AN EMAIL EXCHANGE WITH DR. JUDITH CURRY

THE PROLIFERATON OF MODELS IN CLIMATE SCIENCE

NOVEMBER 5, 2010.  You don’t go to a spot in Tennessee, drill down into the ground, extract a core sample, analyze it and publish a graph that reports the evolution of the planet’s temperature for the last 1000 years.

There are measuring stations, on land, all over the globe—some stations far less reliable than others.  There are satellites overhead that have been recording radiance since 1978.  There are ocean measurements as well. There are tree cores that reveal information about temperature.

How all these records are interpreted and then coordinated is a matter of controversy.  Models are used.  These models are competitive with one another.  And they are strings of complex mathematical inferences which give more weight to certain data and less weight to other data.

After a year or so of sifting through scientific and (to me) arcane debate about the flaws in various models, I began to wonder whether all the models were so abstracted from plain observation that they were useless. 

On October 27, I emailed Dr. Judith Curry at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Dr. Curry is a well-known climate researcher who, unlike many of her colleagues, has shown an interest in skeptics who reject the notion that manmade warming is a serious and imminent threat.

Here is that email:

veteran medical reporter query on climate science

InboxX

jon rappoport to curryja

show details 9:36 AM (3 hours ago)

Dr. Curry,

Jon Rappoport here.  I’ve worked as an investigative medical reporter for 30 years.

In uncovering various kinds of medical-research fraud, I’ve educated myself about how the use of sophisticated models can obscure and distort simple data and cover over the basic uncertainty of the research conclusions.

I’ve tried to apply the same understanding to debates about competing climate-science models. 

I fully realize that most scientists think models are absolutely necessary, and the proposal that important knowledge might be acquired without them appears ludicrous.

Nevertheless, I’ve tried to approach the warming question with an idiot’s eyes and, perhaps, a useful swipe or two of Occam’s Razor. 

So please remember—in the field of climate science, I AM a complete idiot.  I’m navigating by my own version of common sense, and I’m seeing problems with every step I take.  The only question is, are these problems less troublesome than those caused by building models that spawn other models?

Suppose, as regards land measurement of warming, we did the following:

Select the hundred most reliable land stations in the world—those that have a clear, continuous, daily record of temperature going back at least 75 years.

The environments around the stations haven’t changed so radically in 75 years that obvious warming factors were introduced (highways, factories, shopping malls, etc.).

The daily temp measurements, as far as we can tell, were carried out with integrity and accuracy.

We then perform one, and only one, slightly abstract arithmetical calculation: We take each day at each station, and average the temp measurements recorded at six in the morning, noon, and six in the evening—or as close as we can get to those times.

Now, for each of the 100 stations, we have a daily average temp.

We then graph that daily average for each station across those 75 years.

We then have 100 graphs in front of us.

For each graph, we do…nothing.  We just look at each graph.  We keep looking.  What are we seeing?  An obvious overall story of dramatic warming increase?  Decline?  Stability and sameness?  A mixed bag of uncertainty?

Then we draw a trend line for each graph. 

Then we ask, “How many degrees of warming for any given graph, across 75 years, would constitute a red flag?”

I would leave the answer to that question to you.

Let’s call the answer X.

Then we ask, “For how many of the 100 graphs do we see a trend of X or greater?”

Suppose the answer is 42. 

Well, is the geo-distribution of those stations clustered in one area?  Are the stations far apart?

What are the other 58 stations telling us?

In other words, we begin to construct a narrative.  A story told by what we see.  Others can examine our story and comment on it—without invoking complex models.

It seems to me this is a reasonable starting point.  And for those who want to jump off from it into the aether with their models, well, it should be apparent how valid or invalid their suppositions and reasoning are, right from the start. 

Does all this seem completely insane?

When I read comments on blogs in which people argue the flaws vs. merits of some extremely complex model, I get the uneasy sense they’re debating angels on the heads of pins—and they’ve wandered so far from what temperature is and means they’ve lost the thread. 

At the risk of losing you (if you’ve come this far), I can offer an analogy in the field of disease diagnosis and testing.  One can read papers in which the subtleties of antibody-test interpretation are argued: layers, bands, false-positives in non-risk populations, etc.  But one glaring fact, which is being ignored, stands out: Until 1985, the presence of antibodies specific to a particular germ was considered a good sign for the patient.  It meant his body had fought off and disposed of the invader.  Antibodies were certainly not a clue that the patient was ill or was going to get ill.  Then, without the slightest justification (except some clever circular reasoning), the whole business was turned on its head.  Antibodies were indicative of illness. 

I point this out to a number of well-known researchers, and they simply stare at me as if I’m mad.

So then I say, “You know, when you vaccinate a person, you’re producing antibodies.  And you’re saying the antibodies confer protection against illness.  But when those same antibodies are produced naturally, by the body, you say they’re a bad sign.”

Then they throw me out. 

Hope to hear from you.

Regards, Jon

Here is Dr. Curry’s brief reply.  I have deleted a sentence or two that contained private information Dr. Curry didn’t want published.    

Curry, Judith …10:29 AM (2 hours ago)

 Reply |Curry, Judith A to me

show details 10:29 AM (2 hours ago)

hi jon thanks for your message.  not at all insane, in fact a number of people are doing similar things…I will get to this general topic in december (at least according to my current plans).  Judy

I take Dr. Curry’s reply in a positive light.  Maybe there is another way. 

Skeptics have already shown the massive unreliability of many data that are widely accepted as useful.  So perhaps it’s time to say all the models are a sign of a bad habit; a useless and harmful addiction.

Throughout science, there are types of models that should never have been built in the first place.  They were interesting to the builders in the same way that advanced chess is interesting to those who can play at that level.  But by their very nature, they’re rubbish science.

They were doomed from the start to chart a flight path that was, a priori, in a universe vastly different from the observational data.  

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, a unique course for home schools and adults.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WHY DON’T MOVIE STARS ADOPT AMERICAN BABIES?

NOVEMBER 2, 2010.  Well, maybe they do, but we don’t hear about it in the press.  Apparently, movie-star adoptions are part of the feel-good wave-front of globalism.

Certainly, there are places in the US where grinding poverty and orphaned babies go hand in hand.

Perhaps it just doesn’t sound heroic enough, finding a baby in America.  Anyone can do that.  Only a few people can fly thousands of miles and pull it off.

I suspect movie stars want to make a point about “all of us” being one planetary family. 

Of course, flying a few thousand miles has other advantages.  If you’re the Clintons, for example, you can escape the fallout from the elections and distance yourself from Obama.  But I digress.

I don’t think we are all one planetary family.  No.  I’m quite sure we’re not.  You have your family and I have mine. 

Let’s take a mythical Third World country called X.  For a thousand years, internal conflicts and wars have ripped the country apart.  And then neighboring governments, eager to expand their holdings, have invaded and disrupted X as well.  Then you had your colonizers, who came in from Europe and turned the people of X into subjects.  Corporations, from America, Europe, and Asia made inroads, leasing swathes of land for mining and drilling and agri-business, dispossessing citizens and buying off local kings and presidents and tribal leaders, staging coups, and using death squads for the hard cases.

Business as usual. 

If all these meddling corrupt outsiders had stayed out, maybe X would have worked out its own problems.  Maybe not.  But it would have been their mess.  It would have been their country, their future, their choices.

Globalism, when you strip away the veneer, really does mean business as usual, you see, without the trade tariffs.  And mega-corporations can roam the world, move money in and move it out of countries at the drop of a hat, and outsource whatever they want to, wherever they want to.  All in all, it means cutting costs for these companies. 

Then, on top of that, you have your layer of propaganda.  We’re all one global village, hands across the water, love thy neighbor, give away (highly toxic) pharmaceutical drugs to starving people for whom the drugs are useless and destructive—and above all (shh), don’t clean up the water, don’t spend a few millions decontaminating water supplies to promote health.

To the degree that adopting a baby from a faraway land is a political statement that promotes the general notion of international friendship, it’s a ruse.  It’s a misdirection.  It’s a con.

Well, I can go a lot further than that.  Almost all foreign policy of all governments is a con, because it’s either about war alliances, economic loans (which often turn out to be bait and switch propositions that drive the recipient nation into bankruptcy), or some other scheme that enriches a government opposed to freedom (those governments are very easy to find).

But…minding one’s own national business is a dead duck these days.  To enlightened “progressives,” it’s a passé notion supported by Neanderthals. 

No, we must meddle.  We must deal.  We must intercede.  We must make ourselves part of the problem and then pretend to solve the problem.

That’s why, in his Farewell Address to the nation, George Washington warned against adopting foreign babies.  He said, “Don’t give me that.  I know what this is.  It’s a feint.  You’re doing a head fake.  You’re starting a move to the right and then you’re going left.  Hey, I was at Valley Forge.  You think a hustle like this is going to take me off my spot?”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  He is the author of a unique course for home schools and adults, LOGIC AND ANLYSIS.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE BUSINESS OF THE STATE

NOVEMBER 3, 2010.  As liberals are getting up off the floor this morning, their faces bleeding, and as they add up their losses in yesterday’s election and wonder what it means for their future, it’s worth reflecting on what government does, what it does as a matter of course and habit, what it gives and what it takes away.

First, government survives.  Don’t forget that one.  Like any group or organism, it wants to live.  To accomplish that, it needs to grow.  This, of course, isn’t a matter of constitutional function, it’s visceral.

Like any mafia, it develops partnerships toward that end.  Unions, businessmen, special interests, professional victims, doctors, trade organizations.  It seeks out common interests with these and other partners.  And then we have pork.  Tons of pork.  The folks back home in the states need contracts and money.

Let’s focus on “professional victims,” in the abstract.  Government has the very important job of seeking out and creating more and more victims, in perpetuity, because then it can help these victims, and in the process, grow larger.

If you represent left-handed gray-eyed partially bald therapy patients, and you can make a case, somehow, that this group is being put upon by society, you can go belly to belly with politicians.  They will listen to you.  They will do mental calculations and think about what your votes might mean.  They will try to figure out a way to give you money. 

In the best of all possible worlds for government, the whole population would be composed of victims. 

At some point in the last century, government intellectuals began to realize their partnership with the AMA and other medical groups could pay off in unexpected ways.  If researchers continued to invent categories and sub-categories of illnesses and diseases and mental disorders, and if more and more people placed themselves under the banner of PATIENT, from cradle to grave, this could work out very well for government. 

Look at ObamaCare in that light. 

On another front, if government could convince the public that open borders and endless immigration were policies flowing from humane intent, it could gather millions of new victims (and voters).  The public has always been willing to support “charity” and overlook the cynicism behind the mask.

If teachers’ unions could be expanded and take over the education system, government could support these unions and place low-paid teachers on its list of “people who need help.” 

Government is a fungus.  Its job is to grow and expand.

And of course, the burgeoning tax system itself is a way to take money from people who earn it and give it to people who earn less.  It’s a way to aid the extension of the fungus, if the people whose money is being taken can be convinced they’re doing a good thing.

Now, the last thing the government wants to be seen doing is LESS.

That would be a signal that government isn’t so important.

“We’re doing less this year.  Isn’t that wonderful?  Don’t you like us more for doing less?”

Are you kidding?  That’s a step on the road to fungal suicide.

“Hell, why did we vote for you and put you there if you’re going to be doing less?  We put you there to get something done.  So do it.  We don’t know what ‘it’ is, but do it.  Show us you’re active.  Get off your asses and make something happen.”

And this is where freedom comes in.  With a little thought, we can figure out that if the government does less, the individual is freer. 

Only one problem.  Who is ready for more freedom?  Who remembers what it means?  Who is going to react to more freedom by applauding the government?

“Yeah, I’m going to help re-elect those guys because they did less and helped me get some more of that freedom.”

The citizen has his palms up.  He’s weighing the alternatives.  He’s got his scales.  He’s testing and weighing.

“I can be free over here.  Or I can be a victim over there.  Which one is better?”

For many, many years, the horror movie called government has been:

FUNGUS MEETS VICTIM.

FUNGUS INVENTS VICTIM.

Did something change last night?

That depends on how many of the winners understand these issues and are willing to risk their careers and honor and reputation by burning the fungus.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefaknews.com

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  He is the author of a unique course for home schools and adults, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.  To make inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MEDICALLY CAUSED DEATH IN AMERICA:

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH

DR. BARBARA STARFIELD

By Jon Rappoport

Inquiries: qjrpress@gmail.com

www.nomorefakenews.com

For Jon’s radio show every Wednesday at 4PM Pacific Time:

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I’ve had many requests for a reprint of this piece.  Here it is.

As the national healthcare bill winds its way through the legislative process (now passed), one explosive factor is being ignored: the American health system, like clockwork, causes a mind-boggling number of deaths every year.

The figures have been known for ten years.  The story was covered briefly when a landmark study surfaced, and then it sank like a stone.

The truth was inconvenient for many interests.  That has not changed.  “Medical coverage for all” is a banner that conceals ugly facts.

On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America. Starfield was, and still is, associated with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

The Starfield study, “Is US health really the best in the world?”, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the following conclusions:

Every year in the US there are:

12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries; 

7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals; 

20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals; 

80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals; 

106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.

The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.

This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.

The Starfield study is the most disturbing revelation about modern healthcare in America ever published.  The credentials of its author and the journal in which it appeared are, within the highest medical circles, impeccable.     

On the heels of Starfield’s astonishing findings, media reporting was extensive, but it soon dwindled.  No major newspaper or television network mounted an ongoing “Medicalgate” investigation.  Neither the US Department of Justice nor federal health agencies undertook prolonged remedial action.

All in all, it seemed that those parties who could have taken effective steps to correct this situation preferred to ignore it.         

On December 6-7, 2009, I interviewed Dr. Starfield by email. 

What has been the level and tenor of the response to your findings, since 2000? 

My papers on the benefits of primary care have been widely used, including in Congressional testimony and reports. However, the findings on the relatively poor health in the US have received almost no attention. The American public appears to have been hoodwinked into believing that more interventions lead to better health, and most people that I meet are completely unaware that the US does not have the ‘best health in the world’.

In the medical research community, have your medically-caused mortality statistics been debated, or have these figures been accepted, albeit with some degree of shame? 

The findings have been accepted by those who study them. There has been only one detractor, a former medical school dean, who has received a lot of attention for claiming that the US health system is the best there is and we need more of it.  He has a vested interest in medical schools and teaching hospitals (they are his constituency).  They, of course, would like an even greater share of the pie than they now have, for training more specialists.  (Of course, the problem is that we train specialists—at great public cost—who then do not practice up to their training—they spend half of their time doing work that should be done in primary care and don’t do it as well.)

Have health agencies of the federal government consulted with you on ways to mitigate the effects of the US medical system?

NO.

Since the FDA approves every medical drug given to the American people, and certifies it as safe and effective, how can that agency remain calm about the fact that these medicines are causing 106,000 deaths per year?

Even though there will always be adverse events that cannot be anticipated, the fact is that more and more unsafe drugs are being approved for use. Many people attribute that to the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is (for the past ten years or so) required to pay the FDA for reviews—which puts the FDA into an untenable position of working for the industry it is regulating. There is a large literature on this. 

Aren’t your 2000 findings a severe indictment of the FDA and its standard practices?

They are an indictment of the US health care industry: insurance companies, specialty and disease-oriented medical academia, the pharmaceutical and device manufacturing industries, all of which contribute heavily to re-election campaigns of members of Congress. The problem is that we do not have a government that is free of influence of vested interests. Alas, [it] is a general problem of our society—which clearly unbalances democracy. 

Can you offer an opinion about how the FDA can be so mortally wrong about so many drugs?

Yes, it cannot divest itself from vested interests. (Again, [there is] a large literature about this, mostly unrecognized by the people because the industry-supported media give it no attention.

Would it be correct to say that, when your JAMA study was published in 2000, it caused a momentary stir and was thereafter ignored by the medical community and by pharmaceutical companies?

Are you sure it was a momentary stir?  I still get at least one email a day asking for a reprint—ten years later!  The problem is that its message is obscured by those that do not want any change in the US health care system.

Do medical schools in the US, and intern/residency programs in hospitals, offer significant “primary care” physician training and education?

NO. Some of the most prestigious medical teaching institutions do not even have family physician training programs [or] family medicine departments. The federal support for teaching institutions greatly favors specialist residencies, because it is calculated on the basis of hospital beds. [Dr. Starfield has done extensive research showing that family doctors, who deliver primary care—as opposed to armies of specialists—produce better outcomes for patients.] 

Are you aware of any systematic efforts, since your 2000 JAMA study was published, to remedy the main categories of medically caused deaths in the US?

No systematic efforts; however, there have been a lot of studies.  Most of them indicate higher rates [of death] than I calculated.

What was your personal reaction when you reached the conclusion that the US medical system was the third leading cause of death in the US?

I had previously done studies on international comparisons and knew that there were serious deficits in the US health care system, most notably in lack of universal coverage and a very poor primary care infrastructure. So I wasn’t surprised.

Has anyone from the FDA, since 2000, contacted you about the statistical findings in your JAMA paper?

NO. Please remember that the problem is not only that some drugs are dangerous but that many drugs are overused or inappropriately used.  The US public does not seem to recognize that inappropriate care is dangerous—more does not mean better.  The problem is NOT mainly with the FDA but with population expectations.

… Some drugs are downright dangerous; they may be prescribed according to regulations but they are dangerous.

Concerning the national health plan before Congress—if the bill is passed, and it is business as usual after that, and medical care continues to be delivered in the same fashion, isn’t it logical to assume that the 225,000 deaths per year will rise?

Probably—but the balance is not clear. Certainly, those who are not insured now and will get help with financing will probably be marginally better off overall.

Did your 2000 JAMA study sail through peer review, or was there some opposition to publishing it?

It was rejected by the first journal that I sent it to, on the grounds that ‘it would not be interesting to readers’!

Do the 106,000 deaths from medical drugs only involve drugs prescribed to patients in hospitals, or does this statistic also cover people prescribed drugs who are not in-patients in hospitals?

I tried to include everything in my estimates.  Since the commentary was written, many more dangerous drugs have been added to the marketplace.

106,000 people die as a result of CORRECTLY prescribed medicines.  I believe that was your point in your 2000 study.  Overuse of a drug or inappropriate use of a drug would not fall under the category of “correctly prescribed.”  Therefore, people who die after “overuse” or “inappropriate use” would be IN ADDITION TO the 106,000 and would fall into another or other categories.    

‘Appropriate’ means that it is not counter to regulations.  That does not mean that the drugs do not have adverse effects.

INTERVIEWER COMMENTS:

This interview with Dr. Starfield reveals that, even when an author has unassailable credentials within the medical-research establishment, the findings can result in no changes made to the system.

Yes, many persons and organizations within the medical system contribute to the annual death totals of patients, and media silence and public ignorance are certainly major factors, but the FDA is the assigned gatekeeper, when it comes to the safety of medical drugs.  The buck stops there.  If those drugs the FDA is certifying as safe are killing, like clockwork, 106,000 people a year, the Agency must be held accountable.  The American people must understand that.

As for the other 119,000 people killed every year as a result of hospital treatment, this horror has to be laid at the doors of those institutions.  Further, to the degree that hospitals are regulated and financed by state and federal governments, the relevant health agencies assume culpability.

It is astounding, as well, that the US Department of Justice has failed to weigh in on Starfield’s findings.  If 225,000 medically caused deaths per year is not a crime by the Dept. of Justice’s standards, then what is?

To my knowledge, not one person in America has been fired from a job or even censured as result of these medically caused deaths. 

Dr. Starfield’s findings have been available for nine years.  She has changed the perception of the medical landscape forever.  In a half-sane nation, she would be accorded a degree of recognition that would, by comparison, make the considerable list of her awards pale.  And significant and swift action would have been taken to punish the perpetrators of these crimes and reform the system from its foundations.

In these times, medical schools continue turning out a preponderance of specialists who then devote themselves to promoting the complexities of human illness and massive drug treatment.  Whatever the shortcomings of family doctors, their tradition speaks to less treatment, more common sense, and a proper reliance on the immune systems of patients.

The pharmaceutical giants stand back and carve up the populace into “promising markets.”  They seek new disease labels and new profits from more and more toxic drugs.  They do whatever they can—legally or illegally—to influence doctors in their prescribing habits.  Some drug studies which show negative results are buried.  FDA panels are filled with doctors who have drug-company ties.  Legislators are incessantly lobbied and supported with pharma campaign monies. 

Nutrition, the cornerstone of good health, is ignored or devalued by most physicians.  Meanwhile, the FDA continues to attack nutritional supplements, even though the overall safety record of these nutrients is good, whereas, once again, the medical drugs the FDA certifies as safe are killing 106,000 Americans per year.

Physicians are trained to pay exclusive homage to peer-reviewed published drug studies.  These doctors unfailingly ignore the fact that, if medical drugs are killing a million Americans per decade, the studies on which those drugs are based must be fraudulent or, at the very least, massively incompetent.  In other words, the whole literature is suspect, unreliable, and impenetrable.

Jon Rappoport has worked as an independent investigative reporter since 1982.  The LA Weekly nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize, for a interview he did with the president of El Salvador University, where the military had taken over the campus and was disappearing students and burning books.  He has written for In These Tines, Village Voice, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, CBS Healthwatch, Stern.  His work can be found at www.insolutions.info and www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon is the author of a new course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WHY DOES FREEDOM MATTER SO LITTLE NOW?

AYN RAND BRIEFLY REVISITED

NOVEMBER 2, 2010.  When Ayn Rand exploded on the scene with her two massive novels, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957), she was momentarily embraced by the political Right, until the discovery was made that she was an atheist.  Her underlying philosophy of the primacy of the individual had nothing to do with religion.

Oops.  There ensued an attack on her by William Buckley’s magazine, The National Review. 

Despite the ever-burgeoning legion of Rand readers, the centers of political debate in this country excluded Rand and her ideas. 

It didn’t matter that her dramatization of the individual versus the group was the deepest and most compelling in the history of American literature.

Then came the 1960s.

Eastern Thought was run through a spiritual meat grinder, reduced, grilled, and served on a bun to American and European youth; the message was fast-food happiness:

You are a unit of joy in the encompassing Cosmic Joy. 

Translation: the individual is nothing; the spiritual collective is everything.

“Self is a fiction.”

“The Universe has a plan.”

“If it didn’t happen, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“It’s Karma, baby.”

And now, as a derivative of that brand of thought, we have December 21, 2012.  The last day of the Mayan calendar.  The end of time.  The apocalypse.  The entrance of New Everything For Everybody.

I personally don’t care what people believe.  Cosmic Beneficence, a pink bunny on Mars, soup for supper. 

But when beliefs marginalize the individual and his freedom and his power and creative force, then we are looking at spiritual collectivism. 

And politically, of course, there is a nice fit.  Witness the union-sponsored national riots in France, fomented because the government, teetering on brink of financial insolvency, wants to raise the retirement age from 60 to a savage 62 and move the full pension trigger from 65 to an unmerciful 67. 

It’s all about group entitlement.  What the herd deserves.  What the herd demands.

Well, group paradises always collapse.  And for good reason: the individual and freedom are pushed out.

Karl Marx preached a dictatorship of the Proletariat and then the glorious withering away of the State.  The dictatorship turned out to be the old-fashioned kind: iron fist, prisons, mass executions.  Nothing withered. 

Let’s face it.  Preserving freedom of the individual against what people long for—protection by the group—is tough sledding.  And now the sled is heading downhill fast and it’s out of control.

People have lost the thread.

They don’t remember what freedom is.

And if they did, would they be able to make their home there and expand its territory?

The lights are going out.

And yet…there is a primal urge for freedom that never goes away. 

No matter who the elites are and what they doing to squash it and contain it and regulate it and redirect it and distract it, it remains.  Even against people’s own “better judgment,” they sense that desire for freedom within themselves.

Ayn Rand has been praised, admired, attacked, reviled, spat on, accused, elevated, worshipped, pummeled, and read in private hours like a subversive text by people who fear discovery, as if the shame would be too great, the exposure too embarrassing, the punishment by peers too horrific.

Walk down the street with a copy of Atlas Shrugged in your hand, and sooner or later a sheep will approach you, remove his mask, and turn into a slathering wolf who’s after your flesh and bone marrow.

Howard Roark, Rand’s hero in The Fountainhead, was a brilliant architect who simply wanted to do his work.  He refused to compromise his vision for the sake of attracting clients. 

Roark knew.  He understood the dimensions of the war.  He was fully aware, although he didn’t parade his knowledge, that there was a growing expanding fungus of a collective that wanted nothing to do with freedom or the individual.  The collective needed lowest common denominators in every field of endeavor to survive. 

Guided by a slimy newspaper columnist, Ellsworth Toohey, this apparition of an America floating through doors and windows like a death fog, obscuring the free man, demanded permanent status as an underclass of victims—glimpsing the very real possibility that their needs would be the new ruling standard of the nation.  Without end.

From that conflict, freedom versus the collective, everything in the novel flows.

Rand was not only dangerous to the political consensus, she was a distinct threat to the closed literary world, in which tiny personal quirks and clever moments and anarchic bellowing were the trading currency. 

Critics claimed her prose was wooden, her relationships stone-like, her depictions of sex outrageously violent.  They found many “problems” in her work, not the least of which was her adulation of the free individual—a cruel and bitter betrayal of humanity.

Almost no one in literary circles dared to compare the ideas of The Fountainhead with the founding principles of the American Republic.  That would have been very risky territory.

From the opening page of The Fountainhead, you are drawn into Rand’s war.  Roark, Peter Keating, Dominique Francon, Toohey, Gail Wynand—they force you into intense hate or admiration.  The emotions run as deep as the ideas. 

How free is freedom?  How free can the individual be, and what ideas and philosophy will sustain that freedom and expand it beyond any machinations of the demanding mob? 

I don’t believe an exploration in this direction is anything less than heroic.  But of course, we need to know what’s happening in the black hole in the center of this galaxy on December 21, 2010, and how it will change everything for everybody in the grand spiritual parade of the New Age.  Yes, we need to prepare for the external event that is going to dwarf all our ambitions and desires.  We need to empty our minds and stand on a cliff and create NOTHING.  We need to ready ourselves for the breakthrough destiny has unwrapped for us.  Because it is simply ego that has made us believe the individual can be free and enormously creative.  That was the old paradigm.  Now we can all join and experience the pulse of cosmic infiltration.  We can reject, each one of us, any pretension to power, because power is wrong, unless it is melted down and shared by the collective, braying: WE NEED.  WE NEED.

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  He is the author of a unique course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, for home schools and adults.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

WHY SO MANY PEOPLE ARE CRAZY

NOVEMBER 1, 2010.  All over the world, we learn, massive numbers of people are saying their governments aren’t giving them what they need.

Or worse, governments are placing a boot to their heads.

We are presented with the prescriptive picture of governments that should be delivering benefits to enormous numbers of people.

Such populations are considered victims.  They are more or less a permanent victim class.

In order to assuage and take care of this ever expanding class, governments must become bigger. 

Government is looked to as the solution to a problem.

If we glance at the form and structure of the government established in the wake of the American Revolution, we see it was in no way created to solve the problem of widespread need.  That wasn’t the idea.  But since then, the flood has come; public needs, and their fulfillment, have become the standard by which government is judged.

And as that “modern revolution” has swept across the nation, a basic concept—in fact, the quintessential concept—has been evaporating like a stream in a drought.

Freedom.  Individual freedom.

The founders realized very well that the size and scope of government and individual freedom were two parts of the same formula.

To the degree that you grant government more power and solution-making function, to the degree that government becomes the source of all gifts, freedom diminishes.

Conversely, with more individual freedom, government shrinks in size and importance.

You can wiggle and tap dance and fraudulently reason from here to the moon, but you can’t alter those fundamentals.

Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying.

They haven’t had a difficult time of it, either, because they don’t care about freedom.  It isn’t one of their concerns.  In fact, many of these charlatans believe freedom is an illusion; it’s simply a con that was established to allow the powerful and greedy to overwhelm the masses. It was never important.

The original American Revolution had two phases.  The first was declaration of independence from the British crown.  The second, accomplished by the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, broke open the egg completely; and marvelously, it revealed the most profound idea: the individual was free.

This second phase built a government that, by law, would not be able to infringe on that freedom—because government was seen as the most dangerous intruder.

Now, in America, things have deteriorated to the point where government is seen as a parent.  The child wants to be able to do whatever he wants to, and he also wants to be financed in that endeavor.

To cap this approach, the child wants to position himself as an eternal victim, unable to sustain his existence by his own efforts.  With this story in tow, the child is able to make endless demands on the parent.  The child’s official status as victim ensures that “right.” 

Under the arrangement, freedom becomes distorted beyond all recognition.  It becomes the outraged twin of the victim.

“I want what I want when I want it, and I want to do whatever I want to when I want to.”

The advent of psychology as a legitimate and respected profession has added a further piece to the twisted prism.  “Victims are really only people whose present can be explained by their past.”  It’s so simple.  To end up in great need only the parental government can satisfy—to be a victim—means that what happened to you since birth conspired to put you in a situation where your options were drastically limited.

Anyone can cook up such a personal history.  And if the stated goal of therapy is to liberate a person from his past, well, it turns out that most people use psychology to remain in their mythical lock-up.

Note that the fairy tale which explains how the past shapes the present puts up walls against the pure notion of individual freedom.  Such freedom doesn’t really exist; it couldn’t exist.  The links in the chain of past-to-present causation preclude it. 

Consumerism, the vast mall of body, mind, and spirit, really takes hold when the advertising industry can tap into the individual’s perception of his own well-deserved need for thing after thing after thing after thing after thing, in perpetuity.    

“I want what I want when I want it.”

Consumerism, beyond a certain point, has nothing to do with freedom.  It has nothing to do with an individual who knows he is free and is acting from that basis to forward large goals.

Massive and unending material consumption is the territory of the person who has lost track of the fact that he can be free.

Now we get the conjoining of: victim; perpetually hungry consumer; and a government whose job it is to supply the means for acquisition by the children under its care.

Loans don’t have to be repaid.  It’s up to the government to figure out how to structure credit and money so this can happen.

In the future, everyone should have a boat, an island, and a plane.  If not, there will be war.

There are other myths and their spin-off consequences.  Because there are growing numbers of people who can’t secure the essentials of survival, the government must solve that problem.  It must solve it today, tomorrow, and forever.  In order to accomplish this, government must become larger and employ more helpers.

And if the retirement age for these government helpers is moved back two or three years, their pensions postponed, that justifies a national riot.  Because the government helpers are themselves victims.

When you come right down to it, we’re all victims.  And we have to give each other whatever we say we need.  Now.

On and on it goes.

Government, the great solver.

“To satisfy the victim-children, we’ll take your money and give it to them.”

“Wait.  I might be a victim, too.  Let me think about it for a minute.  I believe I can come up with something.”

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport has been working as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  He is the author of a unique course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, for homseschoolers and adults.  For inquiries: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

DOES FREEDOM EXIST?

OR DOES THE BRAIN RULE?

“With the flick of a chemical switch, researchers can now exert unprecedented control over the activating molecules that wire the developing brains of mice.  The new technique permits researchers to use drugs to switch the molecules on and off as precisely and reversibly as a light switch controls a lamp.”

Press Release, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, April 7, 2005

NOVEMBER 1, 2010.  Most Americans are brought up to think that practical questions with practical answers are the only ones that matter. 

And when it comes to philosophy, well, who has the time or inclination to worry about that?  Professors in ivory towers? 

Unfortunately, when everyone deserts the field where the philosophic questions are being asked and answered, the results can be devastating—and the after-effects of those earthquakes can sever the moorings of the Republic.  People may wake up, but it’s too late.

That’s the case with an item called freedom.  It turns out that scientists have been hacking away at it for a long time.   

The answer to the question, does freedom exist, would certainly be the cornerstone of any modern philosophy.

Contemporary thinkers who want to straddle the fence claim that a better understanding of the neurochemical processes of the brain will deliver us better answers.

One of those answers?  “You” are just a concept involuntarily generated by your brain.  There is no “you.”

People tend to blink when they hear that one.  But again, who has time to worry about such a bizarre idea? 

Meanwhile, we have a whole host of questions about freedom that impact society every day.  Should a convicted criminal be sent to a mental hospital for treatment because, in his childhood, he suffered abuse sufficient to render him incapable of choosing to live a lawful life?

This deterministic argument leads us into a massive social and political context, in which large numbers of people, given special treatment and assistance, claim they are not free to advance their lives on their own.  Freedom takes another hit.

In the scientific arena, determinism is leading directly to the assertion that the brain rules; it is the cause from which all human effects flow. 

But the brain isn’t free.  It’s a biological organ.  It operates on chemical/electrical pathways.  It’s remarkably adaptive, but it doesn’t choose.  It follows alternatives in the same mindless way a computer does—depending on what prime directives and software are guiding its actions.

Therefore, if we accept the premise that all our actions stem directly from commands the brain is dispensing, freedom is nowhere to be found.   

The 21^st century is the century of the brain.  If ongoing research has its way, preferred mental states will be defined for us by a psychiatric/neurological elite.  These mental states will be induced (as they are now) by chemicals and other means—but with far more precision.   

Behind this campaign, there is the assumption that freedom doesn’t exist, and life is simply of matter of inhabiting more pleasant states of mind (brain).

What we now see as instances where doctors and law-enforcement authority demand that citizens be treated with certain drugs—this will expand enormously into the engineered society.

FREEDOM?  WHO CARES?

WE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD.

THEREFORE, YOU MUST FEEL GOOD. 

A surprising number of people look forward to that day. 

Against them stand people who know they are free, who take great and powerful joy from their freedom, who build their lives on choices that reflect their highest and widest aspirations.

These are the sides in the battle that is both real-life and philosophical, and ignoring the intellectual aspect is not merely careless, it consigns us to a future in which, by default, scientists and their government partners will make our decisions for us, utilizing arguments that are vacuous and bankrupt.

The brain is not some holy grail.  Without a widespread understanding that individual freedom exists apart from any facts relating to the brain, we will find authorities dictating us into sedation.

I’ve long been warning, in a variety of contexts, about the onrush of the politicized Medical State.  Its ultimate victory would come if we abandon the ideas of Self and Freedom.  Casting aside these twin pillars, we would consider ourselves vague “pleasure apparatuses,” to be manipulated by experts for our own good.

I recall, as a young college student, studying the history of Western philosophy.  My hope was at the end of it, I would find answers, finally, to great questions.  I never really reached the end.  At the close of the 19^th century, Western thought reached an impasse.  There was science, which seemed to be reporting that the entire universe, including human beings, was merely the whirling action of tiny particles in motion.  Determinism.  Materialism.  Against that notion, there was the assertion of absolute Ideals, vague and other-worldly, non-material.  And there philosophy remained.  In a knot. 

It took me a while to wonder why the concept of individual freedom, expressed so brilliantly and powerfully in the founding documents of the American Republic, had been omitted from the philosophic debate.

Were we supposed to believe our Revolution was just an illusion?  Establishing individual freedom was merely jumping on to another synapse-highway of the brain, another comforting pathway to nowhere?

History is replete with examples of ruling elites rationalizing their control over the populace: the gods will it, kings are blessed with divine right, we must all submit to a specific higher power.  And now we have a pseudo-scientific framework claiming: the workings of the brain show us that individual freedom and self are passé superstitions.

Are you buying it?

More and more people are.  They prefer to leave the future to “brain science” and the chemicals it spawns.  They prefer to believe their only problem is Mood, how they feel at any given moment during the day. 

Was that what Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were all about?  Is that what we have left of their legacy?

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years.  He is the author of a unique course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, for homeschoolers and adults.  To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

THE STARFIELD REVELATION, REVISITED

OCTOBER 31, 2010.  In the summer of the year 2000, it was a bolt out of the blue.  The revelation.  I come back to it for various reasons—this time because I’ve been reading doctors’ attacks on the nutritional industry:  “fraudulent claims, quackery, unproven science, theft.”

You’ve heard all the accusations.

It’s interesting that these doctors don’t bother to examine their own profession.  If they did, they would fall through the deep hole, and they might never find their way back to the top.

On July 26, 2000, Dr. Barbara Starfield published her landmark study, “Is US Health Really the Best in the World?” in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  At the time, Starfield was working at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.  She still is.

She is, as you can see, an insider.  You don’t have your papers published in JAMA if you’re not. 

Among her findings?  The annual figure for deaths caused by medical drugs in the US is 106,000.

THE ANNUAL FIGURE.

All those drugs were, according to her report, correctly prescribed and, of course, approved by the FDA.  No drug makes its way into the American market unless the FDA certifies it as safe and effective.  Both.

In a long, exclusive interview I conducted with Dr. Starfield earlier this year, she made it clear that, since the 2000 publication date, no federal agency had contacted her to consult on taking remedial actions, in the face of all these deaths.

It was also clear that the federal government had undertaken no massive campaign to cut down on the deaths caused by medical drugs.

And, of course, no mainstream news outlet has picked up the gauntlet and hammered on this ongoing mind-boggling tragedy. 

106,000 deaths a year.  That means, since 2000, roughly a million Americans have died as a result of ingesting medicines.  A million.

So when I see these little doctors attacking the viability and correctness and safety of vitamins and minerals, I wonder what foul planet they are living on.  I wonder what they think they’re doing.

You should try to remember this the next time a doctor or some self-styled expert tells you the nutritional approach to improving health is dangerous.

You should try to remember the enormity of the cover-up involved here—and also note that Dr. Starfield’s study, since its publication ten years ago, has gone virtually unchallenged. 

A million deaths.

Now, when it comes to fraud (a charge often leveled at the nutritional industry), think about this: how many studies carried out by drug companies had to have been fraudulent, to result in 106,000 deaths a year?

Because, for the FDA to have approved the lethal drugs as both safe and effective, to have examined the studies and clinical trials of those drugs prior to approval—there were obviously many lies in those pages.

As it turns out, several layers of fraud are involved.  First, the drug companies bury some of their own studies on a given drug, the studies that show health dangers or ineffective results.  Then we have the FDA panels, stacked with doctors who, because of their financial connections to the drug companies, give the green light to go ahead and market the drugs.  And then we have the chronic avoidance of FDA officials, who know about Starfield’s (and other researchers’) work, but refuse to undertake a sweeping investigation of the whole rotten, stench-ridden mess.

We also need to bring the medical journals into the picture, because they publish and comment on many of the studies that result in government approval of drugs.

These journals know the death figures I’ve cited.  But they don’t take radical corrective action, either.  Not the kind of action that will considerably reduce the annual body count of 106,000.

Of course, you would think medical schools, in light of the Starfield Revelation, would revolutionize their training of students.  This, too, is a pipe dream.

On every front, it’s business as usual.

And therefore, the medical cartel needs to point the public’s attention elsewhere.  The cartel needs a distraction.  What better area to single out than their main competitor: nutritional supplements.

When you—the FDA—allow a staggering pattern of ongoing death to develop year after year, decade after decade, and you do nothing about it, and you are in a position to do something about it, and you are legally mandated to oversee the actual area that is causing all the deaths, and you are covering up what you know—what do you call that?

I call it murder.  RICO felony, and murder.

I don’t see any other label that fits.

So I invite all critics of the nutritional industry to come my way, and let’s compare notes, and let’s see, in open debate, what’s what. 

What makes me think I won’t receive a shower of emails from experts seeking engagement on these terms?

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

Jon Rappoport is the author of a course, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS, for homeschoolers and adults.  To inquire: qjrconsulting@gmail.com

MEDICAL BRAINWASHING

OCTOBER 31, 2010.  I’ve spent almost 30 years documenting medical blunders and intentional deceptions.  But at the root of all this is the question:

ARE YOU FREE TO CHOOSE HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR OWN HEALTH? 

There is no statement in the Constitution that denies you that freedom or even suggests it is up for auction. 

However, as we all know, the government decided to ally itself with the conventional practice of medicine.  That alliance will not affect you if, in the privacy of your own home, you decide to ingest a nutrient to cure your lumbago, but it certainly does affect what health practitioners can offer you in their offices.

If they stray beyond the “codes of good practice,” as defined by government-supported medical boards, they can have their licenses yanked.  They can be made into pariahs.  If they go into court to challenge rulings against them, they can wind up paying millions of dollars to lawyers for an uncertain outcome.

There is another vector at work here, though.  Schools.  Schools and their presumption they can detect the psychological/physical condition of children.

Here is a chilling story of Diane Booth and her son Vincent, as told by Fred A Baughman, MD, in 2003.  So far, I’ve been unable to get an update on this case.  Diane Booth apparently has a website, but it’s either not operating or I can’t gain access from my computer.  

Excerpts from Dr. Baughman’s account:

“The ordeal of Vincent Booth and his mother, Diane, began as it begins in every case, in every school district in the US–with teachers diagnosing ADHD, presently the number one “disease” in the country.

“Teachers from the Sunnyvale School District decided, not only that 6-year-old son, Vincent, had ADHD, but that he needed Ritalin, as well. Not only did teachers, never having been to medical school, make the diagnosis, they presumed it was their right, duty, and competence, as well, to designate the medication he needed–in this case, an addictive, dangerous, sometimes lethal (200 deaths reported to FDA-Medwatch, 1990-2000) medication–Ritalin.

“When Diane, the natural, legal, mother rejected their diagnosis and treatment, they called in Child Protective Services, pronounced her ‘negligent;’ by order of the juvenile court made Vincent a ward of the State of California (case # JD 1110); institutionalized, diagnosed, and drugged him. Vincent was six years old, and, up to that point, healthy and normal.

“Vincent was held at the Eastfield Ming Quong, a locked, children’s holding facility at one time used to force social services on California’s Chinese immigrant children. Placed on Ritalin, Vincent developed tics–involuntary movements–a complication of Ritalin, never witnessed previously [in him]. He also had bruises and bumps–signs of physical abuse [suffered during incarceration].

“Diane complained, but to no avail. Next, she took matters into her own hands. In desperation, and at her son’s request, she fled to Canada with him on July 5, 2000, and applied for refugee status. Two months later the FBI apprehended them in British Columbia and tore Vincent from her side while he screamed for help that his mother wasn’t allowed to give him.

“For the past 2 ½ years Vincent has been a child of the State of California, held at the Eastfield Ming Quong, getting treatment for the multiple “diseases” psychiatry says he has with the multiple drugs psychiatry says he needs.

“Throughout the 2 ½ years no member of Diane’s family was allowed to have contact with Vincent, and Diane remained a fugitive until she tired of life on the run and turned herself in to authorities in Okanagan, Washington, in January, 2003.

“Diane has since been extradited to Santa Clara County where she has been unable to make bail and remains incarcerated at the (Diane Booth, BOOKING# 03007942, PFN# DPN183, P.O. Box 60910) Elmwood Correctional Center for Women, MILPITAS, CA 95036. While the FBI has seen fit to drop all charges against her, Santa Clara County, not wishing to be charged themselves, still presses felony, child endangerment and child stealing charges against her, that could result in up to 8 years in prison–all of it, mind you, for loving her only child, her normal son, Vincent.

“Diane began to correspond with me through my web site adhdfraud.com about two years ago when she was still in Canada, seeking refugee status there. Based on her description of events (a scenario repeated in every school, in every state, every single day) and medical records, there is no doubt that Vincent was a medically, neurologically normal child at the time psychiatric diagnosing and labeling began, and until the always-injurious, psychiatric drugging began. Vincent’s psychiatric incarceration, ordered by his new “parent,” Judge Leonard P. Edwards (parens patriae), assured it would always be thus.

“In the summer of 2002…Vincent was administered multiple psychiatric medications…each known to [be] brain damaging, none known to target a proven brain abnormality/disease.. They were Buspar, Zoloft and Risperdal, an antipsychotic–an especially potent brain poison. As of June, 2002 Vincent was said to display ‘tics (probably a persisting side effect of Ritalin, but Risperdal commonly causes involuntary movements, as well, known as tardive dyskinesia) severe anxiety, fearfulness, impulsivity, hyper-vigilance, poor adult-child relationships, tantrums and aggression toward staff and peers.’

“More worrisome by far, a case manager wrote: ‘Vincent is socially immature and often functions in a regressed, primitive, unsociable manner, sometimes at a 2 or 3 year level.’

“What if Vincent had been normal and free, living in the protective, loving care of his natural mother, Diane. What if he had been allowed to be the normal child he was, not imprisoned and drugged–a psychiatric patient-in-perpetuity?

“…Every American should know about the Diane Booth case, because, believe it or not, it is happening all over the country, in every school district, every day. In most instances, the coercion works; the insistence that the Ritalin is necessary, that your child can’t function without it–this ‘chemical balancer’ for his ‘chemical imbalance.’ I hear from parents hounded at work, hounded at home, evenings, threatened by the CPS-turned-Gestapo leaving no doubt of your negligence, no doubt juvenile court is the next stop.

“And yes, Diane was a single parent, but a good parent, and she was at her best loving and protecting her son, standing on her common sense. However psychiatry needed her son, not to help him, but, regardless of him, to make him a profit-point; to make him a life-long profit-point, and that is exactly what they will do to Vincent and to any child anywhere, in any US public school, and you-Mother and Father in the USA, you had better wake up to the fact that today it is Diane Booth, tomorrow it can be you, your child, grandchild, niece, nephew, for they find psychiatric ‘diseases’ in each and every child, normal or not.

“Lest you think I am some ranting fool, consider this from the Bazelon Center for Mental Health in Washington, DC [Practice Trends, Clinical Psychiatric News, May 2000, page 49.] Speaking of Vincent Booth, and millions like him across the country, they say:

End Baughman quote—

Well, taking the low figure of 2.1 million children, if that indeed represents diagnosed cases, it would mean the custody of roughly 400,000 children had been delivered over to the State.

Does this sound like freedom to you?

JON RAPPOPORT

www.nomorefakenews.com

qjrconsulting@gmail.com