The Silent Shame of Health Institutions
J.R. Bruning
For how much longer will health policy ignore multimorbidity, that looming, giant elephant in the room, that propagates and amplifies suffering? For how much longer will the ‘trend’ of increasing diagnoses of multiple health conditions, at younger and younger ages be rendered down by government agencies to better and more efficient services, screening modalities, and drug choices?

Multimorbidity, the presence of many chronic conditions, is the silent shame of health policy.

All too often chronic conditions overlap and accumulate. From cancer, to diabetes, to digestive system diseases, to high blood pressure, to skin conditions in cascades of suffering. Heartbreakingly, these conditions commonly overlap with mental illnesses or disorders. It’s increasingly common for people to be diagnosed with multiple mental conditions, such as having anxiety and depression, or anxiety and schizophrenia.

Calls for equity tend to revolve around medical treatment, even as absurdities and injustices accrue.

Multimorbidity occurs a decade earlier in socioeconomically deprived communities. Doctors are diagnosing multimorbidity at younger and younger ages.

Treatment regimens for people with multiple conditions necessarily entail a polypharmacy approach – the prescribing of multiple medications. One condition may require multiple medications. Thus, with multimorbidity comes increased risk of adverse outcomes and polyiatrogenesis – ‘medical harm caused by medical treatments on multiple fronts simultaneously and in conjunction with one another.’

Side effects, whether short-term or patients’ concerns about long-term harm, are the main reason for non-adherence to prescribed medications.

So ‘equity’ which only implies drug treatment doesn’t involve equity at all.

Poor diets may be foundational to the Western world’s health crisis. But are governments considering this?

The antinomies are piling up.

We are amid a global epidemic of metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance, obesity, elevated triglyceride levels and low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and elevated blood pressure haunt the people queuing up to see doctors.

Research, from individual cases to clinical trials, consistently show that diets containing high levels of ultra-processed foods and carbohydrates amplify inflammation, oxidative stress, and insulin resistance. What researchers and scientists are also identifying, at the cellular level, in clinical and medical practice, and at the global level – is that insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress, and nutrient deficiencies from poor diets not only drive metabolic illness, but mental illnesses, compounding suffering.

There is also ample evidence that the metabolic and mental health epidemic that is driving years lost due to disease, reducing productivity, and creating mayhem in personal lives – may be preventable and reversible.

Doctors generally recognise that poor diets are a problem. Ultra-processed foods are strongly associated with adult and childhood ill health. Ultra-processed foods are

‘formulations of ingredients, mostly of exclusive industrial use, typically created by series of industrial techniques and processes (hence ‘ultra-processed’).’

In the USA young people under age 19 consume on average 67% of their diet, while adults consume around 60% of their diet in ultra-processed food. Ultra-processed food contributes 60% of UK children’s calories; 42% of Australian children’s calories and over half the dietary calories for children and adolescents in Canada. In New Zealand in 2009-2010, ultra-processed foods contributed to the 45% (12 months), 42% (24 months), and 51% (60 months) of energy intake to the diets of children.

All too frequently, doctors are diagnosing both metabolic and mental illnesses.

What may be predictable is that a person is likely to develop insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress, and nutrient deficiencies from chronic exposure to ultra-processed food. How this will manifest in a disease or syndrome condition is reflective of a human equivalent of quantum entanglement.

Cascades, feedback loops, and other interdependencies often leave doctors and patients bouncing from one condition to another, and managing medicine side effects and drug-drug relationships as they go.

In New Zealand it is more common to have multiple conditions than a single condition. The costs of having two NCDs simultaneously is typically superadditive and ‘more so for younger adults.’

This information is outside the ‘work programme’ of the top echelons in the Ministry of Health:

Official Information Act (OIA) requests confirm that the Ministries’ Directors General who are responsible for setting policy and long-term strategy aren’t considering these issues. The problem of multimorbidity and the overlapping, entangled relationship with ultra-processed food is outside of the scope of the work programme of the top directorates in our health agency.

New Zealand’s Ministry of Health’s top deputy directors general might be earning a quarter of a million dollars each, but they are ignorant of the relationship of dietary nutrition and mental health. Nor are they seemingly aware of the extent of multimorbidity and the overlap between metabolic and mental illnesses.

Neither the Public Health Agency Deputy Director-General – Dr Andrew Old, nor the Deputy Director-General Evidence, Research and Innovation, Dean Rutherford, nor the Deputy Director-General of Strategy Policy and Legislation, Maree Roberts, nor the Clinical, Community and Mental Health Deputy Director-General Robyn Shearer have been briefed on these relationships.

If they’re not being briefed, policy won’t be developed to address dietary nutrition. Diet will be lower-order.

The OIA request revealed that New Zealand’s Ministry of Health ‘does not widely use the metabolic syndrome classification.’ When I asked ‘How do you classify, or what term do you use to classify the cluster of symptoms characterised by central obesity, dyslipidemia, hypertension, and insulin resistance?’, they responded:

‘The conditions referred to are considered either on their own or as part of a broader cardiovascular disease risk calculation.’

This is interesting. What if governments should be calculating insulin resistance first, in order to then calculate a broader cardiovascular risk? What if insulin resistance, inflammation, and oxidative stress are appearing at younger and younger ages, and ultra-processed food is the major driver?

Pre-diabetes and Type 2 diabetes are driven by too much blood glucose. Type 1 diabetics can’t make insulin, while Type 2 diabetics can’t make enough to compensate for their dietary intake of carbohydrates. One of insulin’s (many) jobs is to tuck away that blood glucose into cells (as fat) but when there are too many dietary carbohydrates pumping up blood glucose, the body can’t keep up. New Zealand practitioners use the HbA1c blood test, which measures the average blood glucose level over the past 2-3 months. In New Zealand, doctors diagnose pre-diabetes if HbA1c levels are 41-49 nmol/mol, and diabetes at levels of 50 nmol/mol and above.

Type 2 diabetes management guidelines recommend that sugar intake should be reduced, while people should aim for consistent carbohydrates across the day. The New Zealand government does not recommend paleo or low-carbohydrate diets.

If you have diabetes you are twice as likely to have heart disease or a stroke, and at a younger age. Prediabetes, which apparently 20% of Kiwis have, is also high-risk due to, as the Ministry of Health states: ‘increased risk of macrovascular complications and early death.’

The question might become – should we be looking at insulin levels, to more sensitively gauge risk at an early stage?

Without more sensitive screens at younger ages these opportunities to repivot to avoid chronic disease are likely to be missed. Currently, Ministry of Health policies are unlikely to justify the funding of tests for insulin resistance by using three simple blood tests: fasting insulin, fasting lipids (cholesterol and triglycerides), and fasting glucose – to estimate where children, young people, and adults stand on the insulin resistance spectrum when other diagnoses pop up.

Yet insulin plays a powerful role in brain health.

Insulin supports neurotransmitter function and brain energy, directly impacting mood and behaviours. Insulin resistance might arrive before mental illness. Harvard-based psychiatrist Chris Palmer recounts in the book Brain Energy, a large 15,000-participant study of young people from age 0-24:

‘Children who had persistently high insulin levels (a sign of insulin resistance) beginning at age nine were five times more likely to be at risk for psychosis, meaning they were showing at least some worrisome signs, and they were three times for likely to already be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia by the time they turned twenty-four. This study clearly demonstrated that insulin resistance comes first, then psychosis.’

Psychiatrist Georgia Ede suggests that high blood glucose and high insulin levels act like a ‘deadly one-two punch’ for the brain, triggering waves of inflammation and oxidative stress. The blood-brain barrier becomes increasingly resistant to chronic high insulin levels. Even though the body might have higher blood insulin, the same may not be true for the brain. As Ede maintains, ‘cells deprived of adequate insulin ‘sputter and struggle to maintain normal operations.’

Looking at the relationship between brain health and high blood glucose and high insulin simply might not be on the programme for strategists looking at long-term planning.

Nor are Directors General in a position to assess the role of food addiction. Ultra-processed food has addictive qualities designed into the product formulations. Food addiction is increasingly recognised as pervasive and difficult to manage as any substance addiction.

But how many children and young people have insulin resistance and are showing markers for inflammation and oxidative stress – in the body and in the brain? To what extent do young people have both insulin resistance and depression resistance or ADHD or bipolar disorder?

This kind of thinking is completely outside the work programme. But insulin levels, inflammation, and oxidative stress may not only be driving chronic illness – but driving the global mental health tsunami.

Metabolic disorders are involved in complex pathways and feedback loops across body systems, and doctors learn this at medical school. Patterns and relationships between hormones, the brain, the gastrointestinal system, kidneys, and liver; as well as problems with joints and bone health, autoimmunity, nerves, and sensory conditions evolve from and revolve around metabolic health.

Nutrition and diet are downplayed in medical school. What doctors don’t learn so much – the cognitive dissonance that they must accept throughout their training – is that metabolic health is commonly (except for some instances) shaped by the quality of dietary nutrition. The aetiology of a given condition can be very different, while the evidence that common chronic and mental illnesses are accompanied by oxidative stress, inflammation, and insulin resistance are primarily driven by diet – is growing stronger and stronger.

But without recognising the overlapping relationships, policy to support healthy diets will remain limp.

What we witness are notions of equity that support pharmaceutical delivery – not health delivery.

What also inevitably happens is that ‘equity’ focuses on medical treatment. When the Ministry of Health prefers to atomise the different conditions or associate them with heart disease – they become single conditions to treat with single drugs. They’re lots of small problems, not one big problem, and insulin resistance is downplayed.

But just as insulin resistance, inflammation, and oxidative stress send cascading impacts across body systems, systemic ignorance sends cascading effects across government departments tasked with ‘improving, promoting, and protecting health.’

It’s an injustice. The literature solidly points to lower socio-economic status driving much poorer diets and increased exposures to ultra-processed food, but the treatments exclusively involve drugs and therapy.

Briefings to Incoming Ministers with the election of new Governments show how ignorance cascades across responsible authorities.

Health New Zealand, Te Whatu Ora’s November 2023 Briefing to the new government outlined the agency’s obligations. However, the ‘health’ targets are medical, and the agency’s focus is on infrastructure, staff, and servicing. The promotion of health, and health equity, which can only be addressed by addressing the determinants of health, is not addressed.

The Māori Health Authority and Health New Zealand Joint Briefing to the Incoming Minister for Mental Health does not address the role of diet and nutrition as a driver of mental illness and disorder in New Zealand. The issue of multimorbidity, the related problem of commensurate metabolic illness, and diet as a driver is outside scope. When the Briefing states that it is important to address the ‘social, cultural, environmental and economic determinants of mental health,’ without any sound policy footing, real movement to address diet will not happen, or will only happen ad hoc.

The Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, Te Hiringa Mahara’s November 2023 Briefing to Incoming Ministers that went to the Ministers for Health and Mental Health might use the term ‘well-being’ over 120 times – but was silent on the related and overlapping drivers of mental illness which include metabolic or multimorbidity, nutrition, or diet.

Five years earlier, He Ara Ora, New Zealand’s 2018 Mental Health and Addiction enquiry had recognised that tāngata whaiora, people seeking wellness, or service users, also tend to have multiple health conditions. The enquiry recommended that a whole of government approach to well-being, prevention, and social determinants was required. Vague nods were made to diet and nutrition, but this was not sufficiently emphasised as to be a priority.

He Ara Ora was followed by 2020 Long-term pathway to mental well-being viewed nutrition as being one of a range of factors. No policy framework strategically prioritised diet, nutrition, and healthy food. No governmental obligation or commitment was built into policy to improve access to healthy food or nutrition education.

Understanding the science, the relationships, and the drivers of the global epidemic, is ‘outside the work programmes’ of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health and outside the scope of all the related authorities. There is an extraordinary amount of data in the scientific literature, so many case studies, cohort studies, and clinical trials. Popular books are being written, however government agencies remain ignorant.

In the meantime, doctors must deal with the suffering in front of them without an adequate toolkit.

Doctors and pharmacists are faced with a Hobson’s choice of managing multiple chronic conditions and complex drug cocktails, in patients at younger and younger ages. Ultimately, they are treating a patient whom they recognise will only become sicker, cost the health system more, and suffer more.

Currently there is little support for New Zealand medical doctors (known as general practitioners, or GPs) in changing practices and recommendations to support non-pharmaceutical drug treatment approaches. Their medical education does not equip them to recognise the extent to which multiple co-existing conditions may be alleviated or reversed. Doctors are paid to prescribe, to inject, and to screen, not to ameliorate or reverse disease and lessen prescribing. The prescribing of nutrients is discouraged and as doctors do not have nutritional training, they hesitate to prescribe nutrients.

Many do not want to risk going outside treatment guidelines. Recent surges in protocols and guidelines for medical doctors reduce flexibility and narrow treatment choices for doctors. If they were to be reported to the Medical Council of New Zealand, they would risk losing their medical license. They would then be unable to practice.

Inevitably, without Ministry of Health leadership, medical doctors in New Zealand are unlikely to voluntarily prescribe non-drug modalities such as nutritional options to any meaningful extent, for fear of being reported.

Yet some doctors are proactive, such as Dr Glen Davies in Taupo, New Zealand. Some doctors are in a better ‘place’ to work to alleviate and reverse long-term conditions. They may be later in their career, with 10-20 years of research into metabolism, dietary nutrition, and patient care, and motivated to guide a patient through a personal care regime which might alleviate or reverse a patient’s suffering.

Barriers include resourcing. Doctors aren’t paid for reversing disease and taking patients off medications.

Doctors witness daily the hopelessness felt by their patients in dealing with chronic conditions in their short 15-minute consultations, and the vigilance required for dealing with adverse drug effects. Drug non-compliance is associated with adverse effects suffered by patients. Yet without wrap-around support changing treatments, even if it has potential to alleviate multiple conditions, to reduce symptoms, lower prescribing and therefore lessen side effects, is just too uncertain.

They saw what happened to disobedient doctors during Covid-19.

Given such context, what are we to do?

Have open public discussions about doctor-patient relationships and trust. Inform and overlay such conversations by drawing attention to the foundational Hippocratic Oath made by doctors, to first do no harm.

Questions can be asked. If patients were to understand that diet may be an underlying driver of multiple conditions, and a change in diet and improvement in micronutrient status might alleviate suffering – would patients be more likely to change?

Economically, if wrap-around services were provided in clinics to support dietary change, would less harm occur to patients from worsening conditions that accompany many diseases (such as Type 2 diabetes) and the ever-present problem of drug side-effects? Would education and wrap-around services in early childhood and youth delay or prevent the onset of multimorbid diagnoses?

Is it more ethical to give young people a choice of treatment? Could doctors prescribe dietary changes and multinutrients and support change with wrap-around support when children and young people are first diagnosed with a mental health condition – from the clinic, to school, to after school? If that doesn’t work, then prescribe pharmaceutical drugs.

Should children and young people be educated to appreciate the extent to which their consumption of ultra-processed food likely drives their metabolic and mental health conditions? Not just in a blithe ‘eat healthy’ fashion that patently avoids discussing addiction. Through deeper policy mechanisms, including cooking classes and nutritional biology by the implementation of nourishing, low-carbohydrate cooked school lunches.

With officials uninformed, it’s easy to see why funding for Green Prescriptions that would support dietary changes have sputtered out. It’s easy to understand why neither the Ministry of Health nor Pharmac have proactively sourced multi-nutrient treatments that improve resilience to stress and trauma for low-income young people. Why there’s no discussion on a lower side-effect risk for multinutrient treatments. Why are there no policies in the education curriculum diving into the relationship between ultra-processed food and mental and physical health? It’s not in the work programme.

There’s another surfacing dilemma.

Currently, if doctors tell their patients that there is very good evidence that their disease or syndrome could be reversed, and this information is not held as factual information by New Zealand’s Ministry of Health – do doctors risk being accused of spreading misinformation?

Government agencies have pivoted in the past 5 years to focus intensively on the problem of dis- and misinformation. New Zealand’s disinformation project states that

Disinformation is false or modified information knowingly and deliberately shared to cause harm or achieve a broader aim.
Misinformation is information that is false or misleading, though not created or shared with the direct intention of causing harm.
Unfortunately, as we see, there is no division inside the Ministry of Health that reviews the latest evidence in the scientific literature, to ensure that policy decisions correctly reflect the latest evidence.

There is no scientific agency outside the Ministry of Health that has flexibility and the capacity to undertake autonomous, long-term monitoring and research in nutrition, diet, and health. There is no independent, autonomous, public health research facility with sufficient long-term funding to translate dietary and nutritional evidence into policy, particularly if it contradicted current policy positions.

Despite excellent research being undertaken, it is highly controlled, ad hoc, and frequently short-term. Problematically, there is no resourcing for those scientists to meaningfully feedback that information to either the Ministry of Health or to Members of Parliament and government Ministers.

Dietary guidelines can become locked in, and contradictions can fail to be chewed over. Without the capacity to address errors, information can become outdated and misleading. Government agencies and elected members – from local councils all the way up to government Ministers, are dependent on being informed by the Ministry of Health, when it comes to government policy.

When it comes to complex health conditions, and alleviating and reversing metabolic or mental illness, based on different patient capacity – from socio-economic, to cultural, to social, and taking into account capacity for change, what is sound, evidence-based information and what is misinformation?

In the impasse, who can we trust?

Published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
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Author

J.R. Bruning is a consultant sociologist (B.Bus.Agribusiness; MA Sociology) based in New Zealand. Her work explores governance cultures, policy and the production of scientific and technical knowledge. Her Master’s thesis explored the ways science policy creates barriers to funding, stymying scientists’ efforts to explore upstream drivers of harm. Bruning is a trustee of Physicians & Scientists for Global Responsibility (PSGR.org.nz). Papers and writing can be found at TalkingRisk.NZ and at JRBruning.Substack.com and at Talking Risk on Rumble.

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Chimaeras and interspecies hybrids; the sinister agenda hiding behind covid
Rhoda WilsonMarch 20, 2024
There is something that has quietly slipped through the din of the murderously phoney episode called covid-19, Dr. Mathew Maavak writes. “If the covid-19 vaccines were ‘experimental gene therapies’, what other genetic experimentations continue unhindered out there?” he asks.

In May 2020, Dr. Maavak wrote an article about how SARS-CoV-2 was not germinated in a vacuum. The Wuhan Institute of Virology conducted research with alarming global parallels including the pursuit of superintelligence and the development of chimaeras, or interspecies hybrids.

What he wrote in May 2020 is still relevant today, he says. So yesterday, Dr. Maavak reposted his now four-year-old article.

Let’s not lose touch…Your Government and Big Tech are actively trying to censor the information reported by The Exposé to serve their own needs. Subscribe now to make sure you receive the latest uncensored news in your inbox…

Coronavirus in a Time of Chimaeras and Beyond

By Dr. Mathew Maavak

In May 2020, just as the coronavirus made hourly headlines, I had suspected that the virus was part of a much more sinister agenda. What I wrote back then remains just as relevant today. Here it is.

Genetically-Enhanced Competitiveness

The Sars-Cov-2 virus, which allegedly causes covid-19, was not germinated in a vacuum. The type of research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had ominous analogues worldwide. These included the quest for super intelligence and the development of interspecies hybrids or chimaeras.

What began as a scientific mission to remedy congenital defects has rapidly morphed into a global race to create designer babies, super soldiers and transhumans through the aid of biotechnology, artificial intelligence and/or machine-neuralinking. 21st century eugenics is tacitly justified by the need to boost “national competitiveness.”

China leads the way here. In one revealing episode, genome sequencing giant BGI Shenzhen had procured and sequenced the DNA of more than 2,000 people – mostly Americans – with IQ scores of at least 160. According to Stephen Hsu, a theoretical physicist from Michigan State University and scientific adviser to BGI:

An exceptional person gets you an order of magnitude more statistical power than if you took random people from the population …

BGI Shenzhen intends to become a “bio-Google” that will collate the “world’s biological information and make it universally accessible and useful.” From 2012 onwards, it began collaborating with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (“BMGF”). No surprises there.

Scientific endeavours like these are based on the assumption that an assemblage of smart samples can help in the identification and transplantation of optimal bits of genetic material into future generations.

Can a virus or vaccine perform this transplantation? Or will such agencies be used to cull the majority of the human population before a “genetic antidote” emerges to reverse their lethal effects? It will be too late for the vast majority of mankind by then. artificial selection, backed by artificial intelligence, may decide who gets this new booster. But is such a hypothetical scenario even realistic? There are too many imponderables here but viruses, nasal swabs and “vaccines” will surely deliver vital data for the “New Human Genome Project.”

New Eugenics Zeitgeist

The science of eugenics is not dissuaded by the nurture over nature debate, even after exhaustive studies had failed to establish genetic variants associated with intelligence. For example, a 2010 study led by Robert Plomin, a behavioural geneticist at King’s College London, had probed over 350,000 variations in single DNA letters across the genomes of 7,900 children but found no prized variant. Curiously, most of the smart samples procured by BGI Shenzhen were sourced from Plomin’s research activities.

Periodic setbacks did not deter the proponents of “procreative beneficence” who argue that it is a human duty to augment the genetic codes of future generations. Failure to do so is couched in terms of “genetic neglect” and even child abuse. If this sounds eerily familiar, look no further than the worldview which once animated the Western world before the Nazis elevated it to a whole new level altogether.

The eugenics zeitgeist has gripped China in a big way. Under its Maternal and Infant Health Care Law (1994), foetuses with potential hereditary diseases or deformities are recommended for abortion. At the rate Beijing is building its eugenics utopia, the definition of deformity may ultimately include a genetically pre-diagnosed average IQ.

Instead of inciting public outrage, the law precipitated a headlong rush to select “intelligent” babies through methods like preimplantation genetic diagnosis (“PGD”). The idea behind PGD is to screen and identify the most promising embryos for implantation and birth. Combined with CRISPR gene-editing tools, next-generation Chinese citizens are expected to exhibit remarkably higher IQs – at least according to bioethicists who fret over a future marked by the “genetic haves” and “genetic have-nots.” China already has three CRISPR-edited babies whose current fate remains unknown.

In the aftermath of the corona psychosis, the availability of “smart samples” would have increased exponentially and may dovetail nicely with the eugenics agenda of the Rockefeller Foundation and BMGF. Incidentally, Bill Gates grew up in a household that was heavily invested in population control and eugenics.

Our smart societies may inevitably face the existential question of “live-lets” and “live-nots” down the line. The orchestrated rebellion towards selective extinction, if it occurs, has a tragicomical public face: An autistic Swede who parrots the “listen to the science” and “listen to the experts” mantra.

How will future designer babies contribute to society? For one thing, we will be missing individuals like Beethoven (deaf); Albert Einstein (learning disability/late development); John Nash (schizophrenia); Andrea Boccelli (congenital glaucoma) and Vincent van Gogh (chronic depression/anxiety) and a host of others like them. A future Stephen Hawking (motor neurone disease) and Greta Thunberg (Asperger’s Syndrome – allegedly) will be genetically disqualified before birth.

It is now inconvenient to consider intelligence as a result of peer interactions, human environment and ingenious reactions to adversity. (I personally define intelligence as an ability to nip the bullsh*t in its foetid bud).

Mapping out the complex and sometimes unpredictable interplay between 100 trillion synaptic connections in a human brain may take centuries to accomplish but that does not deter the utopians of today.

After all, genetic manipulation is the eugenic wormhole that promises to accelerate the emergence of a super society at warp speed. The late billionaire paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, was a prominent proponent of this philosophy. Epstein intended to breed a “super race of humans with his DNA by impregnating women at his New Mexico ranch, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.” Welcome to Lebensborn 2.0!

Prominent scientists linked to Epstein’s transhumanist fantasies included “molecular engineer George Church; Murray Gell-Mann, the discoverer of the quark; the evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks; and the theoretical physicist Frank Wilczek.” The late Stephen Hawking – who will ironically flunk the genetic pre-screenings of tomorrow – was another Epstein associate.

Forget about Mars missions; major powers see eugenics as the next great frontier. Its hyper-materialistic focus is encapsulated by the following analogy from Russian scientist Denis Rebrikov:

It currently costs about a million roubles (US$15,500 at that time) to genetically change an embryo – more than a lot of cars – but prices will fall with greater use … I can see the billboard now: “You Choose: a Hyundai Solaris or a Super-Child?”

You are comparing a child, super or not, with a Hyundai? I mean a Hyundai, really? Sometimes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions but most of the time, it begins with a diabolically silly proposition.

But why stop at children? From genetically engineered horses in Argentina that are supposedly faster, stronger and better jumpers to super-dogs in China that are comprehensively superior to the average mutt, the DNA of the entire natural world is being slated for a revolutionary redesign.

Crouching Chimaeras, Hideous Hybrids

The masters of our universe however cannot create future generations of superhumans without being adept at recombining genetic sequences across species. That is the logic guiding eugenicists. As a result, a slew of chimaeras or interspecies hybrids have been spawned with the aid of CRISPR technology. These include ghastly human-monkey hybrids, monkey-pig hybrids, human-rabbit hybrids and a host of other lab-manufactured monstrosities.

Chimaeras are created when human embryonic stem cells are injected into embryos of other species. The goal, for the time being, is to induce growth of targeted human organs. Those facing terminal illnesses will no longer have to worry about long organ waiting lists. Chinese scientists have just transplanted a modified pig liver into a brain-dead human and it seems to have worked.

A less controversial approach to human organ replacement is 3D bioprinting or its 4D bioprinting iteration. These techniques involve the “printing” of a replacement organ from the stem cells of a transplant recipient, thereby eliminating the odds of organ rejection.

But why stop at replacement organs when we can have “replacement humans” altogether? Future generations must think like Einsteins, be as nimble as leopards and possess owl-like night visions. And, of course, be virus-resistant as well!

The manipulation of the human genome is the new “grand response” to the venerable set of “grand challenges” for 2030 and beyond. China is the go-to place for such genetic tinkering as some of these undertakings are technically illegal in the West. And this is where the utility of covid-19 comes into the picture. It provides the perfect pretext to remove such ethical constraints. After all, “Disease X” is just waiting to escape from the belly of some bat or pangolin …

Since 2014, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been the recipient of a two-stage grant worth $7.2 million from the United States government for gain-of-function research into bat coronaviruses. According to a Newsweek report in April 2020:

Many scientists have criticised gain of function research, which involves manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans because it creates a risk of starting a pandemic from accidental release.

Such caution has not deterred a flurry of research into microbial gene manipulation. The Wuhan experiments may have either spawned the Sars-Cov-2 virus or it may have provided a fraudulent context for future tyrannical mandates.

But to solely blame China for the coronavirus “pandemic” is a tad unfair. Just as China is the factory of the world for foreign corporations, it is also the genetic incubator for a variety of viruses and chimaeras for foreign governments and foundations. Even so, the human-pig chimaera was the creation of the Salk Institute in California. Research into the world’s first human-mouse hybrid was largely a Japanese affair. The Portuguese in the meantime had created a virus chimaera.

The United Kingdom, on their end, had spawned a human-cow hybrid embryo in 2008 – perhaps in keeping with the bovine disposition of those glued to the BBC. It was in Britain where the game-changing Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996.

The transition from sheep to sheeple may turn out to be a short 21st century Jurassic Park ride.

Coincidences and Consequences

Before the advent of gene-editing tools and supercomputing, it would have been impossible to create a viable chimaera. The Biotech-Industrial Complex and contact tracing-type panopticons constitute a new growth area for Tech Titans that were once facing bankruptcy.

The dangers of genome editing were in fact included in the Worldwide Threat Assessment reports submitted to the United States Congress in 2016 and 2017. These risks were either omitted or glossed over in the 2018 and 2019 reports – just as such risks gravitated to the high impact-high likelihood quadrant.

Is it a coincidence that the nations most affected by covid-19 – at least during the first two years of its alleged spread – were the very ones that had either promoted or encouraged a variety of genetic experimentations that are contrary to nature? If – and that is a big “if” – these nations succeed in their quest for “designer babies” and “superhumans,” the rest of mankind will be rendered redundant. Some mass extermination event may transpire under the guise of World War III, food shortages, Disease X or a combination thereof.


If everything goes according to plan, however, there will be 500 million potential specimens left for The Great Reset. The Third World, whose leaders are being monetarily incentivised to focus on unattainable Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”), will be consigned to the ash heaps of history.

It is quite ironic that a new generation of cerebrally deficient “thought leaders” and “experts” are being groomed to promote the demises of their societies and themselves.

About the Author

Mathew Maavak, with a PhD in Policy Studies, specialises in systems science, global risks, strategic foresight, geopolitics and governance. He is a Malaysian expert on risk foresight and governance.

Dr. Maavak has published numerous op-eds on a variety of eclectic subjects for over 20 years – by ‘connecting the dots’ in a disjointed world. He is the author of a Substack page titled ‘The Eye Opener’ which you can subscribe to and follow HERE.



https://expose-news.com/2024/03/20/chimaeras-and-interspecies-hybrids/

I own a small business and have been self employed since 1993 - this rings so very true!!!

The unfortunate truth of owning and running a business.
Running a business is really hard.
What they don’t tell you is that it can cause severe stress and anxiety, and drains you mentally to the point of depression in even the most laid-back people.
People will talk about you, compare you to others, use you, they will view you as a service and not a person anymore.
People will expect discounts and people will value you and your hard work less than a big chain store.
You have to worry about if you forget to email/message someone back, are they going to think it was on purpose? Did you disappoint them? Will they hold that against you? When in reality you just can’t get to everyone’s messages and emails.
Starting up and running a successful business puts incredible strain on personal lives and relationships, many of which fail because there is just often no work life balance. You need to be the director, the worker, the admin, the marketing team, the accountant, the cleaner..... All whilst being a parent, a provider, family support, friend, spouse...
There’s a reason you don’t see many people succeed in small businesses after 5-10 years. If they are successful they are overwhelmed. It takes a toll. It’s freaking exhausting. Especially the past couple of years when so much has been out of our control.
Here’s a small reminder that we are just normal people with hectic lives. Be kind, be patient, support small businesses…….and hopefully more of us will stick around!

The Legendary Lassie
The Journey Home
The story revolves around a Rough Collie named Lassie, who belongs to a struggling family in Depression-era Yorkshire, England. Due to financial hardships, the family is forced to sell Lassie to a wealthy Duke. However, Lassie's loyalty to her original family is unwavering. In a dramatic and emotional turn of events, Lassie embarks on an incredible journey to return to her beloved owners, overcoming numerous obstacles and challenges along the way.
How To Train Your Puppy.
https://www.digistore24.com/redir/434590/sarafraz/
Heartwarming Bonds
What makes Lassie's story truly iconic is the enduring bond between the loyal Collie and her human family. Lassie's determination, intelligence, and courage resonate with audiences, creating a narrative that transcends the boundaries of time and culture. The journey home becomes a metaphor for love, loyalty, and the unbreakable connection between humans and their furry companions.

Cinematic Legacy
Silver Screen Success
"Lassie Come-Home" was adapted into a highly successful film in 1943, starring Roddy McDowall and Elizabeth Taylor. The film's success catapulted Lassie to stardom, solidifying her place as an enduring symbol of devotion and loyalty. Subsequently, Lassie became the protagonist of a long-running television series, captivating generations of viewers with her intelligence, compassion, and knack for rescuing those in need.
Dog Health eBook + Tennis Ball Machine Automatic Throw Pet!
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Enduring Impact
Lassie's story has left an indelible mark on American popular culture, shaping the perception of dogs as not just pets but as integral members of the family. The character of Lassie has become synonymous with loyalty, courage, and the unwavering bond between humans and their canine companions. The iconic image of Lassie, with her distinctive rough coat and expressive eyes, continues to evoke a sense of nostalgia and warmth.

Conclusion
In the vast landscape of dog stories, Lassie's tale stands out as a cinematic masterpiece that has transcended generations. The enduring legacy of Lassie's journey home has ingrained itself in the hearts of viewers, reminding us of the profound impact that the bond between humans and dogs can have. Lassie's story remains a timeless tribute to the loyalty and love that our furry friends bring into our lives.

Curious about the magic of turmeric and its healing properties?

Dive into the 13 health benefits of this tonic!

1. Anti-inflammatory
2. Antioxidant
3. Helps with depression and cancer
4. Helps also with dementia, arthritis, heart disease
5. Improves memory and brain function
6. Burns fat
7. Improves digestion
8. Lowers blood sugar
9. Clear congestion
10. Lowers blood sugar
11. Reduces insulin resistance
12. Boosts immunity
13. Supports heart health

Ingredients:
Green Tea
Cinnamon Stick
Cayenne Pepper
Black Pepper
Turmeric Powder
Orange Juice
3 tots of Apple Cider Vinegar

Follow: Barbara O'neill ️

PINE NEEDLE OIL (science)

Unlike Ivermectin, Pine needle oil can be used continuously. It's safe for the human body and is classified as an essential food.
Pine needle oil surrounds all parasite varieties and suffocates them to death.
Pine oil is a treatment against influenza A, a potent anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and a natural antibiotic. It’s an effective blood thinner, anticoagulant, antimalarial, antitumor, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, and a powerful antioxidant with five times the amount of vitamin C than oranges.

Pine needle oil is one of the top meta nutrients known to man. It turbo charges immunity and repairs cellular damage. Pine oil absorbs into every cell of your body in just 20 minutes. Pine oil treats pain of all kinds because it bypasses your nervous system and treats nerves directly, something truly rare in medicine!

Pine oil remedies depression, chronic PTSD and reverses the memory of trauma in cells. There is no replacement for pine oil, which is essential in every protocol.

Read more:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7278015/

Read more:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6920849/

HUGE CAVEAT TO HABITUAL PILL TAKERS!
Posted on January 29, 2024 by State of the Nation
By Marina Zhang
The Epoch Times

It is well-known that dementia is often a result of aging. However, sometimes it can be caused by medications.


(Life science/Shutterstock)
Drug-induced dementia, the late neurologist and neurosurgeon K.K. Jain wrote, is a type of reversible dementia different from common neurodegenerative disorders.

Several drugs increase the risks of dementia, the most prominent being anticholinergic drugs, anti-epileptics, oncology drugs, and sedative-hypnotic drugs. These are all common prescriptions for older people.

In recent years, antidepressants have also been linked with dementia risks.

The Link Between Dementia and Common Drugs

Psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin, who has published several books on psychopharmacology, told The Epoch Times that most drugs on the market have some degree of neurotoxicity, which can lead to cognitive and neurological side effects.

Not everyone will be affected by a drug’s neurotoxic effects, though older people and those with brain deficits are more vulnerable.

With illnesses that surface in old age and the pills prescribed to treat each symptom, older people also tend to be the most likely cohort to be prescribed drugs that damage their cognition.

For example, many drugs prescribed to treat Parkinson’s disease are linked with dementia risks since they block acetylcholine in the brain as a way of preventing tremors and sudden movements in patients. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that also facilitates cognitive function.

Proton pump inhibitors, often prescribed to treat heartburn, have also been shown in studies to increase people’s risks of dementia by 44 percent.

Within the literature, the most well-known class of drugs that can induce dementia are anticholinergic drugs.

Anticholinergics block the release of acetylcholine. As early as 1977, experiments using the anticholinergic drug scopolamine showed that 40 minutes after drug administration, young medical volunteers in their 20s manifested dementia-like symptoms and had a harder time recalling things they had just learned.

Anticholinergic drugs block autonomic muscle movements and various bodily functions and are often prescribed for cramping and spasms in various organs. They also function as a sedative.

Neuroscientist Dayan Goodenowe, who has a doctorate in medicine and psychiatry, explained on Epoch TV’s “Vital Signs” program that the acetylcholine system is the same system that controls cognition and mobility, two major functions impaired in dementia.

When neurons become unable to release acetylcholine, either due to age or drug effects, their contact with other neurons is reduced. The neurons and brain then start to shrink.

This has also been observed in research published by Indiana University professor Shannon Risacher, who has a doctorate in medical neuroscience. She found that people taking anticholinergic drugs have greater shrinkage of overall brain volume.

“Use of medication with significant anticholinergic activity should likely be discouraged in older adults if alternative therapies are available,” Ms. Risacher and her co-authors wrote in a JAMA Neurology study.

Examples of anticholinergic drugs include diphenhydramine, the active compound in Benadryl, Tylenol PM, and Advil PM. They also include common medications for Parkinson’s disease, such as benztropine, trihexyphenidyl, etc.

Acetylcholine naturally decreases with aging, so Mr. Goodenowe and his team have been attempting to find therapeutics that increase the brain’s acetylcholine levels without compromising overall brain function.

Antidepressants, Other Drugs, and Polypharmacy

Antidepressants, anti-epileptics, hypnotic sedatives, and opioids have also been shown to increase a person’s risk of dementia. These, along with anti-parkinsonian drugs, are all psychoactive.

The primary function of antidepressants is to block neurotransmitters such as serotonin instead of acetylcholine. However, these drugs still have potent anticholinergic properties and, when taken with other anticholinergics, could add to the overall load, potentially inducing side effects of delirium and dementia.

Older people with dementia are often prescribed antidepressants, anti-epileptics, and sedative drugs to help manage depression and aggression that can arise.

However, Dr. Breggin highlighted that an irony is that the drugs prescribed to patients to improve these conditions may very well exacerbate their illness.

Drugs not prescribed for psychoactive treatment have also been linked to dementia.

Type 1 histamine (H1) blockers, prescribed to control allergies, have been shown to increase the risk of dementia in some people. Compared to type 2 histamine (H2) blockers, some H1 blockers can cross the blood-brain barrier and prevent acetylcholine release.

Furthermore, prescribing multiple drugs to a patient—a practice known as polypharmacy—may cause cumulative adverse effects.

“Whether a patient will develop cognitive impairment or not when prescribed a particular drug with anticholinergic properties is unpredictable and depends on factors such as co-medications which may have anticholinergic effects,” Drs. Alan Moore and Shaun O’Keefe, professors of geriatric medicine, wrote in their paper discussing drug-induced neurological effects.

“Studies have suggested that it is often the total burden of anticholinergic drugs that determines development of delirium rather than any single agent,” they added.

The Complex Brain

While many psychoactive drugs on the market attempt to “fix” the brain, how the organ is supposed to function at baseline largely remains a mystery.

Psychoactive drugs are often prescribed to correct brain chemical imbalances, but researchers do not know what the brain’s normal state truly looks like, as Yale University professor Avram Holmes illustrated in his 2018 comment about the brain having “no fixed normal” state.

“There are hundreds of neurotransmitters we don’t know about and maybe thousands of transmitters,” Dr. Breggin said. “We just have a few that are deeply affected by psych drugs, and [those are the ones we] could study because the drug companies in the pharmaceutical industry pay for that.”

Dr. Breggin argues that psychoactive drugs, which aim to address biochemical imbalances within the brain, actually cause the brain to become further maladapted.

He gave the example of SSRIs, which increase serotonin levels by blocking serotonin removal.

He has observed that the brain experiences two changes while on the drug: It reduces serotonin production and reduces the power of the serotonin removal system.

___
https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/several-common-drugs-are-linked-to-dementia-5574311?utm


http://stateofthenation.co/?p=207794

https://donshafi911.blogspot.com/2024/01/huge-caveat-to-habitual-pill-takers.html

Health benefits of the Sun: Vitamin D can reduce the risk of cancer by as much as 67%
Rhoda WilsonDecember 28, 2023
Vitamin D is involved in the biology of all cells in your body, including your immune cells. A large number of studies have shown raising your vitamin D level can significantly reduce your risk of cancer.

Most recently, researchers found vitamin D and calcium supplementation lowered participants’ overall cancer risk by 30%.

Having a serum vitamin D level of at least 40 ng/ml reduces your risk for cancer by 67% compared to having a level of 20 ng/ml or less; most cancers occur in people with a vitamin D level between 10 and 40 ng/ml.

Higher Vitamin D Levels Lower Cancer Risk

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

This article was originally published on 10 April 2017.

Thousands of studies have been done on the health effects of vitamin D, and research shows it is involved in the biology of all cells and tissues in your body, including your immune cells. Your cells actually need the active form of vitamin D to gain access to the genetic blueprints stored inside.

This is one of the reasons why vitamin D has the ability to impact such a wide variety of health problems – from foetal development to cancer. Unfortunately, despite being easy and inexpensive to address, vitamin D deficiency is an epidemic around the world.

It’s been estimated that as many as 90% of pregnant mothers and newborns in the sunny Mediterranean region are even deficient in vitamin D,1 thanks to chronic Sun avoidance. A simple mathematical error may also deter many Americans and Canadians from optimising their vitamin D.

The Institute of Medicine (“IOM”) recommends a mere 600 IUs of vitamin D per day for adults. As pointed out in a 2014 paper,2 the IOM underestimates the need by a factor of 10 due to a mathematical error, which has never been corrected.

Grassroots Health has created a petition for the IOM and Health Canada to re-evaluate its vitamin D guidelines and correct this mathematical error.3 You can help further this important cause by signing the petition on ipetitions.com.

More recent research 4 suggests it would require 9,600 IUs of vitamin D per day to get a majority (97.5%) of the population to reach 40 nanograms per millilitre (ng/ml). The American Medical Association uses of 20 ng/ml as sufficient, but research shows 40 ng/mL should be the cutoff point for sufficiency in order to prevent a wide range of diseases, including cancer.

Research Again Concludes Vitamin D Lowers Cancer Risk

A large number of studies have shown raising your vitamin D level can significantly reduce your risk of cancer.

Most recently, a randomised clinical trial 5 by researchers at Creighton University, funded by the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”), found vitamin D and calcium supplementation lowered participants’ overall cancer risk by 30%.6,7,8

The study, which included more than 2,300 postmenopausal women from Nebraska who were followed for four years, looked at the effects of vitamin D supplementation on all types of cancer.

Participants were randomly assigned to receive either 2,000 IUs of vitamin D3 in combination with 1,500 mg of calcium, or a placebo for the duration of the study. Blood testing revealed that 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels were significantly lower in those who did develop cancer.

Joan Lappe, Ph.D., professor of nursing and associate dean of research at Creighton University’s College of Nursing, and lead author of the study, said:

The study provides evidence that higher concentrations of 25(OH)D in the blood, in the context of vitamin D3 and calcium supplementation, decrease risk of cancer … While people can make their own vitamin D3 when they are in the Sun near mid-day, sunscreen blocks most vitamin D production.

Also, due to more time spent indoors, many individuals lack adequate levels of vitamin D compounds in their blood. The results of this study lend credence to a call for more attention to the importance of vitamin D in human health and specifically in preventing cancer.

Vitamin D Status Is Strongly Correlated with Cancer Risk

Previous research has shown that once you reach a serum vitamin D level of 40 ng/ml, your risk for cancer diminishes by 67%, compared to having a level of 20 ng/ml or less.9,10,11,12,13,14,15

Most cancers, they found, occurred in people with a vitamin D blood level between 10 and 40 ng/ml. The optimal level for cancer protection was identified as being between 40 and 60 ng/ml. Another study 16 published in 2015 found women with vitamin D concentrations of at least 30 ng/ml had a 55% lower risk of colorectal cancer than those who had a blood level below 18 ng/ml.

Even earlier research, 17 published in 2005, showed women with vitamin D levels above 60 ng/ml had an 83% lower risk of breast cancer than those with levels below 20 ng/ml! The Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (formerly IOM) has also reported an association between vitamin D and overall mortality risk from all causes, including cancer.18,19

Vitamin D also increases your chances of surviving cancer if you do get it,20,21 and this includes melanoma. 22

Access Sun Exposure as Much as Possible and Get Your Vitamin D Level Checked

The UVB in sunlight is what triggers your body to produce vitamin D. I firmly believe getting regular, sensible Sun exposure is the ideal way to not only optimise your vitamin D level but maximise your health as well because sunlight also has many other important health functions. I’ll review some of these in another section below.

Regular Sun exposure provides over 1,500 different wavelengths, and we’re just now rediscovering the value of many of these other wavelengths besides UVA and UVB. For example, we now know that red and infrared light helps your body form structured water, which is important for cellular function.

Many do not appreciate that red, near, mid and far-infrared have many important biological functions. One of them is to improve mitochondrial function, especially the 660 nm and 830 nm wavelengths, as cytochrome C oxidase in mitochondria uses these wavelengths to produce ATP more efficiently.

Vitamin D3 supplements are a poor second resort, but if you’re unable to get sufficient Sun exposure, then it’s better than nothing. As demonstrated in the featured study – which specifically looked at the effects of supplementation – they do have some benefits.

Also, while not addressed in this study, I strongly recommend taking your vitamin D3 with vitamin K2 and magnesium as well, since all three work in tandem. A primary consideration when it comes to vitamin D is to get your level checked, ideally twice a year, in the middle of the summer and winter, when your level is at its highest and lowest.

What you’re aiming for is a level between 40 and 60 ng/ml year-round. Grassroots Health offers vitamin D testing at a great value through its D*Action study.

Read more: Harness the Power of the Sun for Health (Infographic)

How to Minimise Your Risk of Skin Cancer from Sun Exposure

Many avoid Sun exposure for fear of melanoma, an aggressive and potentially lethal form of skin cancer. However, it’s important to realise that melanoma occurs among those with minimal Sun exposure as well.

An important risk factor for melanoma is overexposure to UV radiation. Baking in the Sun for hours on end on a weekend here and there is not a wise choice.

To minimise your skin cancer risk, you want to avoid sunburn at all costs. If you’re going to the beach, bring long-sleeved cover-ups and a wide-brimmed hat, and cover up as soon as your skin starts to turn pink.

Following are some general guidelines for sensible Sun exposure. If you pay close attention to these, you can determine, within reason, safe exposure durations.

Know your skin type based on the Fitzpatrick skin type classification system. The lighter your skin, the less exposure to UV light is necessary. The downside is that lighter skin is also the most vulnerable to damage from overexposure.
For very fair-skinned people and those with photodermatitis, any Sun exposure may be unwanted and they should carefully measure vitamin D levels while ensuring they have an adequate intake of vitamin D, vitamin K2, magnesium and calcium.
For most people, safe UV exposure is possible by knowing your skin type and the current strength of the Sun’s rays. There are several apps and devices to help you optimise the benefits of Sun exposure while mitigating the risks. Also, be extremely careful if you have not been in the Sun for some time. Your first exposures of the year are the most sensitive, so be especially careful to limit your initial time in the Sun.
Vitamin D Influences Your Health in Many Ways

The benefits of vitamin D are not restricted to cancer prevention. In fact, the list of health benefits of vitamin D is exceedingly long. As noted earlier, researchers have now realised that vitamin D affects virtually every cell and tissue in your body, so it might be easier to list what it will not affect, rather than what it will impact.

Compelling evidence suggests that optimising your vitamin D can reduce your risk of death from any cause, 23 making it a foundational component of optimal health. Mega doses of vitamin D have also been shown to decrease the length of time critical care patients must remain hospitalised.24 Those who received 250,000 IUs for five days were released after an average of 25 days, compared to the average of 36 days for those receiving a placebo.

Patients who received 500,000 IUs of vitamin D for five days were released after an average of just 18 days, effectively cutting their hospital stay in half. The health care savings in this instance alone are tremendous. When you add in all possible diseases and ailments vitamin D can prevent and/or ameliorate, the savings could potentially tally into the trillions each year.

Certainly, for the average person, optimising your vitamin D level is one of the least expensive preventive care strategies at your disposal. If you suffer from any of the following ailments and still haven’t checked your vitamin D level, now may be the time to go ahead and do so, as research 25 into vitamin D has found it can help prevent and/or address:

Osteoporosis, osteomalacia (bone softening) and hip fractures Type 1 and type 2 diabetes
Cancer, including cancers of the breast, colon, prostate, ovaries, oesophagus and lymphatic system. Adding vitamin D to the conventional treatment for pancreatic cancer may also boost the effectiveness of the treatment 26 Hypertension (high blood pressure), cardiovascular disease and heart attacks – (According to vitamin D researcher Dr. Michael Holick, deficiency can raise your risk of heart attack by 50%. What’s worse, if you have a heart attack while vitamin D deficient, your risk of dying is nearly guaranteed)
Obstructive sleep apnoea – In one study, 98% of patients with sleep apnoea had vitamin D deficiency, and the more severe the sleep apnoea, the more severe the deficiency27 Multiple sclerosis28 (“MS”) – Research shows MS patients with higher levels of vitamin D tend to experience fewer disabling symptoms
Rheumatoid arthritis Reduced immune function
Autoimmune diseases, including psoriasis Infections, including influenza
Depression, 29 Seasonal Affective Disorder and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia Neurological disorders, including autism, dementia and Alzheimer’s 30
Health Benefits of Sun Exposure Beyond Vitamin D

There’s overwhelming evidence to suggest the human body evolved to obtain health benefits from, and to thrive in, sunlight. As previously noted in The Daily Mail:31

Even taking the skin cancer risk fully into account, [scientists] say that getting a good dose of sunshine is statistically going to make us live longer, healthier and happier lives.

One significant mechanism by which sunlight helps optimise your health is by triggering the release of nitric oxide (“NO”) when sunlight strikes your skin. 32 NO is a powerful blood pressure-lowering compound that helps protect your cardiovascular system, cutting your risk for both heart attacks and stroke.

According to one 2013 study, 33 for every single skin cancer death, 60 to 100 people die from stroke or heart disease related to hypertension. So, your risk of dying from heart disease or stroke is on average 80 times greater than your risk of dying from skin cancer.

Importantly, while higher vitamin D levels correlate with lower rates of cardiovascular disease, oral vitamin D supplements do not appear to benefit blood pressure, and the fact that supplements do not increase NO may be the reason for this. According to researcher Dr. Richard Weller:

We suspect that the benefits to heart health of sunlight will outweigh the risk of skin cancer. The work we have done provides a mechanism that might account for this, and also explains why dietary vitamin D supplements alone will not be able to compensate for lack of sunlight.

To get a thorough understanding of how UV light affects your cardiovascular function, read Weller’s paper, ‘Sunlight Has Cardiovascular Benefits Independently of Vitamin D’. 34 Research also shows that UV light:

Helps treat and prevent the spread of diseases like tuberculosis. 35
Helps anchor your circadian rhythm, helping you sleep better.
Helps kill and prevent the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. UV light at 254 nanometres acts as a potent bactericidal, killing drug-resistant strains of S. aureus and E. faecalis in as little as 5 seconds. 36
Reduces your risk of myopia (short-sightedness). As reported by The Daily Mail: 37 “[R]esearchers believe that the neurotransmitter dopamine is responsible. It is known to inhibit the excessive eyeball growth that causes myopia. Sunshine causes the retina to release more dopamine.”
Helps treat seasonal affective disorder and major depression. 38 Schizophrenia has also been linked to maternal lack of Sun exposure during pregnancy. 39
Boosts men’s libido by increasing testosterone. Research reveals men’s testosterone levels rise and fall with the seasons. Researchers have also linked low vitamin D with an increased risk for erectile dysfunction. 40
Helps maintain vitamin D status in elderly people at a lower cost than that of using oral vitamin D supplementation. 41 Not only could UV lamps help improve nursing home patients’ physical health, but they could also help relieve symptoms of depression.
Lowers all-cause mortality. In one study,42,43 women who avoided Sun exposure had double the all-cause mortality rate of those who got regular Sun exposure. Another 54-month-long study, 44 involving more than 422,800 healthy adults, found that those who were most deficient in vitamin D had an 88% increased mortality risk.
Embrace Sensible Sun Exposure as a Health-Promoting Habit

Safe exposure to sunshine is possible by understanding your skin type, the UV strength at the time of exposure, and your duration of exposure. My advice has been clear: Always avoid sunburn. Once your skin develops the slightest tint of pink, cover up with clothing to avoid further exposure.

The most important part of the equation is to pay close attention to your vitamin D level. Ideally, get your vitamin D tested during the peak of summer and at the end of winter to help guide your UV exposure and vitamin D supplementation. The evidence is overwhelming: You really do need sensible Sun exposure for optimal health.

Since few foods contain any significant amount of vitamin D, and your body certainly was not designed to get its vitamin D from supplements, which are a modern invention, the only rational conclusion is that Sun exposure is the ideal way to raise your vitamin D level.

Research has shown just how beautifully your body has been designed to use the Sun’s UV rays to promote health. It even has built-in “fail-safes” and self-regulatory processes to ensure you cannot produce too much vitamin D from Sun exposure. Plus, the vitamin D produced by UVB rays actually helps counteract the skin damage caused by UVA. It’s an intricate dance that simply cannot be fully duplicated with a supplement.

Sources and References

1 Ther Adv Musculoskelet Dis v.8(4); 2016 Aug
2 Nutrients 2014; 6(10): 4472-4475
3 ipetitions.com
4 Anticancer Research 2011 Feb;31(2):607-11
5 JAMA 2017;317(12):1234-1243
6 Lab Manager March 30, 2017
7 Newswise March 28, 2017
8 Time March 28, 2017
9 PLOS ONE 2016; 11 (4): e0152441
10 PR Web April 6, 2016
11 UC San Diego Health April 6, 2016
12 Science World Report April 13, 2016
13 Oncology Nurse Advisor April 22, 2016
14 Tech Times April 11, 2016
15 Chrisbeatcancer.com, Vitamin D
16 Cancer Prev Res (Phila). 2015 Aug;8(8):675-82
17 European Journal of Cancer 2005 May;41(8):1164-9
18 Institute of Medicine, Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium, Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D
19, 44 J Clin Endocrinol Metab 2013;98:2160-2167
20 Anticancer Research February 2011: 31(2); 607-611
21 UC San Diego Health System Press Release March 6, 2014
22 Cancer Therapy Advisor March 23, 2016
23 New York Times November 24, 2014
24 Medical Press May 27, 2015
25 Harvard T.H. Chan. Vitamin D
26 Salk. FAQ on Pancreatic Cancer and Vitamin D
27 Bel Marra Health May 3, 2016
28 Mayo Clinic. Vitamin D and MS: Is There Any Connection?
29 J Nutr Health Aging 1999;3(1): 5-7
30 Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Dec 21;24(1):87. Vitamin D in Neurological Diseases
31, 37 Daily Mail May 2, 2016
32 Medical News Today May 8, 2013
33 BBC News May 7, 2013
34 Sunlight Institute January 18, 2016
35 Science Daily March 17, 2009
36 Ostomy Wound Management 1998 Oct;44(10):50-6
38 Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 1991 May; 52(5): 213-6
39 BBC News July 20, 2001
40 New Hope Network May 2, 2016
41 Photodermatol Photoimmunol Photomed 2001 Aug;17(4):168-71
42 Journal of Internal Medicine 2014 Jul;276(1):77-86
43 Business Insider May 7, 2014
About the Author

Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder and owner of Mercola.com, a Board-Certified Family Medicine Osteopathic Physician, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition and a New York Times bestselling author. He publishes multiple articles a day covering a wide range of topics on his website Mercola.com.




Why do you think the satanic oligarchs, who want us sick, weak and gone, are blocking our sun from healing us?

Health benefits of the Sun: Vitamin D can reduce the risk of cancer by as much as 67%

Vitamin D is involved in the biology of all cells in your body, including your immune cells. A large number of studies have shown raising your vitamin D level can significantly reduce your risk of cancer...

https://expose-news.com/2023/12/28/health-benefits-of-the-sun

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UNLOCKED: Spike Proteins and Lipid Nanoparticles are HIGHLY TOXIC per Systemic Review of Scientific Literature
"People who know about medicine and biology don’t think about it (nanoparticles), which is why they say it’s an 'mRNA vaccine.' Ignorance is bliss. They fell into an infinite hell."

Karen Kingston
January 18, 2024: Due to numerous requests from respected colleagues and valued Kingston Report subscribers, I’ve unlocked this article for free. Please share this compelling and critical article with your friends, family and network.

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January 16, 2024: modRNA, ‘lipid’ nanoparticles, and other gene editing technologies have epically failed at providing any human benefits for decades. Since the unleashing of the mRNA COVID-19 injections on global civilians, these nanoparticle technologies have caused massive increases in disease, disabilities, infertility and death in men, women, and children over the past 3 years.

The above stated claims were recently confirmed on January 11, 2024, by the Japanese General Incorporated Association Vaccine Issues Study Group. These prestigious scientists and doctors held a press conference to report on their systemic review of thousands of publications of scientific literature from the NIH PubMed database and other global databases on synthetic viruses, mRNA gene editing technologies, and ‘lipid’ nanoparticles.

During the press conference, Professor Emeritus Masanori Fukushima of Kyoto University stated; “Thousands of papers have reported side effects after vaccination which affect every organ without exception.”

Professor Emeritus Masayasu Inoue stated, “You will find diseases of the heart, kidney, thyroid, diabetes, liver, skin, eyes, blood, nerves, systemic diseases, brain, lungs… diseases across all medical fields have been reported. As Prof. Fukushima stated, the characteristics of this vaccine is that they occur simultaneously within entire families.”

The Spike is Toxic

Professor Yasufami Murakami of the Tokyo University of Science declared; “I believe it (the mRNA COVID-19 injection) should be STOPPED immediately. THE SPIKE IS TOXIC. It is very clear what happens when you administer a toxic gene to a human. Another point is that the lipid nanoparticles are also toxic.”

Nanoparticles are the World’s #1 Problem

Professor Emeritus Fukushima went on to explain that;

“If the problem of ‘off-targets’ is solved, there are still many other problems because these nanoparticles, which are inflammatory and environmental (cause environmental harm), especially the plastic nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are the world’s number one problem.” - Professor Emeritus Fukushima, Kyoto University

It may surprise you to learn that mRNA gene editing and nanoparticle technologies were considered weapons of mass destruction up until around 2019.

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mRNA Nanoparticles are Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption

mRNA Nanoparticles are Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption
January 15: 2024: Professor James Giordano is a former US marine and became an advisor to the US intelligence community (IC) and military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 2008 under President Barack Obama. Giordano is currently an advisor to the IC and DARPA.

Read full story

I’ve transcribed the summary of the press conference in this article and provided select references to substantiate many of the assertions made by the expert scientific and medical panel.

The name of the press conference’s moderator is Takeguchi.

Takeguchi, Moderator

“Firstly, I would like to take this opportunity to express my condolences to those who have passed away due to health issues after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Furthermore, I extend my best wishes to those who have suffered health issues and those who are currently struggling with symptoms.”

Professor Emiritus Masanori Fukushima, Kyoto University

“A systemic review of the literature has revealed some surprising facts. Thousands of papers have reported side effects after vaccination which affect every organ without exception from ophthalmology to general medicine to psychiatry.

We have compiled this information into a paper that published yesterday. These documents have been preliminarily investigated by a group of volunteer physicians. They have looked into how many cases have been reported by Japanese academic societies. This kind of reporting on drug side effects or the like is unprecedented.”

“This reporting on drug side effects is UNPRECEDENTED.”


“As my specialty is cancer, chemotherapy drugs are plagued with side effects, but the patterns are known and predetermined. The patterns of the side effects caused by this vaccine are not determined. They can occur throughout the body.”

Note: Many of the Harmful Clinical Effects of COVID-19 mRNA Were Predetermined

On October 20, 2020, the FDA met with industry to review of “working list” of the known harmful clinical effects of the mRNA lipid nanoparticle injections. IMO, for the most part, the harmful effects of the mRNA injections were known and ‘predetermined’.


Multiple diseases can occur simultaneously.

“Multiple diseases can occur simultaneously. Doctors have ‘never seen such a thing’ is a candid opinion of the medical profession.”

Note: Internal Pfizer records show that Pfizer has been recording multiple harmful clinical outcomes across multiple organ systems individual patients and failed to alert the public.

In 2022, Pfizer recorded 5 million adverse events across 1.5 million subjects injected with their mRNA ‘vaccines’. On average, each subject experienced 3-4 adverse events across multiple organ systems.


There are interferences. Censorship is taking place.

“Japanese doctors are also trying hard, but they face various obstructions. There’s this sentiment of, ‘Why report on something like vaccine damage?’ There are interferences. Such actions themselves hinder academic freedom. In some academic departments, censorship is taking place. Such as in conference presentations and paper publications.”

“This is happening globally.”

This is happening globally.

“Some journals are effectively practicing censorship.

We are working on a paper that is expected to be published soon. Once published, we will be able to report in detail. For example, the age-adjusted mortality rate for leukemia has increased. And there are significant findings for breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and so on.

We will share the relevant information with everyone as we advise and request the government on how to proceed.”

“mRNA LNP injections should be stopped immediately.”

Professor Yasufami Murakami, Tokyo University of Science

“One thing I want to say initially is that it is clear how the adverse effects occur, which is still harming many victims today. I believe it (the mRNA COVID-19 injection) should be stopped immediately.”


The spike proteins and lipid nanoparticles are toxic.

“The mechanism by which adverse effects occur is well understood; the spike is toxic. It is very clear what happens when you administer a toxic gene to a human. Another point is that the lipid nanoparticles are also toxic.

The major problem is we are injecting two toxic substances into people, one of which being that human cells are producing spike proteins (modRNA). Since the immune system will attack this, this causes very violent reactions. There are cases that occur within one or two weeks after injections, but there are also many cases that appear after one or two years.”

Note: In 2014/2015 the FDA issued warning documents on toxic effects of gene-based ‘protein therapies’ that could have lethal consequences.

In the fall of 2014, the FDA reviewed the auto-immune diseases and artificially induced genetic diseases that can be induced by protein (mRNA) gene therapies, many of which have lethal consequences.


mRNA vaccines program the immune system to cause disease and death.

“Additionally there is such a thing as good and bad antibodies in humans, and an antibody called IgG4 actually suppresses immunity. Usually with vaccines, if an IgG4 antibody is induced, it is considered a failure.

However, with the current messenger-type vaccines, a significant amount of IgG4 is being induced. When this happens, it plays various trick on various immune functions. Therefore, we want to thoroughly investigate what ratio of Japanese people are (having this harmful immune response induced).”

Note: At the 2021 JP Morgan Conference, Pfizer’s mRNA partner BioNTech published there mission statement to “harness the immune system’s full potential to fight human disease.” That is, “the disease of the human species.”


Stop the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines immediately.

“We aim to carefully examine what level of IgG4 that reacts with the spike protein is present in each individual. Of course, the problem is, we already understand these factors.

Vaccines that have failed are still being administered and the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare recognizes these are failed vaccines. So I would like to stop them immediately.

Even though I speak out in various places, they do not stop at all. So we will clearly present evidence and publish articles, one-by-one.”

Professor Emeritus Masayasu Inoue, Osaka City University

“We are working with Dr. Fukushima to create this database. So far, about 201 types of disease and 3,071 papers on side effects have been reported. It is unprecedented in human history for a single vaccine to have this much (harmful) literature out on it.

With this, we plan to present to the nation and Japanese government in the form of solid science that one can dispute. You will find diseases of the heart, kidney, thyroid, diabetes, liver, skin, eyes, blood, nerves, systemic diseases, brain, lungs… diseases across all medical fields have been reported. As Prof. Fukushima stated, the characteristics of this vaccine is that they occur simultaneously within entire families.

As for the data, when diseases such as those of the heart, kidney, endocrine, and liver are taken simultaneously within the range in which they occur, it turns out that a tremendous number of papers are reported over many pages.”

Professor Emiritus Masanori Fukushima, Kyoto University

“Mental disorders, psychiatric symptoms, depression, mania, anxiety, came up in abundance and it is endless. It’s about understanding why this is happening. That’s why actually with broader keywords, for example, not just COVID-19 vaccines, but also SARS-CoV-2, messenger RNA vaccines, and the like, when you separate it out into various key words, more and more results come up. So this is just part of it.

Even with what Dr. Inoue introduced earlier, it’s just a part of what has been done with PubMed database. There are things that won’t be picked-up by PubMed.”

Creutfeldt-Jakob Disease (CLD)

“So like ‘Creutfeldt-Jakob Disease (CLD)’ is not caught (by PubMed). However, there are such peer-reviewed papers out there from Dr. Montagnier who discovered HIV and received the Nobel Prize. This is a persuasive paper.


“So the spike protein sequence within the genes, you know, he (Dr. Montagnier) was warning that if there’s a prion-like sequence it could be very dangerous. Many scientists were warning. I too said it could be hazardous because of the possibility of prions. I discussed it with prion experts.”

Unwanted ‘Off-Target’ Diseases Throughout the Body

So, if you inject it (mRNA LNP technology) into the muscle, it will be taken up by the surrounding cells. People who know nothing about medicine and biology don’t think about such specific things, which is why they say it’s an mRNA ‘vaccine’.

However, if you know biology and medicine, such specific things don’t happen. (Unwanted) specific things are what we call ‘off-target.’ Out of control beyond the target. It doesn’t know where to go. If it goes into the bloodstream, it goes to the brain, liver, and kidneys.

Note: Pfizer publishes on their website that their mRNA spike proteins are gene editing proteins intended to modify the human genome with the hopes of not inducing off-target effects (autoimmune diseases, cancers and artificially induced genetic diseases).

“What if it (spike) is made it everywhere? That’s something people don’t think about. So it’s a very vague story about the off-targets. That problem hasn’t been solved.” - Professor Emiritus Masanori Fukushima, Kyoto University


Nanoparticle are the World’s #1 Problem.

“If the problem of ‘off-targets’ is solved, there are still many other problems because these nanoparticles, which are inflammatory and environmental (cause environmental harm), especially the plastic nanoparticles. Nanoparticles are the world’s number one problem.”

"By Hacking Organisms, Elites May Gain the Power to Re-Engineer the Future of Life Itself"

"By Hacking Organisms, Elites May Gain the Power to Re-Engineer the Future of Life Itself"
November 9, 2023: It was decided years ago to simply ‘cover-up’ the existence of the synthetic biology industry and the end-goal of converging the digital world with the human body and other life forms. Synthetic Biology is quite literally the science of turning technology into new biological life forms and

Read full story

Medical ‘Experts’ Don’t Understand the Basic Principles of Life

“Those (nanoparticles) enter the brain. However, those who don’t know anything (so they) say, ‘It’s plastic. So it won’t be digested. So it’s okay to eat.’ They pretend to know, (but they don’t). It (PEG nanoparticles) doesn’t get digested. The person has no idea how toxic inorganic substances are attached to the surfaces of those plastic nanoparticles.

So, with fragments of such knowledge, they exaggerate things and think they can get away with this (saying) “I understand! This (technology) is good!” It’s that kind of message. So honestly, they need to go back and redo from middle school biology to high school and university entrance exams.

As I mentioned earlier, medicine is still immature. Basically, we don’t understand much about the principles of life. Now this kind of thing has happened, ‘turning adversity into fortune.’

We should learn from what has happened here. Instead of saying, “Go for it! Go for it!” with the vaccines….well, it’s like ignorance is bliss, such is the world today. So, it (the declaration by doctors and health care professionals that the mRNA vaccines are safe and effective) has become a kind of faith. Vaccines centers, they are like a cult. They (the ‘medical experts and professionals’) fell into an infinite hell. Thinking that things can be understood with fragments of knowledge is a mistake.”

“Thinking that things can be understood with fragments of knowledge is a mistake.” - Prof. Fukushima

Romans 1: 22-25

When they professed themselves to be wise, they became fools. For they turned the glory of the incorruptible God to the similitude of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and four footed beasts, and of creeping things.

Wherefore also God gave them up to their hearts lusts, unto uncleanness, to defile their own bodies between themselves; which turned the truth of God unto a lie, and they worshipped and served the creature, forsaking the Creator which is blessed forever. Amen.

It is past the time for Americans and global civilians to recognize that mRNA ‘vaccine’ technology is a catastrophic threat to humanity and a moratorium must be placed on its use in all biological life forms.

The Kingston Report. TRUTH WINS.

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Stop Calling the mRNA LNP Injections ‘Vaccines’.

They are not ‘vaccines’. Every time Freedom Movement leaders use the term ‘vaccine’ they are providing cover for Pfizer and other manufacturers under the Childhood Vaccine Protection Act.

Why Opponents to Medical Freedom Don't Want You to Talk About this $Multi-Trillion Industry

Why Opponents to Medical Freedom Don't Want You to Talk About this $Multi-Trillion Industry
June 22, 2023: Yesterday I had one of the most important interviews of my life with Stew Peters. Stew and I discuss the nanotechnology industry; an unregulated, ‘dual-use’ industry with military weapons’ and consumer applications that has been causing mild-to-severe cognitive dysfunctions, infertility, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and death for dec…

Read full story

The Sheriff's Letter to Criminally Prosecute Pfizer

The Sheriff's Letter to Criminally Prosecute Pfizer
July 5, 2023: We’ve all been struggling with how to stop this hostile medical takeover of our nation, our communities, and our children. Like many of you, I’m exhausted from listening to the barrage of defensive strategies and futile tactics that have enabled innocent adults and children to continue to become disabled, diseased, and sometimes killed by …

Read full story

https://open.substack.com/pub/karenkingston/p/unlocked-spike-proteins-and-lipid?r=29hg4d&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Over 10,000 infants and children killed in Israel’s Gaza genocide, hundreds of whom are trapped beneath debris
Over 10,000 infants and children killed in Israel’s Gaza genocide, hundreds of whom are trapped beneath debris
Geneva - Israel has killed more than 10,000 infants and children since the start of its attack on the Gaza Strip on 7 October, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported in a statement issued Saturday.

Euro-Med Monitor said that 23,012 Palestinians have been killed so far in the intense Israeli air and artillery attacks on the Gaza Strip, including 9,077 children. As hundreds of additional children remaintrapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings with little chance of survival, the total number of child deaths is likely to exceed 10,000.

According to Euro-Med Monitor figures, roughly 700,000 children have been affected by Israel’s Gaza genocide, a number that includes those who were killed, injured, and internally displaced.

The rights group said that United Nations agenciessuch as UNICEF have declined to disclose the actual number of casualties, as this would requireconfronting their own inability to perform their roles, which supposedly entail saving trapped or wounded victims and effectively preventing the deaths of countless children in Gaza.

The ongoing Israeli attacks have left over 18,000 Palestinian children injured, with many in critical condition. Dozens more have suffered amputations, and hundreds more have suffered severe burns to various parts of their bodies.

Euro-Med Monitor further estimated that between 24,000 and 25,000 children in the Gaza Strip have lost one or both parents, and approximately 640,000 have had their homes destroyed or damaged, leaving them without a place to live.

In addition, the future of hundreds of thousands of children is still unknown, as 217 schools in the Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed during the Israeli attacks, severely affecting the education process in the Strip.

The children of Gaza are being subjected to indiscriminate attacks by Israel amid a genocidethat has been ongoing for three consecutive months now, said Euro-Med Monitor, while a large number of them are denied access to food and/or clean water. Many of these children have been forced to flee under fire, which has worsened their already precarious psychological situations.

Over 1.840 million Gazans have been internally displaced, leaving many families with childrenliving in severely overcrowded facilities that are neither intended nor suitable for shelter, stated the human rights organisation.

Children in the Gaza Strip are at a startling risk of starvation and death, particularly in Gaza City and the Strip’s northern areas, where children are only eating one meal a day. Euro-Med Monitor also cited the rise of dangerous coping mechanisms, like children using risky and unhealthy methods to light fires for cooking.

In addition, children in Gaza face the risk of exposure to epidemics and communicable diseases—a result of multiple crises such as lack of safe drinking water; the stopping of sewage pumps; lack of health care; and lack of personal hygiene in extremely overcrowded shelter centres.

Children under the age of 18, who make up 47% of the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip, have long had mental health issues. Prior to the current violence, four out of every five children used to report that they experienced depression, sadness, or fear, and earlier studies revealed an even higher number of mental health issues.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor renewed its urgent call on the international community to take immediate action to stop Israel’s attempts to turn the Gaza Strip into a real-life cemetery for children, to instead protect them, and to end its blatant double-standard policy that allows for Israeli impunity.

The Geneva-based organisation stressed that Israel must be held accountable for its clear violations of international humanitarian law, which are evidenced by its killing and targeting of Palestinian children and negation of their special needs for vaccines, food, clothing, and shelter—needs that are clearly recognised in the Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Protocols.


https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6020/Over-10,000-infants-and-children-killed-in-Israel%E2%80%99s-Gaza-genocide,-hundreds-of-whom-are-trapped-beneath-debris

Chris Hedges: The Enemy From Within
April 30, 2023

You Are What They Eat – by Mr. Fish
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost

America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered. Foreign aid is contingent on buying U.S. weapons. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. Israel has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from U.S. weapons manufacturers. The American public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare.

Between October 2021 and September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military, that’s more than the next 10 countries, including China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined. These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt.

The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of our military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation.

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The intoxication of war is a plague. It imparts an emotional high that is impervious to logic, reason or fact. No nation is immune. The gravest mistake made by European socialists on the eve of the First World War was the belief that the working classes of France, Germany, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia and Great Britain would not be divided into antagonistic tribes because of disputes between imperialist governments. They would not, the socialists assured themselves, sign on for the suicidal slaughter of millions of working men in the trenches. Instead, nearly every socialist leader walked away from their anti-war platform to back their nation’s entry into the war. The handful who did not, such as Rosa Luxemburg, were sent to prison.

A society dominated by militarists distorts its social, cultural, economic and political institutions to serve the interests of the war industry. The essence of the military is masked with subterfuges — using the military to carry out humanitarian relief missions, evacuating civilians in danger, as we see in the Sudan, defining military aggression as “humanitarian intervention” or a way to protect democracy and liberty, or lauding the military as carrying out a vital civic function by teaching leadership, responsibility, ethics and skills to young recruits. The true face of the military — industrial slaughter — is hidden.

The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil. Militarized societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image – threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination.

It was not in our national interest to wage war for two decades across the Middle East. It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow’s requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion.

But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict.

A war with China, now an industrial giant, would disrupt the global supply chain with devastating effects on the U.S. and global economy. Apple produces 90 percent of its products in China. U.S. trade with China was $690.6 billion last year. In 2004, U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s. China’s output is now nearly double that of the United States. China produces the largest number of ships, steel and smartphones in the world. It dominates the global production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics. It is the world’s largest rare earth mineral exporter, its greatest reserve holder and is responsible for 80 percent of its refining worldwide. Rare earth minerals are essential to the manufacture of computer chips, smartphones, television screens, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, wind turbines, smart bombs, fighter jets and satellite communications.

War with China would result in massive shortages of a variety of goods and resources, some vital to the war industry, paralyzing U.S. businesses. Inflation and unemployment would rocket upwards. Rationing would be implemented. The global stock exchanges, at least in the short term, would be shut down. It would trigger a global depression. If the U.S. Navy was able to block oil shipments to China and disrupt its sea lanes, the conflict could potentially become nuclear.

In “NATO 2030: Unified for a New Era,” the military alliance sees the future as a battle for hegemony with rival states, especially China. It calls for the preparation of prolonged global conflict. In October 2022, Air Force General Mike Minihan, head of Air Mobility Command, presented his “Mobility Manifesto” to a packed military conference. During this unhinged fearmongering diatribe, Minihan argued that if the U.S. does not dramatically escalate its preparations for a war with China, America’s children will find themselves “subservient to a rules based order that benefits only one country [China].”

According to the New York Times, the Marine Corps is training units for beach assaults, where the Pentagon believes the first battles with China may occur, across “the first island chain” that includes, “Okinawa and Taiwan down to Malaysia as well as the South China Sea and disputed islands in the Spratlys and the Paracels.”.

Militarists drain funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. The public is impoverished. The harsh forms of control the militarists test and perfect abroad migrate back to the homeland. Militarized Police. Militarized drones. Surveillance. Vast prison complexes. Suspension of basic civil liberties. Censorship.

Those such as Julian Assange, who challenge the stratocracy, who expose its crimes and suicidal folly, are ruthlessly persecuted. But the war state harbors within it the seeds of its own destruction. It will cannibalize the nation until it collapses. Before then, it will lash out, like a blinded cyclops, seeking to restore its diminishing power through indiscriminate violence. The tragedy is not that the U.S. war state will self-destruct. The tragedy is that we will take down so many innocents with us.

NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.


Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.

https://scheerpost.com/2023/04/30/chris-hedges-the-enemy-from-within/

Do You Know What’s in a Vaccine? Chemical Ingredients
Addendum to the Childhood Vaccination Series


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Over the last few decades, the number of chemicals added to foods and other products has skyrocketed. Chemicals are added to “enhance flavor”, make fruits and vegetables look fresh, extend the shelf life of packaged foods and for other invented reasons. A cornucopia of chemicals are also found in lotions and beauty products with the ostensible reason that these chemicals make beauty products feel, look, and smell nice.

Along with this increase in heavily processed foods has come increased skepticism about the necessity of inserting chemical additives into everything we touch and taste. A significant and growing segment of the US population are beginning to examine the health consequences of ingesting and absorbing these chemical-laden products.

This growing awareness about the adverse effects of ingesting and absorbing synthetic ingredients and the public’s understanding of the attendant health benefits of consuming products free from synthetic chemicals has prompted consumers to seek out organic ingredient-based items in their foods and skin lotions.

More people are showing interest in knowing about the ingredients in their food and striving to ‘eat clean.’ This increased awareness is evidenced in the steady growth of the organic food industry and trends in the natural and organic cosmetic industry where demand is higher than ever.

This same level of concern has begun to seep into the public conscience regarding a certain medical product that has mostly avoided scrutiny – the vaccine.

Having been trained to accept that this product is a customary aspect of everyday life, most people haven’t given much thought to what’s inside the vaccine vials. Rarely will the vaccine ritual in the doctor’s office include a discussion about the ingredients which are about to be injected into the patient’s body. It’s highly likely the physicians and nurses themselves don’t know the ingredients of each vaccine.

So what’s in that vial? What’s coming through that needle?

A Partial List of Ingredients

Aluminum: Aluminum salts are used in some vaccine formulations as an adjuvant. An adjuvant is a substance added to vaccines to ostensibly enhance the immune response. Examples of aluminum salts in some vaccines are aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate, alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) or mixed aluminum salts.

In a 2011 study Canadian scientists Professor Christopher Shaw and Dr. Lucija Tomljenovic stated the following:

“Aluminum is an experimentally demonstrated neurotoxin and the most commonly used vaccine adjuvant. In particular, aluminum in adjuvant form carries a risk for autoimmunity, long-term brain inflammation and associated neurological complications and may thus have profound and widespread adverse health consequences.”

Multiple studies have shown that the intramuscularly injected aluminum vaccine adjuvant is absorbed into the systemic circulation and travels to different sites in the body, such as the brain, joints, and the spleen, where it accumulates and is retained for years post-vaccination.

Mercury (thimerosal): Thimerosal is an ethyl mercury-based preservative used in vials that contain more than one dose of a vaccine (multi-dose vials) to prevent germs, bacteria and/or fungi from contaminating the vaccine. While in decline some flu vaccines and childhood vaccines in multi-dose vials still utilize thimerosal.

Mercury is known to be a genotoxic agent, even in minute concentrations, which can damage the genetic information within a cell causing mutations, which may lead to cancer.

A meta-analysis epidemiological study suggested thimerosal containing vaccines significantly increased the risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.

A 2011 study suggested there may be higher rates of blood and brain mercury levels in monkeys exposed to vaccines containing thimerosal.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the U.S. Public Health Service (1999) published a joint statement that urged “all government agencies to work rapidly toward reducing children’s exposure to mercury from all sources.”

Gelatin: Gelatin is used as a stabilizer in some vaccines licensed in the U.S. Stabilizers are added to vaccines to protect the active ingredients from degrading during manufacture, transport and storage.

Gelatin is a protein obtained from cows or pigs and produced by the partial hydrolysis of collagen extracted by boiling animal parts such as cartilage, tendons, skin, bones and ligaments in water. Some people might have a severe allergic reaction to it.

Certain vaccine viruses are grown on gelatin derived from the ligaments of pigs fed heavy doses of glyphosate in their feed. Gelatin comes from collagen which has lots of glycine.

Gelatin is one of the most commonly identified causes of allergic reactions to vaccines.

A 1999 Japanese study showed most anaphylactic reactions and some urticarial reactions to gelatin-containing measles, mumps, and rubella monovalent vaccines were associated with gelatin allergy. Based on these findings Japan removed gelatin from vaccines in 2000.

Formaldehyde: Formaldehyde is used during the manufacture of some vaccines to inactivate viruses (like polio and hepatitis A viruses) or bacterial toxins (like diphtheria and tetanus toxins).

Formaldehyde is a human carcinogen based on evidence from cancer studies in humans and is listed as aknown to be human carcinogen in the National Toxicology Program’s (NTP) Twelfth Report on Carcinogens(2011).

Phenol/Phenoxyethanol: Phenoxyethanol is used in vaccines and biologics as a preservative to prevent microbial growth.

A 2010 study, The relative toxicity of compounds used as preservatives in vaccines and biologics, assessed the relative cytotoxicity of the levels of the compounds commonly used as preservative in US licensed vaccines and found that for phenoxyethanol it was 4.6-fold, for phenol 12.2-fold and for Thimerosal >330-fold.

They concluded, “None of the compounds commonly used as preservatives in US licensed vaccine/biological preparations can be considered an ideal preservative, and their ability to fully comply with the requirements of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) for preservatives is in doubt.”

Case reports (here, here and here) have suggested a link between phenoxyethanol and urticaria (hives), eczema and anaphylaxis.

Triton X-100: Triton X –100 or octylphenol ethoxylate (OPE) is a surfactant (reducing the surface tension of liquids) and stabilizer present in some influenza vaccines.

OPEs are endocrine disruptors and break down relatively easily into Octylphenols (OPs), which are more harmful. Endocrine disruptors can alter reproductive function, increase incidences of breast cancer, affect growth patterns and neurodevelopment in children and change immune function.

Squalene: Squalene is a naturally-occurring substance derived primarily from shark liver oil. When combined with other ingredients it becomes an adjuvant, which, like aluminum, is added to vaccines to elicit a stronger immune response from the body.

A 2000 study demonstrated that one intradermal injection of squalene adjuvant produced arthritis in rats.

Some believe that Gulf War Syndrome was linked to the presence of squalene in certain lots of the anthrax vaccine.

Beta-propiolactone: Beta-propiolactone (BPL) is a commonly used reagent for the inactivation of viruses for use in vaccine preparations. It has recently been used in the development of an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine preparation.

Beta-propiolactone is a known carcinogen. Local sarcomas have been produced by subcutaneous injection of beta-propiolactone in rats. In the laboratory sarcomas and squamous papillomas in mice were produced by a single subcutaneous injection of a minute amount of beta-propiolactone.

Polysorbate 80: Polysorbate 80 is present in some vaccines to stop the vaccine from separating into its component parts. In a PubMed study Polysorbate 80 was described as, “a ubiquitously used solubilizing agent that can cause severe nonimmunologic anaphylactoid reactions.”

In a pharmacological study on mice and rats Polysorbate 80 produced, “mild to moderate depression of the central nervous system with a marked reduction in locomotor activity and rectal temperature, exhibited ataxia and paralytic activity and potentiated the pentobarbital sleeping time.”

The results of that study concluded, “The results of the present study indicate that polysorbate 80 can neither be used as a solvent for isolated tissue experiments nor when considered for intravenous administration.”

Another study from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) suggested the dietary emulsifier polysorbate 80 may induce low-grade inflammation which may contribute to metabolic diseases and increase the potential for development in colon cancer.

Genetically modified yeast: S. cerevisiae, a species of yeast, is used in vaccines in a variety of ways. It is used as an adjuvant and now through genetic manipulation it is being used to create artificial antibodies

Studies have suggested that genetically engineered yeast used in vaccines may be a contributing factor to autoimmune disorders.

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG): Monosodium Glutamate is used in small amounts in some vaccines to keep them stable and protect them from losing potency even when exposed to heat and light.

In a study that looked at rat fertility and MSG consumption the authors found there was a negative impact on the rats’ fertility.

In another study it was noted that chronic MSG intake caused kidney dysfunction and renal oxidative stress in the animal model.

Cells From Aborted Fetus: Fetal cell lines are used to grow viruses which are then collected from the cell cultures and processed further to produce the vaccine itself.

The cell lines are propagated from lung tissue of mature aborted and used in the current manufacture of a number of routine vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella (MMRV), diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis and polio, (DTaP-IPV), Hepatitis A and chickenpox.

Aborted fetal cells are listed on vaccine package inserts as “Human Fetal Diploid Cells.” Two aborted fetal cell lines, WI-38 and MRC-5, have been grown under laboratory conditions since the 1960s. Diploid cells (WI-38, MRC-5) vaccines have their origin in induced abortions.

The use of such cell lines can be profoundly objectionable to segments of the population who hold certain religious and/or philosophical beliefs.

The Italian vaccine research and advocacy organization Corvelva released a study in 2019 regarding the use of aborted fetal cell lines in vaccines.

In their summary they highlighted the following:

The human genomic DNA contained in this vaccine is clearly, undoubtedly abnormal, presenting important inconsistencies with a typical human genome, that is, with that of a healthy individual.
560 genes known to be associated with forms of cancer were tested and all underwent major modifications.
There are variations whose consequences are not even known, not yet appearing in the literature, but which still affect genes involved in the induction of human cancer.
What is also clearly abnormal is the genome excess showing changes in the number of copies and structural variants.
Serum From Aborted Calf Fetus Blood: The purpose for the fetal bovine serum is to provide a nutrient broth for viruses to grow in cells.

Humane Research Australia describes the process of how the blood is collected, “The blood is collected after the slaughter of a mature female cow, the mother’s uterus containing the calf fetus is removed during the evisceration process and transferred to the blood collection room. A needle is then inserted between the fetus’s ribs directly into its heart and the blood is vacuumed into a sterile collection bag.

Only fetuses over the age of three months are used otherwise the heart is considered too small to puncture. Once collected, the blood is allowed to clot at room temperature and the serum separated through a process known as refrigerated centrifugation.”

Beyond certain ethical considerations scientists have found that different bovine tissues contain different amounts of the BSE agent.

Antibiotics: Antibiotics are used during the manufacturing process of some vaccines to stop bacteria growing and contaminating the vaccine.

Antibiotics found in some vaccines include neomycin, streptomycin, polymyxin b, gentamicin and kanamycin.

Polymyxin B comes with a warning that, “This medicine has not been fully studied in pregnant women. This medicine may cause kidney problems. This medicine may cause nerve problems”, as well as a laundry list of side effects.

Similar warnings are found with streptomycin, neomycin, gentamicin, and kanamycin.

A study out of Finland raised concerns about excessive antibiotic use in early childhood which may lead to weight gain and altered gut bacteria.

What Else Could be in That Needle?

The list above is not a complete account of all the ingredients found in various vaccine cocktails. A comprehensive manufacturers’ catalog of ingredients can be found here, here and here.

The reality is that even a complete list issued by the producer doesn’t tell the entire story of what is found in vaccines.

Using an Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope equipped with an X-ray microprobe a group of Italian scientists examined 44 samples of 30 different vaccines and found dangerous contaminants, including metal toxicants in 43 of the 44 samples tested.

In the study, published in the International Journal of Vaccines and Vaccination, the researchers detected lead, chromium, nickel and other metals in every adjuvant sample tested.

Additional metal contaminants identified in 25 of the human vaccines included platinum, silver, bismuth, iron, and chromium. Foreign impurities such as zirconium, hafnium, strontium, tungsten, antimony, bismuth, cerium and were also detected in many of the vaccines tested.

The researchers commenting on their unexpected findings reported:

The quantity of foreign bodies detected and, in some cases, their unusual chemical compositions baffled us. In most circumstances, the combinations detected are very odd as they have no technical use, cannot be found in any material handbook and look like the result of the random formation occurring….In any case, whatever their origin, they should not be present in any injectable medicament, let alone in vaccines, more in particular those meant for infants. [Emphasis added]

When interviewed lead scientist Dr. Antonietta Gatti, of the National Council of Research of Italy and Scientific Director of Nanodiagnostics, explained that the discovery of vaccine impurities shocked the researchers:

Those particles should not have been there. We had never questioned the purity of vaccines before. In fact, for us the problem did not even exist. All injectable solutions had to be perfectly pure and that was an act of faith on which it seemed impossible to have doubts. For that reason, we repeated our analyses several times to be certain. In the end, we accepted the evidence.

Speculating on the potential consequences of these foreign impurities Dr. Gatti stated:

The particles, be they isolated, aggregated or clustered, are not supposed to be there… Our tissues perceive these foreign bodies as potential enemies…Unfortunately, though, the particles we found in vaccines, are not biodegradable. So, all the macrophages’ efforts will be useless, and depending on the exact chemicals involved, the particles may be especially toxic. Cytokines and pro-inflammatory substances in general are released and granulated tissue forms, enveloping the particles. This provokes inflammation which, in the long run, if locally persistent, is known to be a precursor to cancer.

Along with unlisted metal contaminants another unlisted contaminant was noted in some vaccines when a preliminary screening result from Microbe Inotech Laboratories Inc. detected glyphosate in the childhood vaccines they tested.

Merck’s MMR II vaccine had 2.671 parts per billion (ppb) of glyphosate, Sanofi Pasteur’s DTap Adacel vaccine had 0.123 ppb, Novartis’ Influenza Fluvirin had 0.331 ppb, Glaxo Smith Kline’s HepB Energix-B vaccine had 0.325 ppb, Merck’s Pneumococcal Vax Polyvalent Pneumovax 23 had 0.107 ppb of glyphosate.

These findings prompted Moms Across America to send a letter to the FDA, CDC, EPA,NIH and California Department of Health requesting that they test vaccines for glyphosate and recall contaminated vaccines.

MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Seneff remarked on the route by which glyphosate could get into vaccines:

Collagen is a protein found in large amounts in the ligaments of cows, and these ligaments are often used in the production of gelatin. The MMR vaccine and flu vaccine viruses are grown as live cultures on gelatin sourced from cows fed high concentrations of glyphosate in their GMO Roundup­Ready feed.

What to Do?

Given the complex nature of the composition of vaccines and the paucity of information volunteered to the public on the manufacturing processes and ingredients that go into these products, how does one go about navigating this subject?

Conventional wisdom might suggest, “Ask your doctor.” But how independent are these doctors?

Where do you turn when you discover physicians and pediatricians, who have a legal duty to fully inform patients about vaccine risks and side effects, have ideological and material incentives to avoid presenting specific information that might cause a parent to question a vaccine?

What about educational materials and advice from the agencies tasked with protecting public health? Can we trust the FDA and the CDC to provide detailed and unbiased information when it is known that they get substantial amounts of money from vaccine manufacturers?

Informed consent is a principle in medical ethics and medical law that a patient must have sufficient information and understanding before making decisions about their medical care.This includes being given a thorough account of the risks and benefits of treatments, alternative treatments, the patient’s role in treatment, and their right to refuse treatment.

Informed and individualized health care decisions about any product one puts into their or their children’s body starts with being fully informed with what is in that product.

*

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This article was originally published on Health Freedom Defense Fund.

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The Dynamic Duo: Aerobic Exercise and Weight Loss
In a world where weight loss solutions are as varied as the diets themselves, it can be challenging to discern which methods truly deliver results. One approach that consistently stands out for its effectiveness is aerobic exercise. The benefits of aerobic exercise extend far beyond mere calorie burn, making it a dynamic and sustainable tool for achieving and maintaining weight loss goals. In this review article, we'll delve into the science behind aerobic exercise and weight loss to help you understand why this dynamic duo is a key component of any successful weight management plan.

Understanding the Basics

Aerobic exercise, also known as cardio exercise, involves activities that increase your heart rate and breathing for an extended period. These activities include running, swimming, cycling, and brisk walking, among others. When you engage in aerobic exercise, your body primarily relies on oxygen to produce energy, making it an efficient way to burn calories and lose weight. But the benefits of aerobic exercise go well beyond mere calorie expenditure.

Calorie Burn and Weight Loss

The most obvious benefit of aerobic exercise is its capacity to burn calories. When you engage in activities like running or cycling, your body expends energy, resulting in a calorie deficit. Over time, consistently maintaining a calorie deficit leads to weight loss. The equation is simple: burn more calories than you consume, and you'll shed pounds. However, aerobic exercise offers more than just a straightforward approach to weight loss.

Metabolic Boost

Aerobic exercise not only burns calories during your workout but also triggers an increase in your resting metabolic rate. Your metabolism refers to the rate at which your body burns calories when at rest. Engaging in regular aerobic exercise elevates this resting metabolic rate, allowing you to burn more calories throughout the day. This is due to the increased energy demands placed on your body during exercise and the post-exercise recovery process, often referred to as the "afterburn effect" or excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC).

Muscle Preservation

Weight loss can be a double-edged sword. While shedding pounds is often the goal, it's essential to lose fat and preserve muscle mass. Unlike crash diets that may lead to muscle loss, aerobic exercise helps protect your muscle tissue. When you create a calorie deficit through aerobic exercise and proper nutrition, your body predominantly targets fat stores for energy, sparing your muscles. This muscle preservation is vital for maintaining strength, metabolic health, and overall well-being during your weight loss journey.

Psychological Benefits

Aerobic exercise is not just about physical benefits; it also plays a significant role in your mental health. Regular cardio workouts release endorphins, which are often referred to as "feel-good" hormones. These endorphins can help reduce stress, improve mood, and combat symptoms of depression and anxiety. In the context of weight loss, these psychological benefits can be essential for maintaining a positive outlook and sticking to your fitness regimen.

Sustainability

One of the most significant advantages of aerobic exercise in the context of weight loss is its sustainability. While fad diets and extreme weight loss methods often lead to short-term results followed by rebound weight gain, aerobic exercise can be incorporated into your daily routine as a long-term lifestyle choice. You don't need expensive equipment or complicated meal plans. Simply going for a run, brisk walk, or swim can become a regular part of your life, making it easier to maintain your weight loss success over time.

Combining Aerobic Exercise with a Balanced Diet

Aerobic exercise is a powerful tool, but it's most effective when combined with a balanced diet. To achieve significant and sustainable weight loss, it's crucial to monitor your calorie intake and make nutritious food choices. A well-rounded approach that combines aerobic exercise with a healthy diet is the key to long-lasting success.

Conclusion

Aerobic exercise and weight loss are an inseparable duo. The science is clear: regular cardio workouts offer a range of benefits that extend far beyond calorie burn. From boosting your metabolic rate and preserving muscle to enhancing your psychological well-being and providing a sustainable long-term solution, aerobic exercise is a dynamic and effective tool for those seeking to shed unwanted pounds.

When you embark on your weight loss journey, remember that consistency is key. Find an aerobic activity you enjoy, and make it a part of your daily routine. Combine your exercise efforts with a balanced diet, and you'll be well on your way to achieving and maintaining your weight loss goals. Aerobic exercise is not just about losing weight; it's about gaining a healthier and happier life.
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The Age of Megathreats
Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022
op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images
NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be.

Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.”

Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies.

Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries.

Goodbye to All That

Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII.

There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb.


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With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea.

Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any.

Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy.

There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia.

Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.”

But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate.

Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind.

Hard Choices, Hard Landings

The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks.

While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession).

What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant).

History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies.

Sticky Stagflation

In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral.

Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction.

This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth.

Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc.

Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade.

On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable.

The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods.

Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise.

The Worst of All Possible Economies

When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing.

Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis.

While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent.

The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture.

Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate.

With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates.

How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates.

For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage.

The Moment of Truth

In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one).

And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters.

How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust.

In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix.

Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse.

Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.

The Age of Megathreats
Nouriel RoubiniNov 4, 2022
op_roubini3_Getty Images_worlddisaster Getty Images
NEW YORK – Severe megathreats are imperiling our future – not just our jobs, incomes, wealth, and the global economy, but also the relative peace, prosperity, and progress achieved over the past 75 years. Many of these threats were not even on our radar during the prosperous post-World War II era. I grew up in the Middle East and Europe from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, and I never worried about climate change potentially destroying the planet. Most of us had barely even heard of the problem, and greenhouse-gas emissions were still relatively low, compared to where they would soon be.

Moreover, after the US-Soviet détente and US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in the early 1970s, I never really worried about another war among great powers, let alone a nuclear one. The term “pandemic” didn’t register in my consciousness, either, because the last major one had been in 1918. And I didn’t fathom that artificial intelligence might someday destroy most jobs and render Homo sapiens obsolete, because those were the years of the long “AI winter.”

Similarly, terms like “deglobalization” and “trade war” had no purchase during this period. Trade liberalization had been in full swing since the Great Depression, and it would soon lead to the hyper-globalization that began in the 1990s. Debt crises posed no threat, because private and public debt-to-GDP ratios were low in advanced economies and emerging markets, and growth was robust. No one had to worry about the massive build-up of implicit debt, in the form of unfunded liabilities from pay-as-you-go social security and health-care systems. The supply of young workers was rising, the share of the elderly was still low, and robust, mostly unrestricted immigration from the Global South to the North would continue to prop up the labor market in advanced economies.

Against this backdrop, economic cycles were contained, and recessions were short and shallow, except for during the stagflationary decade of the 1970s; but even then, there were no debt crises in advanced economies, because debt ratios were low. The kind of financial cycles that lead to crises were contained not just in advanced economies but even in emerging markets, owing to the low leverage, low risk-taking, solid financial regulation, capital controls, and various forms of financial repression that prevailed during this period. The advanced economies were strong liberal democracies that were free of extreme partisan polarization. Populism and authoritarianism were confined to a benighted cohort of poorer countries.

Goodbye to All That

Fast-forward from this relatively “golden” period between 1945 and 1985 to late 2022, and you will immediately notice that we are awash in new, extreme megathreats that were not previously on anyone’s mind. The world has entered what I call a geopolitical depression, with (at least) four dangerous revisionist powers – China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea – challenging the economic, financial, security, and geopolitical order that the United States and its allies created after WWII.

There is a sharply rising risk not only of war among great powers but of a nuclear conflict. In the coming year, Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine could escalate into an unconventional conflict that directly involves NATO. And Israel – and perhaps the US – may decide to launch strikes against Iran, which is on its way to building a nuclear bomb.


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With Chinese President Xi Jinping further consolidating his authoritarian rule, and with the US tightening its trade restrictions against China, the new Sino-American cold war is getting colder by the day. Worse, it could all too easily turn hot over the status of Taiwan, which Xi is committed to reuniting with the mainland, and which US President Joe Biden is apparently committed to defending. Meanwhile, nuclear-armed North Korea has once again been seeking attention by firing rockets over Japan and South Korea.

Cyberwarfare occurs daily between these revisionist powers and the West, and many other countries have adopted a non-aligned posture toward Western-led sanctions regimes. From our contingent vantage point in the middle of all these events, we don’t yet know if World War III has already begun in Ukraine. That determination will be left to future historians – if there are any.

Even discounting the threat of nuclear Armageddon, the risk of an environmental Apocalypse is becoming increasingly serious, especially given that most of the talk about net-zero and ESG (environment, social, and governance) investing is just greenwashing – or greenwishing. The new greenflation is already in full swing, because it turns out that amassing the metals needed for the energy transition requires a lot of expensive energy.

There is also a growing risk of new pandemics that would be worse than biblical plagues, owing to the link between environmental destruction and zoonotic diseases. Wildlife, carrying dangerous pathogens, are coming into closer and more frequent contact with humans and livestock. That is why we have experienced more frequent and virulent pandemics and epidemics (HIV, SARS, MERS, swine flu, bird flu, Zika, Ebola, COVID-19) since the early 1980s. All the evidence suggests that this problem will become even worse in the future. Indeed, owing to the melting of Siberian permafrost, we may soon be confronting dangerous viruses and bacteria that have been locked away for millennia.

Moreover, geopolitical conflicts and national-security concerns are fueling trade, financial, and technology wars, and accelerating the deglobalization process. The return of protectionism and the Sino-American decoupling will leave the global economy, supply chains, and markets more balkanized and fragmented. The buzzwords “friend-shoring” and “secure and fair trade” have replaced “offshoring” and “free trade.”

But on the domestic front, advances in AI, robotics, and automation will destroy more and more jobs, even if policymakers build higher protectionist walls in an effort to fight the last war. By both restricting immigration and demanding more domestic production, aging advanced economies will create a stronger incentive for companies to adopt labor-saving technologies. While routine jobs are obviously at risk, so, too, are any cognitive jobs that can be unbundled into discrete tasks, and even many creative jobs. AI language models like GPT-3 can already write better than most humans and will almost certainly displace many jobs and sources of income. In due course, some scientists believe that Homo sapiens will be rendered entirely obsolete by the rise of artificial general intelligence or machine super-intelligence – though this is a highly contentious subject of debate.

Thus, over time, economic malaise will deepen, inequality will rise even further, and more white- and blue-collar workers will be left behind.

Hard Choices, Hard Landings

The macroeconomic situation is no better. For the first time since the 1970s, we are facing high inflation and the prospect of a recession – stagflation. The increased inflation in advanced economies wasn’t “transitory.” It is persistent, driven by a combination of bad policies – excessively loose monetary, fiscal, and credit policies that were kept in place for too long – and bad luck. No one could have anticipated how much the initial COVID-19 shock would curtail the supply of goods and labor and create bottlenecks in global supply chains. The same goes for Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, which caused a sharp spike in energy, food, fertilizers, industrial metals, and other commodities. Meanwhile, China has continued its “zero-COVID” policy, which is creating additional supply bottlenecks.

While both demand and supply factors were in the mix, it is now widely recognized that the supply factors have played an increasingly decisive role. This matters for the economic outlook, because supply-driven inflation is stagflationary and thus increases the risk that monetary-policy tightening will produce a hard landing (increased unemployment and potentially a recession).

What will follow from the US Federal Reserve and other major central banks’ current tightening? Until recently, most central banks and most of Wall Street belonged to “Team Soft Landing.” But the consensus has rapidly shifted, with even Fed Chair Jerome Powell recognizing that a recession is possible, that a soft landing will be “very challenging,” and that everyone should prepare for some “pain” ahead. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s model shows a high probability of a hard landing, and the Bank of England has expressed similar views about the United Kingdom. Several prominent Wall Street institutions have also now made a recession their baseline scenario (the most likely outcome if all other variables are held constant).

History, too, points to deeper problems ahead. For the past 60 years in the US, whenever inflation has been above 5% (it is above 8% today), and unemployment has been below 5% (it is now 3.5%), any attempt by the Fed to bring inflation down toward its 2% target has caused a recession. Thus, a hard landing is much more likely than a soft landing, both in the US and across most other advanced economies.

Sticky Stagflation

In addition to the short-term factors, negative supply shocks and demand factors in the medium term will cause inflation to persist. On the supply side, I count eleven negative supply shocks that will reduce potential growth and increase the costs of production. Among these is the backlash against hyper-globalization, which has been gaining momentum and creating opportunities for populist, nativist, and protectionist politicians, and growing public anger over stark income and wealth inequalities, which is leading to more policies to support workers and the “left behind.” However well-intentioned, such measures will contribute to a dangerous wage-price spiral.

Other sources of persistent inflation include rising protectionism (from both the left and the right), which has restricted trade, impeded the movement of capital, and heightened political resistance to immigration, which in turn has put additional upward pressure on wages. National-security and strategic considerations have further restricted flows of technology, data, and talent, and new labor and environmental standards, as important as they may be, are hampering both trade and new construction.

This balkanization of the global economy is deeply stagflationary, and it is coinciding with demographic aging, not just in developed countries but also in large emerging economies such as China. Because young people tend to produce and save more, whereas older people spend down their savings and require many more expensive services in health care and other sectors, this trend, too, will lead to higher prices and slower growth.

Today’s geopolitical turmoil further complicates matters. The disruptions to trade and the spike in commodity prices following Russia’s invasion were not just a one-off phenomenon. The same threats to harvests and food shipments that arose in 2022 may well persist in 2023. Moreover, if China does finally end its zero-COVID policy and begin to restart its economy, a surge in demand for many commodities will add to the global inflationary pressures. There is also no end in sight for Sino-Western decoupling, which is accelerating across all dimensions of trade (goods, services, capital, labor, technology, data, and information). And, of course, Iran, North Korea, and other strategic rivals to the West could soon contribute in their own ways to the global havoc.

Now that the US dollar has been fully weaponized for strategic and national-security purposes, its position as the main global reserve currency could eventually begin to decline, and a weaker dollar would of course add to inflationary pressures in the US. More broadly, a frictionless world trading system requires a frictionless financial system. But sweeping primary and secondary sanctions have thrown sand in what was once a well-oiled machine, massively increasing the transaction costs of trade.

On top of it all, climate change, too, will create persistent stagflationary pressures. Droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and other disasters are increasingly disrupting economic activity and threatening harvests (thus driving up food prices). At the same time, demands for decarbonization have led to underinvestment in fossil-fuel capacity before investment in renewables has reached the point where they can make up the difference. Today’s large energy-price spikes were inevitable.

The increased likelihood of future pandemics also represents a persistent source of stagflation, especially considering how little has been done to prevent or prepare for the next one. The next contagious outbreak will lend further momentum to protectionist policies as countries rush to close borders and hoard critical supplies of food, medicines, and other essential goods.

Finally, cyberwarfare remains an underappreciated threat to economic activity and even public safety. Firms and governments will either face more stagflationary disruptions to production, or they will have to spend a fortune on cybersecurity. Either way, costs will rise.

The Worst of All Possible Economies

When the recession comes, it will not be short and shallow but long and severe. Not only are we facing persistent short- and medium-term negative supply shocks, but we are also heading into the mother of all debt crises, owing to soaring private and public debt ratios over the last few decades. Low debt ratios spared us from that outcome in the 1970s. And though we certainly had debt crises following the 2008 crash – the result of excessive household, bank, and government debt – we also had deflation. It was a demand shock and a credit crunch that could be met with massive monetary, fiscal, and credit easing.

Today, we are experiencing the worst elements of both the 1970s and 2008. Multiple, persistent negative supply shocks have coincided with debt ratios that are even higher than they were during the global financial crisis. These inflationary pressures are forcing central banks to tighten monetary policy even though we are heading into a recession. That makes the current situation fundamentally different from both the global financial crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Everyone should be preparing for what may come to be remembered as the Great Stagflationary Debt Crisis.

While central banks have been at pains to sound more hawkish, we should be skeptical of their professed willingness to fight inflation at any cost. Once they find themselves in a debt trap, they will have to blink. With debt ratios so high, fighting inflation will cause an economic and financial crash that will be deemed politically unacceptable. Major central banks will feel as though they have no choice but to backpedal, and inflation, the debasement of fiat currencies, boom-bust cycles, and financial crises will become even more severe and frequent.

The inevitability of central banks wimping out was recently on display in the United Kingdom. Faced with the market reaction to the Truss government’s reckless fiscal stimulus, the BOE had to launch an emergency quantitative-easing (QE) program to buy up government bonds. That sad episode confirmed that in the UK, as in many other countries, monetary policy is increasingly subject to fiscal capture.

Recall that a similar turnaround occurred in 2019, when the Fed, after previously signaling continued rate hikes and quantitative-tightening, stopped its QT program and started pursuing a mix of backdoor QE and policy-rate cuts at the first sign of mild financial pressures and a growth slowdown. Central banks will talk tough; but, in a world of excessive debt and risks of an economic and financial crash, there is good reason to doubt their willingness to do “whatever it takes” to return inflation to its target rate.

With governments unable to reduce high debts and deficits by spending less or raising revenues, those that can borrow in their own currency will increasingly resort to the “inflation tax”: relying on unexpected price growth to wipe out long-term nominal liabilities at fixed interest rates.

How will financial markets and prices of equities and bonds perform in the face of rising inflation and the return of stagflation? It is likely that, as in the stagflation of the 1970s, both components of any traditional asset portfolio will suffer, potentially incurring massive losses. Inflation is bad for bond portfolios, which will take losses as yields increase and prices fall, as well as for equities, whose valuations are hurt by rising interest rates.

For the first time in decades, a 60/40 portfolio of equities and bonds suffered massive losses in 2022, because bond yields have surged while equities have gone into a bear market. By 1982, at the peak of the stagflation decade, the average S&P 500 firm’s price-to-earnings ratio was down to eight; today, it is closer to 20, which suggests that the bear market could end up being even more protracted and severe. Investors will need to find assets to hedge against inflation, political and geopolitical risks, and environmental damage: these include short-term government bonds and inflation-indexed bonds, gold and other precious metals, and real estate that is resilient to environmental damage.

The Moment of Truth

In any case, these megathreats will further contribute to rising income and wealth inequality, which has already been putting severe pressure on liberal democracies (as those left behind revolt against elites), and fueling the rise of radical and aggressive populist regimes. One can find right-wing manifestations of this trend in Russia, Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, the US (under Donald Trump), post-Brexit Britain, and many other countries; and left-wing manifestations in Argentina, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and now Brazil (which has just replaced a right-wing populist with a left-wing one).

And, of course, Xi’s authoritarian stranglehold has given the lie to the old idea that Western engagement with a fast-growing China would ineluctably lead that country to open itself up even more to markets and, eventually, to democratic processes. Under Xi, China shows every sign of becoming more closed off, and more aggressive on geopolitical, security, and economic matters.

How did it come to this? Part of the problem is that we have long had our heads stuck in the sand. Now, we need to make up for lost time. Without decisive action, we will be heading into a period that is less like the four decades after WWII than like the three decades between 1914 and 1945. That period gave us World War I; the Spanish flu pandemic; the 1929 Wall Street crash; the Great Depression; massive trade and currency wars; inflation, hyperinflation, and deflation; financial and debt crises, leading to massive meltdowns and defaults; and the rise of authoritarian militarist regimes in Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and elsewhere, culminating in WWII and the Holocaust.

In this new world, the relative peace, prosperity, and rising global welfare that we have taken for granted will be gone; most of it already is. If we don’t stop the multi-track slow-motion train wreck that is threatening the global economy and our planet at large, we will be lucky to have only a repeat of the stagflationary 1970s. Far more likely is an echo of the 1930s and the 1940s, only now with all the massive disruptions from climate change added to the mix.

Avoiding a dystopian scenario will not be easy. While there are potential solutions to each megathreat, most are costly in the short run and will deliver benefits only over the long run. Many also require technological innovations that are not yet available or in place, starting with those needed to halt or reverse climate change. Complicating matters further, today’s megathreats are interconnected, and therefore best addressed in a systematic and coherent fashion. Domestic leadership, in both the private and public sector, and international cooperation among great powers is necessary to prevent the coming Apocalypse.

Yet there are many domestic and international obstacles standing in the way of policies that would allow for a less dystopian (though still contested and conflictual) future. Thus, while a less bleak scenario is obviously desirable, a clear-headed analysis indicates that dystopia is much more likely than a happier outcome. The years and decades ahead will be marked by a stagflationary debt crisis and related megathreats – war, pandemics, climate change, disruptive AI, and deglobalization – all of which will be bad for jobs, economies, markets, peace, and prosperity.