from: https://needtoknow.news/about-us/
A Bit of Humor
Systematic Destruction of the Food Supply
Engineered Food Shortages and Famine to Justify ‘Reset’ of US Food System
YouTube personality ‘Ice Age Farmer’ points to signs that food shortages are coming as California has ordered meat processing plants to shut down over an ‘outbreak’ of COVID-19 ‘cases’ of workers testing positive. In Michigan, when Governor Whitmer issued orders for mandatory COVID-19 testing for migrant workers, many of them walked off the job. In the past five years, venture capitalists and corporations have invested almost $10-billion to replace traditional food-source systems with synthetic food produced in laboratories. Strange explosions in food-storage facilities, fires, and wind storms across the world will further affect food supplies. Without farm labor, food will rot in the fields, and with stored food being destroyed, food prices will skyrocket. People will face hunger. Many will starve. The rest will beg the government and the corporations for food. -GEG
Rockefeller Foundation document:
Reset the Table: Meeting the Moment to Transform the US Food System
https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/report/reset-the-table-meeting-the-moment-to-transform-the-u-s-food-system/
from: https://needtoknow.news/2020/09/engineered-food-shortages-and-famine-to-justify-reset-of-us-food-system/
Time To Look at the REAL Numbers! or we Have Been Schnookered AGAIN
CDC: 6% Of US COVID-19 Deaths List COVID-19 As Only Cause Of Death
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The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) this week released a report that shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
In the latest update, the CDC pointed out that only 6% of deaths related to COVID-19 listed COVID-19 as the only cause of death. The vast majority of patients that were listed as COVID-19 related deaths also suffered from serious comorbidities.
CDCThe CDC is reporting 167,558 COVID-19 related deaths in the United State as of August 28, 2020. Out of the 167,558 COVID-19 related deaths, only 10,053 (6%) mentioned COVID-19 as the only cause according to the CDC’s new numbers. The other 94% of the COVID-19 related deaths had comorbidities associated with those deaths.
For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups here.
Some of the comorbidities found in the database include :
Respiratory diseases, Circulatory diseases, Sepsis, Malignant neoplasms, Diabetes, Obesity, Alzheimer disease, Vascular and unspecified dementia, Renal failure, Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events, Influenza, and pneumonia, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Adult respiratory distress syndrome, Respiratory failure, Respiratory arrest, Other diseases of the respiratory system, Hypertensive diseases, Ischemic heart disease, Cardiac arrest, Cardiac arrhythmia, Heart failure, Cerebrovascular diseases, and Other diseases of the circulatory system
CDCCDC Source Links
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?#Comorbidities
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/COVID19/index.htm
https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Conditions-contributing-to-deaths-involving-corona/hk9y-quqm/data
Source: CDC
from: https://firststateupdate.com/2020/08/cdc-6-of-us-covid-19-deaths-list-covid-19-as-only-cause-of-death/
“Thank You For Asking”
DHS Braces For ‘Potential EMP Attack’ As Presidential Election Nears
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a new report warning about a “potential” electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the U.S.
DHS’s warning published Thur. (Sept. 2), or about 60 days until the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, indicates there are “evolving threats against the American homeland, most recently highlighting efforts to combat an Electromagnetic Pulse attack which could disrupt the electrical grid and potentially damage electronics.”
The department released an EMP status report via the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) that said the “key actions to address known EMP-related vulnerabilities to critical infrastructure.”
CISA said an EMP attack could “disrupt, degrade, and damage technology” embedded in critical infrastructure systems. Widespread blackouts could be seen if an EMP was to damage the nation’s electrical grid, resulting in additional flare-ups of socio-economic turmoil.
“EMP attacks are part of the emerging threats against our nation and demand a response,” said Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
“That is why DHS is taking these contingencies very seriously, working diligently to mitigate our risks and equipping our state and local partners with the resources they need to do the same. We’ve made significant progress and look forward to work ahead,” Cuccinelli said.
CISA Director Chris Krebs said top priorities of the agency is to mitigate threats associated with EMPs:
“Over the past year, we have worked with interagency and industry partners to identify the footprint and effects of EMP threats across our National Critical Functions, and are developing sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective approaches to improving the Nation’s resilience to EMPs,” Krebs said.
To combat these emerging threats, President Trump signed an executive order in March 2019, delegating power to the White House for EMP preparedness.
We recently quoted Peter Vincent Pry, ex-chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, who wrote an op-ed that said the virus pandemic from China has “exposed dangerous weaknesses in U.S. planning and preparation for civil defense protection and recovery, and those weaknesses surely have been noticed by our potential enemies: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and international terrorists.”
Pry warned that “China has been planning to defeat the U.S. with an EMP and cyber “Pearl Harbor” attack for a quarter-century.”
DHS nor CISA gave any more information on ‘evolving EMP threats’ on the American homeland. There was not mention of whether the threat could be from a solar storm or EMP weapons. However, the EMP status report did mention DHS is currently running EMP pilot tests to assess EMP vulnerability on infrastructure:
“Finally, DHS is partnering with other federal departments and agencies, state, local, tribal, and territorial entities and the private sector to field test a more resilient critical infrastructure. There are a number of field demonstration (or pilot) projects planned and underway by both DHS and DOE to assess EMP vulnerability and then deploy, evaluate, and validate EMP mitigation and protection technologies.
“One such pilot is the San Antonio Electromagnetic Defense Initiative, designed to show how an entire region can become resilient against an EMP. These pilots are multisector, multifunction efforts, seeking to ensure key capabilities continue to function in a post EMP environment and that by maintaining those key functions we can expedite a full recovery. Working with federal interagency partners, DHS will play a major role in ensuring communications systems remain operational and, by ensuring key systems which are protected against EMP, are also protected against other threats such as cyber-attacks.” – EMP status report
One EMP-expert and friend-of-the-site summed up the report perfectly:
“We recognize the threat and we’re working on it and you don’t need to know any more than that, thank you for asking…”
The warning comes just two months before the U.S. presidential election…
from: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/dhs-braces-potential-emp-attack-presidential-election-nears?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
Sweden UnMasked
ER Editor: Sweden won, hands down. Why is this so hard to accept? Why another fake, non-problem over the wearing of masks?
To recap:
- REAL CASES of actually sick people were declining BEFORE lockdown in March;
- the lockdown wasn’t necessary therefore, just massively destructive;
- there’s been no second wave;
- new ‘cases’ are just healthy people with trace amounts of coronavirus RNA in their systems. And it’s summer. So now masks must be the new bone of contention. And this isn’t going away.
Today on Twitter we came across this short video clip, probably taken in the north-west of England (Liverpool region) on public transport judging by the accents. The police officer is a member of the British Transport Police. Yet if you live in Wales, apparently masks aren’t compulsory there. What gives???
It is noteworthy in the AFP piece cited below that Nordic countries except Sweden changed their mask policy in … MID-SUMMER.
********
No mandatory masks in Sweden, yet contamination continues to drop!
LE LIBRE PENSEUR
The question greatly perturbs and disturbs the pro-maskers: why does Sweden, a country of more than 10 million inhabitants, not require the wearing of masks, not lockdown and yet have fewer deaths and a significant drop in contagiousness and new cases? Moreover, how can we blame them since they’ve only followed WHO recommendations!
In reality, this has an important relationship with the principle of herd immunity because they have let the virus circulate, so a large part of the population must be immunized.
The same is true in Germany, where masks are not compulsory in schools either, and yet the country has managed its epidemic much better than France. Some Landers impose it in the corridors but not in the classroom, which demonstrates once again the absurdity of such an approach since the pupils stay very little time in the corridors and whole hours in the classrooms.
One thing is certain, this pandemic has shown us just how crazy our leaders are…
****
(ER: This report comes from AFP, which we issue an MSM warning for!)
In a masked Europe, Sweden once again goes it alone. But unlike many European countries that are seeing an upsurge in new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.
Sweden, which has attracted attention with its less strict strategy against the coronavirus, finds itself once again isolated in its fight against the epidemic, continuing for the time being to sulk the mask.
While Paris has made it mandatory to wear a mask in all its streets, in Stockholm, few wear it in supermarkets, offices, buses and subways. Only a handful bend to its use.
Instructions for social distancing and regular hand washing
If the Swedish health authorities consider it insufficiently effective, they insist on social distancing and regular handwashing.
“I find it a bit strange. In Sweden, which is a small country, they think they know better than the rest of the world,” says Jenny Ohlsson, manager of an accessory store in the Swedish capital, where you can find all kinds of colorful fabric masks. (ER: Why would AFP, to give a ‘contrary view’, interview a lady, a non-medical person, who makes her living from selling masks? This is extremely poor journalism.)
Unlike the arrangements imposed in the rest of Europe, Sweden has not confined its population and has kept its cafés, bars, restaurants and businesses open, asking everyone to “take responsibility”.
A questionable balance sheet but declining figures
The toll is questionable: with more than 5,800 deaths and 84,000 cases, Sweden is among the most affected countries in relation to its population.
But, unlike many European countries that are experiencing a resurgence of new cases, such as France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium, the data for Sweden has been declining since June.
The dangers of the mask?
Faced with this trend, health authorities see no reason to change their strategy, including with regard to masks, for the moment.
Epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, the face of this assumed Swedish strategy, considers that its effectiveness remains to be proven. Misused or mishandled, the mask could also contaminate the person wearing it, he defends.
“There are at least three weighty reports, from the World Health Organization, the ECDC (European Health Agency) and The Lancet that the WHO cites, all of which state that the scientific evidence is weak,” explains the researcher.
KK Cheng, an epidemiologist at the Birmingham Institute of Applied Health Research, denounces the logic of the “irresponsible” and “stubborn” approach.
“If those who think like him are wrong, it costs lives. But if I’m wrong, what harm does it do? “pleads this proponent of wearing the mask.
Improvement of conditions in retirement homes
Anders Tegnell prefers to emphasize the decline in numbers since the improvement of conditions in retirement homes, which recorded a large number of deaths at the beginning of the epidemic, combined with increased compliance with recommendations such as teleworking.
“Trying to replace these measures with masks won’t work,” he says. “Several countries that have introduced masks are now experiencing a sharp upsurge,” he told public television in mid-August.
Nordic neighbors turn around
If Sweden’s northern neighbors have long avoided wearing masks, they all changed course in mid-summer. (ER: And the question should be why, since respiratory viruses lose significant power during summer months in mid-latitude countries? Who is pushing this policy on these governments?)
Finland now recommends the wearing of masks in public places, Norway advises it on public transport in its capital Oslo, and Denmark has made it mandatory on public transport and cabs.
In June, some twenty doctors and researchers signed an op-ed piece in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet asking Anders Tegnell and the Swedish Public Health Agency to reconsider health policy on masks.
Faced with this call, which has been regularly repeated since then, the authorities say they are “keeping an eye on” the issue and could introduce the measure if deemed necessary.
It remains to be seen whether the transmission of Covid-19 in Sweden will continue to decrease.
In front of Jenny Ohlsson’s mask store, Gilbert Sylwander, a 69-year-old Stockholmer, contemplates the choice of colors available to him.
The sexagenarian says he has confidence in the strategy led by the Swedish Public Health Agency.
What if he had to wear a mask tomorrow? “Of course I would,” he says, “just to be polite to others.”
from: https://www.europereloaded.com/no-mandatory-masks-in-sweden-yet-contamination-continues-to-drop/masks mandatory masks
Sweden
See the USA On The Rioting Tour
Black Lives Matter Protester Arrested In Washington Was Also At Riots In Portland And Kenosha
Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,
A Black Lives Matter protester arrested during riots in Washington over the weekend had also attended riots in Kenosha and Portland, police said Monday, as the Justice Department announced it would be probing whether organizations are paying individuals to move across the country.
Seattle-based Jeremy Vajko, 27, was arrested on Saturday night amid clashes between law enforcement officers and rioters. According to the Metropolitan Police Department, he drove recklessly near the Hay-Adams Hotel and drove “into a crowd of over 100 individuals.”
Vajko, who reportedly worked for Microsoft until May, was released from jail on Sunday and his charges have since been dropped. He has insisted that his “Snack Van” is used to hand out food and water and to help transport medics.
“The van is just full of free water, food, and medical supplies for the homeless and protesters,” Vajko tweeted Thursday. “I even gave water to the people that destroyed my van.”
Washington Police Chief Peter Newsham said during a press briefing on Monday with Mayor Muriel Bowser that Vajko’s van had been sighted previously in during clashes in both Portland, the nexus of the riots, and Kenosha.
“There was a van that was driving recklessly, potentially could have hit pedestrians and officers in the area,” Newsham said of Saturday’s incident in the nation’s capital, without mentioning Vajko’s name.
“We have intelligence to suggest that van was also at some of the violence we saw in Portland, Oregon, and some of the violent activity we saw in Kenosha,” he said.
The police chief noted that his officers are being assisted by the federal government to investigate whether there is “an organized, funded attempt to create violence in our city.”
“This isn’t just Washington, D.C. We’ve seen violence in other cities and to the extent that that is coordinated, us in law enforcement, we have a responsibility to find out if it is and then answer that question ‘Who?’—and hold them accountable,” Newsham said.
He said that 70 percent of individuals arrested in recent days were from outside Washington, D.C. Bowser noted that weapons were brought into the capital by “outside agitators” to “destroy property in the District.”
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary (DHS) Chad Wolf said late Monday that the heads of organizations believed to be behind the recent riots in the United States are being probed by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
DOJ officials are “also targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country,” Wolf added, without specifying which groups.
Wolf said many of those arrested in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were from outside the city.
“So we know they’re moving around, we’ve seen them in D.C., in Sacramento, and elsewhere. We know they’re organized. We have seen similar tactics being used from Portland and other cities across the country as well,” he said.
A White House spokeswoman told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement:
“The president is highlighting questions that need answers such as who may be funding travel and lodging for organized rioters. For example, violent rioters in Kenosha who were arrested hailed from 44 different cities. An investigation is underway to determine who is funding these organized riots happening across the country.”
from: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/black-lives-matter-protester-arrested-washington-was-also-riots-portland-and-kenosha?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter
With VS Of — The Difference a Preposition Makes
NOW WAIT A MINUTE… THE CDC’S NEW NUMBERS
August 31, 2020
I’ve been getting tons of emails on this one, and, granted, it’s about that story we’re all sick of hearing about, it is nonetheless intriguing. So thanks to you all who passed it along and shared it. I had so many people sending it to me that it vaulted to the top of the finals box. The CDC appears to have released an interesting set of numbers which, if true, raise lots (and lots[and lots]) of questions:
Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics
Now, here’s the clincher, the whopper doozie squating in the middle of all of this:
Table 3 shows the types of health conditions and contributing causes mentioned in conjunction with deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death. The number of deaths with each condition or cause is shown for all deaths and by age groups.
Wait a minute, of all the deaths being reported, only 6% are due to the virus itself without other factors (co-morbidities)? (Emphasis added)
Now, if you’ve been following this whole story carefully, very early on many in alternative media were raising serious questions about the numbers of reported deaths, and many were claiming that people who were dying with covid were being reported as having died of covid, and here we appear to have a back-handed admission that this was so.
A further ramification of these new numbers is that if the percentage of deaths from the virus alone as a percentage of deaths with complicating factors is so small, the percentage of deaths relative to the whole population is even smaller.
And if that’s the case, then there seems to me to be a further implication, especially for those calling for mandatory vaccines against the virus: why is a vaccine needed for a virus that now appears, by these latest numbers, not to be nearly the dreaded pandemic we were led to believe? Or is there some other agenda behind that? Or conversely, why is there a call for a expensive vaccine research and mandates, when the dreaded (and inexpensive) hydroxychloriquine seems to have, by some sources’ lights, an effective therapeutic and in some cases curative effect?
At the minimum, these new numbers raise some disturbing questions, and appear to corroborate at least to some degree those early skeptics’ views of the basis of the numbers being reported. Time will tell, of course, what other new numbers from the CDC might indicate, or, as the case may be, backpedal, on these latest statistics.
In the meantime, Kamaula Harris is calling for nationwide mask mandates, while others push the meme that it will “never go away,” raising the prospects that “they” want to keep everyone masked… forever. The question is why. Why – with previous planscamdemics (think SARS from a few years ago) – were no such draconian measures instituted? And why institute them now?
Bottom line: the CDC’s numbers raise disturbing questions and implications. This is a case of “you tell me”…
See you on the flip side.
from: https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/08/now-wait-a-minute-the-cdcs-new-numbers/
Surgeries & Masks
Joseph P. Farrell says:For the “commenter” on the live feed chat who was snarkily asking about masks and surgeries, I urge you to consider the following:
Very interesting research: [Arthur Firstenberg is the author of *The Invisible Rainbow*].
Arthur Firstenberg on facial masks:
“As a person who went to medical school, I was shocked when I read Neil Orr’s study, published in 1981 in the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Dr. Orr was a surgeon in the Severalls Surgical Unit in Colchester. And for six months, from March through August 1980, the surgeons and staff in that unit decided to see what would happen if they did not wear masks during surgeries.
They wore no masks for six months, and compared the rate of surgical wound infections from March through August 1980 with the rate of wound infections from March through August of the previous four years.
And they discovered, to their amazement, that when nobody wore masks during surgeries, the rate of wound infections was less than half what it was when everyone wore masks.
Their conclusion: ‘It would appear that minimum contamination can best be achieved by not wearing a mask at all’ and that wearing a mask during surgery ‘is a standard procedure that could be abandoned.’
I was so amazed that I scoured the medical literature, sure that this was a fluke and that newer studies must show the utility of masks in preventing the spread of disease.
But to my surprise the medical literature for the past forty-five years has been consistent: masks are useless in preventing the spread of disease and, if anything, are unsanitary objects that themselves spread bacteria and viruses.
• Ritter et al., in 1975, found that ‘the wearing of a surgical face mask had no effect upon the overall operating room environmental contamination.’
• Ha’eri and Wiley, in 1980, applied human albumin microspheres to the interior of surgical masks in 20 operations. At the end of each operation, wound washings were examined under the microscope. ‘Particle contamination of the wound was demonstrated in all experiments.’
• Laslett and Sabin, in 1989, found that caps and masks were not necessary during cardiac catheterization. ‘No infections were found in any patient, regardless of whether a cap or mask was used,’ they wrote. Sjøl and Kelbaek came to the same conclusion in 2002.
• In Tunevall’s 1991 study, a general surgical team wore no masks in half of their surgeries for two years. After 1,537 operations performed with masks, the wound infection rate was 4.7%, while after 1,551 operations performed without masks, the wound infection rate was only 3.5%.
• A review by Skinner and Sutton in 2001 concluded that ‘The evidence for discontinuing the use of surgical face masks would appear to be stronger than the evidence available to support their continued use.’
• Lahme et al., in 2001, wrote that ‘surgical face masks worn by patients during regional anaesthesia, did not reduce the concentration of airborne bacteria over the operation field in our study. Thus they are dispensable.’
• Figueiredo et al., in 2001, reported that in five years of doing peritoneal dialysis without masks, rates of peritonitis in their unit were no different than rates in hospitals where masks were worn.
• Bahli did a systematic literature review in 2009 and found that ‘no significant difference in the incidence of postoperative wound infection was observed between masks groups and groups operated with no masks.’
• Surgeons at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, recognizing the lack of evidence supporting the use of masks, ceased requiring them in 2010 for anesthesiologists and other non-scrubbed personnel in the operating room. ‘Our decision to no longer require routine surgical masks for personnel not scrubbed for surgery is a departure from common practice. But the evidence to support this practice does not exist,’ wrote Dr. Eva Sellden.
• Webster et al., in 2010, reported on obstetric, gynecological, general, orthopaedic, breast and urological surgeries performed on 827 patients. All non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries, and none of the non-scrubbed staff wore masks in half the surgeries. Surgical site infections occurred in 11.5% of the Mask group, and in only 9.0% of the No Mask group.
• Lipp and Edwards reviewed the surgical literature in 2014 and found ‘no statistically significant difference in infection rates between the masked and unmasked group in any of the trials.’ Vincent and Edwards updated this review in 2016 and the conclusion was the same.
• Carøe, in a 2014 review based on four studies and 6,006 patients, wrote that ‘none of the four studies found a difference in the number of post-operative infections whether you used a surgical mask or not.’
• Salassa and Swiontkowski, in 2014, investigated the necessity of scrubs, masks and head coverings in the operating room and concluded that ‘there is no evidence that these measures reduce the prevalence of surgical site infection.’
• Da Zhou et al., reviewing the literature in 2015, concluded that ‘there is a lack of substantial evidence to support claims that face masks protect either patient or surgeon from infectious contamination.’
Schools in China are now prohibiting students from wearing masks while exercising. Why? Because it was killing them. It was depriving them of oxygen and it was killing them. At least three children died during Physical Education classes — two of them while running on their school’s track while wearing a mask. And a 26-year-old man suffered a collapsed lung after running two and a half miles while wearing a mask.
Mandating masks has not kept death rates down anywhere. The 20 U.S. states that have never ordered people to wear face masks indoors and out have dramatically lower COVID-19 death rates than the 30 states that have mandated masks. Most of the no-mask states have COVID-19 death rates below 20 per 100,000 population, and none have a death rate higher than 55.
All 13 states that have death rates higher than 55 are states that have required the wearing of masks in all public places. It has not protected them.
‘We are living in an atmosphere of permanent illness, of meaningless separation,’ writes Benjamin Cherry in the Summer 2020 issue of New View magazine. A separation that is destroying lives, souls, and nature.”
Arthur Firstenberg
August 11, 2020
from: https://gizadeathstar.com/2020/08/news-and-views-from-the-nefarium-august-27-2020/
Shutting Up Jiminy Cricket
Face masks make you stupid
Why face masks are a form of dehumanisation
Face masks make you suggestible; they make you more likely to follow someone else’s direction and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do
Neolithic man had a similar problem dealing with his livestock. Homo sapiens’ success has relied not insignificantly on cattle – their dairy, meat, leather and manure. Yet the cow’s ancestor, the auroch, was quite a different beast. It was fast, aggressive and dangerous – hardly conducive to be corralled into predictable channels of behaviour. So, about 10,500 years ago, man started to deliberately breed the most docile aurochs for domestication.
The key word here is docile, which comes from the Latin docere, meaning “to teach” (as does, say, ‘doctorate’ and ‘document’). Being docile means being compliant and following commands, which means submitting to a system of thought.
Whereas animals, however, typically need to be bred to have a higher level of reasoning to be taught commands, human beings, already being quite smart, need to be dumbed down. You won’t disobey an order if you lack the cognitive ability to question it. This is particularly pertinent to the smooth running of a modern world system which relies on millions of individual souls, each with their own nuanced life history and perspective, thinking and acting in the same way.
The empirical literature has shown that compliance and suggestibility are negatively related to intelligence (e.g., Gudjonsson, 1991). In consumer psychology, there is even a technique called ‘disrupt-then-reframe’: bamboozle people first and they’ll be more likely to buy what you’re selling (Davis & Knowles, 1999). Ultimately, the common denominator for increasing suggestibility is switching off executive function in the prefrontal cortex – disabling the superego, the conscience, the internal monologue. Without Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, Pinocchio would never have become a real boy – he would have always remained a puppet. Modern society is shot through with things that make us similarly dumb (literally, unable to speak).
The effect of television, for example, as Meerloo wrote, is to “catch the mind directly, giving people no time for calm, dialectical conversation with their own minds.” The mind-numbing, irrational effect of visual communication has been recognised throughout history. Not for nothing did religions talk about the word of God and forbid graven images. Unsurprisingly, empirical studies showing that watching television makes you stupid in both the short- and long-term (Hoang et al., 2016; Lillard & Peterson, 2011). This is to say nothing of pornography, which is now consumed by 98% of men but known to inhibit the part of the brain dealing with conscience and consciousness, the prefrontal cortex (Kuhn & Gallinat, 2014).
Moving from circuses to bread, alcohol, of course, reduces cognitive function in the short-term (Hindmarch & Sherwood, 1991). Even at moderate levels of consumption, it accelerates cognitive decline in older age (Topiwala et al., 2017). Junk food, likewise, makes it harder to think in the short-term (Barnes & Joyner, 2012) and harms cognitive ability in the long-term (Reichelt & Rank, 2017).
Fluoride has become something of a cliché of conspiracy theorists; being added to the public water supply in multiple countries around the world, ostensibly to reduce tooth decay. However, the evidence supporting the dental benefits of fluoridated water is poor, while many studies have shown it can damage tooth aesthetics via fluorosis (McDonagh et al., 2000). Many more studies have found that fluoridated water lowers the population’s intelligence (e.g., Borman & Fyfe, 2013; Green et al., 2019; Lu et al., 2000; Rocha-Amador et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2008).
Which brings us to face masks.
Face masks can now be added to the list of mandates that make you stupid. As if Piers Morgan feverishly promoting them weren’t evidence enough, here are the facts on why you absolutely, categorically should not wear a face mask. They make you suggestible; they make you more likely to follow someone else’s direction and do things you wouldn’t otherwise do. In short, they switch off your executive function – your conscience.
A great example comes from a study by Mathes and Guest (1976), who asked participants how willing they would be, and how much they would have to be paid, to carry a sign around the university cafeteria reading “masturbation is fun” (this being 1976, doing such a thing would be considered embarrassing; these days it will probably earn you a course credit!). The results showed that when people wore a mask, they were more likely to carry the sign and required less money to do so ($30 compared to $48, on average).
Meanwhile, Miller and Rowold (1979) presented Halloween trick-or-treaters with a bowl of chocolates and told them they were allowed to take only two each. When the children thought they weren’t being watched, they helped themselves. Children without a mask broke the rule, taking more chocolates, 37% of the time, compared to 62% for masked children. The authors concluded that masks “lead to lower restraints on behaviour”.
The effect has similarly been found online: the online disinhibition effect refers to the tendency for people to act antisocially when anonymous online (Suler, 2004). There is even an infamous trolling movement calling itself Anonymous and using a mask as its symbol.
The disinhibiting effects of wearing a mask are described by psychologists in terms of a suspension of the superego’s control mechanisms, allowing subconscious impulses to take over. Saigre (1989) wrote that masks ‘short-cut’ conscious defence systems and encourage “massive regression” to a more primitive state; Castle (1986) wrote that eighteenth century masquerades allowed mask-wearers to release their repressed hedonistic and sexual impulses; and Caillois (1962) similarly wrote about European masked carnivals involving libidinal activities including “indecencies, jostling, provocative laughter, exposed breasts, mimicking buffoonery, a permanent incitement to riot, feasting and excessive talk, noise and movement”. In the 12th Century, Pope Innocent III banned masks as part of his fight against immorality; and in 1845, New York State made it illegal for more than two people to wear masks in public, after farmers wore masks to attack their landlords.
From a neuroimaging perspective, masks are known to inhibit identity and impulse control – both associated with executive function in the prefrontal cortex (e.g., Glannon, 2005; Tacikowski, Berger & Ehrsson, 2017). In other words, masks silence the Jiminy Cricket in the brain.
It is little wonder that covering our mouths would ‘shut us up’ psychologically. Studies have shown that clothing has a powerful effect on how we think (or not), via a principal known as enclothed cognition: wearing a lab coat enhances cognitive function (Adam & Galinsky, 2012), wearing a nurse’s scrubs increases empathy (López-Pérez et al., 2016), and wearing counterfeit brands increases the likelihood of cheating in a test (Gino, Norton & Ariely, 2010). Similarly, in the world of body language, someone putting their hand over their mouth is a sign that they are listening intently: they are ready to receive information, not to question it.
While no studies have looked at the effect of masks on verbal reasoning, it is fairly safe to assume that priming a ‘shutting up’ would have a cognitive effect. For example, extraverts are less compliant than introverts (Cohen et al., 2004; Gudjonsson et al., 2004); the development of conscience in humans is heavily linked to that of language (e.g., Arbib, 2006); and inner speech is highly related to cognitive functions (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015). Crucially, verbal reasoning is strongly correlated with moral reasoning (e.g., Hayes, Gifford & Hayes, 1998): being unable to ‘speak’ makes one less able to deduce what is moral and immoral behaviour.
There is also a more basic reason masks might make you stupid: decreasing oxygen flow to the brain. Face veils reduce ventilatory function in the long-term (Alghadir, Aly & Zafar, 2012), and surgical masks may reduce blood oxygenation among surgeons (Beder et al., 2008): believe it or not, covering your mouth makes it harder to breathe. Reviewing the N95 face mask, a 2010 study (Roberge et al.) concluded that “carbon dioxide and oxygen levels were significantly above and below, respectively, the ambient workplace standards” inside the mask. A post-COVID study found that 81% of 128 previously-fit healthcare workers developed headaches as a result of wearing personal protective equipment (Ong et al., 2020).
Not only do face masks make it hard to breathe, but the evidence that they even work to stop the spread of coronavirus is limited at best. A popular brand of mask even carries a warning on its packaging that it “will not provide any protection against COVID-19”; as for preventing carriers from spreading the disease, a meta-analysis found, for example, that of eight randomised control trial studies, six found no difference in transmission rates between control and intervention groups (while one found that a combination of masks and handwashing is more effective than education alone, and the other found that N95 masks are more effective than standard surgical masks; bin-Reza et al., 2012). Non-surgical masks, such as scarfs and cloths, are almost useless (Rengasamy et al., 2010). Masks may even be unhealthy, causing a build-up of bacteria around the face (Zhiqing et al., 2018).
The fact that masks likely don’t even work brings us to the final reason that wearing one inculcates stupidity and compliance: through a bombardment of lies, contradictions, and confusion, the state overwhelms your ability to reason clearly.
As Theodore Dalrymple wrote, “In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”
The point of face masks is not to protect humans, but to diminish humanity – to rob people of their ego, their identity, and their autonomy. Masks are worn by disposable horror movie villains and ignorable background dancers; they make people less-than-human.
Dehumanisation is rarely followed by anything good. Face masks are another worrying portent of what’s to come, alongside a seismic shift in mainstream discourse. In an analysis of the Rwandan genocide, one of the first linguistic predictors was the tendency to look backwards, to blame, and to focus on past wrongs and injustices (Donohue, 2012), which will sound familiar to anyone unfortunate enough to have read The BBC or The Guardian recently. Similarly, where the Tutsis were referred to as cockroaches by the Hutus, and the Nazis depicted the Jews as rats, Nancy Pelosi recently promised to “fumigate” President Trump out of the White House.
It is hard to predict how the wheel of life will revolve in the coming years, but all signs point to trouble. During the crisis years of a generational cycle, only one thing can be guaranteed: the importance of a clear mind. To that end, allow yourself the dignity, identity and Logos of being human – and never, ever wear a mask.
https://thecritic.co.uk/face-masks-make-you-stupid/
Report: A Gates-ian Nightmare World
Most of the feature stories published by the Columbia Journalism Review, a mostly-digital biannual “magazine” published and edited by the Columbia School of Journalism and its staff, is sanctimonious media naval-gazing filtered through a lens of cryptomarxist propaganda, written by a seemingly endless procession of washed-up magazine writers.
But every once in a while, just like the NYT, Washington Post and CNN, even CJR gets it (mostly) right. And fortunately for us, one of those days arrived earlier this month, when the website published this insightful piece outlining the influence of the Gates Foundation on the media that covers it.
Most readers probably didn’t realize how much money the Gates Foundation spends backing even for-profit media companies like the New York Times and the Financial Times, some of the most financially successful legacy media products, thanks to their dedicated readerships. For most media companies, which don’t have the financial wherewithal of the two named above, the financial links go even deeper. Schwab opens with his strongest example: NPR.
LAST AUGUST, NPR PROFILED A HARVARD-LED EXPERIMENT to help low-income families find housing in wealthier neighborhoods, giving their children access to better schools and an opportunity to “break the cycle of poverty.” According to researchers cited in the article, these children could see $183,000 greater earnings over their lifetimes—a striking forecast for a housing program still in its experimental stage.
If you squint as you read the story, you’ll notice that every quoted expert is connected to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which helps fund the project. And if you’re really paying attention, you’ll also see the editor’s note at the end of the story, which reveals that NPR itself receives funding from Gates.
NPR’s funding from Gates “was not a factor in why or how we did the story,” reporter Pam Fessler says, adding that her reporting went beyond the voices quoted in her article. The story, nevertheless, is one of hundreds NPR has reported about the Gates Foundation or the work it funds, including myriad favorable pieces written from the perspective of Gates or its grantees.
And that speaks to a larger trend—and ethical issue—with billionaire philanthropists’ bankrolling the news. The Broad Foundation, whose philanthropic agenda includes promoting charter schools, at one point funded part of the LA Times’ reporting on education. Charles Koch has made charitable donations to journalistic institutions such as the Poynter Institute, as well as to news outlets such as the Daily Caller, that support his conservative politics. And the Rockefeller Foundation funds Vox’s Future Perfect, a reporting project that examines the world “through the lens of effective altruism”—often looking at philanthropy.
As philanthropists increasingly fill in the funding gaps at news organizations—a role that is almost certain to expand in the media downturn following the coronavirus pandemic—an underexamined worry is how this will affect the ways newsrooms report on their benefactors. Nowhere does this concern loom larger than with the Gates Foundation, a leading donor to newsrooms and a frequent subject of favorable news coverage.
It’s just the latest reminder that all of NPR’s reporting on the coronavirus and China is suspect due to its links to Gates and, by extension, the WHO. Back in April, we noted this piece for being an egregious example of a reporter failing to make all of the sources links to China explicitly clear. Though a few clues were included.
Of course, even CJR left out certain salient examples of the media’s penchant for protecting Gates. He was reportedly a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein’s, even reportedly maintaining ties after the deceased pedophile’s first stint in prison.
That photo never gets old.
Of course, the Gates Foundation is unusual in the level of heft it exerts, but it’s not alone. The Clinton Foundation has benefited from equally light-touch treatment from the mainstream press, if not more so. Little unflattering reporting was done on the Clinton Foundation until Steve Bannon helped Peter Schweizer produce “Clinton Cash”.
Read some more of the CJR piece below:
I recently examined nearly twenty thousand charitable grants the Gates Foundation had made through the end of June and found more than $250 million going toward journalism. Recipients included news operations like the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting; charitable organizations affiliated with news outlets, like BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund; media companies such as Participant, whose documentary Waiting for “Superman” supports Gates’s agenda on charter schools; journalistic organizations such as the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the National Press Foundation, and the International Center for Journalists; and a variety of other groups creating news content or working on journalism, such as the Leo Burnett Company, an ad agency that Gates commissioned to create a “news site” to promote the success of aid groups. In some cases, recipients say they distributed part of the funding as subgrants to other journalistic organizations—which makes it difficult to see the full picture of Gates’s funding into the fourth estate.
The foundation even helped fund a 2016 report from the American Press Institute that was used to develop guidelines on how newsrooms can maintain editorial independence from philanthropic funders. A top-level finding: “There is little evidence that funders insist on or have any editorial review.” Notably, the study’s underlying survey data showed that nearly a third of funders reported having seen at least some content they funded before publication.
Gates’s generosity appears to have helped foster an increasingly friendly media environment for the world’s most visible charity. Twenty years ago, journalists scrutinized Bill Gates’s initial foray into philanthropy as a vehicle to enrich his software company, or a PR exercise to salvage his battered reputation following Microsoft’s bruising antitrust battle with the Department of Justice. Today, the foundation is most often the subject of soft profiles and glowing editorials describing its good works.
During the pandemic, news outlets have widely looked to Bill Gates as a public health expert on covid—even though Gates has no medical training and is not a public official. PolitiFact and USA Today (run by the Poynter Institute and Gannett, respectively—both of which have received funds from the Gates Foundation) have even used their fact-checking platforms to defend Gates from “false conspiracy theories” and “misinformation,” like the idea that the foundation has financial investments in companies developing covid vaccines and therapies. In fact, the foundation’s website and most recent tax forms clearly show investments in such companies, including Gilead and CureVac.
In the same way that the news media has given Gates an outsize voice in the pandemic, the foundation has long used its charitable giving to shape the public discourse on everything from global health to education to agriculture—a level of influence that has landed Bill Gates on Forbes’s list of the most powerful people in the world. The Gates Foundation can point to important charitable accomplishments over the past two decades—like helping drive down polio and putting new funds into fighting malaria—but even these efforts have drawn expert detractors who say that Gates may actually be introducing harm, or distracting us from more important, lifesaving public health projects.
From virtually any of Gates’s good deeds, reporters can also find problems with the foundation’s outsize power, if they choose to look. But readers don’t hear these critical voices in the news as often or as loudly as Bill and Melinda’s. News about Gates these days is often filtered through the perspectives of the many academics, nonprofits, and think tanks that Gates funds. Sometimes it is delivered to readers by newsrooms with financial ties to the foundation.
The Gates Foundation declined multiple interview requests for this story and would not provide its own accounting of how much money it has put toward journalism.
In response to questions sent via email, a spokesperson for the foundation said that a “guiding principle” of its journalism funding is “ensuring creative and editorial independence.” The spokesperson also noted that, because of financial pressures in journalism, many of the issues the foundation works on “do not get the in-depth, consistent media coverage they once did.… When well-respected media outlets have an opportunity to produce coverage of under-researched and under-reported issues, they have the power to educate the public and encourage the adoption and implementation of evidence-based policies in both the public and private sectors.”
As CJR was finalizing its fact check of this article, the Gates Foundation offered a more pointed response: “Recipients of foundation journalism grants have been and continue to be some of the most respected journalism outlets in the world.… The line of questioning for this story implies that these organizations have compromised their integrity and independence by reporting on global health, development, and education with foundation funding. We strongly dispute this notion.”
The foundation’s response also volunteered other ties it has to the news media, including “participating in dozens of conferences, such as the Perugia Journalism Festival, the Global Editors Network, or the World Conference of Science Journalism,” as well as “help[ing] build capacity through the likes of the Innovation in Development Reporting fund.”
The full scope of Gates’s giving to the news media remains unknown because the foundation only publicly discloses money awarded through charitable grants, not through contracts. In response to questions, Gates only disclosed one contract—Vox’s—but did describe how some of this contract money is spent: producing sponsored content, and occasionally funding “non-media nonprofit entities to support efforts such as journalist trainings, media convenings, and attendance at events.”
Over the years, reporters have investigated the apparent blind spots in how the news media covers the Gates Foundation, though such reflective reporting has waned in recent years. In 2015, Vox ran an article examining the widespread uncritical journalistic coverage surrounding the foundation—coverage that comes even as many experts and scholars raise red flags. Vox didn’t cite Gates’s charitable giving to newsrooms as a contributing factor, nor did it address Bill Gates’s month-long stint as guest editor for The Verge, a Vox subsidiary, earlier that year. Still, the news outlet did raise critical questions about journalists’ tendency to cover the Gates Foundation as a dispassionate charity instead of a structure of power.
Five years earlier, in 2010, CJR published a two-part series that examined, in part, the millions of dollars going toward PBS NewsHour, which it found to reliably avoid critical reporting on Gates.
In 2011, the Seattle Times detailed concerns over the ways in which Gates Foundation funding might hamper independent reporting…
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Source: CJR
from: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/columbia-journalism-review-explains-how-gates-foundation-manipulates-media-narrative?utm_campaign=&utm_content=ZeroHedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter