“Without full access to all performed toxicity studies, there can be no reliable safety evaluation of pesticides by E.U. authorities,” researchers warn in a new study.
New research published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health found that pesticide companies did not disclose to European Union regulators at least nine studies examining the brain toxicity of their chemical products—a finding that experts said is a scandal that must spur reforms.
“It is outrageous,” Christina Rudén, a professor of regulatory ecotoxicology and toxicology at Stockholm University and a co-author of the new study, told The Guardian.
The researchers behind the new study found that pesticide companies submitted 35 developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) assessments to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency between 1993 and 2015 as part of efforts to win regulatory approval for their products.
But the companies withheld nine of those 35 studies from E.U. regulators, the new analysis notes, raising concerns that the firms deliberately suppressed information that may have impacted risk assessments. The Guardian noted that “the pesticides identified in the new study include the insecticides abamectin, ethoprophos, and pyridaben and the fungicide fluazinam.”
“These are, or have been, used on a range of crops including tomatoes, strawberries, potatoes, and aubergines,” the newspaper added.
The researchers said their findings demonstrate that “non-disclosure of DNT studies to E.U. authorities, in spite of clear legal requirements, seems to be a recurring phenomenon.” Last year, the same researchers discovered that an industry-sponsored DNT study on glyphosate found impacts on “neurobehavioural function, motor activity, in rat offspring”—findings that were not shared with E.U. officials.
Glyphosate is currently authorized for use in the E.U. through 2023, despite evidence of its negative effects on humans, animals, insects, and the environment.
“Without full access to all performed toxicity studies, there can be no reliable safety evaluation of pesticides by E.U. authorities,” the researchers warned Thursday. “Rules should be amended so that future studies should be commissioned by authorities rather than companies. This ensures the authorities’ knowledge of existing studies and prevents the economic interest of the company from influencing the design, performance, reporting, and dissemination of studies.”
Bayer—which owns Monsanto, maker of the cancer-linked glyphosate product Roundup—and Nissan Chemical were among the sponsors of the studies withheld from E.U. authorities, who only learned about the assessments years after they were conducted.
As AFP reported, the brain toxicity studies “were conducted on pregnant rats, testing whether the offspring of those exposed to the compounds suffered developmental problems.”
“Decreased weight gain, delayed sexual maturation, and deteriorating motor activity were among the side effects reported in adult offspring in the studies,” the outlet continued. “Of the nine pesticide compounds, four have now been taken off the E.U. market, while another four are currently under review.”
“It is outrageous and unbelievable that a good fraction of these studies do not make it to the authorities as required by law,” Axel Mie, another study co-author, told AFP. “There must be legal consequences and serious ones for the companies if they do not follow the law.”
A new study highlights the need for corporations to identify and manage “corporate psychopaths” to prevent financial crises.
A new academic study examining the actions of Bernie Madoff, the New York banker behind the world’s biggest Ponzi fraud, suggests companies do more to root out “corporate psychopaths” within their organizations to prevent financial ruin.
The study, published in the International Journal of Market Research, looked at Madoff’s behavior throughout his life including during his business dealings, his trial, and his time in prison.
It warns that while people with some psychopathic personality traits tend to get ahead in corporate finance, their recklessness and greed can bring down organizations and even entire economies.
Author of the research Dr Clive R. Boddy, Associate Professor at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU), is a pioneer in the field of corporate psychopathy.
Around 0.6%-1.2% of the adult population are defined as psychopaths, meaning they possess no conscience, shame, guilt or ability to experience love for or feel empathy towards other people. The term corporate psychopath refers to well-performing psychopaths who work in corporate settings.
Madoff’s Ponzi fraud centred around the asset management branch of his financial firm and it defrauded thousands of investors across the world. The fraud was uncovered in December 2008 and was thought to be worth around $ 64 billion.
He was jailed for 150 years in 2009 and died in 2021 in a prison for inmates with health needs.
Madoff’s actions were examined against two established scales of psychopathy. These include personality traits such as superficial charm and apparent intelligence; lack of sincerity or truthfulness; a tendency to cheat; a lack of remorse; being emotionally shallow; a lack of self-insight; calmness; and apparent rationality.
The research suggests Madoff embodied all of these behavioural traits in addition to many others. He was renowned for his bullying towards his detractors, while carefully crafting an image of rationality and competence to those whose opinion was important to him and his business.
His ego reportedly remained intact even when in prison, where he showed no remorse for the victims of his crimes.
Dr. Boddy said: “Highly psychopathic senior businesspeople who were quite plausibly genuine psychopaths are visible in commercial history.
“This new study aims to understand whether some corporate scandals and bankruptcies feature senior corporate officials who might be workplace psychopaths, and this has demonstrably been the case.
“People have often wondered whether Bernie Madoff was, in fact, a corporate psychopath, and he certainly scored highly on the two measures of psychopathy utilised within this study.
“The findings suggest that Madoff’s fraud was an outcome of his personality and that similar personalities such as Robert Maxwell and Ken Lay, have behaved in similar ways.
“There are likely to be plenty of people in the world of corporate finance with similar psychopathic traits to Bernie Madoff. The job for financial corporations and firms, if they want to give themselves the best chance of avoiding crisis, would appear to be identifying them before they ascend to power.”
Insights into the Bernie Madoff financial market scandal which identify new opportunities for business market researchers
This article reflectively applies measurement tools to gage whether a renowned financier and champion of shareholder capitalism, in 20th century business history, might be categorized as a corporate psychopath.
The article examines aspects of the career of the outstanding financial investment manager, Bernie Madoff. Psychopaths and corporate psychopaths are defined as background to the article.
Gauges of corporate psychopathy and psychopathy are outlined which could be modified by market research companies to identify corporate psychopathy in organisations as a way of aiding investment decisions into such organisations.
The current article concludes that insolvencies such as those at Madoff’s investment company, have been distinguished by CEOs being present who were simultaneously the lauded agents of financial market capitalism and who embodied the traits of the corporate psychopath.
The examination of potential corporate psychopaths using this historical methodology helps inform ideas about what the effects of psychopathic leadership may be within economies and gives new insights into the reasons for the greed, risk taking, and unethical practices found in financial markets.
Findings support the accepted view that corporate psychopaths can be discovered in senior roles in the financial services sector.
This current paper provides new avenues for research offerings from market research companies. For example, business to business researchers could undertake research to identify firms more likely to be longitudinally viable, sustainable and less likely to collapse (i.e., non-psychopathic firms).
Investment companies like pension funds could use such research to identify firms that are less risky, more ethical, better led, and therefore safer to invest in. The research, focusing on Bernie Madoff, the perpetrator of the largest Ponzi scheme in history, underscores how certain psychopathic traits can lead to recklessness and greed, potentially causing organizational and economic collapse.
The study suggests that Madoff’s actions were consistent with psychopathic traits, raising the question of whether similar personalities exist within the corporate finance world.
(Natural News) While states like Texas have been eager to protect children in recent weeks by protecting them from specific treatments at young ages and ensuring they are old enough to give informed consent, Target seems to be retaliating with a new line of merchandise.
(Article by Megan Benton republished from DCEnquirer.com)
School board candidate and activist from Wisconsin, Scarlett Johnson, took to Twitter to expose the new line for what it is. In a shocking tweet, Johnson exposed the new “Abprallen” line.
Why did @target hire a Satanist to design pieces for their recent "Pride" clothing line?
WTF👉🏽"Satan loves you and respects who you are… LGBTQIA+ people are so often referred to as being a product of Satan or going against God's will, so fine. We'll hang with Satan instead." pic.twitter.com/FLsNZNzHNa
On their website, Target offers multiple items with “pride” messages on them that are available to be shipped. These bright-colored items have messages on them like “Too Queer for Here,” “We Belong Everywhere,” and “Cure Transphobia.”
The designer of Abprallen has many Instagram posts with “pro-satan” messages on them and questionable comments. Johnson drew people’s attention to the comments with her Twitter thread, and many have retweeted and expressed their concern.
By all metrics, this line of clothes and accessories espoused a very anti-Christian, pro-Satan message along with its promotion of the LGBTQ movement. One post on the designer’s Instagram account says, “Ho ho ho! Santa loves all the good boys, girls and non-binary people (and the bad ones too) and he hopes this holiday season treats you well, that your family don’t misgender you, and that you feel the love and support you deserve!” Underneath in a different paragraph, the designer explains, “Of course, this piece based on my infamous “satan respects pronouns” design, but with a Christmas twist! (twistmas?)”
Earlier this week, in another Instagram, the designer said, “Being able to sell my stuff at Target stores is incredibly exciting, knowing that people are seeing it without (necessarily) explicitly seeking LGBT-related stuff is wonderful, and see it, and I hope that in some way they’ll feel a bit more comfortable in themselves, as we all deserve to feel.”
This type of content being pushed by big companies like Target draws concern from Americans across the country, and activists are doing what they can to expose these growing trends.
“There’s now literally no reason to watch Fox News.”
In Kennedy’s view, Carlson “crossed a red line” in his April 19 monologue, during which he “broke TV’s two biggest rules.”
“Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content, and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet.
“Fox just demonstrated the terrifying power of Big Pharma,” he added.
During the said monologue, Carlson openly chastised the pharmaceutical industry and the media, including his own network, for taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Pharma companies in exchange for “shill[ing] for their sketchy products on the air.”
“And as they did that,” Carlson went on to state, “they maligned anyone who was skeptical of those products. At the very least, this was a moral crime. It was disgusting, but it was universal. It happened across the American news media. They all did it.”
Weighing in on Tucker Carlson’s recent firing from Fox News, 2024 presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed “pharma advertisers” for pushing “deadly and ineffective” vaccines that Carlson refused to promote and even blasted as dangerous and unnecessary.
In Kennedy’s view, Carlson “crossed a red line” in his April 19 monologue, during which he “broke TV’s two biggest rules.”
“Tucker told the truth about how greedy Pharma advertisers controlled TV news content, and he lambasted obsequious newscasters for promoting jabs they knew to be lethal and worthless,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet.
“Fox just demonstrated the terrifying power of Big Pharma,” he added.
During the said monologue, Carlson openly chastised the pharmaceutical industry and the media, including his own network, for taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from Big Pharma companies in exchange for “shill[ing] for their sketchy products on the air.”
“And as they did that,” Carlson went on to state, “they maligned anyone who was skeptical of those products. At the very least, this was a moral crime. It was disgusting, but it was universal. It happened across the American news media. They all did it.”
(Related: Check out what Kennedy had to say about his uncle’s assassination.)
Natural News was censored and blacklisted for the same reasons: we call out Big Pharma and its puppets
With guns blazing, Carlson continued to point out that the vast majority of everything “in public life is corrupt,” stating that there are “too many to count.”
“The question is: who is telling the truth?” Carlson further said. “There are not many of those.”
“One of them is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Robert Kennedy knew early that the covid vaccines were both ineffective and potentially dangerous, and he said so in public to the extent he was allowed. Science has since proven Robert F. Kennedy Jr. right. Unequivocally right.”
Instead of being rewarded for his honesty, Kennedy was vilified and censored, just like Carlson now has been at the hands of Fox, ironically enough. Kennedy, and now Carlson himself, have both been censored for daring to criticize media advertisers, which are largely dominated by pharmaceutical industry interests.
“He was censored because he dared to criticize their advertisers, the news media called Bobby Kennedy a Nazi, and then they attacked his family, but he kept doing it,” Carlson revealed in his last segment before getting axed by Fox.
“He was not intimidated and we were glad he wasn’t. This is one of those moments when it’s nice to have a truth teller around. It’s helpful because suddenly the stakes are very high.”
Carlson’s full segment is available for viewing at Infowars.com.
Keep in mind that Natural News, Brighteon, and other affiliated platforms have been blacklisted and censored for years for doing the same things Carlson and Kennedy have: telling the truth.
Check out the following video from Carlson announcing Kennedy’s run for president in 2024:
“Tucker makes news with his monologues,” tweeted conservative commentator Matt Walsh in response to Carlson’s firing from Fox. “People talk about them.”
“Nobody talks about Sean Hannity monologues. Fox is insane for letting that kind of cultural relevance go.”
Paul Joseph Watson of Summit News tweeted much more simply that “There’s now literally no reason to watch Fox News.”
“Well, there’s still the Pfizer commercials,” responded someone else jokingly about how Fox News is little more than Big Pharma news – which, by the way, we have been warning you about for years.
The latest news about Big Pharma’s control over the media through advertising can be found at Fascism.news.
“The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law. The Journal proclaimed:
The golden age of French pensions is coming to an end, one way or another, in an extreme example of the demographic stress afflicting the retirement systems of advanced economies throughout the world.
The possibility that this “golden age” could be extended is not even entertained. Due to previous “reforms” (CounterSpin, 9/17/10), the pension of the average French person is already facing cuts over the coming decades. So preserving the current level of benefits would require strengthening the system. For the Journal, this is out of the question. Stingier pensions, on the other hand, are portrayed as the inevitable result of “demographic stress,” not policy choices.
The French people, by contrast, recognize that a less generous pension system is far from an inevitability. Protesters quickly took to the streets this January after the government unveiled plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64; one poll from that month found 80% of the country opposed to such a change. And as the government pushed the reform through in March, protests grew especially rowdy, with monuments of refuse lining the city’s streets and fires illuminating the Parisian landscape.
But that’s just how the French are, you know? They’re a peculiar people, much different from us Americans.
The French are built different
As the New York Times’ Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen put it in a recent episode of the Daily (3/16/23), protesters have been “talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.”
Left unmentioned is the fact that, for decades, Americans have consistently opposed increases to the Social Security retirement age, usually by a large margin (CounterSpin, 10/26/18). Moreover, two-thirds of the American public support a four-day workweek, and half say Americans work too much. How French of them.
US media (Extra!, 3–4/96) have taken to covering the uprising against pension “reform” in the same way the narrator of a nature documentary might describe the wilderness:
Now, we come to a Frenchman in his natural habitat. His behavior may give the impression of idleness, but don’t let that fool you. If prodded enough with the prospect of labor, he will not hesitate before lighting the local pastry shop ablaze.
The New York Times (2/24/23), for instance, ran an article in the midst of the protests headlined “The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most,” about a man who has “become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration.” It followed that up with a piece (3/7/23) presenting French opposition to an increase in the retirement age as some exotic reflection of the French’s French-ness. A source attested to the country’s uniqueness: “In France, we believe that there is a time for work and then a time for personal development.”
Meanwhile, while the Washington Post has mostly been content to outsource coverage of the protests to Associated Press wires, it did run a piece (3/15/23) by one of its own reporters titled: “City of … Garbage? Paris, Amid Strikes, Is Drowning in Trash.”
The burden of old people
This fairly unserious reporting on the protests contrasts sharply with the grave rhetoric deployed by the editorial boards of major newspapers in opposing the protesters’ demands. The Wall Street Journal (3/16/23), which has implored the French to face “the cold reality” of spending cuts, is not alone in its crusade against French workers. The boards of the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times have all run similarly dour editorials promoting pension reform over the past few months.
Among these, only the Financial Times (3/19/23) opposed the French government’s remarkably anti-democratic decision to raise the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly, opining that Macron’s tactics have both “weakened” him and left “France with a democratic deficit.”
The Washington Post (3/17/23), by contrast, suggested democratic means would have been preferable, but gave no indication of opposition to Macron’s move. (As FAIR has pointed out—3/9/23—the Post’s supposed concern for democracy doesn’t extend far beyond its slogan.) And the Wall Street Journal (3/16/23) actually saluted the move, remarking, “Give Mr. Macron credit for persistence—and political brass.”
The editorial boards’ case for pension reform is based on a simple conviction—French pensions are unsustainable—for which there are three main pieces of evidence.
First, the ratio of workers to retirees. The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) included a graphic projecting the worker-to-retiree ratio through 2070:
As the graphic shows, this ratio has declined substantially since 2002, and is set to decline even more over the next several decades. This trend is referenced more or less directly in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), the Washington Post (3/17/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23).
The declining worker-to-retiree ratio is meant to inspire fear, but in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, the increased costs associated with a rising number of retirees could very well be offset by other factors. It is therefore much more useful to look directly at how much of a nation’s wealth is used to support retirees.
Which brings us to the second commonly cited piece of evidence: pensions as a percentage of GDP. This is mentioned in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), Post (3/17/23) and Bloomberg (1/16/23).
As it turns out, there’s no problem to be found here. In its 2021 Aging Report, the European Commission estimates that, even without a rise in the minimum retirement age to 64, public pension spending in France would actually decline over the next several decades, dropping to 12.6% of GDP in 2070, down from 14.8% in 2019. Cost-saving factors, primarily the deterioration in benefit levels, would more than cancel out the increase in the number of retirees. In other words, there is no affordability crisis. It doesn’t exist.
Which side are you on?
The only actual evidence for the unsustainability of France’s pension system is the system’s deficit, which is projected to reach around €14 billion by 2030. This piece of evidence is cited in editorials by the Journal (1/31/23, 1/13/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23, 1/10/23).
One solution to the deficit is raising the retirement age. Another is raising taxes. Oddly enough, the editorials cited above almost universally fail to mention the second option.
The only editorial board to bring up the possibility of raising taxes is the Financial Times’ (1/10/23), which comments, “Macron has rightly ruled out raising taxes or rescinding tax breaks since France’s tax share of GDP is already 45%, the second-highest in the OECD after Denmark.”
This statement says much more about the Times than it does about the reasonableness of raising taxes. Oxfam France (1/18/23) has estimated that a mere 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires could eliminate the projected pension deficit. Rescinding three tax cuts that Macron’s government passed and that largely benefit the wealthy could free up €16 billion each year. That would plug the pension system’s projected deficit with money left over.
Which option you pick—increasing taxes on the wealthy or raising the retirement age—depends entirely on who you want to bear the costs of shoring up the pension system. Do you want the wealthy to sacrifice a little? Or do you want to ratchet up the suffering of lower-income folks a bit? Are you on the side of the rich, or the poor and working class? The editorial boards of these major newspapers have made their allegiance clear.
Sanders joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Katie Porter, and others in questioning Cal-Maine Foods’ claim that an avian flu outbreak is to blame for soaring egg prices.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders this weekend renewed his call to break up agricultural monopolies after the nation’s largest egg producer reported that its quarterly profits soared more than 700%.
Cal-Maine Foods, which controls about 20% of the U.S. egg market, announced last week that its revenue for the quarter ending February 25 rose 109% to $997.5 million, while profit for the same period skyrocketed 718% to $323.2 million.
In a statement, Cal-Maine president and CEO Sherman Miller attributed the company’s soaring profits to “the ongoing epidemic of highly pathogenic avian influenza which has significantly reduced the nation’s egg-laying capacity.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, “U.S. egg inventories were 29% lower in the final week of December 2022 than at the beginning of the year,” while “more than 43 million egg-laying hens were lost to the disease itself or to depopulation since the outbreak began in February 2022.”
Sanders (I-Vt.)—who took on agricultural monopolies while campaigning for president in 2016 and 2020—questioned Cal-Maine’s narrative in a tweet arguing that “we must break up Big Ag and enact a windfall profits tax.”
Why are the American people angry? Maybe it has something to do with the largest producer of eggs in America increasing its profits by 718% last quarter after doubling the price of eggs and reporting ZERO cases of avian flu. We must break up big Ag & enact a windfall profits tax.
Sanders wasn’t the only congressional critic of Cal-Maine’s latest profits.
“While working families paid record prices for eggs, Cal-Maine raked over 700% more in profits—without reporting a single case of avian flu,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted on Thursday. “We need to crack down on corporate price gouging to provide Americans with relief at the grocery store.”
“We need more competition to drive down prices,” she added. “In the meantime, I’m demanding answers from Cal-Maine directly.”
In February, Warren and Porter wrote letters to the heads of the five biggest U.S. egg producers expressing their concern over the “massive spike” in prices and “the extent to which egg producers may be using fears about avian flu and supply shocks as a cover to pad their own profits at the expense of American families.”
The advocacy group Farm Action earlier this year implored the Federal Trade Commission to investigate “apparent price gouging, price coordination, and other unfair or deceptive acts or practices by dominant producers of eggs such as Cal-Maine Foods.”
Four out of every 10 British families with children under the age of 12 have been replacing meat in their diet with carbohydrates such as pasta and bread to bulk out their meals and get more out of their money. 18% of Brits are buying fewer vegetables and fruits, and almost a third are purchasing less meat, according to Red Tractor.
The cost of food continues to rise in the UK, and the country’s food retailers have warned that price inflation will continue into the foreseeable future. The latest figures show grocery prices are now increasing at their fastest rate on record.
Figures provided by retail analyst Kantar found that grocery price inflation in the country reached a new record high of 16.7% in the four weeks that ended on January 22. This amounts to a nearly £ 800-pound increase on a typical yearly shopping bill. This is a notable increase from the 14.4% recorded in December and the highest level since figures were first tracked in 2008.
Some categories of food that have noted particularly sharp rises recently include eggs, milk and dog food. However, fruit, vegetables, sugar and alcohol have also noticed steep rises in the past month. According to Kantar, the price of basics such as cheese, milk, butter and bread is up 16.7% on a year-over-year basis. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that olive oil has risen by nearly 40% in the last year, while low-fat milk is up 46% and sugar is up 38.5%.
People are turning to store-label products, cheap carbs and expired food to feed their families
In response to record-setting inflation, some supermarkets are expanding their store label ranges to provide customers with more value. In January, sales of store-label products climbed by 9.3%; sales of branded alternatives only rose by 1%.
Four out of every 10 British families with children under the age of 12 have been replacing meat in their diet with carbohydrates such as pasta and bread to bulk out their meals and get more out of their money. 18% of Brits are buying fewer vegetables and fruits, and almost a third are purchasing less meat, according to Red Tractor.
Another way some people are making ends meet is by eating food that is well past its use-by date. According to the ONS, almost one in five adults say they have eaten food that was beyond its use-by date, which indicates when perishable food can safely be consumed. This is despite the Food Standards Agency warning that individuals should never eat food after this date – even if it smells or looks acceptable – because it could result in serious illness.
The ONS also found that 15% of adults are somewhat or very worried that they will run out of food before they can afford to purchase more. It also revealed that Brits are struggling to stay warm amid the higher costs of energy, with nearly a quarter of those polled saying that they struggled to stay comfortably warm during the previous two weeks.
Discount grocery chains like ALDI and Lidl have noted rising sales. For the fourth month in a row, ALDI was the country’s fastest-growing grocer, noting sales that were 26.9% higher year on year and taking a 9.2% share of the market. Sales at Lidl climbed by 24.1%; they took a market share of 7.1%. Meanwhile, the sales at bigger rivals like Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco only saw increases of 6%; sales at Morrisons dropped by 1.9%.
It’s bad news for Brits who are already struggling with inflation across the board. The Bank of England recently raised interest rates for the 10th time in a row, which is pushing monthly mortgage payments higher; its 0.5 percent rise places rates at 4%, which is the highest level seen since the financial crisis of 2008. A further rise to 4.25% is widely expected next month.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has forecasted that the British economy will shrink this year and experience the poorest performance out of all developed countries, including Russia. The news isn’t much better in the U.S., where the prices of many foods have risen exponentially as well.
“The real culprit behind this 138% hike in the price of a carton of eggs,” says the letter, “appears to be a collusive scheme among industry leaders to turn inflationary conditions and an avian flu outbreak into an opportunity to extract egregious profits reaching as high as 40%.”
‘This mass delusion that we are all under through unrelenting propaganda & censorship they are censoring all these things. If I have to read one more article of a young person dying where the word vaccine isn't even mentioned as a possibility it's disgusting’ ~ Dr Pierre Kory pic.twitter.com/Wfd778LASd
Up until now, the medical establishment had stubbornly insisted that fake sweeteners are perfectly safe for human consumption. All concerns to the contrary were dubbed as “conspiracy theories” – that is until covid jabs started killing people and a cover story was needed
Why, all of a sudden, are the dangers of artificial sweeteners being thrust to the forefront of the public health conversation? The natural health community was mocked or ignored for pointing out their dangers previously, but the narrative appears to have shifted now that distractions are needed for covid jabs.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a study recently that links the consumption of artificial sweeteners like aspartame (Sweet’N Low) and sucralose (Splenda) to cardiovascular disease.
A curiously timed endeavor, French researchers decided to take a closer look at fake sweeteners in the context of heart disease right as millions of people “fully vaccinated” for covid are suffering heart effects – and in some cases, sudden death.
Up until now, the medical establishment had stubbornly insisted that fake sweeteners are perfectly safe for human consumption. All concerns to the contrary were dubbed as “conspiracy theories” – that is until covid jabs started killing people and a cover story was needed.
It appears as though some elements of “science” are now attempting to peg all this excess heart damage and sudden death among the fully jabbed on artificial sweetener consumption, which is suddenly on the radar as a health threat after decades of denial. (Related: Covid jab spike proteins cause heart attacks.)
For their research, this new study’s authors looked at 103,388 participants in the web-based NutriNet-Santé cohort. All across the board, they found that artificial sweetener consumption is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular conditions such as coronary heart disease and cerebrovascular disease.
“The findings from this large-scale prospective cohort study suggest a potential direct association between higher artificial sweetener consumption (especially aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose) and increased cardiovascular disease risk,” the paper concludes.
“Artificial sweeteners are present in thousands of food and beverage brands worldwide, however, they remain a controversial topic and are currently being re-evaluated by the European Food Safety Authority, the World Health Organization, and other health agencies.”
Artificial sweeteners are dangerous, but so are covid injections
While it is certainly true that fake sweeteners are destructive to health, the timing of this study’s publishing in a prominent, widely respected medical journal is suspect.
Why, all of a sudden, are the dangers of artificial sweeteners being thrust to the forefront of the public health conversation? The natural health community was mocked or ignored for pointing out their dangers previously, but the narrative appears to have shifted now that distractions are needed for covid jabs.
It is true that cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of death all around the world. This was true before covid jabs were unleashed, and it is still true today. What is not true is the claim that spiking rates of CVD and associated sudden death are some kind of “mystery” that can be explained away by things that people were already doing previously.
The study does not mention covid, vaccines, or excess deaths, but its publishing at this point in time is being used by the media to suggest that the reason why more people these days are suffering stroke and heart attack events is due to even just minimal fake sweetener consumption.
“Basically, what they saw is that people who had as little as two packets a day, or like four ounces of soda, which you know, most sodas are more than four ounces,” said Mona Shah, MD, a cardiologist at Baptist Health Holistic.
“They had a nine percent higher risk of heart attack and 18 percent higher risk of stroke.”
Shah also warned that fake sweeteners disrupt healthy metabolism, which is why she recommends natural alternatives like stevia and monk fruit.
“I think the body’s kind of like, well should I secrete insulin? Wait, this is not real sugar. Or you know, so the whole balance between insulin and glucose over time is getting totally screwed up.”
If you enjoyed reading this story, you will find more like it at Sweeteners.news.
In a greatly anticipated Friday night drop of what was expected to be a cache of information involving the censoring of Hunter Biden’s notebook story days ahead of the 2020 presidential election, moments ago Elon Musk – who worked in collaboration with the notoriously independent gonzo journalist Matt Taibbi of “Vampire Squid” fame – has published the “Twitter Files.”
Shortly before their release, Matt Taibbi sent the following email to his substack subscribers:
Dear TK Readers:
Very shortly, I’m going to begin posting a long thread of information on Twitter, at my account, @mtaibbi. This material is likely to get a lot of attention. I will absolutely understand if subscribers are angry that it is not appearing here on Substack first. I’d be angry, too.
The last 96 hours have been among the most chaotic of my life, involving multiple trips back and forth across the country, with a debate in Canada in between. There’s a long story I hope to be able to tell soon, but can’t, not quite yet anyway. What I can say is that in exchange for the opportunity to cover a unique and explosive story, I had to agree to certain conditions.
Those of you who’ve been here for years know how seriously I take my obligation to this site’s subscribers. On this one occasion, I’m going to have to simply ask you to trust me. As it happens, there may be a few more big surprises coming, and those will be here on Substack. And there will be room here to to discuss this, too, in time. In any case, thanks for your support and your patience, and please hold me to a promise to make all this up to you, and then some.
And this is what Taibbi has been tweeting in the past few minutes (link here):
1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES
2. What you’re about to read is the first installment in a series, based upon thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter.
3. The “Twitter Files” tell an incredible story from inside one of the world’s largest and most influential social media platforms. It is a Frankensteinian tale of a human-built mechanism grown out the control of its designer.
4. Twitter in its conception was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true real-time global conversation possible for the first time.
5. In its early conception, Twitter more than lived up to its mission statement, giving people “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
6. As time progressed, however, the company was slowly forced to add those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters.
7. Slowly, over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well: first a little, then more often, then constantly.
8. By 2020, requests from connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another: “More to review from the Biden team.” The reply would come back: “Handled.”
9. Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party:
10. Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored. However:
11. This system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels, more ways to complain, open to the left (well, Democrats) than the right.
12. The resulting slant in content moderation decisions is visible in the documents you’re about to read. However, it’s also the assessment of multiple current and former high-level executives.
… Okay, there was more throat-clearing about the process, but screw it, let’s jump forward
16. The Twitter Files, Part One: How and Why Twitter Blocked the Hunter Biden Laptop Story
17. On October 14, 2020, the New York Post published BIDEN SECRET EMAILS, an expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop:
18. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be “unsafe.” They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.
19. White House spokeswoman Kaleigh McEnany was locked out of her account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Mike Hahn, who seethed: “At least pretend to care for the next 20 days.”
20. This led public policy executive Caroline Strom to send out a polite WTF query. Several employees noted that there was tension between the comms/policy teams, who had little/less control over moderation, and the safety/trust teams:
22. Although several sources recalled hearing about a “general” warning from federal law enforcement that summer about possible foreign hacks, there’s no evidence – that I’ve seen – of any government involvement in the laptop story. In fact, that might have been the problem…
23. The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with the former head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde playing a key role.
24. “They just freelanced it,” is how one former employee characterized the decision. “Hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours, pretty much everyone realized that wasn’t going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.”
25. You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including Gadde and former Trust and safety chief Yoel Roth. Comms official Trenton Kennedy writes, “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe”:
26. By this point “everyone knew this was fucked,” said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of… continuing to err.
27. Former VP of Global Comms Brandon Borrman asks, “Can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy?”
28. To which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course, because “caution is warranted”:
29. A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation: many people in charge of speech know/care little about speech, and have to be told the basics by outsiders. To wit:
30. In one humorous exchange on day 1, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna reaches out to Gadde to gently suggest she hop on the phone to talk about the “backlash re speech.” Khanna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.
31. Gadde replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware Khanna is more worried about the Bill of Rights:
32. Khanna tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files:
33. Within a day, head of Public Policy Lauren Culbertson receives a ghastly letter/report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of congress – 9 Rs and 3 Democrats, from “the House Judiciary Committee to Rep. Judy Chu’s office.”
34.NetChoice lets Twitter know a “blood bath” awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it’s a “tipping point,” complaining tech has “grown so big that they can’t even regulate themselves, so the government may need to intervene.”
35. Szabo reports to Twitter that some Hill figures are characterizing the laptop story as “tech’s Access Hollywood moment”:
36. Twitter files continued: “THE FIRST AMENDMENT ISN’T ABSOLUTE”
Szabo’s letter contains chilling passages relaying Democratic lawmakers’ attitudes. They want “more” moderation, and as for the Bill of Rights, it’s “not absolute”
37. An amazing subplot of the Twitter/Hunter Biden laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, and how long it took for the situation to get “unfucked” (as one ex-employee put it) even after Dorsey jumped in.
38. While reviewing Gadde’s emails, I saw a familiar name – my own. Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident
39. There are multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions, for accounts across the political spectrum
40. The problem with the “hacked materials” ruling, several sources said, was that this normally required an official/law enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a “whirlwind” 24-hour, company-wide mess.
41. It’s been a whirlwind 96 hours for me, too. There is much more to come, including answers to questions about issues like shadow-banning, boosting, follower counts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more. These issues are not limited to the political right.
42. Good night, everyone. Thanks to all those who picked up the phone in the last few days.
* * *
The release was telegraphed one week ago, when Musk acknowledged that revealing Twitter’s internal discussions surrounding the censorship of the New York Post‘s Hunter Biden laptop story right before the 2020 US election is “necessary to restore public trust.”
Raise your hand if you think @ElonMusk should make public all internal discussions about the decision to censor the @NYPost’s story on Hunter Biden’s laptop before the 2020 Election in the interest of Transparency.
Recall that the Post had its Twitter account locked in October 2020 for reporting on the now-confirmed-to-be-real“laptop from hell,” which contained still-unprosecuted evidence of foreign influence peddling through then-Vice President Joe Biden – including a 2015 meeting with an executive of Ukrainian gas giant Burisma.
Users who tried to share the link to the article were greeted with a message saying, “We can’t complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful.”
Then, days after Musk’s tweet, Twitter’s former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, admitted it was a ‘mistake’ to censor the Hunter Biden laptop story.
In his first public appearance since becoming an ex-employee, Roth suggested that the Hunter Biden laptop story was simply ‘too difficult’ for Twitter to verify. Alternatively, the company could have perhaps simply trusted the Post, one of America’s oldest publications that doesn’t have a reputation for fabricating bombshell stories – like Twitter does with countless anonymous bombshells from other major publications.
“We didn’t know what to believe. We didn’t know what was true. There was smoke,” Roth said during an interview at the Knight Foundation conference, as noted by the Epoch Times. “And ultimately for me, it didn’t reach a place where I was comfortable removing this content from Twitter.”
“It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 ‘hack and leak campaign’ alarm bells,” he said, referring to a notorious team of cyberspies affiliated with Russian military intelligence. “Everything about it looked like a hack and leak.”
When asked whether it was a mistake to censor the story, Roth replied, “In my opinion, yes.”
Would Roth have suppressed the story if it was a Don Jr. laptop full of incriminating evidence?
* * *
Finally, it will be very interesting to see which “independent”, “impartial” and “objective” members of the Mainstream Media cover the Twitter Files, which, unlike all that Russia collusion bullshit, was a real and actionable attempt to interfere with US democracy by covering up one of the most explosive political stories of a generation, not to mention an event that would have swayed the 2020 presidential election.
“There is simply no evidence that healthy schoolchildren in the U.K. are at significant risk from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and to imply that they are is disgracefully misleading,” they said.
In September 2021, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), had advised against a mass roll-out for children aged 12-15, saying the “margin of benefit” was “considered too small” and citing the low risk to healthy children from the virus.
But less than a fortnight later, ministers gave the green light for youngsters to be given a single dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab with the U.K.’s Chief Medical Officers arguing that this would help to keep schools open.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 