” said Trump, “reaffirmed that strong cooperation among the United States, India, Australia, and Japan [the Quad], and it’s crucial really to maintaining peace and prosperity, tranquillity even, in the Indo-Pacific.”
“We will work together to enhance peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” Modi replied, “The Quad will play a special role in this. During the Quad summit scheduled to be held in India this year, we will expand cooperation in new areas with our partner countries.”
A veteran Indian source in Moscow explains: “Indians are very pleased with the anti-China stand of the US. The last two years of relations with Russians have been bruising for Indians and a lot of top oil and gas managers are exasperated with the Russians. They would do anything to stop doing business with the Russians – this is not because of the sanctions, it is the Russians themselves! [From Modi’s visit to Washington] there is the general take that we cannot be throwing our lot with Russians because they are so unreliable now and are junior to the Chinese. Putin might have brokered the Ladakh moment, but all in all Indians prefer to deal with the US now. For now we know that the Americans call the shots.”
“One thing that I deeply appreciate, and I learn from President Trump, is that he keeps the national interest supreme,” Modi said in his Oval Office remarks. “Like him, I also keep the national interest of India at the top of everything else.”
The Indian media have interpreted this as more than compensating for the American put-downs Modi registered. “The President did not turn up to greet [Modi] when he arrived at the White House; Trump snubbed him by doubling down on reciprocal tariffs…Elon Musk insulted him by bringing his children to a business meeting… In the age of trivialisation through social media tattle and trolling, all of this is of little consequence… The broad consensus among more seasoned analysts and experts is that PM Modi disarmed a rampant US President…and advanced bilateral ties…The visit was actually a tour de force measured in terms of impact and outcomes.”
Click on the White House transcript to read what was said in the February 13 press conference.
In the White House press room on Thursday, President Trump stumbled over pronunciation of Prime Minister Modi’s name as he read haltingly from the speech prepared for him. He also evaded an Indian reporter’s question on anti-Hindu and anti-Modi operations in the US. “I can’t understand…a word he’s saying. It’s not the — it’s the accent. It’s a little bit tough for me.” The Indian press hit back at Trump’s deception.
In the 33-point joint statement which officials from both sides had negotiated word by word in advance of Modi’s arrival in Washington, Indian sources caution that points 1 through 6 cut across existing defence and military supply agreements with the Kremlin, while point 13 undercuts the current Russian oil and gas supply trade with India.
Trump amplified this for Putin’s ear. “The prime minister and I also reached an important agreement on energy that will restore the United States as a leading supplier of oil and gas to India. It will be, hopefully, their number one supplier.”
Before the Special Military Operation began in February 2022, India imported 4.2 million barrels of crude oil per day: 24% came from Iraq, 16% from Saudi Arabia, 10% from the US; only 2% from Russia. By 2023, India was importing 4.6 mmbd of crude. During this period, the share of imports from Russia climbed to almost 40%, while Iraq’s share slipped to 20%, Saudi Arabia’s fell to 15%, and the United States’ dropped to 4%.
The Russian supplies of crude at a discount price dictated by US sanctions have also stimulated the Indian petroleum refining industry into re-exporting their products and enriching one of Modi’s leading political financiers, Mukesh Ambani.
An Indian investment banker qualifies. The Modi-Trump points don’t so much cut out the Russians, he says, as supplant them. “They will cover where Russians have defaulted. Indians have understood that Russians will be unreliable and the Russian market will not be beyond $10-15 billion of Indian goods. The US is the primary market now for India and will be if manufacturing shifts away from China slowly. On the other hand, Indians will never curtail Russians from competing and doing real business in India if they have the will and means to.”
Points 23, 24, 27 and 28 are also interpreted by Indian sources as strikes intended by Modi and agreed by Trump against both Putin’s and China’s President Xi Jinping’s Caspian Sea and Belt and Road trade movement plans, as well as against China’s military resistance to escalation of US pressure on China’s shipping lanes in the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and around Taiwan.
Trump was explicit, adding Israel whose war against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iran is supported by Modi’s anti-Muslim domestic voters. “We agreed to work together,” said Trump, “to help build one of the greatest trade routes in all of history. It will run from India to Israel to Italy and onward to the United States, connecting our partners by ports, railways and undersea cables – many, many undersea cables.” In explicit payoff, it was announced that US Government funding for opposition parties and votes against Modi’s ruling BJP party has been cancelled.
Modi obtained this concession from Elon Musk who came to his meeting at the official Blair House residence for the Prime Minister with his girlfriend, his children, and a private business agenda that triggered corruption reports in the US media.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAut2426aX4 Modi’s direct and friendly interaction with the Musk children contrasts with the behavior of Trump who met with Musk and his son in the Oval Office later in the day. Indian and US sources have noted the contrast also. “To be sure,” commented one source off the record, “the Indians were taken by surprise at Musk’s costume and entourage when they showed up at Blair House, but they were too politic to show it. Modi then acted towards the four-year old as you would expect from a human being, let alone a politician on camera. That Trump could not, was frozen when he had his meeting with the child, indicates to me that Trump is borderline psychotic.”
Ahead of Musk and Trump, Modi had met Tulsi Gabbard, the new US Director of National Intelligence (DNI). There has been extensive reporting of their meeting in the Indian press, but no official statement from the DNI. Indian sources and the Indian press noted that Gabbard is the first Hindu to hold a senior US intelligence post, and that in front of Trump she had taken her oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita.
The DNI ignored the Modi meeting. It then published the speech Gabbard gave the next day at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. “The challenges presented by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea,” Gabbard identified the US intelligence community’s targets, “similarly demand a united front to advance the cause of peace, freedom, and prosperity. To deter aggression and maintain stability, we look forward to working closely with those who share those interests.”
In this hour-long podcast, one of India’s highest-ranking artillerymen, Lieutenant-General (retired) P.R. (Ravi) Shankar, analyzes the convergence of Indian strategy with the Trump Administration’s China warfighting objectives. He is dismissive of what Trump says, recommending instead to concentrate on what the US is already doing and now planning. “We should not rely on [Trump],” Shankar adds. “We should rely on him not at all.”
In his Indian strategy, Shankar ignores Russia. Click to view.
Commenting on Shankar and on Modi’s Washington meetings last week, an Indian political source says “the fine details of what Trump says and does , tariffs or no tariffs, are not all that much of a problem for us. What he is delivering is already a lot. The Indians in his administration are loyal to India. The Trump family – Ivanka in particular – is also very good with India. We know we can get a lot out of Trump; and at a minimum, stop the Canadian, USAID, Ford Foundation, and Soros interference in Indian domestic politics. Indian officials know also that the US will have to act in tandem with them on Pakistan and Bangladesh. Perhaps in Afghanistan, too. So the finer points of Trump’s unreliability and all Americans being made out of the same cloth does not really concern Indians. After all, what other world order is there for them to choose from? What alternative can Russia offer?”
A US source agrees with Shankar’s identification of the anti-Chinese objectives common to US and Indian strategy in talks at the moment. He faults Shankar for over-estimating Trump’s capacities and the resistance he is generating at home. “My read is that no one, including Shankar, appreciates how bad the situation is in the US nor how much better, ultimately, the Chinese will be to deal with. The Americans are not reliable.”
As for Trump, the source comments: “Look at what the dyed hair, the caked-on make-up, his wild eyes are signaling: since the Inauguration Trump’s decline has become more evident across the board. His repetition of the same points, over and over again, with one wild assertion after another, is also a clear sign that he is losing his mind. His condition is going to get worse, much, much worse, and soon. As that happens, the things happening in the name of ‘President Trump’s wishes’ will accelerate and grow worse.”
https://www.unz.com/CONTENTS/AUDIO/runz/Unz-AmPravda-KennedyPublicHealth.mp3
On Thursday the full Senate voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). This gave Kennedy full authority over one of America’s largest government bureaucracies, including its 90,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $2 trillion, twice that of the Department of Defense.
Ironies abounded in that narrow 52-48 vote, which was almost exactly along party lines, with every
On Thursday the full Senate voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). This gave Kennedy full authority over one of America’s largest government bureaucracies, including its 90,000 employees and an annual budget of nearly $2 trillion, twice that of the Department of Defense.
Ironies abounded in that narrow 52-48 vote, which was almost exactly along party lines, with every Democrat in opposition and all but one Republican in support.
Not only had Kennedy spent almost his entire life as a liberal Democrat, but he was the scion of that party’s most famous political dynasty, nephew of the martyred President John F. Kennedy and son of his brother Robert, who would have also probably reached the White House in 1968 if he had not been cut down by an assassin’s bullet.
The younger Kennedy had followed in their illustrious footsteps, spending nearly his entire life as a high-profile environmental activist, so well regarded in Democratic Party circles that President Barack Obama had considered naming him to the Cabinet in 2008. But in recent years, Kennedy’s views on public health issues had caused him to fall from grace in his own ideological camp. His strident skepticism regarding the safety of vaccines in general and the Covid vaccine in particular outraged the mainstream liberal establishment, as did his loud denunciation of the lockdowns and other controversial public health measures undertaken to control the spread of that dangerous disease.
This sharp ideological rupture eventually propelled him to challenge the renomination of President Joseph Biden in the Democratic primaries, then to launch an independent run for the White House, and ultimately to drop-out and endorse Donald Trump in that race. Following Trump’s victory, the president-elect named Kennedy as his choice to lead HHS, with the former Democrat proclaiming his intent to “Make America Healthy Again.” Last week’s Senate vote has now given Kennedy the authority to set our national public health policies.
Over the years, Kennedy had become a very sharp critic of both the pharmaceutical and the food industries, so having him in control of the NIH, the CDC, and the FDA represented the worst nightmare of those powerful corporations. Therefore, they naturally mobilized their army of lobbyists and opposition researchers to assist their media and political allies in derailing his nomination.
Along with Tulsi Gabbard, nominated as Director of National Intelligence, Kennedy had probably ranked as Trump’s most controversial and bitterly opposed nominee. Indeed, the volume and vehemence of the attacks I saw against him in our leading media organs such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal may have even been greater, with those influential publications doing everything they could to endorse and amplify any harsh accusations, hoping to sway enough senators to block his appointment. He was accused of every sort of iniquity and denounced as a deranged conspiracy theorist, whose bizarre, irrational beliefs would severely endanger our nation’s public health.
Few stones were left unturned in the attacks on Kennedy’s fitness for the job, and he experienced two days of grueling testimony before the relevant Senate Committees, with the Democratic staffers having obviously strategized on the best means of defeating him before feeding the most effective attacks to their senatorial principals who grilled the nominee before the television cameras.
But one oddity I noted was that almost none of the hostile news stories nor the probing senatorial questions ever mentioned the name of “Sirhan Sirhan.” That young Palestinian had been arrested and convicted of the 1968 assassination of Kennedy’s father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and there had been a multitude of supposed eyewitnesses to that crime. But in recent years Kennedy publicly declared that Sirhan was an innocent patsy, framed by the true conspirators, and called for his release from prison.
For six decades, our media has invested enormous resources in ridiculing and demonizing anyone questioning the official verdict of the 1960s Kennedy assassinations as a “conspiracy theorist,” rendering that the term of abuse almost as radioactive as slurs such as “racist” or “antisemite.” Yet although Kennedy had publicly placed himself in that poisonous category, virtually none of his fierce opponents were willing to take notice of that important fact.
I think there were obvious reasons that those barking dogs kept strangely silent. Not only had the victim been Kennedy’s own father, but he had very strong evidence on his side. As even the ultra-establishmentarian Wikipedia page admits, the fatal bullet had been fired into the back of the senator’s head at point-blank range while everyone agreed that Sirhan was standing five or six feet in front of him, and this led the LA Coroner to declare that a second gunman had apparently been responsible. Sirhan’s gun only held eight rounds yet acoustical records proved that more shots had been fired. In an early 2022 article, I discussed all this evidence at considerable length, and the journalists and Democratic staffers challenging Kennedy must have realized that his case was too strong and raising it would badly backfire against them.
In any event, the question of who had assassinated Kennedy’s father in 1968 might have seemed too far removed from how he would administer America’s system of public health nearly six decades later.
However, I also noticed a far more recent and more relevant matter that had equally escaped any public scrutiny.
On two consequence days, the New York Times ran a pair of major articles summarizing the intense questioning that Kennedy endured, with each of these carrying five or six bylines and containing a number of sections highlighting all the major points raised against the nominee:
These items were apparently regarded as Kennedy’s greatest vulnerabilities. But I noticed that one entire topic was totally missing from the interrogation, so I dropped a note to a highly knowledgeable journalist calling attention to that remarkable absence:
I know that you’ve been very skeptical of my support for the Duesberg Hypothesis regarding HIV/AIDS, but here’s another interesting data-point you might want to consider.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Democrats have been mounting a ferocious all-out attack in the Senate on RFK Jr., doing everything they can to discredit him and try to block his confirmation. They have focused on every possible means of portraying him as a deluded, conspiratorial individual who holds crackpot beliefs and who must therefore be kept away from our public health system…
Don’t you find it very odd that there has been absolutely no mention of HIV/AIDS during those hearings?
After all, Kennedy published a #1 Amazon bestseller that devoted 200 pages(!) to promoting the theory that HIV was harmless and AIDS was merely a hoax.
Obviously, I wouldn’t have expected any of the senators themselves to have read his book, but surely many of their staffers did, and held strategy sessions to decide which issues to raise against Kennedy. They must have consulted scientific and medical experts to help decide where Kennedy was most vulnerable.
Isn’t it absolutely extraordinary that apparently not a single senator has brought up the Kennedy’s utterly heretical views on HIV/AIDS?
Surely this must be one of the most extreme cases of “the Dog That Didn’t Bark” on record.
The only explanation I can see is that the staffers concluded that raising the HIV/AIDS issue would be disastrously counter-productive to their efforts. This doesn’t prove that Kennedy and Duesberg are correct, but I think it means many, many very knowledgeable people fear that they might be.
While still refusing to consider that the Duesberg Hypothesis might be right, he admitted that something very strange had taken place:
I agree – it’s most peculiar that Democratic Senators passed up the chance to assail RFK on his writings about HIV. I follow your logic that something must have warned the staffers off this issue.
Although there is naturally a great reluctance to consider the possibility that Duesberg was correct and our forty year battle against HIV/AIDS has been waged against a medical phantom, I think that anomalies such as the Kennedy confirmation hearings must force us to begin seriously considering that shocking notion.
Several months ago, I published a long article summarizing this case, and with Kennedy now in charge of American public health policy, I think it is now worth revisiting some of that important material.
ORDER IT NOW
As I have recounted on several occasions, despite being a very strong critic of the wildly popular Covid anti-vaxxing movement, in late 2021 I happened to read Kennedy’s new book The Real Anthony Fauci.
I was quite impressed with a great deal of the material provided, which sharply criticized our pharmaceutical industry and its close allies in the public health bureaucracy. But what completely shocked me was that nearly half the text—some 200 pages—was devoted to presenting and promoting the astonishing claim that everything we have been told about HIV/AIDS for more than forty years probably constituted a hoax, and this latter issue became a central focus of my own subsequent review.
As all of us know from the media, AIDS is a deadly auto-immune disease that was first diagnosed in the early 1980s, primarily afflicting gay men and intravenous drug users. Transmitted by bodily fluids, the disease usually spread through sexual activity, blood transfusions, or the sharing of needles, and HIV, the virus responsible, was finally discovered in 1984. Over the years, a variety of medical treatments were developed, mostly ineffective at first, but more recently so successful that although being HIV-positive was once considered a death-sentence, the infection has now become a chronic, controllable condition. The current Wikipedia page on HIV/AIDS runs more than 20,000 words, including over 300 references.
Yet according to the information provided in Kennedy’s #1 Amazon bestseller, this well-known and solidly-established picture, which I had never seriously questioned, is almost entirely false and fraudulent, essentially amounting to a medical media hoax. Instead of being responsible for AIDS, the HIV virus is probably harmless and had nothing to do with the disease. But when individuals were found to be infected with HIV, they were subjected to the early, extremely lucrative AIDS drugs, which were actually lethal and often killed them. The earliest AIDS cases had mostly been caused by very heavy use of particular illegal drugs, and the HIV virus had been misdiagnosed as being responsible. But since Fauci and the profit-hungry drug companies soon built enormous empires upon that misdiagnosis, for more than 35 years they have fought very hard to maintain and protect it, exerting all their influence to suppress the truth in the media while destroying the careers of any honest researchers who challenged that fraud. Meanwhile, AIDS in Africa was something entirely different, probably caused mostly by malnutrition or other local conditions.
I found Kennedy’s account as shocking as anything I have ever encountered.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been extremely reluctant to embrace such seemingly outlandish claims, but the credibility of some of the adherents he mentioned was difficult to disregard.
However, the first endorsement on the back cover is from Prof. Luc Montagnier, the medical researcher who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the HIV virus in 1984, and he writes: “Tragically for humanity, there are many, many untruths emanating from Fauci and his minions. RFK Jr. exposes the decades of lies.” Moreover, we are told that as far back as the San Francisco International AIDS Conference of June 1990, Montagnier had publicly declared “the HIV virus is harmless and passive, a benign virus.”
Perhaps this Nobel Laureate endorsed the book for other reasons and perhaps the meaning of his striking 1990 statement has been misconstrued. But surely the opinion of the researcher who won a Nobel Prize for discovering the HIV virus should not be totally ignored in assessing its possible role.
As Kennedy explained, three additional science Nobel Laureates have also expressed similar public skepticism toward the conventional HIV/AIDS narrative, one of them being Kary Mullis, the renowned creator of the revolutionary PCR test. Meanwhile, the reaction of the hostile media towards Kennedy’s book greatly raised my own suspicions.
Despite the book’s tremendous success, it was initially ignored by the mainstream media. That silence was finally broken a month after publication, when the Associated Press released a 4,000 word hit-piece harshly attacking the author and his controversial bestseller.
Yet as I noted in my own response, that lengthy denunciation had entirely avoided the subject of HIV/AIDS, which surely constituted the most outrageous and explosive portion of Kennedy’s material. Six AP journalists and researchers had spent at least ten days producing the article, so their total silence on that topic struck me as extremely suspicious. If almost half of Kennedy’s book argued that HIV/AIDS was a medical media hoax and his harshest critics refused to challenge him on that score, any fair-minded reader must surely begin to suspect that at least some of the author’s remarkable claims were probably correct.
Prior to the recent Covid outbreak, AIDS had spent nearly four decades as the world’s highest-profile disease, and I began to wonder whether I might have been completely misled for all those years by my daily newspapers. Indeed, Kennedy himself had never previously been associated with the HIV/AIDS topic and he emphasized that his coverage was merely intended “to give air and daylight to dissenting voices” so I would need to consult other sources for additional information. The story he told was an extremely strange one but his book also clearly identified the most important figure in the debate.
In 1985 AZT, an existing drug, was found to kill the HIV virus in laboratory tests. Fauci then made tremendous efforts to speed it through clinical trials as an appropriate treatment for healthy, HIV-positive individuals, with FDA approval finally coming in 1987, producing Fauci’s first moment of triumph. Priced at $10,000/year per patient, AZT was one of the most expensive drugs in history, and with the cost covered by health insurance and government subsidies, it produced an unprecedented financial windfall for its manufacturer.
Kennedy devotes an entire chapter to the story of AZT, and the tale he tells is something out of Kafka or perhaps Monty Python. Apparently, Fauci had been under enormous pressure to produce medical breakthroughs justifying his large budget, so he manipulated the AZT trials to conceal the extremely toxic nature of the drug, which rapidly killed many of the patients who received it, with their symptoms being ascribed to AIDS. So following FDA approval in 1987, hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy individuals found to be infected with HIV were placed on a regimen of AZT, and the large number of resulting deaths was misattributed to the virus rather than to the anti-viral drug. According to the scientific experts cited in the book, the vast majority of post-1987 “AIDS deaths” were actually due to AZT.
One of the major scientific heroes in Kennedy’s account is Prof. Peter H. Duesberg of Berkeley. During the 1970s and 1980s, Duesberg had been widely regarded as among the world’s foremost virologists, elected to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences at age 50, making him one of its youngest members in history. As early as 1987 he began raising serious doubts about the HIV/AIDS hypothesis and highlighting the dangers of AZT, eventually publishing a series of journal articles on the subject that gradually won over many others, including Montagnier. In 1996 he published Inventing the AIDS Virus, a massive 712 page volume setting forth his case, with the Foreword provided by Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, the renowned inventor of PCR technology and himself another leading public critic of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. Duesberg even underscored the confidence of his HIV skepticism by offering to be injected with HIV-tainted blood.
But rather than openly debate such a strong scientific opponent, Fauci and his allies blacklisted Duesberg from receiving any government funding, thereby wrecking his research career, while also vilifying him and pressuring others to do the same. According to fellow researchers quoted by Kennedy, Duesberg was destroyed as a warning and an example to others. Meanwhile, Fauci deployed his influence to have his critics banned from the major national media, ensuring that few outside a narrow segment of the scientific community ever even became aware of the continuing controversy.
One of Duesberg’s central claims was that the disease known as “AIDS” didn’t actually exist, but was merely the official label attached to a group of more than two dozen different illnesses, all of which had a variety of different causes, with only some of these being infectious agents. Indeed, most of these illnesses had been known and treated for many decades, but they were only designated “AIDS” if the victim was also found to test positive for the HIV virus, which probably had nothing to do with the condition.
In support of their contrary position, the authors noted that the various groups at high risk for “AIDS” only tended to get particular versions of the disease, with the “AIDS” suffered by hemophiliacs usually being very different from the “AIDS” of African villagers and only slightly overlapping with the diseases of gay men or intravenous drug addicts. Indeed, the pattern of “AIDS” in Africa seemed utterly divergent from that in the developed world. But if all these different illnesses were actually caused by a single HIV virus, such completely disparate syndromes would seem puzzling anomalies, difficult to explain from a scientific perspective.
The Lancet is one of the world’s leading medical journals and in 1996, the year after he become its chief editor, Richard Horton took to the pages of the intellectually-prestigious New York Review of Books to produce a 10,000 word discussion of Duesberg’s theories, as propounded in three of the researcher’s recent books and collections. Horton was obviously among the most respectable of establishmentarian figures, but although he mostly came down in support of the orthodox HIV/AIDS consensus, he presented Duesberg’s entirely contrary perspective in a fair-minded manner, respectfully though not uncritically.
However, what struck me most about Horton’s account was how appalled he seemed at Duesberg’s treatment by America’s ruling medical-industrial complex, as suggested by his title “Truth and Heresy about AIDS.”
The very first sentence of his long review article mentioned the “vast academic and commercial industry built around…HIV” along with the fundamental challenge Duesberg posed to its scientific basis. As a consequence, the “brilliant virologist” had become “the most vilified scientist alive” and the subject of “excoriating attacks.” The leading professional science journals had displayed an “alarmingly uneven attitude,” and partly as a consequence, other potential dissidents had been dissuaded from pursuing their alternative theories.
According to Horton, financial considerations had become a central element of the scientific process, and he noted with horror that a press conference on research questioning the effectiveness of a particular anti-AIDS drug was actually packed with financial journalists, focused on the efforts of the corporate executives to destroy the credibility of a study that they themselves had helped to design but which had now gone against their own product.
Most importantly, although Horton was generally skeptical of Duesberg’s conclusions, he was absolutely scathing towards the opponents of the dissident virologist.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the dispute between Duesberg and the AIDS establishment is the way in which Duesberg has been denied the opportunity to test his hypothesis. In a discipline governed by empirical claims to truth, experimental evidence would seem the obvious way to confirm or refute Duesberg’s claims. But Duesberg has found the doors of the scientific establishment closed to his frequent calls for tests…
Duesberg deserves to be heard, and the ideological assassination that he has undergone will remain an embarrassing testament to the reactionary tendencies of modern science…At a time when fresh ideas and new paths of investigation are so desperately being sought, how can the AIDS community afford not to fund Duesberg’s research?”
That ringing last sentence closed the entire review, which appeared in a prestigious and influential publication nearly thirty years ago. But as near as I can tell, Horton’s heartfelt criticism fell on deaf ears, and the AIDS establishment simply ignored the entire controversy while gradually pressuring the media to end any coverage. This seems to fully confirm the narrative history provided in Kennedy’s current bestseller, and I recently summarized this strikingly dissenting analysis of the supposed HIV/AIDS disease in a lengthy article.
If the Duesberg Hypothesis of HIV/AIDS is correct, many hundreds of thousands of American lives were needlessly lost due to a combination of corporate greed, political opportunism, and media incompetence. But most of that calamity took place thirty years ago, and there have been other public health disasters that were both much more recent and also considerably larger, with their reality and their scale now publicly acknowledged by everyone.
As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kennedy may be able to explore the deeper reasons for these disasters and finally begin to give them the scrutiny they deserve, perhaps with dramatic consequences for the lives and well-being of most Americans.
Although for nearly all of my life, I had paid very little attention to public health issues, during the last few years that began to change, as I gradually discovered that the standard media narrative in that subject had sometimes been just as unreliable as it so often proved to be with regard to the political or historical events upon which I’d more usually focused.
A couple of years ago, I discussed my awakening to these matters in an article:
All of us necessarily focus on different areas, and until quite recently I’d never paid much attention to public health issues, naively assuming that these were in the hands of reasonably competent and reasonably honest government servants, monitored by journalists and academics of similar reliability.
For many of us, myself included, an important crack in that assumption came in 2015, when the pages of the New York Times and our other major newspapers were filled with reports of a shocking new study by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a married pair of eminent economists, with Deaton’s career having been crowned a few weeks earlier by winning the Nobel Prize in his discipline.
Their remarkable finding was that during the previous 15 years, the health and survival rates of middle-aged white Americans had undergone a precipitous decline, completely breaking with the pattern of non-white American groups or with whites living in other developed nations. Moreover, this sharp fall in physical well-being represented a radical departure from the trends of the previous half-century, being almost unprecedented in modern Western history.
Although their short paper filled merely a half-dozen pages in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it was quickly endorsed by a host of prominent public health experts and other scholars, who emphasized the dramatic nature of the discovery. A couple of Dartmouth professors told the Times “It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,” while an expert in mortality trends exclaimed “Wow.” Their striking results were illustrated by numerous simple graphs based upon easily obtained government statistics.
The two authors were both economists, whose normal work was distant from public health issues, and according to their account, they had stumbled into these remarkable results quite accidentally, while exploring a different topic. So the natural question that came to my mind was how such a momentous calamity affecting a large fraction of the American population could have been entirely ignored for so long by all the academics and researchers actually working in public health. Perhaps a short trend of three or four years might have escaped notice, but missing fifteen years of such a deadly national decline?
Moreover, the source of this drastic reversal in long-term mortality trends was narrowly confined to a few particular categories. For white Americans aged 45-54, deaths due to drug overdoses and other poisonings had soared almost 10-fold during the period in question, easily overtaking lung cancer to become the leading cause of death.
Mortality by cause, white non-Hispanics ages 45-54 (PNAS)
Together with the steep rise in suicides and chronic alcoholism, drug deaths accounted for the great change in life-expectancy. This situation was particularly acute for the working-class, with the death rates rising a remarkable 22% for white Americans who lacked a college-education.
ORDER IT NOW
Case and Deaton grouped together drug overdoses, suicides, and chronic alcoholism as “deaths of despair,” and in 2020 they expanded their ground-breaking study into a book of that title, which was widely discussed and praised. Their subtitle emphasized “the Future of Capitalism” and they argued that the central cause of America’s deadly predicament was the opioid prescription drug epidemic, produced by the FDA’s 1996 approval of addictive OxyContin and its subsequent massive marketing by Purdue Pharmaceutical. Under the pressure of manipulative corporate lobbying, our government had “essentially legalized heroin,” with the consequences being exactly as might be expected. By 2015, 98 million Americans—more than one-third of all adults—had been prescribed opioids and the level of drug overdoses and other deaths of despair reached 158,000 per year by 2017.
The total American body-count from this opioid disaster, brought about by the widespread use of dangerous but highly lucrative prescription drugs has been estimated at around one million, and often described as “the White Death.”
Back in 2012, I had published an article telling the somewhat similar story of Vioxx, another very profitable but harmful prescription drug.
In September 2004, Merck, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical companies, suddenly announced that it was voluntarily recalling Vioxx, its popular anti-pain medication widely used to treat arthritis-related ailments. This abrupt recall came just days after Merck discovered that a top medical journal was about to publish a massive study by an FDA investigator indicating that the drug in question greatly increased the risk of fatal heart attacks and strokes and had probably been responsible for at least 55,000 American deaths during the five years it had been on the market.
Within weeks of the recall, journalists discovered that Merck had found strong evidence of the potentially fatal side-effects of this drug even before its initial 1999 introduction, but had ignored these worrisome indicators and avoided additional testing, while suppressing the concerns of its own scientists. Boosted by a television advertising budget averaging a hundred million dollars per year, Vioxx soon became one of Merck’s most lucrative products, generating over $2 billion in yearly revenue. Merck had also secretly ghostwritten dozens of the published research studies emphasizing the beneficial aspects of the drug and encouraging doctors to widely prescribe it, thus transforming science into marketing support. Twenty-five million Americans were eventually prescribed Vioxx as an aspirin-substitute thought to produce fewer complications.
This story of serious corporate malfeasance largely forgiven and forgotten by government and media is depressing enough, but it leaves out a crucial factual detail that seems to have almost totally escaped public notice. The year after Vioxx had been pulled from the market, the New York Times and other major media outlets published a minor news item, generally buried near the bottom of their back pages, which noted that American death rates had suddenly undergone a striking and completely unexpected decline.
A cursory examination of the most recent 15 years worth of national mortality data provided on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website offers some intriguing clues to this mystery. We find the largest rise in American mortality rates occurred in 1999, the year Vioxx was introduced, while the largest drop occurred in 2004, the year it was withdrawn. Vioxx was almost entirely marketed to the elderly, and these substantial changes in national death-rate were completely concentrated within the 65-plus population. The FDA studies had proven that use of Vioxx led to deaths from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes, and these were exactly the factors driving the changes in national mortality rates.
So although the official FDA research indicated that Vioxx had killed many tens of thousands of Americans, there are some indications that the true number of premature deaths might have been in the hundreds of thousands.
One major point emphasized by Kennedy has been the terrible long-term consequences of American nutritional and dietary policies.
Although I hadn’t paid much attention at the time, for the last couple of decades our media has been filled with stories about our growing national obesity epidemic and the huge rise in diabetes, high blood pressure, and related American health problems. In a recent article, I summarized the terrible state of those aspects of public health:
Obesity is closely associated with diabetes, and nearly 40 million Americans now suffer from that serious medical condition, while another 115 million have prediabetes. Tens of millions have high blood pressure and other related illnesses. Once again, these rates have risen dramatically over the last generation or two.
These are huge numbers, with massive health consequences. Diabetes alone ranks as the eighth leading cause of death, annually killing more than 100,000 Americans, while being a contributing factor in 300,000 additional deaths. By contrast, the combined total of all our drug-overdose fatalities is a little over 100,000.
A study last year indicated that obesity substantially boosted the risk of death, potentially by as much as 91%, and with so many tens of millions of Americans suffering from that condition, the mortality impact has obviously been enormous. Partly as a consequence of these very negative trends, we spend much more on health care than any other developed nation, yet our life expectancy has generally been much lower, and stagnant rather than rising.
The cause of this public health crisis had always seemed obvious to me, namely that Americans were eating too much and exercising too little—the traditional sins of gluttony and sloth—and the media seemed to say much the same thing.
However, I was recently very surprised to discover strong evidence that many of these terrible American health problems—obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular illness—were probably due to some disastrous mistakes in nutritional policy that our government had made a half-century ago, encouraging Americans to abandon their traditional, reasonably healthy foods for different ones that produced these dire result.
As far back as I can remember, government health experts and the media reporting their warnings had informed us that eating fatty foods was bad for your health and led to much higher risks of heart attacks, strokes, obesity, and numerous other ailments. Although I never paid a great deal of attention to such matters, I always assumed those facts were true, as did most other Americans.
Decades of such media messages told us that the traditional hearty American breakfasts of bacon, sausage, and eggs, often served with gobs of butter—foods overflowing with fat and therefore fattening—needed to be replaced by healthier fare such as granola, fruit, and yogurt. Much of our population eventually heeded those warnings and did exactly that.
The history of those disastrously wrong-headed official nutritional policies had been laid out by Gary Taubes, a very distinguished science journalist in a New York Times Sunday Magazine cover-story published more than two decades ago.
Under this nutritional framework, a healthy diet relied upon a basic foundation of grain-based foods, such as bread, rice, and pasta, supplemented by substantial quantities of fruit and vegetables, and taken together these plant-based carbohydrates should supply the bulk of one’s daily calories. Animal products such as milk, cheese, meat, fish, and eggs were high in protein with substantial fat and they should be eaten in moderation, while servings of fatty foods and sweets should be minimized. Many of us naturally fell short in adhering to those guidelines, but they represented the lodestar for the healthy lifestyle that all of us were encouraged to pursue.
But according to Taubes’ blockbuster article, this had all been “a Big Fat Lie.” As he told the story, fatty foods were healthy foods and eating them was the best way to keep yourself slim, while fruit and low-fat yogurt were exactly the sort of dangerous foods that promoted obesity. I’m sure that for those who closely followed such matters, these outlandish claims must have seemed much like declaring that rocks fall upward.
Taubes later expanded his analysis into Good Calories, Bad Calories, a very heavily documented 2007 national bestseller.
ORDER IT NOW
During my entire life, the mainstream media had always informed me that fatty foods were high in something called cholesterol that greatly increased one’s risk of heart attacks and strokes, and not having any interest nor expertise in such matters, I’d naturally assumed that was true. But Taubes rather convincingly argued that this conclusion was based upon extremely flimsy scientific evidence and might be totally false, with a mountain of that media coverage having been built upon barely a postage stamp of rather doubtful scientific evidence….
This same severe mismatch between minimal factual evidence and enormously widespread belief was also the case with regard to the supposed connection between salt intake and high blood pressure, dietary fiber and colon cancer, and various other health conditions. But the mythology regarding diet and obesity was the worst example of all.
As Taubes documented, from the earliest days of nineteenth century nutritional science and for generations afterward, it had been very widely accepted that diets high in carbohydrates such as pasta, bread, potatoes, and especially sugar were generally fattening and the best way of losing weight was to forgo those foods. Yet in the postwar era, rather scanty or misinterpreted scientific evidence convinced some energetic American nutritionists to develop an entirely different understanding of obesity, based upon the assumption that all calories were essentially interchangeable, and since fatty foods were much denser in their caloric content than either carbohydrates or protein, they should be avoided in order to lose weight. As Taubes evocatively put it, their simple argument amounted to the dogma that obesity was caused by the two traditional sins of gluttony—eating too much—and sloth—exercising too little. This had always seemed intuitively plausible to me, and I’d accepted it as true my entire life.
But Taubes argued that this completely ignored the underlying endocrinological facts and these were far more complex. As he explained, people get fat because their fat cells grow larger, taking on more fat molecules than they release for use in the rest of the body, a process that is regulated by various hormones, especially insulin. When carbohydrates such as starches and sugars are ingested, insulin is released into the bloodstream, leading fat cells to absorb fats rather than release them, while the liver converts excess circulating blood-sugar into molecules of fat for such storage. But eating fatty foods or proteins does not have this same impact upon insulin release, helping to explain the traditional folk-wisdom that carbohydrates are fattening foods.
The simplistic notion that all calories are the same for purposes of weight control fails to consider these crucial hormonal factors. While eating fats or protein assuages our hunger, eating carbohydrates and especially sugar stimulates the release of insulin, which may actually indirectly trigger further sensations of hunger, thereby leading to over-eating.
As Taubes recounted the history, our governmental nutritional guidelines had been produced nearly a half-century ago based upon very scanty scientific evidence and often determined by completely extraneous ideological and political factors.
Taubes had clearly invested a great deal of time in studying the scientific and public health history that had produced our current policies, and one surprising aspect of his account was how remarkably contingent many crucial turning points seem to have been.
For example, the battle over whether dietary fat was seriously harmful had raged for a couple of decades by the mid-1970s, with prominent academic nutritional experts on both sides and the anti-fat camp gradually gaining ground but without any clear decision. Indeed, according to Taubes, much of the growing support for that hypothesis had absolutely nothing to do with research studies or even health issues, but was partly carried along by the growing concerns that overpopulation would doom the world to starvation unless diets in wealthy countries shifted from meat to far more efficiently-produced vegetable products, with all of this occurring before the Green Revolution of agronomist Norman Borlaug swept away the threat of world hunger. So once a traditional American diet heavy in meat had become “politically incorrect” for those totally unrelated geopolitical reasons, there was a tendency to conclude that it was also unhealthy even if the actual supporting evidence was rather thin and ambiguous.
Taubes pointed to the single day that played the greatest role in setting American nutritional policy and enshrining anti-fat dogma. A Senate select committee on nutrition had been established in 1968 by Sen. George McGovern aimed at eliminating the malnutrition caused by poverty, and on Friday, January 14, 1977, it issued federal dietary guidelines declaring that Americans could improve their health by eating less fat. The author noted that the staff members who made that decision were almost totally ignorant of the underlying scientific debate, and in a lengthy footnote, he even raised the disturbing possibility that they were driven to take that step by their fears that the committee would soon be disbanded unless it could gain publicity from some dramatic public declaration.
Once the government had adopted that position, the verdict naturally influenced the subsequent research of FDA investigators and outside academics dependent upon federal funding, so to some extent the anti-fat doctrine then became a self-fulfilling scientific prophecy. And after a generation of researchers had invested their careers warning of the harmful role of dietary fat, they probably became very reluctant to later admit that they might have been mistaken.
The result of these dietary and life-style changes were exactly the opposite of what their advocates had expected, but our political and medical establishment almost entirely ignored these facts and never reconsidered them.
It was only in the 1970s that our government firmly put its stamp of approval on replacing fatty foods with carbohydrates in our diet, especially favoring those in the “health food” category such as granolas, fruit, and whole wheat breads. There was a clear shift away from bacon, sausage, and butter to yogurt, fruit juice, and leaner rather than fattier cuts of meat. Around the same time, more and more Americans began embracing regular daily exercise, including jogging and gym workouts, activities that had previously been almost unknown or even considered harmful. So this combination of less fatty food and more regular exercise should have been followed by very noticeable changes in American weight and related health problems. And so they were, but in exactly the opposite direction from what the nutritional framework promoted by the government and the media would have predicted.
Obesity had always been a very minor problem in American society, but it now suddenly skyrocketed. The obese fraction of our population had been relatively static at one in eight or nine, but it now rose to better than one in three during the thirty years that followed. Meanwhile, the number of Americans with diabetes rose even faster, increasing by nearly 300%.
Taubes highlighted our very heavy and growing consumption of sugar as probably the single most important factor behind our dire health problems.
But all these general concerns about carbohydrates are hugely magnified in the case of sugar, which only very recently became a major component of our diet. Although sugar had been known for many thousands of years, until the last couple of centuries and the creation of large tropical sugar plantations, it had only been available to the wealthy in very limited quantities, and was often regarded as a medicinal or even semi-magical compound with powerful properties. Thus, it would hardly be surprising if the human digestive system and bodily metabolism had a difficult time handling it in the very large quantities that we currently consume, and Taubes provided quite a lot of scientific evidence supporting that very worrisome possibility.
Although Taubes had discussed these concerns about sugar in both his books, a year after releasing the second one, he published a major new Times article entirely devoted to that topic, which carried an explosive title.
Is Sugar Toxic? Gary Taubes • The New York Times Sunday Magazine • April 13, 2011 • 6,500 Words
ORDER IT NOW
Over the last couple of centuries, sugar has become one of the most ubiquitous components of our ordinary diet, heavily found across an enormous range of foods from cookies to sports drinks to ketchup, and the notion that it might actually be a harmful human toxin seems exactly like the sort of nutritional “conspiracy theory” we might expect to find in isolated corners of the Internet, spouted by paranoid health-cranks. Yet that case was instead made by one of our most distinguished science writers in a lengthy cover-story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and he subsequently expanded it into The Case Against Sugar, a heavily-documented 350 page book once again published by Knopf in 2017.
But fructose falls into an entirely different category, and it can only be metabolized in the liver. Taubes emphasized that forcing that organ to handle too much fructose may result in long-term tissue damage, just like drinking too much alcohol can produce cirrhosis of the liver.
In addition, he argued that the liver-damage caused by such fructose-processing may lead to the growth of insulin resistance, which he suggests may be the central factor behind both obesity and diabetes. So ingesting large quantities of sugar probably has an impact upon obesity far greater than merely the extra calories provided. He even speculated that the resulting over-production of insulin may increase the risk of cancer, an illness often associated with obesity and diabetes.
When public concerns developed during the late 1970s that our soft drinks and other foods contained too much sugar, industry reacted to that pressure by replacing such ordinary sugar with high fructose corn-syrup (HFCS), a supposedly natural compound that sounded relatively innocuous, was just as sweet, and had the additional benefit of being even cheaper. Yet, ironically enough, HFCS is actually around 55% fructose to 45% glucose, so that substitution may have actually been somewhat more damaging to the liver and other internal organs. And perhaps coincidentally, the gently rising curves of both obesity and diabetes underwent a further inflection point soon afterward, beginning their rapid subsequent increase.
Taubes’ discussion of the central, pernicious role of sugar had drawn very heavily upon the work of Dr. Robert Lustig, an endocrinologist specializing in childhood obesity at the UCSF’s highly-regarded School of Medicine who had spent years researching that issue.
In 2009 Lustig had given a classroom lecture on his analysis of the harmful effects of sugar. His talk had been unexpectedly recorded and uploaded to YouTube under the title Sugar: The Bitter Truth, where it began attracting considerable viewership and eventually came to Taubes’ attention.
In the years since then, that video has gone super-viral, with its 25 million views possibly ranking it as the second most popular academic lecture in the history of the Internet, only exceeded by Prof. John Mearsheimer’s famous 2015 presentation on the underlying causes of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
In 2012, Lustig published Fat Chance, his own national bestseller covering all these same issues regarding sugar in considerable detail, which I discussed at length in a recent article:
Once we recognize that sugar—or rather its fructose component—constitutes our main dietary problem, our evaluation of different foods and beverages is completely transformed.
For example, it has long been widely understood that heavily sugared soft-drinks are bad for our health, and in recent years the media has often portrayed Coca Cola and its rivals as a major source of our obesity problems. But I’d guess that at least 98% of the public regards natural fruit juices as an ideal alternative, with their consumption even being encouraged by government food programs.
However, Lustig pointed out that this was total nonsense. Although nothing might seem more healthful than freshly-squeezed orange juice, the unfortunate truth is that calorie for calorie or ounce for ounce, fruit juice is actually higher in dangerous fructose than sugary sodas and therefore worse for our health…
According to Lustig, eating most whole fruits themselves—whether oranges, apples, or pears—is generally harmless because their fructose is surrounded by a thick layer of indigestible fiber, greatly slowing its digestion and therefore putting much less pressure on the liver. But using a blender to create the fruit “smoothies” so beloved by many health-food adherents shears away those cellulose fibers and allows the very rapid absorption of the fructose. So the result is something just as harmful as fruit juice itself, and for similar reasons, applesauce falls into the same dangerous category…
Some of the statistics cited by Lustig were quite remarkable. He explained that by 2012 the average American was ingesting 130 pounds of sugar each year, amounting to more than a pound every three days, up from just 40 pounds per year in the 1980s, and that 33% of such sugar came from beverages, with sodas foremost in that category.
When the FDA first began to classify food additives in 1958, sugar had been declared entirely safe due to its natural origins and long use rather than as the result of any sort of testing or scientific analysis, while political pressure later ensured that the same “officially safe” designation was applied to HFCS, once again without any testing. As a consequence, those compounds could be added in unlimited quantities to any food product, and since they generally improved the taste, this was so widely done that of the 600,000 food items today sold in the U.S. fully 80% are laced with added sugar. So finding a food product without added sugar is actually much more difficult than not.
I also discussed Lustig’s important nutritional analysis in Metabolical, the book he had published in 2020, and his explanation of the intensive corporate lobbying that had played a major role in this disaster.
Lustig has become best known for his focus on the dangers of sugar, and he noted that inedible dietary fiber played an important mitigating role by preventing its rapid absorption, thereby cushioning any potentially harmful impact upon the liver. This explained why the fructose in whole fruit was relatively harmless while the fructose in fruit juice was not.
But he also emphasized that we needed to eat sufficient fiber in order to maintain the health of our microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that symbiotically coexist inside our intestines. He explained that these microorganisms normally feed upon the dietary fiber that we ingest, but if that supply is lacking, they may instead begin digesting the mucin layer that protects our intestinal cells, leading to severe health problems. So fiber is beneficial in both these ways, explaining its importance in our diet. Unfortunately, fiber also tends to make the long-term storage of food more difficult, and for that reason it is usually removed from processed foods, so many Americans now get much too little if it in their diet.
Our media and health advocates regularly denounce our diet for being so heavy in such “processed foods,” but to a large extent I think that term is merely shorthand for foods in which the fiber has been removed and additional sugar added. Those are the underlying problems, and obfuscating that issue with a vaguer and more general term can have negative consequences. For example, almost nobody would describe freshly-squeezed orange juice as a “processed food,” but according to Lustig it is just as harmful as the worst of those.
…Lustig’s nutritional mantra, regularly repeated throughout his book, was a very simple one: “Protect the liver and feed the gut.” The leading source of liver damage is the fructose component of sugar, while dietary fiber both protects the liver and feeds the gut, so those seemed the most important items upon which to focus, a relatively simple action plan to take away from a book running more than 400 pages long and containing over than 1,000 reference notes.
Lustig also explained the important role of corporate lobbying and PR efforts in our public health disaster. He drew a clear and persuasive analogy between the nefarious activities of Big Tobacco and those of Big Sugar, noting that contrary to what one might assume, the former was actually modeled upon the latter rather than the other way round, with the tobacco industry hiring a top sugar lobbyist to launch its efforts in 1954.
As concerns over rapidly rising obesity and related health problems escalated, the sugar industry became very successful at deflecting the blame unto all sorts of other products such as fatty foods and salt, so those became the central villains of the standard nutritional narratives promoted by our government and media. Sugar-funded studies suggested that sodas or desserts ranked below French fries and potato chips as a cause of weight gain, but they omitted the fact that both ketchup and chips were actually very heavy in sugar. In fact, a more realistic study seemed to show that of all the items offered on the McDonalds menu, purchase of the sugary drinks correlated most closely with the added weight of the customers.
Researchers and investigative journalists eventually uncovered documents revealing that the Sugar Lobby had spent decades secretly funding scientific researchers whose studies pointed to all culprits except themselves.
During the last decade or so, Kennedy has been most heavily identified with his sharp criticism of vaccines, a subject that I had never previously considered. But despite my very strong criticism of the widespread Covid anti-vaxxing movement, I was eventually persuaded to read a recent book challenging the broader narrative of that long-established public health product.
Early in 2023 I published an article explaining that I’d been quite impressed with much of the material it presented and the controversial questions that it raised.
ORDER IT NOW
However, those earlier vaxxing concerns still have a presence here and there, and a few months ago I received a book on exactly that broader subject, published under the auspices of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense organization. It had originally been released in 2019, long before anyone had ever heard of Covid or Wuhan, so it had nothing to do with these current issues, but addressed the previous vaccine controversy. The authors were anonymous—supposedly a couple of Israeli medical doctors—and their work had originally been published in their own country, but had now been released in an English-language American edition. Except for a few simple charts, the contents consisted entirely of text, and the title was a puzzling one: Turtles All the Way Down.
I was really quite impressed. Most of the Covid anti-vaxxers I’d encountered on the Internet were prone to making wild, very doubtful charges involving gigantic body-counts but I encountered very little of such grandiosity in this extremely sober 500 page discussion of the subject.
Yet although the tone and the factual claims were quite restrained, in many other respects this book constituted a far more radical critique of vaccines than anything I’d previously seen, amounting to a frontal assault against their traditional role in modern medicine. Turtles aimed at overthrowing what most of us had long assumed we knew about those established public health measures, so I was hardly surprised that the authors chose to conceal their names for fear of professional retribution. According to the foreword to the American edition, some months after its original publication the book had received a strongly favorable review in Israel’s leading medical journal, but the senior academics who praised it were then harshly vilified by a medical establishment that was unwilling to directly challenge the substance of the text they had applauded. The front of the book is studded with lengthy endorsements by nearly a dozen medical professionals and other academics, certainly enough support for me to take the book seriously rather than merely dismissing it out of hand…
A central theme of anti-vaxxers has been that many of the vaccines they criticize actually have serious adverse side effects, sometimes doing more harm than good, and I’d always been quite skeptical of this claim. After all, I’d known that prior to their general release new vaccines must typically go through a long period of clinical trials, in which they are matched in randomized, blinded large-scale tests against placebos. But the very first chapter of Turtles claimed that this was mostly a myth and a deception.
According to the authors, such vaccine trials are not conducted against true placebos such as saline solutions, but only against previously approved vaccines. So a new treatment is considered safe if its rate of harmful side-effects is no worse than those of previously approved versions rather than no treatment at all, an illogical approach that seems to make little sense. Thus, the supposed safety and efficacy of current vaccines has only been established relative to a long series of their predecessors, often stretching back decades, and this constitutes the “Turtles All the Way Down” metaphor of the book’s title. This sort of very simple factual claim seems unlikely to have been made unless it were actually true.
Surprisingly enough, the tested rate of adverse vaccine side-effects is sometimes quite significant. For example, during the clinical trials of the Prevnar vaccine, about 6% of the 17,000 infants tested needed emergency room visits and 3% required hospitalization. But because the previous vaccine used for comparison purposes had similarly high rates of negative side-effects, Prevnar was judged safe and effective, a shocking verdict.
There are also cases in which no previously approved version of the vaccine existed for use in such a comparison trial, and one might naturally assume that the only possible choice would be to use a true placebo such a saline solution. Yet as Turtles reveals, in that situation a deliberately crippled version of the vaccine itself is given to the other half of the trial population, a compound which could not provide any benefits but would still probably produce all the same adverse side-effects. The most plausible reason for this strange methodology would be to mask the existence of those adverse side-effects, thereby ensuring the vaccine’s approval.
Turtles summarizes this outrageous situation by stating that each year tens of millions of vaccine doses are administered to infants and toddlers in America, and not a single one of them has ever been tested in clinical trials against an inert placebo. None of this proves that any of these vaccines are dangerous, but it certainly raises that serious possibility. Pilots who fly blind may not necessarily crash, but they probably have a much greater chance of doing so.
Once a vaccine has passed its clinical trials and been approved for general use, any future problems that might appear are supposedly covered by VAERS, the “Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System,” whose name indicates its role of bringing any such problems to the attention of public health authorities. Turtles devotes a full chapter to this system, which the authors claim is very poorly designed and quite unreliable.
In particular, the reporting system is entirely voluntary, so that medical professionals are not obligated to file reports regarding harmful results they have encountered, even those involving the most severe reactions. This suggests that a large degree of under-reporting may be occurring, while at the same time false or misleading reports can also be filed by anyone, without any verification process.
As a result, the data collected by VAERS is statistically suspect and probably quite unreliable, and the authors are suspicious as to why those huge defects in such a seemingly vital system have been left uncorrected for decades. They suspect that these flaws may be deliberate, intended to mask the dangers of the vaccines the system is supposedly meant to monitor.
The authors recognize that skeptical readers may find it difficult to believe that ill-effects from so widespread a product as vaccines might have remained concealed for decades, so they take a short digression into the past history of disease epidemiology. They note that lung cancer was once extremely rare, but then suddenly began to appear in the early part of the twentieth century around the same time that cigarette smoking became widespread, and did so in many of the same populations. But although scientists began pointing to the possible connection and the supporting statistical evidence, that causal relationship was fiercely disputed for decades, partly because of the wealth and power of the industry responsible. Turtles suggests that this tragic history, which led to the premature deaths of millions of lung cancer victims, should be kept carefully in mind as we consider the issue of vaccine safety.
By the late 1990s, renewed questions regarding the safety of vaccines were beginning to appear in the scientific literature, notably the 1998 publication of a hugely controversial study concerning the safety of the MMR vaccine by Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues in the Lancet, a leading medical journal. In addition, the appearance of the Internet for the first time allowed ordinary individuals to share their experiences and concerns, and organize themselves to investigate these issues.
But according to Turtles, the response of the vaccine establishment was to release a series of studies debunking these concerns, studies that the authors argue were severely flawed, biased, and possibly even corrupt, but which were heavily promoted by the medical establishment and its subservient media allies. They devote most of a long chapter to analyzing five of these major studies in considerable detail, noting that some of the most influential contained errors that seemed to severely damage their credibility. Remarkably enough, the raw data presented in one of the most important, the 2002 Madsen study of Danish children, actually seemed to support the opposite conclusion, suggesting that the vaccine indeed had dangerous side-effects, but various dubious statistical “adjustments” were then employed to produce the desired, reassuring result.
At this point the authors raised a very simple question. The easiest and most convincing means of demonstrating that vaccines are actually safe and beneficial with few serious side-effects, would obviously be to conduct a large randomized trial study comparing the total health consequences of vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, what they call a “Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated” (VU) study. Yet according to Turtles, no such study has ever been conducted: “It seems inexplicable that VU studies have not been initiated by the vaccine establishment for so many years.”
Indeed, there already exist substantial populations such as the Amish which forego vaccinations and whose health outcomes could easily be compared with a matched control group of the general, fully-vaccinated public, and Turtles notes some disturbing indications in this regard. A journalistic investigation found that the rate of autism in the Amish was just a small fraction of that in the general population, and the same condition was non-existent in unvaccinated Ethiopian-born children in Israel, while their fully-vaccinated Israeli-born siblings showed normal levels. A similar pattern occurred with Somali immigrant families to both Minnesota and Sweden. Given that those autism-vaccine concerns have for years been such a flashpoint among anti-vaccine activists, it does seem quite suspicious that the public health authorities have been unwilling to respond with a large-scale VU study to conclusively settle the issue.
There have been repeated demands for such VU studies but the regular response of the medical establishment has been to dismiss the proposal as unethical, claiming that it would require denying a large group of children access to beneficial vaccinations; but this is obvious nonsense. A non-randomized study could be based upon unvaccinated groups or a retrospective study could use the health history of large numbers of children who had been unvaccinated in the past. Turtles notes that 0.8% of all American children are today completely unvaccinated, thereby providing 30,000 potential subjects in each birth cohort, while in Australia the rate is 1.5%. These would obviously provide large enough numbers to conclusively determine the relative health benefits of vaccinations, so various other doubtful or entirely specious excuses are typically made…
The authors argue that such studies have indeed almost certainly been quietly conducted, probably many times, but the results have never been made public because they pointed in the wrong direction. After all, the data has been accessible to government authorities for many years and it seems inconceivable that no analysis was ever performed, only that the findings were never released. While I can’t be certain that the authors are right, I do think that their deeply cynical suspicion is more likely correct than not.
The second half of the book shifts to a broader historical perspective, focusing on what the authors describe as the “founding myths” of public health, especially the supposedly crucial role that medical innovations such as vaccines had played in freeing us from the deadly diseases of the past. For nearly my entire life, I had always vaguely accepted these beliefs and had never seriously questioned them.
The authors tell a very different story. They explain that beginning in the early 1960s, Dr. Thomas McKeown, a leading British physician and academic researcher, and his colleagues had published a series of ground-breaking articles that successfully challenged these assumptions, noting that the huge reductions in infectious disease mortality in Britain had actually long pre-dated the introduction of either vaccines or medical treatments such as antibiotics. Instead, the sharp reductions in disease mortality had overwhelmingly been due to major improvements in public sanitation and private hygiene, a surprising conclusion later confirmed in the US as well. They provide several very telling charts demonstrating these facts.
Among other factors, changes in urban transportation technology such as the replacement of horses by automobiles had had an enormous impact given that the former produced an average of 25 pounds of feces per day, much of it scattered on the city streets. The urban reliance on horses involved other major health hazards, with New York City having to remove some 15,000 horse carcasses from its streets during the year 1880. Meanwhile, refrigeration greatly reduced the consumption of spoiled or tainted food, and advances in nutritional understanding increased personal health.
The authors emphasize that forty years after McKeown and his allies produced this “conceptual revolution,” leading health authorities have fully recognized the relative importance of these different factors. A report by the American Institute of Medicine states that
the number of infections prevented by immunization is actually quite small compared with the total number of infections prevented by other hygenic interventions such as clean water, food, and living conditions.
But although the academic community has absorbed these facts, they have still not been widely disseminated or given proper attention. For example, most CDC publications still misleadingly emphasize the central role of vaccinations, leading to widespread public misconceptions. According to Turtles
the scientific consensus regarding the minor role vaccines played in reducing the burden of infectious diseases has become a kind of “open secret” in scientific and medical circles: Everyone knows the truth but nobody cares to share it with the public.
Turtles does freely admit that some major diseases were largely eliminated by vaccines, notably smallpox, and also that vaccines played an important role in reducing the morbidity—widespread illness—of others such as measles, even if not their mortality.
But even these successful examples may raise complicated, hidden questions. Just as the widespread use of vaccines was successfully eliminating various contagious but non-fatal childhood illnesses, other important changes in public health occurred, sometimes quite negative ones. For example, chronic, incurable illnesses such as asthma, autism, and ADHD began appearing for the first time in significant numbers or rapidly growing, soon greatly surpassing the dwindling infectious diseases in their debilitating impact. Despite this, most such chronic diseases have received little attention from the CDC and other infectious-oriented health organizations that prefer to continue focusing upon the vanishing sliver of measles or mumps cases while the millions of children now suffering from chronic illnesses are given much less attention. Turtles raises the disturbing suspicion that these two divergent trends may be directly connected, suggesting once again that large-scale studies should explore the possible links of these new chronic illnesses to the vaccines that were introduced during roughly the same period.
The sole Republican vote against confirming Kennedy came from former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the media often explained his opposition by describing him as a polio survivor, who therefore understood the horrific consequences of populist attacks on vaccines. A week or two before the hearings, the Times had run a front-page article focusing on the 300,000 survivors of that dread disease, forever vanquished through the miracle of vaccination, and Kennedy never challenged any of those arguments in his testimony.
Yet as I explained in my early 2023 article, the true medical story of polio may actually be considerably more complex than what is widely believed.
ORDER IT NOW
Turtles had presented all of these vaccine and public health issues in a relatively cautious manner, and although I found much of the information quite surprising, almost none of it provoked any sense of disbelief. However, the penultimate chapter of the book was by far the longest, amounting to nearly a quarter of the entire text and its contents were far more shocking. I suspect that the authors deliberately placed it near the end so that the earlier revelations would have already softened the skepticism of readers, reducing the likelihood that this explosive material would simply be dismissed out of hand. The title of the chapter is “The Mysteries of Polio” and the first sentence describes the towering edifice they are boldly preparing to assault:
The epic tale of science’s victory over polio—more than any other account of a fight against disease, even the fable-like story of Edward Jenner and his smallpox vaccine—is the foundational myth of vaccination.
Just as the authors suggest, the successful use of the polio vaccine to eliminate that dread disease became the greatest public health triumph of the 1950s, one that saved countless children from crippling paralysis and lifted a reign of terror facing American families, while elevating Dr. Jonas Salk and his vaccine to secular sainthood. The history of that fearsome disease and the vaccine that eradicated it seems as solidly established as anything can be in medicine, with the Wikipedia page running well over 11,000 words and including nearly 150 references.
Yet remarkably enough, Turtles seeks to completely overturn this long-established narrative, claiming that the scientific facts are actually far more complex and ambiguous than I or most other readers would have ever imagined. While this single long account can hardly overcome my enormous presumption in favor of so seemingly well-documented a medical history, it did raise numerous major issues that I’d never previously known, so I will merely present their arguments, urging those interested to read the book and then decide for themselves.
The authors begin by briefly summarizing the standard history of polio, explaining that the disease is caused by a viral infection that can produce a flu-like illness, but which in less than 1% of the cases may also damage the nerve cells thereby creating long-term paralysis. Polio has apparently been around for thousands of years, with the earliest evidence being an Egyptian stele from 1500 B.C. showing a young man with a withered leg supported by a crutch, and its first medical description came in a book by a physician published in 1789. But the illness was extremely rare with no recorded outbreaks so it received minimal attention until near the end of the 19th century, when such outbreaks suddenly began in Europe and the U.S. These soon multiplied in size, claiming 9,000 paralyzed victims in New York City in 1916, and polio epidemics then came and went without any clear pattern, increasing after World War II and reaching a peak in the early 1950s.
The mystery of the illness was solved in 1908 when the virus responsible was isolated, and with the later support of FDR, himself a paralyzed polio victim, huge sums were invested in studying the disease and seeking a cure. This finally culminated in the Salk and Sabin vaccines of the early 1950s, leading to the disappearance of the disease in the industrialized world in the 1960s and 1970s and its eventual near-eradication elsewhere by the end of the twentieth century.
Yet the authors note that this apparently simple story that I had casually absorbed over the years and never questioned, actually hides numerous strange anomalies, mysteries that have always been known in scientific circles but that were never brought before the public. There was no explanation of why polio outbreaks first began in the late 19th century, why they were entirely confined to industrialized countries, and why they were far more severe in summer and early fall. Polio spread and intensified exactly when most other infectious diseases were sharply declining, most victims had no identified contact with other infected individuals, and there was no explanation as to why the virus would only so very rarely attack the nervous system. It proved impossible to infect laboratory animals orally, as humans themselves supposedly became infected.
And oddly enough, although the disease itself has supposedly been vanquished and almost eradicated by medical science, all these mysteries still remain unanswered today despite over a century of research, and some of them have become even more puzzling.
As the authors emphasize “Polio is one of a handful of diseases that have become a major threat to public health during modern times” and the well-documented record of its appearance followed a very strange pattern. The early outbreaks in Europe and North America were sufficiently conspicuous that they clearly represented a new phenomenon, yet there is no explanation for why they suddenly began.
These outbreaks were almost entirely confined to industrialized countries, and in those rare cases in which they spread to other parts of the world, the disease was almost always restricted to Westerners and only rarely affected local residents. American soldiers based in the Philippines contracted polio, but local Filipinos did not, and the same was true for such troops located in China and Japan. American soldiers stationed in the Middle East contracted polio at a rate ten times higher than their counterparts who remained in the U.S., but local residents seemed almost immune. During the early 1940s, polio cases were five times higher among British officers stationed in India than among British enlisted men and 120 times higher than for local Indian troops. Similarly, British officers based in North Africa and Italy were nearly an order-of-magnitude more likely to contract polio than the soldiers serving under their command. Numerous similar instances were recorded of this strange pattern of infection, disproportionately striking those of higher social status.
So during exactly the era when improved sanitation, hygiene, and diet had caused the dramatic decline of other infectious diseases in industrialized countries, polio began its frightening rise. By the late 1940s, the noted tendency of polio to strike Westerners rather than locals living elsewhere gave rise to the theory that “improved hygiene” was somehow an important contributing factor, a conclusion widely accepted by many top polio experts. Scientific hypotheses were formulated to explain this, but these were soon contradicted by empirical research.
However, as the authors point out, the earliest outbreaks of polio in the U.S. had actually followed the exact opposite pattern, being concentrated in the dirtiest, least hygienic urban slums, which had led to the widespread belief that polio was a disease of poverty. But then after polio waned and eventually disappeared in the industrialized world during the 1960s and 1970s, it suddenly reemerged in impoverished Third World countries at rates similar to its 1950s peak in the West. So over the course of a couple of generations, a disease widely believed caused by poverty and lack of hygiene had been transformed into a disease associated with affluence and too much hygiene, but then afterwards returned to its roots as a disease of poverty and dirt. According to Turtles, these totally contradictory assumptions were sometimes simultaneously accepted by leading polio researchers. This very strange pattern of polio infection raises the obvious possibility that the true nature of the illness had been misunderstood in some very fundamental way.
A crucial point that Turtles raises is that contrary to public perceptions, the flaccid paralysis characteristic of polio may actually have a very large number of different causes, perhaps as many as 200 according to the medical literature, with most of these involving poisonings or toxic chemicals. But by the early decades of the 20th century the very high profile of the polio disease meant that the label “polio” was almost always immediately applied to any such physical illness. In some important cases, this was later found to have been a misdiagnosis, but the authors wonder whether this problem may have actually been much more widespread than was realized at the time.
As they emphasize, something very dramatic must have happened late in the 19th century producing the remarkable rise in the incidence of paralytic polio, and they note that this same period saw the widespread introduction of new dyes and pesticides based upon arsenic, lead, and other potentially toxic chemicals.
As a suspicious example, they explain that farmers in the northeastern U.S. began applying lead arsenate to their apple trees in 1892 and the following year there was a large rise in polio cases in the Boston area, which more than quadrupled in number. Moreover, these cases peaked in apple-picking season and most of the victims came from the rural areas surrounding Boston rather than from the city itself. Even decades later, medical experts emphasized that it was very difficult to distinguish polio paralysis from the nerve damage caused by lead poisoning, and misdiagnosis was common. The authors note that the rise of apparent polio cases from a few each year to hundreds or more seems to closely match the widespread use of lead arsenate, which was not only far more dangerous than previous pesticide chemicals but also remained on the fruit much longer.
At this point, Turtles employs highly restrained language to offer a remarkably explosive hypothesis:
The supposition that polio is an infectious and contagious disease—that is, it is caused by a living organism (typically a bacterium or virus) and is transmitted from person to person—has not been in dispute in scientific circles for many decades. The institutional version of polio history has cast a thick layer of concrete around it, and any scientist daring enough to challenge it is likely to be ignored or mocked. The disease, as “everyone knows,” is caused by the poliovirus—a highly contagious virus that enters the body through the mouth and is excreted in the feces. But is polio really an infectious and contagious disease? Delving into some of its early history suggests that the answer to this question is not nearly as straightforward or unequivocal as the official polio story would have us believe.
During the early years of polio’s rise, the nature of the illness was often disputed, with critics of the infection theory emphasizing that they could find no examples of person-to-person transmission. Indeed, the cases were so geographically scattered that almost none of the victims had had any contact with each other. Among 1,400 cases reviewed, less than 3% involved more than a single patient in a family.
Meanwhile, there were many other large-scale instances of such paralysis produced by poisoned foods. In Manchester, England, a mysterious epidemic broke out in 1900, paralyzing thousands of people and killing several dozens, which was eventually traced to high arsenic concentrations in the sulfuric acid used to process sugar in local beer breweries. It was later determined that a similar problem at lower levels had been producing dozens of mysterious cases of paralysis each year in northwestern England during the late 19th century. In 1930, 50,000 Americans became paralyzed in the southern and central regions after they drank a patent medicine contaminated with a toxic chemical, and ten days had usually passed between time of consumption and first onset of the symptoms, completely masking the true cause.
The notion that the paralysis ascribed to polio might actually be due to a toxic chemical seems an astonishing one, not easy for me to accept, but it would help to explain the very strange pattern of the disease and its apparent lack of transmissibility.
Meanwhile, the authors carefully examine the historical studies said to have established the contagious and infectious nature of polio, and find them very doubtful and inconclusive, pointing out that scientific critics had raised many of these same objections at the time. Although repeated experimental failures seemed to establish that polio infections were strictly unique to humans, they note that some of the earliest reports of the rural outbreaks had mentioned that similar forms of paralysis had also afflicted local farm animals such as horses, dogs, and fowls, suggesting that a toxic agent might have been responsible.
So the question naturally arises as to why the possible role of lead or arsenic poisoning had been ignored in those early studies, which instead concluded that a viral disease was responsible. The authors suggest that this was due to the powerful influence of the chemical industry, which marketed these dangerous compounds as pesticides for apple farmers. At the time, such chemicals were totally unregulated by the American government, and indeed several European countries banned American apples for exactly that reason.
The authors note that polio outbreaks in the northern hemisphere tended to peak in the summer and autumn months when fruits and vegetables were most heavily consumed and also intensively sprayed with chemicals to protect them from pests. By contrast, other infectious childhood diseases were much less likely to occur during those same months because schools were not in session.
Polio paralysis had become a notable illness in America by the late 1930s, but its incidence then grew very rapidly after the end of World War II, while outbreaks also began to afflict countries such as Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, where it had previously been unknown. The first epidemics in France, Belgium, and the Soviet Union were only recorded during the 1950s. Medical historians have no explanation for this strange pattern, which elevated polio to a particularly fearsome disease even as so many others were finally being controlled and disappearing.
The authors note that a pesticide revolution was occurring at exactly this same time, with DDT becoming the global insecticide of choice, an inexpensive, powerful, and long-lasting compound that attacked the nervous system of common agricultural pests. Although the chemical was officially judged completely safe, early reports did show some examples of apparent toxicity to humans, even including paralysis as a symptom. According to some medical critics at the time, the pattern of surprising growth in polio infections both in America and other countries seemed to generally track the widening use of DDT, but the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies strongly denied any possible connection.
All lingering doubts about the true nature of polio were swept away once the Salk vaccine was released in 1955, followed by the rapid disappearance of the illness, but the authors raise serious doubts about this seemingly conclusive cause-and-effect relationship. They note that polio cases had already been sharply declining nationwide for several years, and this trend merely continued, followed by a noticeable rise in polio incidence a few years later. The trajectory in Israel was even more contradictory, with a long decline in polio cases actually being reversed after vaccinations began, before dropping back down a few years later.
According to the authors, during the early 1950s American government agencies had become quietly concerned about the health effects of DDT and began discouraging its extensive use, especially in food preparation and within houses. They suggest that this might explain the sharp decline of apparent polio cases during the years prior to introduction of the Salk vaccine.
So for whatever combination of reasons, polio had largely disappeared from the US and the rest of the industrialized world by the 1970s. But meanwhile, the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides in many Third World countries was soon followed by a surprising rise in apparent polio outbreaks, which had previously been unknown in those regions, leading to the launch of a global vaccination campaign in 1988 to eradicate polio.
That massive effort has seemingly been very successful, and by 2013 reported cases of polio had dropped by 99.9%. However, the authors seriously question this triumphal narrative, noting the concurrent, even more rapid rise of “Acute Flaccid Paralysis” (AFP) syndrome, a physical ailment with similar characteristics but not ascribed to the polio virus. If the actual number of severely paralyzed individuals has remained constant or even sharply increased, perhaps the supposed success of the global polio vaccination campaign has been achieved merely by redefinition, a sleight of hand.
Although I’d found most of the previous sections of Turtles interesting and reasonably persuasive, these had hardly prepared me for the incendiary impact of this very long chapter on polio, which completely astonished me. The mere possibility that one of the most famous historical diseases of the twentieth century had largely been a figment of medical misdiagnosis simply boggled the mind.
Polio’s fatalities had been relatively few in number, but its legacy of permanently crippled children had established it as a particularly terrifying illness, finally conquered by the heroic medical breakthroughs of Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin, for which the former received a Nobel Prize. Just as the authors declare, the eradication of polio had been a crowning achievement of mass vaccination drives, permanently justifying that public health measure and leading to its widespread expansion. My view on all these matters had always been quite conventional and I’d never doubted what I’d read in my newspapers or textbooks. So I was stunned to encounter 125 pages—soberly written and carefully argued—that raised the serious suspicion that the contagious disease had never really existed, with most of the victims actually suffering from various types of toxic poisoning rather than any viral infection.
I’d similarly remembered the controversy surrounding the use of DDT as a pesticide and its ban a half-century ago because of the threat it posed to wildlife. But I’d accepted the arguments that it was almost entirely harmless to humans and had never heard of any possible connection to an illness, let alone anything as high-profile as the paralysis attributed to polio.
ORDER IT NOW
There is obviously an enormous difference between creating serious doubts about a landmark scientific issue and successfully overturning it. Even if I were willing to check the hundreds of scholarly references Turtles provides to support its revolutionary hypothesis, I probably wouldn’t possess the technical expertise to properly evaluate them. The victory over polio ranks as one of the most famous triumphs of modern medicine, and surely its legion of defenders could produce lengthy rebuttals to the arguments made by these anonymous authors, rebuttals that would have to be carefully weighed by those with the expert knowledge to effectively do so. Reversing our settled understanding of polio is the sort of monumental feat that would require an equally monumental professional debate. But from my perspective, even merely raising significant doubts about such a seemingly central element of medical history entirely justifies reading the book of these courageous authors.
ORDER IT NOW
Not long after publishing that article, I was sent a copy of an earlier 2018 book focused entirely on the strange and anomalous history and medical aspects of the disease of polio, covering the same subject but in far greater detail.
The Moth in the Iron Lung by Forrest Maready reached conclusions roughly similar to those of Turtles, and had apparently served as a source for some of the latter’s analysis. Therefore, those strongly interested in the subject should certainly consider adding it to their reading list as well.
The “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect” is an important aspect of our psychology that was described by the late novelist Michael Crichton in a 2002 speech:
Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I’d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn’t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.
Even after we recognize this principle, we often still suffer from its effects, and in my own case this has happened on multiple separate occasions.
During the last couple of decades, I’d become more and more suspicious of the established historical narrative regarding our wars and other major political events of the last hundred-odd years, and begun investigating these in detail, producing my lengthy American Pravda series as a consequence.
However, until recently I never applied this same skepticism to our public health matters, which I assumed were more or less as they had been officially presented. But over the last several years, I have concluded that I had probably been mistaken about this.
Some of the major health controversies described and summarized in this long article involved a greater loss of American life than the combined total of all of our wars of the twentieth century. So if our accepted view of them has been incorrect and should be revised, the implications are absolutely enormous.
Over the last decade, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been one of the boldest public figures arguing for this sort of sweeping reassessment and he has now been installed as our country’s most powerful public health official, able to translate some of his concerns and skepticism into careful investigation and possible public policy.
So if he successfully undertakes such actions, he might eventually come to be recognized as one of the most momentous public officials of our recent national history.
Rumble link Bitchute link False Flag Weekly News link
A few days ago, US Vice President JD Vance made a pilgrimage to Dachau, apostatized from Christianity and embraced Holocaustianity—the new official religion of the West in which the Jews have replaced Jesus, the gas chambers have replaced the cross, and Israel has replaced the Resurrection. To climax his conversion, Vance prostrated himself before the holy imaginary gas chambers and uttered the sacred litany: “Never again!”
According to the
A few days ago, US Vice President JD Vance made a pilgrimage to Dachau, apostatized from Christianity and embraced Holocaustianity—the new official religion of the West in which the Jews have replaced Jesus, the gas chambers have replaced the cross, and Israel has replaced the Resurrection. To climax his conversion, Vance prostrated himself before the holy imaginary gas chambers and uttered the sacred litany: “Never again!”
According to the exoteric doctrine of Holocaustianity, never again means never again a genocide. But even as Vance was intoning “never again,” the government Vance represents was perpetrating genocide—a real and indubitable one this time. And Vance’s boss Trump was blessing that genocide with boastful threats to nuke what remains of Gaza, expel the survivors, and build casinos on the bones of Palestinian women and children.
So what does “never again” really mean, then? The true, esoteric meaning seems to be: Never again will anyone significant in the West arise to challenge Jewish power, or even have the temerity to notice it.
If JD Vance had cojones, he would have put it this way:
“NEVER AGAIN will I allow the Jews to drag me to their infernal holohoax theme park and force me to bow down and kiss kosher tush!”
Now that the livestreamed genocide of Gaza has changed everything, it won’t be long before people start saying things like:
“NEVER AGAIN…Will a HOLOHOAX Trigger a REAL GENOCIDE!”
Stripe is Substack’s only processor and they debanked me, so you can no longer pay me through Substack. So I am posting everything on Substack free and asking people to sign up for recurring donations at Paypal or better yet, the free speech platform SPdonate. (Note that you need to do a recurring larger recurring ANNUAL donation not a small monthly one, because SPdonate can’t process anything under $20. For smaller recurring donations use Paypal.)
Kiss the ring. Grovel before the Godfather. Give him tribute, a cut of the spoils. If he and his family get rich you get rich. Enter his inner circle, his “made” men and women, and you do not have to follow rules or obey the law. You can disembowel the machinery of government. You can turn us and the natural world into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. You can commit crimes with impunity. You can make a mockery of democratic norms and social responsibility. Perfidy is very pro
Kiss the ring. Grovel before the Godfather. Give him tribute, a cut of the spoils. If he and his family get rich you get rich. Enter his inner circle, his “made” men and women, and you do not have to follow rules or obey the law. You can disembowel the machinery of government. You can turn us and the natural world into commodities to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. You can commit crimes with impunity. You can make a mockery of democratic norms and social responsibility. Perfidy is very profitable at first. In the long term it is collective suicide.
America is a full blown kleptocracy. The demolition of the social and political structure, begun long before Trump, makes a few very, very rich and immiserates everyone else. Mafia capitalism always leads to a mafia state. The two ruling parties gave us the first. Now we get the second. It is not only our wealth that is being taken from us, but our liberty.
Since the election of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, currently worth $394 billion, saw his wealth increase by $170 billion. Mark Zuckerberg, worth $254 billion, saw his net worth increase by nearly $41 billion.
Tidy sums for kneeling before Moloch.
At least 11 federal agencies that have been affected by the slash and burn campaign of the Trump administration have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions, into Musk’s six companies, according to a review by The New York Times.
The mafia state ignores legal constraints and regulations. It lacks external and internal control. It cannibalizes everything, including the ecosystem, until there is nothing left but a wasteland. It cannot distinguish between reality and illusion, which obscures and exacerbates gross incompetence. And then the hollowed-out edifice will collapse leaving in its wake a shell of a country with nukes. The Roman and Sumerian empires fell this way. So did the Mayans and the sclerotic reign of the French monarch Louis XVI.
In the final stages of decay for all empires, the rulers, focused exclusively on personal enrichment, ensconced in their versions of Versailles or The Forbidden City, squeeze the last drops of profit from an increasingly oppressed and impoverished population and ravaged environment.
Unprecedented wealth is inseparable from unprecedented poverty.
The more extreme life becomes, the more extreme ideologies become. Huge segments of the population, unable to absorb the despair and bleakness, severs itself from a reality-based universe. It takes comfort in magical thinking, a bizarre millennialism — one embodied for us in a Christianized fascism — which turns con artists, morons, criminals, charlatans, gangsters and grifters into prophets while branding those who decry the pillage and corruption into traitors. The rush towards self-immolation accelerates intellectual and moral paralysis.
The mafia state makes no pretense of defending the common good. Trump, Musk and their minions are swiftly repealing executive orders regarding health, environmental and safety regulations, food assistance, as well as child care programs such as Head Start. They are fighting a court order to halt their dismantling of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has ensured that Americans have been reimbursed with more than $21 billion due to cancelled debts, financial compensation and other forms of consumer relief. They are abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development. They are closing federal defenders’ offices, which provide legal representation to the poor. They have cut billions of dollars from the budget of the National Institutes of Health jeopardizing biomedical research and clinical trials. They have frozen permits for solar and wind projects, including sign-offs needed for projects on private land. They fired more than 300 staffers at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that manages our nuclear stockpile. They are gutting the workforce of the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Geological Survey.
The mafia state, its blueprint contained in Project 2025, ignores the dire lessons from history of extreme social inequality, political disintegration, wanton ecological plunder and the evisceration of the rule of law.
We are, of course, not naturally destined for freedom. It was two millennia before democracy reappeared in Europe after its collapse — largely because Athens became an empire — in ancient Greece. The mafia state, not democracies, may be the wave of the future, one where the wealthiest one percent of the globe owns some 43 percent of all global financial assets – more than 95 percent of the human race — while 44 percent of the planet’s population lives below the World Bank’s poverty line of less than $6.85 per day. These calcified regimes endure solely because of draconian systems of internal control, wholesale surveillance and the evisceration of civil liberties.
We have at the same time wiped out 90 percent of the large fish such as cod, sharks, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, and marlin and degraded or destroyed two thirds of the mature tropical forests, the lungs of the planet. Lack of access to safe drinking water, and the resultant spread of infectious diseases, kills at least 1.4 million people annually — 3,836 per day — and also contributes to 50 percent of global malnutrition, according to the World Bank. Between 150 and 200 million children are impaired by malnourishment. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is well above the 350 parts per million that most climate scientists warn is the maximum level for sustaining life as we know it. By May of this year, atmospheric CO2 levels are forecast to reach 429.6 ppm, the highest concentration in over two million years. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that the measurement could reach 541 to 970 ppm by the year 2100. At that point huge parts of the planet, beset with high population density, droughts, soil erosion, freak storms, massive crop failures and rising sea levels, will be unfit for human existence.
Clans, in the later period of the Easter Island civilization, competed to honor their ancestors by constructing larger and larger hewn stoner images, which demanded the last remnants of the timber, rope and manpower on the island. By the year 1400 the woods were gone. The soil had eroded and washed into the sea. The islanders began to fight over old timbers and were reduced to eating their dogs and soon all the nesting birds.
The desperate islanders developed a magical belief system that the erected stone gods, the moai, would come to life and save them from disaster.
The belief by Christian nationalists in the rapture, which does not exist in the Bible, is no less fantastic. These Christian fascists — embodied in Trump appointees such as Russell Vought, head of Trump’s Office of Budget and Management, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Mike Huckabee, nominated to be the ambassador to Israel — intend to use schools and universities, the media, the judiciary and the federal government as platforms to carry out indoctrination and enforce conformity.
The followers of this movement defer to a leader they believe has been anointed by God. They embrace the illusion that the righteous will be saved, floating naked upwards into heaven, at the end of time and the secularists they despise will perish. This retreat into magical thinking, which is the foundation of all totalitarian movements, explains their suffering. It helps them cope with despair and anxiety. It gives them the illusion of security. It also ensures retribution against a long list of enemies — liberals, intellectuals, gays, immigrants, the deep state — blamed for their economic and social misery.
Our millennialism is an updated version of the faith in the moai, the doomed Taki Onqoy revolt against the Spanish invaders in Peru, the Aztec prophecies of the 1530s and the Ghost Dance, which Native Americans believed would see the return of the buffalo herds and slain warriors rise alive from the earth to vanquish the white colonizers.
This retreat into fantasy is what happens when reality becomes too bleak to be absorbed. It is the appeal of Trump. Of course, this time it will be different. When we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will be no new lands to pillage, no new peoples to exploit. We will be exterminated in a global death trap.
Karl Polanyi in “The Great Transformation” writes that once a society surrenders to the dictates of the market, once its mafia economy becomes a mafia state, once it succumbs to what he calls “the ravages of this satanic mill,” it inevitably leads to “the demolition of society.”
The mafia state cannot be reformed. We must organize to break our chains, one-by-one, to use the power of the strike to cripple the state machinery. We must embrace a radical militancy, one that offers a new vision and a new social structure. We must hold fast to moral imperatives. We must forgive mortgage and student debt, institute universal health care and break up monopolies. We must raise the minimum wage and end the squandering of resources and funds to sustain the empire and the war industry. We must establish a nationwide jobs program to rebuild the country’s collapsing infrastructure. We must nationalize the banks, pharmaceutical corporations, military contractors and transportation and embrace environmentally sustainable energy sources.
None of this will happen until we resist.
The mafia state will be brutal with any who revolt. Capitalists, as Eduardo Galeano writes, view communal cultures as “enemy cultures.” The billionaire class will do to us what it did to the radicals who rose up to form militant unions in the past. We had the bloodiest labor wars in the industrialized world. Hundreds of American workers were killed, tens of thousands were beaten, wounded, jailed and blacklisted. Unions were infiltrated, shut down and outlawed. We cannot be naïve. It will be difficult, costly and painful. But this confrontation is our only hope. Otherwise, we, and the planet that sustains us, are doomed.
Rumble link Bitchute link
Christians reacted to last week’s interview with Laurent Guyénot by disagreeing with Guyénot’s assertion that the Old Testament is very bad scripture, that Yahweh is basically Satan, and that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Patrick Chenal, a Catholic listener, and Ed Kendrick, a spiritual seeker and pioneer of the “Israel did it” school of the 9/11 truth movement, continue the discussion.
Excerpt
Ed Kendrick: I’m kind of a Heinz 57 as far as religious experience
Christians reacted to last week’s interview with Laurent Guyénot by disagreeing with Guyénot’s assertion that the Old Testament is very bad scripture, that Yahweh is basically Satan, and that Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Patrick Chenal, a Catholic listener, and Ed Kendrick, a spiritual seeker and pioneer of the “Israel did it” school of the 9/11 truth movement, continue the discussion.
Excerpt
Ed Kendrick: I’m kind of a Heinz 57 as far as religious experience, starting with Southern Baptists, moving into Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science as my mother had cancer. We were trying to seek a cure through spirituality. Then moving on to Unity, that’s in Lee’s Summit, the Unity School of Christianity. And then moving into meditation, Buddhism, Baha’i, Scientology eventually for a year and a half, and I went legal against Scientology to get out. That’s an interesting story but we don’t need to go there right now. Where I’m at right now is I’m at a bit of variance to contemporary Christians in the context of the I am references. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Moses at the burning bush, the burning bush suggested he tell his people that I am sent him. And Jesus met on this road by a stranger, replied to the stranger, I am that I am.
The concept being something I encountered about 50 years ago, a pastor named Rocco Errico, who grew up in Mesopotamia, and he’s a biblical scholar. And he comes from the Essene standpoint of the definition of I am as a central viewer, the watcher, the witness that we all have in Hindu traditions. It would be what we acknowledge when you say namaste to someone and that you acknowledge that core self that you see in the other in front of you that we all share.
I’m quite uncomfortable with taking things on belief, which by definition requires no evidence. And I’m quite an advocate for things that we can mutually verify, not because of a majority rule or the loudest voice, but things that we can verify when we start talking about epistemology and the relationship of science and spirituality.
Kevin Barrett: Those are two very different perspectives. And they’re different from mine, and they’re different from Lauren Guyenot’s. We’ve got a diversity of viewpoints here. Patrick, in a way, your viewpoint, the traditional Catholic viewpoint, is in some ways closer to sort of the long-term Western consensus. There’s a doctrine. There are some things that are taken on faith, but there are mechanisms for empirically verifying things. In the first hour, I was just talking about miracles with Eric Wahlberg, And the Catholic Church is well known for doing very extensive investigations of reports of paranormal phenomena that might be accepted as miracles and as evidence for somebody’s sainthood. So there is a tradition of empirical research in certain respects in Catholicism, as well as a whole doctrinal approach to what’s really going on. And some of that does require faith.
So Patrick, what’s your take on sort of the relationship between faith and investigation, skepticism, looking for evidence?
Patrick Chenal: Well, I would point out that the word faith in Hebrew means understanding. And if you understand something, then you know that it’s true. And if you know it’s true, then you have hope in something, which is trust. And then love comes after that, and that would be mercy.
You were talking about miracles. I’d say one of the greatest miracles in history in regard to Catholicism would be the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And recently I read the Gospel of Mark, of Jesus meeting the two followers that were on the road to Emmaus, where he appeared and broke bread with them…
When we regard Catholicism, we have the Eucharist, which is the body and blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine, which is the heart of Catholic worship. We go on Sunday to church and we participate in that.
Now, when Jesus met these two on the road to Emmaus, he mentioned to them that he was the one prophesied from the time of Moses and throughout the Old Testament. So, that right there gives evidence against the Marcionite claim that Jesus had nothing to do with the God of the Old Testament, which is quite a stretch. And I think a lot of that comes from people who are trying to justify their behavior. And a lot of times they do it to justify their bad behavior so that they can revert to the old way and say, well, God is just this revengeful, almost like demon-like figure that takes revenge and kills entire peoples, like the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, when God saw that they were so evil that he wiped them out.
It’s quite a shock to people today, that sort of thing. Why would God do that? It really begs the question that most people who aren’t of the faith have, that if God is so good, if God is totally good, then why does he allow evil to occur? And I think this kind of involves sort of magical thinking in a way because it’s like saying that God is God and that he doesn’t have the power of life and death and the ability to take something that is evil, like, for instance, the death of Jesus, his only begotten son, and make it into something glorious, which is his resurrection.
The South is blamed for slavery. One encounters this false association, the product of decades of demonization of the South, everywhere, even in books about the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 in Buffalo, New York by a Polish-American, Leon Czolgosz, who was born in Detroit.
Nothing in McKinley’s presidency or in Czolgosz’s life has anything to do with the South or slavery. Yet the author of the book, Eric Rauchway, manages to use the fact that northern whites wanted to lynch Czolgos
The South is blamed for slavery. One encounters this false association, the product of decades of demonization of the South, everywhere, even in books about the assassination of President McKinley in 1901 in Buffalo, New York by a Polish-American, Leon Czolgosz, who was born in Detroit.
Nothing in McKinley’s presidency or in Czolgosz’s life has anything to do with the South or slavery. Yet the author of the book, Eric Rauchway, manages to use the fact that northern whites wanted to lynch Czolgosz, a white man, to pull the South into the story. “White men of the South practiced lynching to terrify black men into submission,” and blacks fled the South because of “the growing number of blacks lynched in the slow-burning race war of the late-nineteenth century South.” These are blanket and unsupported statements.
In fact, lynching was a form of community justice. There are instances of blacks lynching blacks and instances of lynchings far outside the South. On the Western frontier lynching was the punishment for horse thieves. As the author is described as a teacher at the University of California, Davis, and the book was published in 2003, perhaps the explanation is the author is protecting himself against the rising power of the university left and the doctrine of “aversive racism.”
I don’t mean to single out this particular book. It just happens to be lying at hand. The point is that no matter how remote a book’s topic is from the South, such as President McKinley’s assassination, writers establish their moral credentials with potshots at the South.
Demonizing the South has become a way for northerners and university professors to demonstrate their moral standing, but it doesn’t stop them from immigrating to the South and destroying Southern communities with their lack of graciousness,
The South has no responsibility for slavery. Nor were blacks the only people enslaved. It was not whites who enslaved blacks. Blacks were enslaved by the black Kings of Dahomey in their slave wars. Dahomey sold the blacks it enslaved to Arabs and to British, Spanish, and Portuguese who shipped them to the New World that offered resources to exploit but had no labor force. Blacks enslaved by the King of Dahomey became the labor force for colonial rice, sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations. I do not know of any incidence of a black enslaved by a white. White colonists purchased already enslaved blacks. In the US free blacks also owned black slaves
Blacks were the agricultural work force in the New World long before the United States existed. For the South slavery was an inherited institution, not one created by the South. There was no labor market in which agricultural labor could be hired. Immigrants to the British colonies simply moved westward, taking Indian land for their own.
When the United States became a country, it was a poor one in which government had scant sources of revenues and in which slavery was an established institution. One way of freeing slaves would have been to confiscate them from those who purchased them. This would have collapsed the agricultural sector of the economy and eliminated the few export revenues the nation had. Another way, if revenues had been available, would have been for the federal government to purchase and release the slaves. But thrown on their own, where was their employment? And where was the agricultural work force?
The un-enslaved blacks would have to have gone to work for the plantations where they were formerly slaves. Only now, they would be responsible for their own housing, clothes, medical care, food, and what if the wage earner drank his wage away?
It wasn’t the South that did not face these issues. It was the self-righteous North, essentially a barbaric people whose culture was the pursuit of wealth at the expense of the South and the American Indians, the native inhabitants, both of which were destroyed by violence in pursuit of wealth.
Independent scholarly investigations, without an axe to grind, have established beyond question that there were more white slaves than black ones. Arabs raided the seacoast towns of Mediterranean Europe for slaves. Arabs took American citizens off of intercepted ships and sold them as slaves, prompting President Thomas Jefferson to send the US Navy and troops to “the shores of Tripoli” as the US Marine Corps anthem reflects in order to halt the practice of enslaving American white citizens.
We have before us the total abject failure of American Universities and intellectuals, who do not warrant the name and should be known as propagandists, to provide any semblance in their histories to actual facts.
Since the 1930s when German Jewish Cultural Marxists arrived at Columbia University, the United States and all of its history, values, and institutions have been under attack. The Cultural Marxists call it “the march through the institutions.”
Donald Trump, it seems, has aroused the long docile and insouciant American population, too devoted to their entertainment to notice the erasure of their nation, to deal with the rot that insouciance has produced. Trump is up against the fact that the long neglect of their country by the American people has left him at war with an American enemy that is institutionalized in every American institution, public and private.
America, from long neglect, has acquired an anti-American character full of rot that must be cleaned out. Trump, Musk, Bondi and other appointees with integrity must not flinch. They must destroy those who have been working to destroy us and leave us in tyranny.
We all know who they are.
Despite the left’s emphasis on American Slavery, for example the Jewish NY Times’ 1619 Project, the re-enslavement of the entirety of the American people has gone unnoticed. I have tried for decades to call attention to the fact that anyone who pays an income tax is unfree.
ORDER IT NOW
Historically, the definition of a “free man” is a man who owns his own labor. Feudal Serfs did not own their own labor. Feudal Lords had use rights in the serf’s labor. Years ago when I studied the feudal system, the consensus was that the maximum use of the serfs’ labor by feudal lords was one-third. Anything higher produced rebellion.
Slaves do not own their own labor. The maximum tax rate on a 19th century plantation slave’s labor was 50%, as half of his labor was devoted to his food, housing and health care. Actually, as the person who purchased a slave had made a capital investment, he could only benefit from half of its output.
Americans, Europeans, Russians, indeed all peoples, are unaware that they are as effectively enslaved as 19th century slaves working on cotton plantations. No person subject to an income tax is a free person, because they do not own their own labor. The richer you are, the higher your tax rate and the less you own of yourself. We are all slaves.
It is extraordinary that in the present time everyone accepts their own slavery.
It is extraordinary that libertarian and free market economists are up in arms against tariffs but are comfortable with an income tax that enslaves them to government.
Tariffs are a tax on consumption, which is where the classical economists wanted taxation to be placed. An income tax is a tax on the factors of production–labor and capital. It is the income tax, not tariffs, that suppress the growth of the economy by reducing the supply of labor and capital.
I have been making this point for decades, and it is libertarians, those committed to freedom and liberty, who have paid the least attention. Until slavery was reestablished in 1913, tariffs were the main source of government finance. The United States developed as a powerful industrial and manufacturing economy under the protection of tariffs, not as a free trade country. Indeed, the North invaded the Confederacy and destroyed a country in order to force the South to bear the consequences of a tariff needed for the North’s industrial development.
What are we to make of this? Are we so brainwashed and indoctrinated into our own slavery that we cannot recognize it, preferring to project our present day slavery onto the 19th century South?
When Trump speaks of abolishing the income tax and substituting tariffs, he is speaking of the restoration of American freedom which was abolished in 1913.
The Democrats are using the judiciary to cover up their corrupt operations and theft of taxpayers’ money.
If you will notice, the slew of judges countermanding Trump’s executive orders are themselves issuing executive orders, and they are doing so with no reference to law. Instead, they are ruling that Trump’s executive orders are harming someone, including illegal immigrant-invaders who are not US citizens. This is outrageous. Harm is a subjective standard. Moreover, the judges are overlooking
The Democrats are using the judiciary to cover up their corrupt operations and theft of taxpayers’ money.
If you will notice, the slew of judges countermanding Trump’s executive orders are themselves issuing executive orders, and they are doing so with no reference to law. Instead, they are ruling that Trump’s executive orders are harming someone, including illegal immigrant-invaders who are not US citizens. This is outrageous. Harm is a subjective standard. Moreover, the judges are overlooking the harm that their rulings do.
What can Trump do? Like Andrew Jackson, he could ignore the judges. He could order the federal marshall’s, who report to the president and not to the judiciary, to cease delivering the judges’ edicts and to stop providing any service to the judges other than life protection.
The rulings by these judges are so egregious that they demonstrate both that some judges are in on the grift and the danger to Democrats from having their corruption revealed is so great that it has to be prevented by having the judiciary dictate to the executive.
We have judges blocking Trump’s order against birthright citizenship which prevents illegals from gaining US citizenship by illegally entering the US in order to give birth. Such births are known as “anchor babies” as they result in citizenship for the entire family. Hows corrupt does a judge have to be to claim that the Constitution provides nefarious ways for foreigners to acquire US citizenship?
We have judges ordering Trump to reinstate federal funding for private NGOs working to undermine foreign governments and to spread sexual perversion and anti-white woke propaganda. Judges ordering the continuation of these harmful activities are arguing that it is harmful to prevent harm. Moreover, many and probably most of these NGOs are grift money-laundering operations dumping taxpayers’ money into the hands of Democrats and their children via NGO salaries and grants. Judges are even ordering Trump to continue financing private DEI and gender operation websites.
Judges do not have executive powers. They can interpret existing law and the Constitution, but not on the basis of some subjective factor as their personal notion of harm or their determination to cover up corruption.
I predicted that Trump’s attempt to restore America would be tied down in lawsuits aided and abetted by a corrupt judiciary. Something must be done about judicial overreach or the renewal of America is a lost cause.
On arriving at the White House, it’s the first rule of American politics for the new president to overestimate his power, and for his staff and appointees to confer that exaggeration upon themselves.
The second rule for these novices and freshmen is to declare as much of this power as possible in public, and as quickly as they can. Their aim is to steal a march on their rivals within the new administration; box the Congress into a corner; and create faits accomplis to prevent the courts from
On arriving at the White House, it’s the first rule of American politics for the new president to overestimate his power, and for his staff and appointees to confer that exaggeration upon themselves.
The second rule for these novices and freshmen is to declare as much of this power as possible in public, and as quickly as they can. Their aim is to steal a march on their rivals within the new administration; box the Congress into a corner; and create faits accomplis to prevent the courts from injuncting and reversing. Also, believing the President of the United States to be next to God, he and his appointees enjoy the feeling of divinity, walking on water, tossing their rivals into hell, anticipating heavenly rewards on earth, etc. These rules are so simple, a child of four years old can understand and say them aloud; he has.
Equally simple is the rule of the court and camp followers, the press first of all. Their aim is to truckle and ingratiate themselves with the new power, propagandizing the new exaggeration in exchange for patronage. This is a cold cash nexus.
In the present exaggeration of the warmaking and peacemaking between the US and Russia, this cash nexus is as obvious on the Russian side as it is on the American. It is the reason President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin have appointed special emissaries so that the money on one side can negotiate with the money on the other side; this is what Steven Witkoff, a real estate speculator, and Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), are doing now.
Left, Steven Witkoff; right, Kirill Dmitiriev; for more on Dmitriev, read the backfile.
One of the certainties of the deal-making they have commenced is that they intend the payoffs to be larger than the privatization and loans-for-shares schemes which, with White House backing, launched the Russian oligarchy thirty years ago.
For an outline of the Witkoff-Dmitriev deals, read this.
Media camp followers of Trump, Putin and the oligarchs, left to right, Nima Alkhorshid with Gilbert Doctorow, Larry Johnson with Andrew Napolitano.
The US Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegsteth, was not included in the list President Trump announced on February 12, following his telephone conversation with President Putin, “to lead the negotiations which, I feel strongly, will be successful.” But hours before their conversation, Hegsteth announced that he accepts that the return to Ukraine of Russian Crimea and the four regions of Novorossiya – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson — will not be negotiated because it is an “unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war”.
Hegsteth added that in negotiating security guarantees for the new Ukrainian border and demilitarized zone, he is ruling out US troops, identifying instead “capable European and non-European troops” who would not be under NATO orders or covered by the NATO treaty’s mutual defence Article Five. This implied that the rump Ukraine the US negotiators anticipate would also not receive NATO status or NATO security guarantees.
Within hours Hegsteth was contradicted by John Coale, a lawyer for Trump in the past and the president’s appointee as deputy special envoy for Ukraine. Coale called Reuters for interview in Germany in order to announce that he “had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine or a negotiated return to its pre-2014 borders. ‘Right now, that is still on the table’”.
Hegsteth then contradicted himself in a single speech. Speaking in Warsaw beside the Polish Defense Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, Hegsteth said “our message is so stark to our European allies — now is the time to invest because you can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.” Hegsteth went on: “The invitation we receive here, if anything, would make me want to have more troops to Poland — that’s not a policy statement, that’s just how I feel.”
The next day in Munich, Vice President J D Vance appeared to contradict both Coale and Hegsteth, downplaying the security threat from Russia for Germany, Poland and the rest of Europe. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor… To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’…What has seemed a little bit less clear to me, and certainly I think to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you’re defending yourselves for.”
Two of the US negotiators on which Trump agreed with Putin were also at the Munich Security Conference with Hegsteth and Coale – Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. It is Waltz’s National Security Council (NSC) which in standard White House practice reviews in advance and coordinates public statements like those of Hegsteth and Coale. But this has not happened.
Rubio was publicly silent in Munich, upstaged by Vance who also took charge of the bilateral meeting with Vladimir Zelensky and a Ukrainian delegation.
At right, Vice President Vance speaking to the press, Secretary of State Rubio silent on his right. Source: https://www.youtube.com/ Sitting on Vance’s left was General Keith Kellogg, Coale’s nominal superior as White House envoy for negotiations with the Ukrainians; Coale was not present.
Waltz was not with Rubio and Vance in the Zelensky meeting. Before leaving Washington for Germany, Waltz had announced the “underlying principle here is that the Europeans have to own this [Ukraine] conflict going forward. President Trump is going to end it. And then in terms of security guarantees, that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.” Regarding US aid to the Ukraine, he added: “We need to recoup those costs. And that is going to be a partnership with the Ukrainians, in terms of their rare earths, their natural resources, and their oil and gas, and also buying ours. Those conversations are going to happen this week.”
On the Russian side, there is caution in interpreting what Trump and his officials are claiming for their end-of-war terms. Former President Dmitry Medvedev, now a spokesman on the Security Council for the Russian military, has issued no statement on his Telegram account. Instead, he told the Russian press: “The presidents of Russia and the US have talked at last. This is very important in and of itself…in our small, controversial but highly interdependent world there can be no chief country or planetary ruler. This is a lesson that must be learned by the arrogant American elites and the so-called deep state (US bureaucracy). They need to understand that contacts and consultations are much more valuable than chest-thumping and the desire to see the strategic defeat of a country like Russia. That would be a very dangerous thing anyway because it is impossible to bring us to our knees. The quicker our adversaries realize this, the better.”
None of the officials and experts reported by RT, the state press platform, was optimistic. “I believe we’re still far from any breakthroughs,” said the Vice Speaker of the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev, a former Foreign Ministry advisor. “It’s crucial to not jump to conclusions”, responded one academic expert. “There is hope that the dialogue initiated by both sides might help Russia achieve the goals of the military operation,” commented another. “However, the ultimate outcome will also depend on the situation on the battlefield.”
Dmitry Rogozin (right), the senator for Zaporozhye and a combatant, was sceptical of the Americans’ meaning and intention. “The United States has proved under Trump that it is the undisputed leader of the entire Western world. When they want, they start a war in Europe, and when they want, they stop fighting it, having received all the bonuses from it: a huge increase in military revenues, testing their weapons in battle with the strongest enemy, expanding NATO at the expense of neutral countries, imposing their liquefied gas supplies on Europeans, and finally, starting with the first Maidan pitting Ukrainians against Russians.”
“The Europeans are the main loser. By handing over a significant part of their sovereignty to unknown pederasts from the European Commission, European countries have committed an unforgivable mistake of historical proportions. Russian Russians will never forget German tanks with crosses on Russian fields and another Napoleon [Emmanuel Macron] with an elderly Josephine [Brigitte Macron/Jean-Michel Trogneux], who sent French legionnaires and French weapons to kill Russians on Russian soil. We will never forget or forgive you. Every war ends in peace. And the main question is how perfect this world will be — how strong and durable. And in this regard, I will express my opinion: as long as the evil herd of Bandera ghouls graze on our western borders, who have tasted and drunk Russian blood, we will have no peace. Until we finish, we will not cut out this Bandera metastasis from the Slavic body — the threat of an imminent big war, inspired by the unfinished Ukrainian Russophobes and their Anglo-Saxon patrons, will hang over our heads.”
The only contradiction in the Russian positions being aired is between the Russians in Moscow and pro-Putin American podcasters who have been celebrating a breakthrough which no Russian acknowledges.
“Vance’s speech was brilliant, very well composed and delivered,” claimed Gilbert Doctorow. “The man has to be the very best Vice President of the United States since the days of the Founding Fathers…I think we can be very happy that a constellation of people with, I say, superior experience, superior intelligence, and the ability to have the president’s ear have done what they have done in the last day, because it gives us hope that we are finally seeing the light at the end of this long tunnel of the Biden years.”
Doctorow also defended the oligarch deal-making. “The people who have spoken about the oligarchs that Trump surrounds himself with, these plutocrats, as if money is the only factor they have going for them, they’re intentionally defaming people who succeed, and people who have experience that is rare. Mr. Witkoff was a businessman, but an international level businessman.”
There are two certainties Russian sources in Moscow are not ready to acknowledge publicly.
The first is that they do not detect in the US statements to date the readiness of the US to negotiate for withdrawal of US forces and nuclear missile bases from Poland, Romania, Germany and the Baltic states, or agree on the terms of the NATO rollback proposed by the Russian Foreign Ministry’s non-aggression pacts of December 17, 2021.
The second Russian certainty is that Trump and his men are intent on escalating their war against China. That is the priority of Trump’s newly appointed Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby (right). He served at the Pentagon during Trump’s first term; he is now reported to be the brains behind Hegsteth and “the main strategist in US President Donald Trump’s administration.”
Colby reportedly believes “first, China is the ultimate threat to the US. China is an urgent threat, as it is outpacing the US in many key indicators and is clearly preparing for a global war. China could win such a war against the US, whereas other countries couldn’t. Second, Colby believes the US is overstretched strategically and militarily. The US has overpromised security in many places and does not have the capacity to deliver on all its commitments. So it must prioritise. Almost everything the US will do strategically and militarily must be aimed at countering China and deterring it from launching a kinetic war… We can expect the Trump administration to focus on deterring China from taking hostile action against Taiwan. So that is where smaller central and eastern European allies should look to help. They can provide direct political support. They could put particular effort into training Taiwanese troops on US soil, and they could build many thousands of drones for a US strategy of turning the Taiwan Strait into a hellscape for a Chinese invasion force.”
Colby is the grandson of William Colby, the career Russia and China hater and CIA Director between 1973 and 1976. The new Colby is named after the old Colby’s father, a US Army officer and professor.
Privately, sources in Moscow express concern that Putin’s oligarch deal-making with Trump — and the enthusiasm for this which the pro-Putin US podcasters are displaying — may already have aroused Chinese suspicion of a betrayal of the strategic relationship with President Xi Jinping.
According to one military source, “How do the American [podcasters] arrive at the conclusion that the US will pull forces out of the EU while remaining in NATO to provide a nuclear umbrella the Europeans don’t need – France and the UK have the bombs, warheads and delivery systems. It’s obvious the podcasters don’t understand what the American military presence in Europe is all about. As if this so-called peace they are salivating over already isn’t just the prelude to a much larger, and by magnitudes much uglier war.”
A Moscow political source: “Xi has seen Putin’s inability to rein in the Central Bank and the oligarchs. He has seen how vulnerable Putin has made Russia. As a result he has placed no big bets on Moscow. Putin therefore can’t betray him because Xi has anticipated precisely this. Let’s say the relationship is not unlike that of Iran with Russia. Sometime, perhaps, maybe. Xi will watch but he will do nothing to hurt Putin because he has done nothing to help Putin.”
Trump’s innovation is not the threat to ‘clean out’ Gaza. It is dropping a long-standing aim to dress up Palestinian expulsion as a peace plan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention from day one of his “revenge” attack on Gaza, launched 16 months ago, was either ethnic cleansing or genocide in Gaza.
His ally in genocide for the next 15 months was former US President Joe Biden. His ally in ethnic cleansing is current US President Donald Trump.
Biden provided the 2,000lb bombs for t
Trump’s innovation is not the threat to ‘clean out’ Gaza. It is dropping a long-standing aim to dress up Palestinian expulsion as a peace plan
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention from day one of his “revenge” attack on Gaza, launched 16 months ago, was either ethnic cleansing or genocide in Gaza.
His ally in genocide for the next 15 months was former US President Joe Biden. His ally in ethnic cleansing is current US President Donald Trump.
Biden provided the 2,000lb bombs for the genocide. Trump is reportedly providing an even larger munition – the 11-ton MOAB, or massive ordnance air blast bomb, with a mile-wide radius – to further incentivise the population’s exodus.
Biden claimed that Israel was helping the people of Gaza by “carpet bombing” the enclave – in his words – to “eradicate” Hamas. Trump claims he is helping the people of Gaza by “cleaning them out” – in his words – from the resulting “demolition site”.
Biden called the destruction of 70 percent of Gaza’s buildings “self defence”. Trump calls the imminent destruction of the remaining 30 percent “all hell breaking loose”.
Biden claimed to be “working tirelessly for a ceasefire” while encouraging Israel to continue the murder of children month after month.
Trump claims to have negotiated a ceasefire, even as he has turned a blind eye to Israel violating the terms of that ceasefire: by continuing to fire on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank; by refusing entry into Gaza of vital aid trucks; by allowing in almost none of the promised tents or mobile homes; by denying many hundreds of maimed Palestinians treatment abroad; by blocking the return of Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza; and by failing to engage with the second phase of the ceasefire negotiations.
Those Israeli violations, although widely reported by the media as Hamas “claims”, were confirmed to the New York Times by three Israeli officials and two mediators.
In other words, Israel has broken the agreement on every count – and Trump has stood foursquare behind this most favoured client state every bit as much as Biden did before him.
‘Hell breaking loose’
As Israel knew only too well in breaching the ceasefire, Hamas only ever had one point of leverage to try to enforce the agreement: to refuse to release more hostages. Which is precisely what the Palestinian group announced last Monday it would do until Israel began honouring the agreement.
In a familiar double act, Israel and Washington then put on a show of mock outrage.
Trump lost no time escalating the stakes dramatically. He gave Israel – or maybe the US, he was unclear – the green light to “let hell break out”, presumably meaning the resumption of the genocide.
This will happen not only if Hamas refuses to free the three scheduled hostages by the deadline of noon this Saturday. Trump has insisted that Hamas is now expected to release all of the hostages.
The US president said he would no longer accept “dribs and drabs” being released over the course of the six-week, first phase of the ceasefire. In other words, Trump is violating the very terms of the initial ceasefire his own team negotiated.
Clearly, neither Netanyahu nor Trump have been trying to save the agreement. They are working tirelessly to blow it up.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported as much last weekend. Israeli sources revealed that Netanyahu’s goal was to “derail” the ceasefire before it could reach the second stage when Israeli troops are supposed to fully withdraw from the enclave and reconstruction begin.
“Once Hamas realizes there won’t be a second stage, they may not complete the first,” a source told the paper.
Hamas insisted on a gradual release of hostages precisely to buy time, knowing that Israel would be keen to restart the slaughter as soon as it got the hostages home.
The Palestinians of Gaza are back to square one.
Either accept that they will be ethnically cleansed so that Trump and his billionaire friends can cash in on reinventing the enclave as the “Riviera of the Middle East”, paid for by stealing the revenues from Gaza’s gas fields, or face a return to the genocide.
Quiet part out loud
As should have been clear, Netanyahu only agreed to Washington’s “ceasefire” because it was never real. It was a pause so the US could recalibrate from a Biden genocide narrative rooted in the language of “humanitarianism” and “security” to Trump’s far more straightforward tough-guy act.
Now it’s all about the “art of the deal” and real-estate development opportunities.
But of course Trump’s plan to “own” Gaza and then “clean it out” has left his allies in Europe – in truth, his satraps – squirming in their seats.
As ever, Trump has a disturbing habit of saying the quiet part out loud. Of tearing away the already-battered veneer of western respectability. Of making everyone look bad.
The truth is that over 15 months Israel failed to achieve either of its stated objectives in Gaza – eradicating Hamas and securing the return of the hostages – because neither was ever really the goal.
Even Biden’s secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had to concede that Israel’s mass slaughter had served only to recruit as many fighters to Hamas as it had killed.
And Israeli military whistleblowers revealed to the website +972 last week that Israel had killed many of its hostages by using indiscriminate US-supplied bunker-buster bombs.
These bombs had not only generated huge blast areas but also served effectively as chemical weapons, flooding Hamas’ tunnels with carbon monoxide, asphyxiating the hostages.
The indifference of the Israeli leadership to the hostages’ fate was confirmed by Israel’s former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, in an interview with Israeli TV Channel 12.
He admitted that the army had invoked the so-called Hannibal directive during Hamas’ breakout of Gaza on 7 October 2023, allowing soldiers to kill Israelis rather than risk letting them be taken hostage by the Palestinian group.
These matters, which throw a different light on Israel’s actions in Gaza, have, of course, been almost completely blanked out by the western establishment media.
Damage limitation
Israel’s plan from the outset was the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And now Trump is making that explicit.
So explicit, in fact, that the media have been forced to go into frenzied damage-limitation mode, employing one of the most intense psy-ops against their own publics on record.
Every euphemism under the sun has been resorted to to avoid making clear that Trump and Israel are preparing to ethnically cleanse whoever’s left of the 2.3 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
In other reports, Palestinians are inexplicably on the brink of “leaving”.
The New York Times refers to ethnic cleansing positively as Trump’s “development plan”, while Reuters indifferently calls it “moving out” Gaza’s population.
Western capitals and their compliant media have been put in this uncomfortable position because Washington’s client states in the Middle East have refused to play ball with Israel and Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan.
Despite the ever-mounting slaughter, Egypt has refused to open its short border with Gaza to let the bombed, starved population pour into neighbouring Sinai.
There was, of course, never any question of Israel being expected to allow Gaza’s families to return to the lands from which they were originally expelled, at gunpoint, in 1948 in order to create a self-declared Jewish state.
ORDER IT NOW
Then, as now, the western powers colluded in Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations. This is the historical context western media prefer to gloss over – even on the rare occasions when they concede that there is any relevant background other than a presumed Palestinian barbarism. Instead the media resort to evasive terminology about “cycles of violence” and “historic enmities”.
Backed into a corner by Trump’s outbursts of the past few days, western politicians and the media have preferred to suggest that his administration’s “development plan” for Gaza is actually an innovation.
In truth, however, the president isn’t advancing anything new in demanding that Gaza’s Palestinians be ethnically cleansed. What’s different is that he is being unusually – and inadvisably – open about a long-standing policy.
Israel has always harboured plans to expel Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and from the West Bank to Jordan.
But more to the point, as was noted by Middle East Eye a decade ago, Washington has been fully on board with the Gaza half of the expulsion project since the latter stages of George W Bush’s second presidency, in 2007. For anyone struggling with maths, that was 18 years ago.
Every US president, including Barack Obama, has leant on Egypt’s leader of the time to allow Israel to drive Gaza’s population into Sinai – and each one has been rebuffed.
Open secret
This open secret is not widely known for exactly the same reason that every western pundit and politician is now pretending to be appalled that Trump is actually advancing it.
Why? Because it looks bad – all the more so couched in Trump’s vulgar real-estate sales pitch in the middle of a supposed ceasefire.
Western leaders had hoped to bring about the ethnic cleansing of Gaza with more decorum – in a “humanitarian” way that would have been more effective in duping western publics and maintaining the West’s claim to be upholding civilised values against a supposed Palestinian barbarity.
Since 2007 Washington and Israel’s joint ethnic cleansing project has been known as the “Greater Gaza Plan“.
Israel’s siege of the tiny enclave, which began in late 2006, was designed to create so much misery and poverty that the people there would clamour to be allowed out.
This was when Israel began formulating a so-called “starvation diet” for the people of Gaza, counting the calories to keep them alive but only barely.
Israel’s conception of Gaza was that it was like a tube of toothpaste that could be squeezed. As soon as Egypt relented and opened the border, the population would flood into Sinai out of desperation.
Every Egyptian president was bullied and bribed to give in: Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi, and General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. They all refused.
Egypt was under no illusions about what was at stake after 7 October 2023. It fully understood that Israel’s levelling of Gaza was designed to squeeze the tube so hard the top would be forced off.
Pressure on Egypt
From the outset, officials like Giora Eiland, Israel’s former national security adviser, stated publicly that the goal was to make Gaza “a place where no human being can exist”.
Just a week into Israel’s slaughter, in October 2023, military spokesperson Amir Avivi told the BBC that Israel could not ensure the safety of civilians in Gaza. He added: “They need to move south, out to the Sinai Peninsula.”
The next day, Danny Ayalon, a Netanyahu confidant and former Israeli ambassador to the US, amplified the point: “There is almost endless space in the Sinai Desert… We and the international community will prepare the infrastructure for tent cities.”
He concluded: “Egypt will have to play ball.”
Israel’s thinking was divulged in a leaked policy draft from its intelligence ministry. It proposed that, after their expulsion, Gaza’s population would initially be housed in tent cities, before permanent communities could be built in the north of Sinai.
At the same time, the Financial Times reported that Netanyahu was lobbying the European Union on the idea of driving the enclave’s Palestinians into Sinai under cover of war.
Some EU members, including the Czech Republic and Austria, were said to have been receptive and floated the idea at a meeting of member states. An unnamed European diplomat told the FT: “Now is the time to put increased pressure on the Egyptians to agree.”
Meanwhile, the Biden administration supplied the bombs to maintain the pressure.
Sisi was only too aware of what Egypt was up against: a concerted western plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. None of it had anything to do with Trump, who was more than a year away from being elected president.
In mid-October 2023, days into the slaughter, Sisi responded in a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “What is happening now in Gaza is an attempt to force civilian residents to take refuge and migrate to Egypt, which should not be accepted.”
That was precisely why he dedicated so much effort to shoring up the short border shared between Gaza and Sinai both before and after Israel’s genocide began.
Peace sales pitch
Part of what makes Trump’s sales pitch so surreal is that he is half-heartedly sticking to the original script: trying to make the plan sound vaguely humanitarian.
At the same time as re-arming Israel and warning of “all hell breaking loose”, he has spoken of finding “parcels of land” in Egypt and Jordan where the people of Gaza “can live very happily and very safely”.
He has contrasted that with their current plight: “They are being killed there at levels that nobody’s ever seen. No place in the world is as dangerous as the Gaza Strip… They are living in hell.”
That seems to be Trump’s all-too-revealing way of describing the genocide Israel denies it is carrying out and the one the US denies it is arming.
But the talk of helping Gaza’s population is just the rhetorical leftovers from the old sales pitch when previous US administrations were preparing to sell ethnic cleansing as integral to a new stage of the fabled “peace process”.
ORDER IT NOW
As Middle East Eye noted back in 2015, Washington had been recruited to the Greater Gaza Plan in 2007. Then the proposal was that Egypt would give 1,600 sq km area in Sinai – five times the size of Gaza – to the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, headed by Mahmoud Abbas.
Palestinians from Gaza would be “encouraged” – that is, pressured through the siege and aid blockade, as well as intermittent episodes of carpet bombing known as “mowing the lawn”– to flee there.
In return, Abbas would have to forgo a Palestinian state in historic Palestine, undermine the right of return of Palestinian refugees enshrined in international law, and pass the burden of responsibility for repressing the Palestinians on to Egypt and the wider Arab world.
Israel advanced the Sinai plan between 2007 and 2018 in the hope of sabotaging Abbas’ campaign at the United Nations seeking recognition of Palestinian statehood.
Notably, Israel’s large-scale military assaults on Gaza – in the winter of 2008, 2012 and again in 2014 – coincided with reported Israeli and US efforts to turn the screws on successive Egyptian leaders to concede parts of Sinai.
‘Waterfront property’
Trump is already deeply familiar with the Greater Gaza Plan from his first presidency. Reports from 2018 suggest he hoped to include it in his “deal of the century” plan to bring about normalisation between Israel and the Arab world.
In March that year the White House hosted 19 countries in a conference to consider new ideas for dealing with Gaza’s mounting, entirely Israeli-made crisis.
As well as Israel, the participants included representatives from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The Palestinians boycotted the meeting.
A few months later, in the summer of 2018, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and architect of his Middle East plan, visited Egypt. A short time later Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo to learn about what was being proposed.
Then, as seemingly now, Trump was offering a purpose-built zone in Sinai with solar-power grid, desalination plant, seaport and airport, as well as a free trade zone with five industrial areas, financed by the oil-rich Gulf states.
Revealingly, a veteran Israeli journalist, Ron Ben-Yishai, reported at the time that Israel was threatening to invade and bisect Gaza into separate northern and southern sectors to force Hamas’ compliance. That is exactly the strategy Israel prioritised last year during its invasion and then set about emptying north Gaza of its residents.
Trump also sought to deepen the crisis in Gaza by withholding payments to the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa). That same policy was actively pursued by Israel and the Biden administration during the current genocide.
Since Trump took office, Israel has banned Unrwa activities anywhere in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump’s team revived their own interest in the ethnic cleansing plan the moment Israel launched its genocide – long before Trump knew whether he would win the November 2024 election.
In March last year, nearly a year ago, Kushner used exactly the same language Trump does now. He observed that “there’s not much of Gaza left at this point”, that the priority was to “clean it up”, and that it was a “valuable waterfront property”. He insisted the people of Gaza would have to be “moved out”.
Rabbit in the headlights
If Trump refuses to relent, the direction things head next for the people of Gaza hangs chiefly on neighbouring Egypt and Jordan: they must either accept the ethnic cleansing plan, or Israel will resume the extermination of Gaza’s population.
Should they demur, Trump has threatened to cut US aid – effectively decades-old bribes to each not to come to the Palestinians’ aid while Israel brutalises them.
King Abdulah of Jordan, during a visit to the White House this week, looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
He dared not anger Trump by rejecting the plan to his face. Instead he suggested waiting to see how Egypt – a larger, more powerful Arab state – responded.
But privately, as MEE has reported, Abdullah is so fearful of the destabilising effects of Jordan colluding in Gaza’s ethnic cleansing – which he regards as an “existential issue” for his regime – that he is threatening war on Israel to stop it.
Similarly, Egypt has shown its displeasure. In the wake of Abdullah’s humiliating visit, Sisi has reportedly postponed his own meeting next week with Trump – in a clear rebuff – until the ethnic cleansing plan is off the table.
Cairo is said to be preparing its own proposal for how Gaza can be reconstructed. Even Washington’s oil-rich ally Saudi Arabia is in revolt.
It is rare to see Arab states show so much backbone to any US president, let alone one as vain and strategically unhinged as Trump.
Which may explain why the US president’s resolve appears to be weakening. On Wednesday his press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that Trump was now seeking from “our Arab partners in the region” a counter-proposal, a “peace plan to present to the president”.
And in another sign that Trump may be hesitating, Netanyahu walked back his threat to resume the genocide unless all the hostages were freed on Saturday. He is now demanding only the three that were originally scheduled.
Reports from Gaza are that Israel has also significantly stepped up its aid deliveries.
All of which is welcome news. It may buy the people of Gaza a little more time.
But we should not lose sight of the bigger picture. Israel and the US are still committed to “cleaning out” Gaza, one way or another, as they have been for the past 18 years. They are simply looking for a more propitious moment to resume.
That could be this weekend, or it could be in a month or two. But at least Biden and Trump have achieved one thing. They have made sure no one can ever again mistake the crushing of Gaza for a peace plan.
Criminology, like other social scientific disciplines, has long been dominated by environmentalist explanations that downplay or dismisses the importance of biology. As recently as 2007, a survey of liberal and radical criminologists found they attribute crime mainly to such causes as an unfair economic system, lack of education, peer influence, and bias in law enforcement.
One consequence of neglecting biology is that criminologists treat sex and crime as separate and unrelated, at least when not discussing specifically sexual crimes such as rape. Yet a strong correlation exists between criminality in general — not just sex crimes — and a certain pattern of sexual behavior. Criminal offenders show an earlier onset of sexual activity than non-offenders, have more sexual partners, father children by more women, are more likely to have sexually transmitted diseases, are less likely to get married and, if married, are more likely to divorce. The more criminal convictions a man has, the stronger these associations become.
This is because a tendency to pursue irresponsible sexual adventures is driven by the same short-run hedonistic traits that define criminality. Such traits include sensation-seeking as well as low levels of empathy, intelligence, self-control, and conscientiousness. Any serious effort to explain these traits leads straight to biology: brain functioning, genetics, and natural selection. Researchers have already identified specific gene variants that predict high levels of both sexual activity and antisocial behavior.
The strawman of biological determinism
Mainstream criminologists dismiss these arguments as “biological determinism,” accusing their proponents of thinking all behavior is preprogrammed by our genes and uninfluenced by environment. This is an obsolete understanding of DNA.
Genes never dictate specific behavior, personality, or emotion. All they “determine” is amino acid sequences within certain proteins. The route from these proteins to actual behavior is no expressway, but more like a “winding, detour-ridden back road riddled with potholes.” The genetic basis of human behavior is only probabilistic, never deterministic.
Furthermore, gene expression is heavily influenced by environment. As biologist Matt Ridley puts it, genes “may direct the construction of the body and brain in the womb, but they set about dismantling and rebuilding what they have made almost at once in response to experience.” The author of this book, Anthony Walsh — who teaches criminal justice at Boise State University — writes that “the genome is a reactive system rather than a controlling system. Without an environment, genes have no place to go because they depend on an environment to activate them.” There is now an entire subdiscipline called “epigenetics” devoted to studying the many processes that alter gene activity without changing DNA. Many of these processes involve environmental input: the circumstances and situations a person encounters in life affect gene transcription.
Experience also plays a role in wiring the brain:
Brain imaging studies reveal that the prefrontal cortex undergoes a wave of synaptic overproduction just prior to puberty, which is followed by a period of pruning during adolescence and early adulthood. The selective retention and elimination of synapses rely crucially on experience-dependent input from the environment.
In this way, the human brain is in part custom designed for dealing with the sort of environment it meets with as the individual comes of age.
In sum, the old divisions of “nature or nurture,” “genes or environment,” are hopelessly out of date. All competent biologists know this, and it is past time social scientists learned it. As Prof. Walsh notes, everyone will gain from incorporating the insights of different disciplines: “For social scientists, understanding genetics will take them closer to understanding environmental effects, and for biological scientists, understanding the environment will take them closer to understanding genetic effects.”
Evolution and the sex ratio in crime
As long as it refuses to take evolutionary biology into account, criminology remains stuck at the lowest level of scientific inquiry: observation and description. Only biology can take the discipline to the next level of grasping causes. For example, perhaps the most reliable pattern in all of criminology is that men always and everywhere commit more crime than women, but mainstream criminologists have no convincing explanation for this. They can attribute it only to socialization — to parents and teachers treating boys and girls differently. But this gets causality backwards: parents and teachers treat boys and girls differently because they are different.
The true explanation lies in the different reproductive strategies of men and women, with men drawn to maximize mating opportunities while women are more cautious in mating choices:
The inherent conflict between the reckless and indiscriminate male mating strategy and the careful and discriminating female strategy drove the evolution of traits in males such as aggressiveness and, relative to females, lower levels of empathy and constraint that help males overcome both male competitors and female reluctance.
Since an infant’s survival depends far more on its mother’s than its father’s survival, women have developed a strong aversion to risk: “Greater fear responses account for the greater tendency of females to avoid potentially violent situations and to employ indirect and low-risk strategies in competition for mates and dispute resolution.” Over human evolutionary history, risk-averse women have had greater reproductive success, and have therefore passed on that trait to their daughters.
Men, on the other hand, can maximize their reproductive success by competing directly against other men for status and resources, a high-risk, high-reward strategy. They benefit from being bold, enterprising, and aggressive. In the primary human environment of evolutionary adaptation — the hunter-gatherer band — the connection between high crime rates and mating is obvious. As psychologist Judith Harris has observed:
Almost all the characteristics of the “born criminal” would be, in watered-down form, useful to a male in a hunter-gatherer society and useful to his group. His lack of fear, desire for excitement, and impulsiveness made him a formidable weapon against rival groups. His aggressiveness, strength, and lack of compassion enable him to dominate his groupmates and give him first shot at hunter-gatherer perks.
Those perks are chiefly economic resources and mating opportunities. Mr. Walsh writes that, “Of course, such traits can easily overshoot their optimum and become liabilities,” especially “when exercised freely in evolutionarily novel modern societies.”
Women can steal and be aggressive, but as one criminologist notes: “they rarely do both at the same time because the equation of resources and status reflects a particularly masculine logic.” Studies of female thieves do not indicate that achieving social dominance is among their motives, nor do they wants to gain reputations as “badasses,” as young male delinquents often do.
Evolution and the age-crime curve
A second pattern in criminology almost as reliable as the sex ratio is the age-crime curve which “shows a sharp increase in offending beginning in early adolescence, a peak in mid-adolescence, a steep decline in early adulthood, and a steady decline thereafter.”
Age-crime curve of criminal offenders in England and Wales in 1842-1844, separated for male and female offenders. From: Hirschi, T., & Gottfredson, M. (1983). Age and the explanation of crime. American Journal of Sociology, 89, 552-584. As reproduced here.
Mainstream criminologists can attribute this only to “peer influences,” but as the author points out, “they do not inform us why these peer influences become more salient during adolescence, and why [they] are typically antisocial rather than prosocial.” Comparative primate studies:
have shown that [primate] adolescents share with human adolescents the tendency to become overly sensitive to rewards, risk-taking, sensation-seeking and novelty. From an evolutionary perspective, the purpose of these tendencies is to compel the animal to leave the nest to find a mate from another troop.
Neurologists are coming to understand the associated brain mechanisms, as explained in a paper cited by Prof. Walsh:
The propensity during adolescence for reward/novelty seeking in the face of uncertainty or potential harm might be explained by a strong reward system (nucleus accumbens), a weak harm-avoidance system (amygdala), and/or an inefficient supervisory system (medial/ventral prefrontal cortex).
Prof. Walsh writes:
Adolescence is accompanied by changes in the ratios of excitatory to inhibitory neurotransmitters. The reward- and excitation-related transmitters dopamine and glutamate peak while the inhibitory transmitters gamma-aminobutyric acid and serotonin are reduced. . . . While parents may decry adolescent behavior, it is how natural selection has designed them to leave the nest and produce the next generation.
One understandable by-product, especially in cities, is a high crime rate among young adult males.
Crime and Life History Theory
Life History Theory proposes that living organisms face a trade-off between mating effort and parenting effort. In a dangerous, unstable environment, an animal best reproduces by quickly having as many offspring as possible but devoting little or no effort to nurturing them. This is called an ‘r’ reproductive strategy, part of a fast life history. In a challenging but stable environment, animals do better to produce fewer offspring but invest in them. This is called a ‘K’ strategy, part of a slow life history.
Humans are the most ‘K’-selected animals in nature, but not all subgroups of our species are equally K. The male strategy of maximizing mating opportunities is more ‘r’-selected than the female strategy of careful mate selection. There is also a spectrum of life-history traits within men that distinguishes “cads” from “dads.” Differences in sexual attitudes, desires, and behaviors can be plotted on the so-called sociosexual scale which forms:
a continuum from restricted (i.e., fewer sexual partners, agreement with conventional sexual attitudes, and a preference for long-term relationships) to unrestricted (i.e., larger number of sexual partners, permissive sexual attitudes, and a preference for short-term over long-term relationships).
Researchers have found “mating effort highest among manipulative, self-centered individuals, [while] parenting effort characterized those who endorsed sexual commitment and higher empathy.”
The relevance of Life History Theory to criminology is that crime correlates strongly with a fast life history:
More than 35 years ago, Lee Ellis (1988) reviewed numerous studies showing that individuals with serious criminal histories were high on fast life history traits. Ellis’ literature review provided abundant evidence that criminals had shorter gestation periods, faster maturation, earlier onset of sexual activity, a greater number of sexual partners outside of a bonded relationship, unstable parental and partner bonding, low parental investment (high rates of child abuse, neglect, and abandonment), and shorter life expectancy.
Crime can in part be seen as an anachronistic survival of a way of life that would have been adaptive in our ancestral environment before agriculture. In Prof. Wash’s words:
Violence (at least credible threats of violence) is intimately related to reproductive success in almost all animal species as a way to gain access to resources and females. Reacting violently when some brute tries to steal your bananas, your cave or your wife could be very useful in evolutionary environments when you just couldn’t call 911 to have the police settle your problem. Having a reputation for violence would be even better because others would avoid your bananas, cave and wife in the first place. In environments in which one is expected to take care of one’s own beefs, violence or the threat of violence works to let any potential challenger know that it would be in his best interest interests to avoid you and your resources and look elsewhere.
A propensity to retaliate violently against all threats is part of a fast life strategy and is “advantageous among humans inhabiting harsh and unpredictable environments characterized by high levels of predation.”
The modern urban slum is therefore like the environment of evolutionary adaptation in hunter gatherer bands. High mortality and resource scarcity lead to and reinforce a faster life history strategy. Boys growing up in a high-crime slum see plenty of violence, which makes them feel vulnerable. They react by resorting to preemptive violence themselves, seeking a “badass” reputation that will deter aggression — often at great risk to themselves. They create a feedback effect, inviting more of the hostility they seek to guard against. The world becomes “a dangerous and hostile place, setting in motion a vicious cycle of negative expectations and confirmations.”
A similar feedback pattern emerges to perpetuate and reinforce the tendency to fatherlessness in such environments:
Evolution has built plasticity into our brains and genomes so we can adopt different reproductive strategies facultatively based on childhood experiences. Early childhood is a sensitive period in which future reproductive strategies are calibrated by stressors relating to interpersonal relationships, with father absence being a major stressor. Father absence is correlated with the acceleration of the early onset of puberty. Children will adopt an unrestricted [or ‘r’ mating] strategy if they perceive interpersonal relationships as fleeting, unreliable, and emotionally unrewarding.
Feedback loops of this kind make slums very difficult to reform.
Genome-wide association studies have found genetic correlations between various measures of reproductive effort and antisocial behavior. In the words of one study from 2018:
Our genetic correlation analyses demonstrate that alleles (gene variants) associated with higher reproductive output (i.e., faster life history styles) were positively correlated [0.50] with alleles associated with antisocial behavior, whereas alleles associated with giving birth later in life were negatively associated with alleles linked to antisocial behavior [—0.64].
The neurology of crime
Much human behavior is governed by a “tug-of-war within us as we seek rewarding opportunities while avoiding punishing consequences.” No analysis of this process would be complete without some discussion of the brain.
What researchers call the behavioral approach system (BAS) motivates us to seek pleasure. “It is primarily associated with dopamine (the ‘happy hormone’) and with mesolimbic system pleasure centers rich in neurons that respond to dopamine.” The BAS can be thought of as our behavioral accelerator pedal.
But we must also avoid danger and pain. Avoidance can be instinctive or, in humans, a product of reflection. For instinctive responses to sudden threats we have what researchers call the fight/flee/freeze system (FFFS) which is part of the autonomic nervous system that governs unconscious bodily processes.
Humans must also weigh the social aspects of reward-seeking and pain-avoidance. For this purpose, we have a behavioral inhibition system (BIS) based primarily in our prefrontal lobes, sometimes known as the “social brain.” The BIS “enables us to negotiate relationships, understand the thoughts, feelings, and intentions of others, and cooperate in securing resources and defending the group. We learn to seek our pleasures with temperance and prudence thanks to the BIS.” The prefrontal lobes involved in the BIS operate consciously. They are unique to humans, were the last brain areas to evolve, and the last to mature in individuals.
The BIS and FFFS are both concerned with avoidance, and hence overlap to some extent: both involve the amygdala (anxiety) and the hippocampus (memories of similar situations), as well as the inhibitory neurotransmitter serotonin. Together, they can be thought of as our behavioral brake pedal.
Criminals tend to have “a dominant BAS, a weak BIS, and/or a hypoactive FFFS.” Their weak avoidance systems may be related to low levels of serotonin activity, which lead to aggression and impulsiveness:
One of criminology’s most invoked causal variables — low self-control — is highly influenced by serotonin functioning, as is negative emotionality. Negative emotionality is the tendency to experience many situations as aversive and to react to them with irritation and anger. Because both traits are underlain by low serotonin functioning, [criminologist Robert Agnew has] contended that aberrant serotonergic functioning may be a heritable diathesis [predisposition] for a personality style involving high levels of negative affect and low levels of constraint [self-control], which generates in turn a vulnerability to criminal behavior.
There is a gene known as 5-HTTLPR which governs how serotonin is transported and recycled within the body, and it comes in a common “long” variant and less common “short” variant. The “short” variant reduces gene expression, causing the BIS to function less efficiently. People with this short variant engage in more risky sexual behavior.
The physical basis of psychopathy
The author writes:
Nowhere is the link between criminality and hypersexuality more clearly seen than in the psychopath. He is both the quintessential criminal and the quintessential cad. The central characteristics of psychopaths, such as emotional coldness, lack of empathy and guilt, high risk-taking, inability to delay gratification, present orientation, and a lack of commitment and loyalty, are suited to both career criminality and successful short-term mating effort. A core part of psychopathy thus includes having many impersonal sexual encounters. Psychopathy affects approximately 1% of the general population but is present in 15-25% of the prison population.
Electroencephalography (EEG) studies find distinctive features in the brains of psychopaths. In one such study:
psychopaths and non-psychopaths are presented with a list of emotionally neutral and emotionally laden words. When presented with emotionally neutral words (e.g., apple, cup) both show a small EEG spike indicating they have recognized the word and visualized an apple or cup. When presented with emotionally laden words (cancer, death, mother), non-psychopaths show a much higher spike indicating that they have recognized the word and [paired] the cognition with emotion. When psychopaths are presented with the same emotional words, they process them the same way they processed apple or cup. That is, they recognize the words intellectually but fail to involve the emotions.
Brain imaging studies have linked psychopathy to specific areas of the brain, especially the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Impairment of these regions offers the most plausible explanation for “why although psychopaths can think rationally, they fail to integrate their thinking with feeling. All studies agree that in psychopathy there is a decoupling of the cortical and subcortical structures that tie the rational and the emotional structures together.”
Sex ratios and crime
The sex ratio is the number of males in a population divided by the number of females. The operational sex ratio refers to potential partners — those in the mating game.
When women are plentiful — a low operational sex ratio — men revert to polygyny. Both men and women are more likely to remain unmarried, and illegitimate births increase. The divorce rate is high, but the remarriage rate is high only for men. Men compete for women, as they always do, but for short-term encounters “in locations such as bars that are likely to lead to violence.” Rates of murder, rape, and prostitution increase. Children grow up in poor, fatherless homes, and have high levels of depression, behavioral problems, drug abuse, promiscuity, and suicide. As they come of age, they often join criminal youth gangs.
High operational sex ratios give women more control over mating, which they use to insist on male commitment. Men get married, society is more stable, and crime goes down. If the sex ratio gets too high, however, an excess of bachelors with too much time on their hands also leads to the formation of criminal gangs. Moreover, women become spoiled and excessively materially demanding, and men resort to crime to get the resources needed to attract them. An even or mildly high female-to-male sex ratio is the most favorable for social stability and high-investment parenting.
In Too Many Women (1983), their study of low sex ratio societies, social psychologists Guttentag and Secord write: “American blacks present us with the most persistent and severest shortage of men in a coherent subcultural group that we have been able to discover during the age of modern censuses.” The operational sex ratio among blacks is exceptionally low because:
a greater proportion of Black males are incarcerated in prisons and mental institutions than males of any other racial or ethnic group. Additionally, Black males of all ages die at higher rates than white or Asian males from homicides, alcoholism, drug overdoses and accidents.
A literature review quoted by Prof. Walsh notes:
Several studies of African American communities describe black women’s distrust of black men, and their assumption that most black men are “naturally” or inherently bad, sinful and untrustworthy — particularly in their relationships with black women.
The author also cites a survey of married women that found only 36 percent of lower-class black women would marry again if they had to start their lives over; the figure for white women was 100 percent. One important factor Prof. Walsh does not mention is the effect of American welfare law, with its “man in the house” rule limiting benefits to fatherless families. Obviously, this creates a powerful incentive to start and maintain such families. Some combination of a naturally fast life strategy in blacks and the perverse incentives of welfare policy have created massive fatherlessness among black Americans, and it is the proximate cause of much black criminality.
Conclusion
Although Prof. Walsh deals with race at any length only in his final chapter on sex ratios, all of Sexuality and Crime demonstrates the importance of biology as an explanatory factor in the human sciences. The hold of the environmentalist model on the minds of mainstream criminologists must be very strong for them to forego the explanatory power the author draws from the biological sciences. If Anthony Walsh has no such ideological inhibitions, it may in part be because he worked as a police officer and probation officer for many years before turning to academic criminology in his forties.
As visitors to this website are aware, most of my own articles tend to be long or sometimes even very long, and readers have often complained about this.
Unfortunately, the topics I usually cover tend to be complex and controversial ones, and I feel it is difficult to properly address them in short columns that would lack the mass of supporting material necessary to make my case.
However, the powerful new AI chatbot technology that has now become available may partially alleviate this problem, a
As visitors to this website are aware, most of my own articles tend to be long or sometimes even very long, and readers have often complained about this.
Unfortunately, the topics I usually cover tend to be complex and controversial ones, and I feel it is difficult to properly address them in short columns that would lack the mass of supporting material necessary to make my case.
However, the powerful new AI chatbot technology that has now become available may partially alleviate this problem, and I’ve incorporated it into this website.
I’ve added a new button towards the top called “AI Summary” for all of our website articles that are longer than 2,000 1,000 words. Clicking that button generates relatively short summaries of the content of the article using the OpenAI technology.
Since some people might prefer summaries in paragraph text format and others might prefer outline summaries, both of those are produced. They appear in separate, closeable boxes just above the main text of the article, with the online box being scrollable since the outlines often occupy a considerable amount of vertical space.
Generating these two AI summaries generally takes 25-30 seconds, but the output is then cached for a full week, so all subsequent users would get the results with no delay at all.
The AI summaries really seem remarkably good to me, and by providing a 400-500 word precis of a 10,000 or 15,000 word article, they obviously serve a very useful purpose. For now I’ve restricted these AI summaries to articles longer than 2,000 words, but it would be easy to reduce that to 1,000 words if people think that worthwhile.
Most of the different top-tier AI systems seem roughly equal in quality and I’m using OpenAI since it is the best established and has the most developed API, but once again, it would be easy to later add additional AI systems if that proved worthwhile.
As an example, here’s one of my articles from more than a dozen years ago:
Clicking that button generates both the paragraph text summary and the outline summary shown below, though only the box containing the former is initially open.
OpenAI Text Summary
The rise of China is one of the most significant global developments in the last century, especially as the United States grapples with ongoing economic struggles. While some economists argue that China’s economic growth is unsustainable due to its extractive political system, others emphasize its remarkable transformation since the late 20th century. The reforms initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978 led to an unprecedented economic expansion, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty and positioning China to potentially surpass the United States in economic output. This transformation showcases how a nation can evolve rapidly through strategic economic policies, despite challenges such as environmental degradation and social inequality.
China’s growth trajectory since the late 1970s is remarkable, with real economic output increasing nearly 40-fold by 2010. The country’s ability to double agricultural production within a short span and achieve rapid industrial growth—especially in sectors like automobiles—demonstrates a significant shift in global economic dynamics. The World Bank attributes a significant decline in global poverty rates to China’s economic success, contrasting sharply with stagnant or worsening conditions in other developing nations like India. This rapid development parallels historical growth patterns seen in the United States during its own industrial revolution, indicating that China’s rise is not merely a flash in the pan but a substantial and sustained economic transformation.
However, the social costs of such rapid growth cannot be ignored. Urban pollution and rising inequality have become pressing issues, with corruption at various levels of government breeding public discontent. Yet, as China invests in infrastructure, such as its high-speed rail system, it illustrates a commitment to harnessing its economic gains for broader societal benefits. This approach stands in stark contrast to the stagnation seen in parts of the American economy. While the U.S. grapples with wealth concentration and declining middle-class incomes, China’s burgeoning economy is lifting millions into the middle class, demonstrating how effective governance can yield significant advancements in living standards.
In the United States, a different narrative unfolds, where economic gains have largely benefited a small percentage of the population, raising questions about the effectiveness of its democratic institutions. The concentration of wealth among the top 1% and the stagnation of wages for the majority highlight a troubling trend of economic inequality. Moreover, the political landscape has increasingly been characterized by a lack of genuine choices for voters, with many feeling disillusioned by a system that seems to favor elite interests. The juxtaposition of America’s political and economic challenges against China’s rapid rise serves as a stark reminder of how domestic policies and institutions critically shape a nation’s trajectory.
OpenAI Outline Summary
# Outline of “ChinaAmerica”
## I. Introduction A. Overview of China’s rise as a significant global development. B. Comparison between China’s economic growth and America’s economic struggles. C. Reference to “Why Nations Fail” by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson. 1. Characterization of China’s ruling elites as “extractive.” 2. Predictions of China’s economic decline. 3. Assertion of America’s strength through “inclusive” institutions. D. Questioning the validity of these conclusions.
## II. China’s Economic Transformation A. Historical context of China’s economy pre-1978. 1. Effects of Communist central planning. 2. High mortality rates during the Great Leap Forward. 3. Low standard of living compared to other developing countries. B. Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in 1978. 1. Introduction of free-market policies. 2. Agricultural production doubled within seven years. 3. One-child policy’s impact on population growth. C. Economic growth from 1978 to 2010. 1. 40-fold increase in real economy. 2. China’s economy projected to surpass the U.S. shortly. D. Improvements in living standards. 1. Median incomes in China rising significantly. 2. Significant reduction in poverty rates attributed to China.
## III. Global Context of China’s Growth A. Comparison with historical U.S. economic expansion. 1. America’s growth between 1870 and 1900. 2. China’s per capita income growth of over 1,300% since 1980. B. Industrial output and technological advancements. 1. China’s industrial output quadrupled in the last decade. 2. Dominance in automobile production and high-tech exports. C. Historical significance of China’s contributions to global progress. 1. Historical wealth and advancements prior to Western dominance.
## IV. Economic Interdependence A. China’s growth and its positive effects on the global economy. 1. Increased demand for raw materials benefiting resource-rich countries. 2. The “China price” reducing costs of manufactured goods globally. B. China’s growing consumer market. 1. Western companies benefiting from China’s rising middle class. 2. Examples of American businesses thriving in the Chinese market.
## V. Social Costs of Rapid Development A. Challenges associated with rapid urbanization. 1. Urban pollution and traffic issues. 2. Rise of billionaires and official corruption. B. Comparison with historical American issues. 1. Potential for reversing environmental degradation. 2. Addressing corruption with growing wealth. C. Tiananmen Square and its aftermath. 1. Long-term economic improvement overshadowing past incidents.
## VI. America’s Economic and Social Decline A. Contrast with China’s rapid progress. 1. Stagnation of real incomes for the majority of Americans. 2. The concentration of wealth among the top 1%. B. Challenges faced by younger Americans. 1. Employment issues and rising student debt. C. International trade statistics highlighting economic struggles. 1. Dependence on government IOUs as primary exports. D. Demographic trends favoring China.
## VII. Political and Institutional Challenges in America A. Critique of American political institutions. 1. Corruption and ineffectiveness of the political elite. 2. The erosion of civil liberties. B. Comparison with China’s governance. 1. Discussion of military interventions and constitutional violations. 2. Perception of media manipulation in American society.
## VIII. The Emergence of Political Homogeneity A. Discussion of political continuity between administrations. 1. Comparisons between Bush and Obama policies. B. The role of money and media in politics. 1. The evolving nature of American democracy. C. Public discontent and lack of political change.
## IX. Conclusion A. Reflection on the causes of American decline. B. The implications of China’s rise for global leadership. C. The need for self-reflection in America about its governance and economic policies.
## X. Final Thoughts A. The importance of a robust media and academic discourse in shaping societal awareness. B. The potential for China’s growth to encourage global prosperity, not necessarily at America’s expense.
## XI. Bibliography – Reference to academic and media works cited throughout the article.
Please feel free to provide your comments, complaints and suggestions.
Apparently there’s an interesting and developing situation in USA NYC regarding politics/ law/ immigration/ Trump exec orders and new policies implementation.
“The Thursday Night Massacre(s)” [See endnote. -cmc]
“The first is the contretemps over the Justice Department’s transparently cynical decision to drop the corruption prosecution of Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, at the exact same time (a remarkable coincidence!) as Adams apparently promised to cooperate with federal immigration e
Apparently there’s an interesting and developing situation in USA NYC regarding politics/ law/ immigration/ Trump exec orders and new policies implementation.
“The Thursday Night Massacre(s)” [See endnote. -cmc]
“The first is the contretemps over the Justice Department’s transparently cynical decision to drop the corruption prosecution of Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, at the exact same time (a remarkable coincidence!) as Adams apparently promised to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities.”
“Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Danielle Sassoon, and five high-ranking Justice Department officials resigned Thursday after she refused an order to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams — a stunning escalation in a dayslong standoff over the Trump administration prioritizing political aims over criminal culpability.
“Sassoon, a Republican who was interim U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, accused the department of acceding to a “quid pro quo” — dropping the case to ensure Adams’ help with Trump’s immigration agenda — and said she was “confident” the Democratic mayor committed the crimes spelled out in his indictment, and even more. Before the showdown, Sassoon said, prosecutors had been preparing to charge Adams with destroying evidence and instructing others to destroy evidence and provide false information to the FBI.”
“Adams is an American citizen, and a local elected official, who is seeking a personal benefit—immunity from federal laws to which he is undoubtedly subject—in exchange for an act—enforcement of federal law—he has no right to refuse.”
Emil Bove acting deputy US attorney general ltr, excerpt:
“On February 10, 2025, I directed you to dismiss the prosecution of Mayor Adams based on well-founded concerns regarding weaponization, election interference, and the impediments that the case has imposed on Mayor Adams’ ability to govern and cooperate with federal law enforcement to keep New York City safe.”
“No system of ordered liberty can allow the Government to use the carrot of dismissing charges, or the stick of threatening to bring them again, to induce an elected official to support its policy objectives.”
Endnote: The phrase ‘Thursday Night Massacre’ alludes to the Saturday Night Massacre of the Nixon era.
“The “Saturday Night Massacre” was a series of resignations over the dismissal of special prosecutor Archibald Cox that took place in the United States Department of Justice during the Watergate scandal in 1973.[1] The events followed the refusal by Cox to drop a subpoena for the Nixon White House tapes at President Richard Nixon’s request.”
1. The website is very slow to refresh pages
2. When I rely to someone and post the response, I am at the bottom of all the comments, awaiting moderation check off. I then want to return to where I was to continue to read comments after the one I responded to. So I click on the comment authors name which returns me to the point I was at. But if I don’t wait 5-10 seconds before doing this, I will jump to where I was but then be immediately returned to the new comment at the bottom of the page. Th
2. When I rely to someone and post the response, I am at the bottom of all the comments, awaiting moderation check off. I then want to return to where I was to continue to read comments after the one I responded to. So I click on the comment authors name which returns me to the point I was at. But if I don’t wait 5-10 seconds before doing this, I will jump to where I was but then be immediately returned to the new comment at the bottom of the page. Then I have to do the click again and it will work the second time.
3. When I make a comment, which is awaiting moderation and then return to the page at some future time (I keep many pages open in tabs), I then have to hit F5 to refresh the page. When I do this, I expect that when the refresh is completed, that I will be returned to the comment I had previously made. But this is rare. Most of the time, I am returned up-page to some previous comment I made or to a reaction I made to some other commenter. This is annoying and I then have to scroll down to where I left off, which is my last comment.
4. Would be nice to have additional reactions (the yellow block single words). How about ‘Shrug’ for not important or whatever?
5. Would be nice to have image storage provided by TUR. With the other free services, images get lost from TUR responses/threads when the service deletes images tied to disposable or temp accounts.
6. Would like to see 5 comments/hour allowed on a single thread.
More and more people are beginning to realize that Artificial Intelligence is a high-risk technology that could lead to the extermination of the species. That may sound like an exaggeration, but if you follow the developments in AI closely, you’ll see that it’s an accurate assessment. AI is a potentially lethal technology that can either be used to benefit mankind or pave the way to unimaginable death and destruction. Check out this excerpt from an article at Scientific American:
A 2023 survey
More and more people are beginning to realize that Artificial Intelligence is a high-risk technology that could lead to the extermination of the species. That may sound like an exaggeration, but if you follow the developments in AI closely, you’ll see that it’s an accurate assessment. AI is a potentially lethal technology that can either be used to benefit mankind or pave the way to unimaginable death and destruction. Check out this excerpt from an article at Scientific American:
A 2023 survey of AI experts found that 36 percent fear that AI development may result in a “nuclear-level catastrophe.”Almost 28,000 people have signed on to an open letter written by the Future of Life Institute, including Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, the CEOs of several AI companies and many other prominent technologists, asking for a six-month pause or a moratorium on new advanced AI development….
Elon Musk has used his platform at X to amplify his concerns about AI and to emphasize the need to proceed with caution in order to minimize the risks. Regrettably, Musk’s concerns have been lost on the Trump administration who see AI as the weapon they need to maintain America’s dominant position in the world order. The conflict that is brewing between Trump and Musk on this key issue has not yet exploded into public view, but we can be reasonably certain that the clash will take place sometime in the near future. If we consider, for example, Vice President JD Vance’s alarming speech at the AI Summit in France this week, in which the VP flatly rejected the push for prudent regulation or government oversight while characterizing people who take such concerns seriously as “too self-conscious and too risk averse”, then we don’t need to wonder what the administration’s approach will be. In fact, Vance summed it up for his audience in one shocking sentence: “The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety…”
So, taking sensible steps to avoid a full-blown mass extinction event is “hand-wringing”??
Naturally, we disagree with that view. And as we noted earlier, over 28,000 people have already signed a letter requesting a six-month moratorium on advanced AI development. Are we to assume that these 28,000 people—all of whom have more expertise on the subject of artificial intelligence than Vance—are merely hand-wringing worrywarts whose views are not grounded in an intimate grasp of the topic and the threat it poses to humanity?
And what exactly are those threats? Can they be summarized? Here’s more from Scientific American:
Artificial intelligence algorithms will soon reach a point of rapid self-improvement that threatens our ability to control them and poses great potential risk to humanity…. Once AI can improve itself, which may be not more than a few years away, and could in fact already be here now, we have no way of knowing what the AI will do or how we can control it. This is because superintelligent AI …will be able to run circles around programmers and any other human by manipulating humans to do its will; it will also have the capacity to act in the virtual world through its electronic connections, and to act in the physical world through robot bodies….Here’s Why AI May Be Extremely Dangerous—Whether It’s Conscious or Not,Scientific American
Musk’s concerns are even more explicit. Here’s a brief summary provided on his own AI entity called Grok: (note—In response to the question: “What concerns Musk most about AI?”)
There’s a significant concern about how AI, especially powerful forms like AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), should be developed and controlled. Musk has expressed distrust towards OpenAI’s leadership, particularly Sam Altman, regarding the stewardship of such technology. He has indicated a preference for OpenAI to return to its safety-focused and open-source roots, which he believes would align better with the broader public interest rather than corporate profit motives…..
(Grok answers this question: what worries Musk most about AI:)
Existential Risk to Humanity:
Musk has warned that AI could either eliminate or constrain humanity’s growth, highlighting the risk of AI becoming “vastly smarter than humans” and potentially leading to scenarios where AI might decide to dispose of humanity or place it under strict control. This concern is likened by Musk to the dangers of nuclear physics, where the power can be used for both beneficial and catastrophic outcomes….
Musk has advocated for government regulation of AI, expressing stress over the technology’s advancement without adequate regulatory frameworks. He fears AI could lead to “civilization destruction” if not properly managed, proposing the creation of an “insight committee” to oversee AI development (source: web results from cnn.com, foxbusiness.com, and reuters.com).
AI’s Potential to Outsmart Humans:
He has repeatedly mentioned the risk of AI surpassing human intelligence, leading to scenarios where AI might not align with human values or interests. Musk has cited this as one of the biggest risks to civilization, comparing it to summoning a demon…
Musk has also expressed concerns about AI being used for… the proliferation of autonomous weapons systems, which could lead to unintended escalations in conflicts.
Safety and Ethics:
Musk advocates for careful development of AI, suggesting that safety protocols should be established before advancing to more powerful AI systems. He has called for a regulatory framework similar to those for aviation or pharmaceuticals to ensure AI’s safety. (Grok)
Musk’s concerns, which emerge from his vast technological experience, clearly conflict with those of JD Vance and the administration who regard regulation as a form of bureaucratic strangulation that stifles innovation. Here’s part of what Vance had to say at the AI Summit in Paris on Tuesday:
When conferences like this convene to discuss a cutting-edge technology, oftentimes, I think our response is to be too self-conscious, too risk averse. But never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly caused us to do precisely the opposite. Our administration, the Trump administration, believes that AI will have countless revolutionary applications… And to restrict its development now would not only unfairly benefit incumbents in the space, it would mean paralyzing one of the most promising technologies we have seen in generations.
this administration will ensure that American AI technology continues to be the gold standard worldwide, and we are the partner of choice for others, foreign countries, and certainly businesses as they expand their own use of AI. Number two, we believe that excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off, and we’ll make every effort to encourage pro-growth AI policies. And I like to see that deregulatory flavor, making its way into a lot of the conversations this conference. Number three, we feel very strongly that AI must remain free from ideological bias and that American AI will not be co-opted into a tool for authoritarian censorship. …
The United States of America is the leader in AI, and our administration plans to keep it that way. The US possesses all components across the full AI stack, including advanced semiconductor design, frontier algorithms, and, of course, transformational applications…. And to safeguard America’s advantage, the Trump administration will ensure that the most powerful AI systems are built in the US with American designed and manufactured chips. (America must dominate AI because AI provides the means for domination.)
America wants to partner with all of you, and we want to embark on the AI revolution before us with the spirit of openness and collaboration. But to create that kind of trust, we need international regulatory regimes that foster the creation of AI technology rather than strangle it. And we need our European friends in particular to look to this new frontier with optimism rather than trepidation. (Note—Ignore the risks, damn the torpedoes)…
with the President’s recent executive order on AI, we’re developing an AI action plan that avoids an overly precautionary regulatory regime while ensuring that all Americans benefit from the technology and its transformative potential…..
Concerns About International Regulations
The US innovators of all sizes already know what it’s like to deal with onerous international rules…..
Ladies and gentlemen…. The AI future is not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety….
Now at this moment, we face the extraordinary prospect of a new industrial revolution, one on par with the invention of the steam engine or Bessemer steel, but it will never come to pass if overregulation deters innovators from taking the risks necessary to advance the ball…TRANSCRIPT: VP JD Vance’s Speech at Paris AI Summit 2025, Singju Post
Vance’s entire presentation was little more than an anti-regulation harangue designed to belittle anyone who failed to ascribe to his “Damn the torpedoes, all ahead full” philosophy. What the speech shows is that the Trump team believes that anyone who expresses the slightest support for modest oversight (of this potentially lethal technology) is a namby-pamby trying to block the path to the future. But what is so surprising about Vance’s analysis is that it appears to be the polar opposite of Musk’s. Musk has not expressed any such opposition to regulation or oversight; quite the contrary. As we’ve already shown, Musk feels quite strongly that we must reach international consensus on how AI should be regulated to ensure things don’t get out of hand.
It’s worth noting that Elon Musk made a $97.4 billion bid last week to buy back OpenAI from its current owner, Sam Altman, saying that Altman had abandoned the system’s original mission to remain an open source, non-profit. At present, OpenAI is a “closed source, maximum-profit company effectively controlled by Microsoft,” a complete reversal of Musk’s vision of a transparent, (community oriented) learning tool that could be used for the benefit of humanity. The nearly $100 billion offer underscores the importance Musk attaches to AI development given the risks it poses for humanity. In other words, he wants to buy OpenAI back because he doesn’t consider its current owner “trustworthy”.
Elon Musk said to Tucker Carlson, “I don’t trust Sam Altman, and I don’t think we want the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who’s not trustworthy.”
It’s also worth noting that a growing number of experts have been fleeing OpenAI complaining that the company is not taking steps to address their safety concerns. Among these are Daniel Kokotajlo, William Saunders, Ilya Sutskever, Jan Leike, Gretchen Krueger, Leopold Aschenbrenner, Pavel Izmailov, and Cullen O’Keefe, Miles Brundage and Rosie Campbell.
Why are so many well-paid professionals fleeing OpenAI while warning of safety concerns?
Because—as former AI researcher Steve Adler candidly stated: OpenAI labs are taking a ‘very risky gamble’ with humanity amid the race toward AGI.”
That’s it in a nutshell. These people simply believe that it is immoral for them to participate in a project that puts the species at risk. Here’s more from the BBC:
The UK and US have not signed an international agreement on artificial intelligence (AI) at a global summit in Paris. The statement, signed by dozens of countries including France, China and India, pledges an “open”, “inclusive” and “ethical” approach to the technology’s development…..
The statement signed by 60 countries sets out an ambition to reduce digital divides by promoting AI accessibility, and ensuring the tech’s development is “transparent”, “safe” as well as “secure and trustworthy”….
…. US Vice President JD Vance told delegates in Paris that too much regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) could “kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off”. Vance told world leaders that AI was “an opportunity that the Trump administration will not squander” and said “pro-growth AI policies” should be prioritized over safety…..
However UKAI – a trade body representing businesses working in the sector across the country – said it was the right decision. “While UKAI agrees that being environmentally responsible is important, we question how to balance this responsibility with the growing needs of the AI industry for more energy,” said its chief executive Tim Flagg.
“UKAI cautiously welcomes the Government’s refusal to sign this statement as an indication that it will explore the more pragmatic solutions that UKAI has been calling for – retaining opportunities to work closely with our US partners”, he added. UK and US refuse to sign international AI declaration, BBC
Judging from its webpage, the UKAI appears to be an industry/lobby group that may have influenced Vance’s decision to reject the Paris AI Declaration. Here’s a snippet from their webpage:
UKAI represents companies of all sizes with an interest in AI, from startups to industry leaders, ensuring their voices are heard in shaping policy.By working closely with UK Government and regulators, UKAI ensures AI policies foster innovation and business growth without stifling progress. UKAI is the bridge between policymakers and the AI community, offering a platform for feedback on legislation, programmes, and initiatives. UKAI believes in the transformative role AI can play in the UK’s social and economic development. UKAI
So, did this British industry group influence the administration’s position on the Declaration; is that what’s going on? And if they did, then what role did the tech giants in Silicon Valley play? We put that very question to Grok: “Did big tech push JD Vance to oppose to the Paris AI Declaration”:
Answer—Vance’s background in Silicon Valley and his funding from tech billionaires like Peter Thiel suggest he has strong connections with tech leaders. These ties might influence his policy perspectives, but no direct link to Big Tech lobbying him against the AI declaration is explicitly stated (NPR)….. While Vance’s positions seem to align with Big Tech’s interests in avoiding stringent regulations, the available information does not explicitly confirm that these companies directly influenced his decision regarding the AI declaration. His actions could be seen as part of a broader policy stance on tech regulation, influenced by his political beliefs, his role in the Trump administration, and his previous interactions with the tech industry rather than a specific push from Big Tech companies. However, given his criticism of “excessive regulation,” it’s reasonable to infer that his views are at least sympathetic to Big Tech’s general stance on regulatory matters. Grok
In short, we cannot yet verify that the administration’s rejection of the Paris AI Declaration was a response to the lobbying efforts of the Silicon Valley giants. But we do think that it is highly likely that these corporations were at least consulted on the matter before the decision was made.
In any event, the Paris AI Summit was largely a public relations extravaganza that flopped miserably due to Vance’s shocking refusal to sign the Declaration. Keep in mind, the Declaration contains no onerous regulations or binding obligations. It’s merely an expression of support for a few generalized principles that were concocted to build public confidence. Instead of showing a willingness to work collaboratively with other world leaders on a matter of global security, the Trump administration decided to stick a thumb in their eye while conveying their intention to develop AI in any way they see fit. The fact is that Trump and his lieutenants see AI as a tool for global domination and for maintaining America’s privileged position in the world order. And for that, they are willing to risk everything.
President Donald J. Trump speaks before Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, February 12, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
MintPress News Editor’s Note | Originally published on November 24, 2021, this investigation by Alan Macleod delves into Tulsi Gabbard’s political metamorphosis—from self-proclaimed anti-war progressive to champion of military intervention. Given her recent confirmation as Di
President Donald J. Trump speaks before Tulsi Gabbard is sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, February 12, 2025. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)
MintPress News Editor’s Note | Originally published on November 24, 2021, this investigation by Alan Macleod delves into Tulsi Gabbard’s political metamorphosis—from self-proclaimed anti-war progressive to champion of military intervention. Given her recent confirmation as Director of National Intelligence, we are republishing the piece to shed light on the ideological journey that has led Gabbard to the helm the America’s most powerful intelligence apparatus.
While many on the American left have denounced the acquittal of Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse as handing a get-out-of-jail-free card to racist militias, former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard openly celebrated the verdict. “The jury got it right — finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges,” said the 40-year-old lieutenant colonel, adding that the prosecution was so obviously politically motivated and his innocence so obvious that bringing charges against him should be considered “criminal” in itself.
The Rittenhouse trial was clearly flawed from the start. Among other decisions, Judge Bruce Schroeder refused to allow into evidence either video showing Rittenhouse fantasizing about killing Black Lives Matter protesters just days before the Kenosha shooting or images of him partying with the far-right group Proud Boys, flashing white nationalist hand gestures. Schroeder, who has a long history of questionable rulings, also ruled that those killed by Rittenhouse must not be referred to as “victims” in court, preferring the terms “looters” and “arsonists.”
To Gabbard, however, those questioning the verdict had merely had their minds poisoned by “pro-Antifa” mainstream media, a phrase she has repeatedlyused over the past week. She tweeted:
With no evidence, mainstream media and antifa-loving politicians immediately labeled Rittenhouse a white supremacist terrorist. It’s obvious now that he was just a foolish kid who felt he needed to protect people and the community from rioters and arsonists because the government failed to do so.”
“Anyone who disagrees with pro-antifa mainstream media bias on [the] Rittenhouse trial is smeared as a white supremacist terrorist. Disgusting,” she added.
Doubling down on her stance, on Tuesday she released a video condemning those trying to view the shooting through the prism of race and racial justice. “We are all connected. We are all children of God, no matter our race, religion, or where we come from. So, please let us stop the RACIALIZATION of everyone and everything. This is what our country and world need most right now,” she wrote.
The former congresswoman’s words did not convince everyone. “Tulsi going all in on All Lives Matter,” remarked California-based media analyst Steve Patt. “I have never seen any politician move right as fast as Gabbard,” he added.
We are all connected. We are all children of God, no matter our race, religion, or where we come from. So, please let us stop the RACIALIZATION of everyone and everything. This is what our country and world need most right now. pic.twitter.com/oDChWad848
Today, Gabbard posted a clip of her on Tucker Carlson Tonight condemning the handling of the Waukesha murder case — an incident where an SUV drove into a crowd of spectators at a Christmas parade, killing six people. Gabbard argued that the incident showed that leftists are endangering America. Linking defunding the police to the release on bail of the suspect charged with multiple murders, she said:
We have politicians, we have activist judges and prosecutors who are not enforcing the law, people trying to defund the police, people who have really screwed up priorities who seem to be more interested about protecting criminals than protecting our community. “
“They are let out on to our streets, continuing their terror sprees,” she added.
Fox News star
These positions might surprise many who remember Gabbard from the 2016 and 2020 election cycles as a “rising star” on the progressive left. However, in recent weeks, she has pivoted hard to the right, appearing on Fox News virtually daily, espousing traditionally conservative talking points. In the past month alone, she has appeared on Fox shows Tucker Carlson Tonight, Hannity, Gutfeld!, Neil Cavuto Live, Fox News Primetime, The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, and Watters World. Over the same timeframe, she has not appeared on MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, CBS or ABC.
She has spent most of her time on the network chastising the Democratic Party, despite once being DNC vice-chair. In a Fox News Prime Time segment last week titled “Dems Target their Political Enemies,” she presented her own colleagues as perhaps the greatest threat to liberty in America, warning:
You’re either with them – agreeing with them, supporting them, carrying the water for them — or you’re not. You’re either part of their team or you’re not. And if you’re not (and this is what we’re seeing happening now. It is what I’ve experienced), then they will target you, censor you, demonize you and call you a domestic terrorist and sick the attorney general on you.”
This built on a previous interview with Steve Hilton titled “Dems have become the party of hate and division,” where she warned against the ominous “darkness” of the “far-left” party, and a Tucker Carlson segment where she claimed her party was pursuing “an intentional strategy to tear us apart based on the color of our skin.”
The problem is that we have leaders who are intentionally trying to tear us apart based on the color of our skin for their political or financial gain, and they don't care about the destruction they leave in their wake. pic.twitter.com/IGFnHIEjnW
Gabbard also openly celebrated the Republican victory in the Virginia gubernatorial election earlier this month, which saw Glenn Youngkin defeat Democrat Terry McAuliffe, telling Carlson that “McAuliffe’s loss is a victory for all Americans.” “This is where I find hope for the future,” she added.
She also condemned leftists who complain about Republicans using racial dog whistles, claiming that they were comparing the American public to dogs. “Please let us stop the racialization of everyone and everything. Racialism. We are all children of God and are therefore family in the truest sense, no matter our race or ethnicity,” she said, adding, “Please, let us not allow ourselves to be led down this dark and divisive path of racialism and hate.” Choosing to do this on Fox News — a network whose entire business model is dedicated to spreading animosity and riling up their overwhelmingly elderly, white base against minorities and liberals — is a particularly noteworthy decision.
President Joe Biden himself has also been a key target of Gabbard’s ire. In September, at the height of the Haitian migrant scandal, where Border Patrol Agents were filmed whipping black people trying to cross into the United States, Gabbard attacked Biden from the right, claiming that his “open border policy” was hurting America and helping gang members and sex traffickers enter the country. Going further, she presented Trump as a sensible leader, praising him for his efforts to shore up the southern frontier with Mexico (In reality, “open borders” Biden has deported nearly 1.3 million people in less than a year in office — nearly three times the figure Trump achieved in four years).
This was not the only recent shot Gabbard has aimed at the 46th president. Earlier this month, she directly accused him of “undermining the fundamental principles of our country” and “tearing our country apart.” Four days later, she warnedFox viewers that his Build Back Better bill will allow “unelected bureaucrats” to “stick their noses into every aspect of our lives, furthering this cradle-to-grave mentality of government dependence that makes us lose even more of our autonomy.” “Government is already too big and powerful as it is. The Build Back Better bill will only make it worse,” she concluded, using classic conservative rhetoric.
From anti-war hero to drone queen
Perhaps the most surprising shift in her metamorphosis into boilerplate conservative is her seemingly shifting stance on war. Appearing on Fox News just after the Biden administration was forced to admit that a drone strike it ordered on “terrorists” in Kabul actually targeted ten civilians, she vehemently defended the policy. Clearly not expecting such an answer (the segment was titled “Afghan Disaster: Who Is Getting Fired?”), host Tucker Carlson looked surprised as Gabbard launched into a spirited defense of both drones and the endless war on terror.
“I think it’s important for the American people to understand that Islamist jihadists are continuing to wage war against us,” she said. Then, barely acknowledging that the slain Afghan children were not terrorists, she added:
We have to work to defeat them militarily and ideologically. And militarily, we have two choices in how we do that. Number One: We can continue to invade and occupy in nation-building [sic] countries around the world — just as we did in Afghanistan at great cost. Number Two: We can take a targeted approach using airstrikes, using our special forces to go in and go after these terror cells.”
“We’ve seen a near-180 from Tulsi Gabbard this year. Her opinions on many subjects are now indecipherable from Fox News — which is why they’ve been inviting her on regularly,” Lee Camp, a political comedian who has followed Gabbard’s career trajectory closely, told MintPress, adding:
Many of her tweets seem to pretend race is not an issue in America — a country with overwhelmingly white-supremacist foreign and domestic policy. Much of her ire and concern has shifted from those without healthcare to those refugees coming through our “open borders.” Tulsi now feeds into the toxic nationalism and xenophobia that has allowed the American empire to abuse other peoples and cultures for generations (ironically including white America’s annexation of her home state of Hawaii).”
Gabbard’s heel turn accelerated in the fall after she returned from active deployment on what she called a “Special Operations mission to go after al-Qaeda affiliated jihadists,” in the Horn of Africa. Many congratulated her on her promotion to lieutenant colonel, but others were surprised to hear that the U.S. military was at war in Africa at all.
All this seems a far cry from the woman who resigned from the DNC in 2016 in order to stand with Bernie Sanders. Gabbard consistently shared anti-war opinions on potential conflicts with Russia or Syria, to the point where she was constantly accused of being an agent of both governments. She also gained plaudits and followers after condemning the Saudi war on Yemen and attacking establishment figures like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris when few others would.
On race, too, she has taken an even more abrupt rightward shift. In 2017, she demanded that America must “dismantle the systemic racism that causes Black men to disproportionately receive harsher sentences compared to other races and ethnicities for the same types of crime.” Yet when a movement emerged raising these same points, she attacked it, siding with Rittenhouse.
Likewise, on immigration, only last year she condemned Trump for the policies she now says were correct. During the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination debates, she said:
Our hearts break when we see children at these detention facilities who’ve been separated from their parents, when we see human beings crowded into cages in abhorrent, inhumane conditions. We can have both secure borders as well as humane immigration policies. We have to stop separating children from their parents, make it easier for people to seek asylum, make sure that we are securing our borders and [sic] by reforming those laws.”
While it is certainly possible to hold left-wing economic views without subscribing to liberal social values (many Americans do just that), claiming that Biden’s border policy, which is demonstrably far more authoritarian than Trump’s, constitutes an “open border” is harder to understand, as is scaremongering about the perils of big government.
The grift in pursuit of power by this Lieutenant Colonel is unmatched. Started as bigot anti-gay official; became generic mainstream Dem to get into Congress; then an “attack Obama from the right” Dem; to “Bernie progressive” bandwagon; to a Bernie-Lite candidate; now full MAGA🤙🏽 https://t.co/PI1Ae00LRM
While many have been surprised by Gabbard’s rightward shift, there were a number of warning signs in her past that suggested her progressive, anti-war bona fides were not as rock solid as they might appear. Tulsi is the daughter of Republican-turned-Democratic State Senator Mike Gabbard, who came to prominence nationally as a leader in the anti-LGBT movement. In the 1990s, he was president of the group “Stop Promoting Homosexuality America” and host of the radio show “Let’s Talk Straight Hawaii.”
Tulsi took after her father in many respects. One of her first political gigs was working for an anti-gay group that promoted conversion therapy. “As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists,” she said. To be fair to her, her public pronouncements on the subject have greatly changed since then. In 2013, she joined the LGBT Equality Caucus and consistently voted for increased rights for sexual and gender minorities.
This is a video with Tulsi Gabbard’s father, Mike Gabbard. He was the founder of “Stop Promoting Homosexuality America” and she is the daughter in this video.
Perhaps even more alarming are her links to far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) paramilitary movement. Modi, a Hindu nationalist, first came to worldwide attention while he was chief minister of Gujarat state during the massive wave of anti-Muslim pogroms in 2002 that saw over 2,000 killed and 200,000 Muslims driven from their homes thanks to RSS handiwork.
As prime minister, Modi has led drives to strip millions of Indian Muslims of their citizenship and overseen other anti-Muslim violence. Members of Modi’s cabinet have floated the idea of genocide against India’s Muslim population (thought to be nearly 200 million).
Gabbard, a practicing Hindu, gifted Modi her childhood copy of the sacred text “The Bhagavad Gita,” condemned the U.S.’ 2014 decision to block his entry into the country owing to his history of inciting religious violence, and voted against a House resolution condemning his attacks on Muslims. Senior members of the RSS — an organization often compared to the Ku Klux Klan or Hitler’s brownshirts — attended Gabbard’s Hawaii wedding.
Whether Modi has influenced Gabbard’s views on Islam is unclear. However, what is evident is that her beliefs about the religion drive much of her domestic and foreign policy positions. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in 2015, she fumed that President Barack Obama was not nearly tough enough on Islamic extremism, telling Fox News that “radical Islamic ideology” had to be defeated militarily, not just ideologically. She also constantly attacked Obama on his deal with Iran, calling the Islamic Republic “the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” On U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, however, her position was completely the opposite, saying that it was “understandable” if they developed atomic weaponry.
Another Middle Eastern dictatorship she supported was Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt. In 2015, she traveled to Egypt to meet Sisi, who has already suggested he might rule for life. There, she offered a glowing endorsement of his autocratic rule. “President el-Sisi has shown great courage and leadership in taking on this extreme Islamist ideology, while also fighting against ISIS militarily to keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt,” she said, urging the U.S. to recognize him and “stand with him in this fight against Islamic extremists.”
This rhetoric is a far cry from the image of a sober, war-skeptical outsider many of her champions presented her as. While she does challenge many U.S. policies, it does not come from a position of being against war (she is, after all, a high ranking member of the U.S. military). “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove… When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she explained, while failing to recognize that the war on terror is inextricably linked to regime-change wars and that one begets the other. Iraq, of course, supposedly started because of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in 9/11 and terrorism, but quickly morphed into a regime-change war lasting two decades, destabilizing an entire region and turning it into a breeding ground for radical Islamic terror.
On Israel, Gabbard has also been a loyal ally and was even chosen to speak at Christians United for Israel, a far-right pro-occupation organization. There, she shared a stage with Benjamin Netanyahu, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee. So forthright was her support for the Apartheid State that the next year she received the Champion of Freedom award from the controversial Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an acolyte of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. Nevertheless, she still managed to cultivate an image of being against war and empire.
with philanthropist Miriam Adelson and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii at our Gala Dinner on 5 May pic.twitter.com/GhUXVWolXA
Gabbard has been courted by the right-wing for a long time, so her recent shift should perhaps not have come as such a surprise. A favorite of individuals such as Mike Cernovich, Richard Spencer and David Duke, she even went to Washington to interview for a position in the Trump administration. This was reportedly presidential advisor Steve Bannon’s idea. “He loves Tulsi Gabbard. Loves her…[he] wants to work with her on everything,” a source close to Bannon toldThe Hill.
Last year, she also sided with notorious right-wing organization Project Veritas to promote the idea that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) had cheated her way to election victory, stuffing ballot boxes with votes. In this light, then, her decision not to vote to impeach Donald Trump (an action that infuriated her own party), might seem less like a principled stand and more like a long-term strategic move.
American politics is often compared to the charade of pro wrestling, with participants secretly working together to put on a show for the public. Gabbard’s latest heel turn is merely the latest in a long line of metamorphoses from conservative anti-LGBT campaigner to progressive anti-war activist to boilerplate Republican. Her latest actions might disappoint some on the anti-war left. However, a closer look at her past suggested her opposition to militarism was always limited in scope. Unfortunately, the United States is so starved of genuine anti-imperialist leaders that many are willing to compromise to an incredible degree.
“Gabbard has switched from championing the oppressed to championing the oppressors. It’s tough to say whether she ever truly believes anything she says or merely points her trajectory towards the greatest number of clicks and attention,” Camp told MintPress, adding:
Rather than stick to her (supposed) beliefs, she has now recalibrated to the Fox News audience. Most of our ruling elite in both parties are sociopaths who don’t actually have empathy for others. Perhaps Gabbard has always been just more of the same.”
