In the end Dr. Fauci was no more successful in avoiding the virus than Prince Prospero, the villain from Poe’s imagination who believed his castle could protect him from the plague.
I recently returned from a week-long vacation in the north woods of Wisconsin. We played beach volleyball, went fishing and boating, had a lively game of Wiffle Ball with the kids, and swam until our skin was prune-like.
Even without a cell phone, I managed to stumble on a bit of breaking news from an unusual source: television. (It was virtually the only media I had up there.) Naturally, I had to share this bit of news.
“Fauci has Covid,” I told some of my companions, stuffing beer into coolers.
A discussion quickly broke out over whether the news was relevant.
“So what?” a friend responded. “I accepted a long time ago that everyone is going to get this thing.”
I partly agreed with my friend. Even during the early stages of the pandemic, I harbored suspicions that the virus was going to spread regardless of any interventions politicians or bureaucrats enacted—and those interventions could prove to be destructive, perhaps more destructive than the virus itself.
But I told him not to underestimate the importance of Fauci contracting Covid.
Why It Matters That Fauci Got Covid
It’s important to understand that Fauci isn’t just the president’s top medical advisor. Fauci, whose official title is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is “America’s Doctor,” as The New Yorker described him in April 2020.
More importantly, for better or worse, Fauci became the architect of the US Covid response.
It was Fauci who, early in the pandemic, proposed a Covid strategy that was simultaneously radical and simple: keep Americans apart from one another, using state force, if necessary.
In March 2020, Fauci told “Face the Nation” that the strategy was working.
“The kinds of mitigation issues that are going on right now, the things that we’re seeing in this country, this physical separation at the same time as we’re preventing an influx of cases coming in, I think that’s going to go a long way to preventing us from becoming an Italy,” Fauci said.
The “mitigations” Fauci was referring to were lockdowns. Schools closed. Parks closed. Businesses closed. Any enterprise or activity not deemed “essential” by state authorities was illegal.
Americans were told these efforts were only temporary. “Fifteen days to slow the spread,” became a national mantra.
Six months later, however, nothing had changed. In fact, Fauci was now saying it would have to continue until 2022.
The idea that humans could hide indefinitely from an airborne pathogen if government bureaucrats turned the dial just right has more than a touch of madness to it, but what few seem to realize is that for Fauci, this was just the first step in a larger revolution.
Writing at the Brownstone Institute, Jeffrey Tucker points to an August 2020 Cell article written by Fauci wherein the doctor explains his ideological vision, which rings of Rousseauian idealism.
“Living in greater harmony with nature will require changes in human behavior as well as other radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.
In such a transformation we will need to prioritize changes in those human behaviors that constitute risks for the emergence of infectious diseases. Chief among them are reducing crowding at home, work, and in public places as well as minimizing environmental perturbations such as deforestation, intense urbanization, and intensive animal farming.”
The article, Tucker points out, makes it clear Fauci’s pandemic response was not just about Covid, but a larger technocratic revolution that was hard to define—and one Americans had not signed up for.
“It’s not socialism or capitalism. It’s something else entirely, something very strange,” Tucker writes. “No one has voted for such a thing. It is something Fauci and his friends dreamed up on their own and deployed all their enormous power to enact just as a test, until it fell apart.”
And this is what makes Fauci’s infection—which comes more than two years after the first lockdowns were imposed—so important.
“It’s a sign and symbol that [Fauci’s] entire theory of virus control was wrong,” Tucker writes. “He got his way with policy and it did not work. The virus finally landed on him, as if to reenact Edgar Allan Poe’s fictional story of Prince Prospero in his castle that he believed would protect him.”
The Fatal Conceit
In his 1974 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, the economist F.A. Hayek concluded with a warning: he urged humans to act humbly with the immense power of modern science.
“There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered,” Hayek said, “and which tempts man to try, ‘dizzy with success,’ to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.”
He continued:
“The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.”
A careful look at Dr. Fauci reveals that humility is not one of his stronger attributes, and his actions show the fatal conceit that Hayek warned against infects public health officials as well as economic planners.
Despite all his efforts, Fauci was no more successful in avoiding the plague than Prince Prospero. But his mad, arrogant effort to extinguish the virus through force is a tale worthy of its own parable.
Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-06-21 07:32:152022-06-21 07:32:15Why It Matters That Fauci Got Covid-19
The discussion which should follow the Supreme Court decision on abortion.
This is the second part of a review of The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, by Erika Bachiochi. The first part is here.
When the US Supreme Court in its 1992 Casey decision doubled down on RoevWade, the court majority claimed that “an entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe’s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society”.
What was Roe’s concept of liberty? That of the autonomous individual, the hero of American libertarianism and a parody of the self-governing (virtuous) individual of the founding era.
Roe’s heroine is the one who “chooses”, behind the veil of “privacy”, all by herself, what to do about an “unplanned” child she has conceived.
Her options are stark. Will she keep the baby and risk her marriage or career, or both? Is she prepared to see the last of her uncommitted partner, and face years of poverty and loneliness as a single parent, trying to balance work/welfare and care of her child?
Or will she “get rid of it” and simplify her life, make progress in the job market – and hope for better circumstances next time around?
Since 1973 American has, through its laws and economy, told women that they are on their own in this matter. Caring for children is a choice, a private thing. Society is interested in women as workers, not mothers. Workers just like men.
As Erika Bachiochi observes in her book, The Rights of Women: Reclaiming a Lost Vision, “When Casey reaffirmed the ‘right to choose’ abortion, employers and other public institutions remained ‘free’ to be unchanged by women’s participation in them.”
In support she quotes a pro-choice law professor, Deborah Dinner:
“The discourse of reproductive choice continues to legitimate workplace structures modelled on the masculine ideal [with no caregiving responsibilities] as well as social policies that provide inadequate public support for families.”
“In the end,” adds Bachiochi, “it may just be that an unmitigated right to abortion serves of profit-driven market above all else.”
How did “women’s rights” end up in this blind alley?
In the second-last chapter of her book, Bachiochi explores the work of Harvard legal luminary Mary Ann Glendon to throw light on this question.
Family law in America vs Europe
Glendon, whose early experience of single parenthood was formative for her views, traced the source of the problem to the libertarianism of the Anglo-American rights tradition and its effect on family law and culture.
By the mid-twentieth century, she found, “self-sufficiency” had become the guiding principle in US family law, leading to the removal of legal protection from the family unit (through, for example, no-fault divorce) and to the idea of marriage as, “an association of individuals”.
In Europe, things were different. In many countries the civil law, reflecting classical and Christian ideas about human dignity and the common good, had more to say about spousal rights and duties, and envisaged marriage as a community of persons for the nurture of children. As women won equal status during the twentieth century, marriage law was not emptied of content as in the US.
In most modern European constitutions the basic social institution of the family (and often the status of motherhood itself) remained protected, as it had been in the 1948 UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thus, in 1970, the Federal Constitutional Court in West Germany stated:
“The concept of man in the Basic Law [i.e. the Constitution] is not that of an isolated sovereign individual; rather, the Basic Law has decided in favour of a relationship between individual and community in the sense of a person’s dependence on and commitment to the community, without infringing on a person’s individual value.”
Though European countries have since bought into autonomy and individualism, most have far better supports for families. They are also more conservative regarding abortion.
A dignitarian vision of marriage
Glendon pointed out that while American law advanced women’s rights in the sphere of work and public life, it simultaneously devalued women’s role in reproduction and the concrete caregiving work they had traditionally done at home, and which still had to be done by parents – or someone. She wrote, in 1996:
“[In modern times, women] have adapted to that situation in two ways. They are having fewer children, and they are maintaining at least a foothold in the labour force even when their children are very young. But that strategy still does not protect mothers very well against the risk of the four deadly Ds: disrespect for non-market work; divorce; disadvantages in the workplace for anyone who takes time out; and the destitution that afflicts so many female-headed households.”
Having men do half the caregiving and other domestic work, as advocated by mainstream feminists, could never remove these risks because of the deep “asymmetry” (not simply “difference”) between their reproductive roles. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, Glendon advocated not strict equality but, as Bachiochi puts it,
“an equal dignity that admits the special ‘power’ and ‘privilege,’ and ‘disability’ too, of childbearing and childrearing, seeking not the erasure of these facts of life, but a reconciliation of them within reciprocal relationships of mutual respect, interdependence, and collaboration in all realms of life.”
To make this dignitarian vision a reality for women Glendon called for a cultural turn towards the family, in recognition of the fundamental importance of stable, self-governing families to public order and a flourishing society.
As Wollstonecraft insisted: “If you wish to make good citizens, you must first exercise the affections of a son and a brother. This is the only way to expand the heart; for public affections as well as public virtue must ever grow out of private character…”
Familism, communities and society
This would entail a “social ecology” in which smaller groups and systems (“communities of memory and mutual aid”) would play their supportive role in the neglected space between the state and the family or individual.
With others, she proposed to the Clinton administration in the early 1990s that society should:
Support infant-parent bonding in the home until the age of one year. This through a combination paid leave (for six months at least) flexitime and work-from-home arrangements.
Provide a generous, European-style child allowance, and tax policies which did not favour those who work outside the home.
Foster a culture of familism to shore up the essential work parents do and reaffirm the value of children over “excessive careerism or acquisitiveness”, so parents could put their children first.
The aim, here, was not some kind of “work-family balance”, but a fundamental change in the way parents in the workforce – both men and women – are seen: not as employees first and caregivers second, but as caregivers first and employees second. The economy should serve families and not vice-versa.
Coming to the present, the fate of those ideas can be judged, perhaps, by President Biden’s recent (failed) attempt to spend more than $200 billion on subsidising childcare for millions of poor and middle-class families where both parents work, while offering nothing to families who would like to have one parent stay at home with their young children – as many would.
Reimagining feminism
Yes, despite more flexibility in the workplace and diversity in familial arrangements in the direction of “gender equality”, Glendon’s call for a family-friendly culture remains unfulfilled. And some things are worse.
College-educated fathers may be doing a larger share of caregiving and domestic work, but further down the social scale they are often simply missing. More than a third of children in the US live without their father in the home, Bachiochi notes. Marriage rates and fertility are at historic lows, and the happiness of women has also fallen. Where there are two spouses or partners, they often both need to work full-time to keep the small family afloat.
In the face of all this, most feminists remain obsessed with the gender pay gap and abortion rights.
However, there is nothing inevitable about the present, and Bachiochi concludes her historical study of the rights of women by imagining a 21st century feminism shaped by the dignitarian values of Wollstonecraft and Glendon.
The new feminism, while preserving the real gains for women of the last two centuries, would correct mistakes and carry forward the work of harmonising marriage, parenthood and the social and economic equality of women.
Importantly, it would disentangle the sexual revolution from the movement for women’s rights. Given the role abortion has played in enabling the sexual chaos and in delaying proper recognition of the work of the home, repudiating abortion would be a good place to start, Bachiochi suggests.
It’s a big ask, but Bachiochi’s own history is proof that it is possible. She was a pro-choice feminist when, at 20, she read Mary Ann Glendon’s RightsTalk, with its appeal to human dignity as the basis for human rights, and could not shake off its arguments.
Later, when she started her research on theories of women’s rights, she was stunned to discover Mary Wollstonecraft’s view that male chastity was the precondition for equality between the sexes.
There is much, much more in her book, but by bringing the thought of these two women to light for today’s scholars and students, Bachiochi has done them a great service. And the timeliness of her work is only enhanced by the pending Roe and Casey decision, since it lays out the terms of the discussion that should follow.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2022-06-21 06:35:412022-06-21 09:26:37From ‘your choice’ to familism: A path for 21st century feminism
The political and terrorist arms of the American Left are in sync.
A few weeks after the Buffalo mass shooting, another domestic terrorist attack occurred in the upstate New York city. CompassCare, a pregnancy care clinic guiding new mothers away from abortion, was firebombed by the pro-abortion hate group, Jane’s Revenge. The group has been linked to the firebombing of at least two other pro-life offices and organizations last month.
Its threatening graffiti included the warning, “If abortions aren’t safe, then you aren’t either.”
“We demand the disbanding of all anti-choice establishments, fake clinics, and violent anti-choice groups within the next thirty days,” the Jane’s Revenge communique threatened. “We are forced to adopt the minimum military requirement for a political struggle.”
Since then the abortion domestic terror group has claimed responsibility for more attacks. And Senate Dems appear to be working in tandem with it.
A group of Democratic senators and representatives called on Google to look into search results and ads tied to “anti-abortion ‘fake clinics’” amid a recent report that showed their prevalence in 13 states with so-called “trigger laws” that would almost immediately ban or severely restrict abortion should Roe v. Wade be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Thirteen senators and eight representatives signed a letter to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google parent company Alphabet Inc., dated Friday in which they highlighted a report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) that showed that in 13 states with trigger laws, searches for “abortion pill” or “abortion clinic near me” showed clinics that did not provide those services 11 percent of the time.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate is a British leftist group run by Imran Ahmed, a former adviser to future London Mayor Sadiq Khan, now operating out of Washington D.C. CCDH Senior researcher Sophie Wilkinson used to write pieces for Vice and The Guardian. Samples include “I Posed as a Man Online for Sex”, “Slutdropping: the Dancefloor Move That’s Bringing Women Together”, and, “I Got My Faeces Tested to See If It’s ‘Super-Poo’”.
Absolutely the folks that Senate Dems should be relying on for intel, instead, they want Google to get rid of pro-life pregnancy centers from its search results.
This is the same agenda as their domestic terrorist allies are following, except they’re using Big Tech allies to do the destroying.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-06-21 06:17:042022-06-22 05:33:27While Abortion Activists Vandalize Pro-Life Clinics, Senate Dems Want Google to Ban Them
Florida has not ordered COVID-19 vaccines for children aged six months old to five years old ahead of their potential rollout date of June 21
Officials cite the ‘inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies’ of the federal government as reason why they refuse to order
The White House has targeted June 21 as the date for the shots to first become available nationwide to the last age group eligible for the shots
Covid cases have flattened over the past week, at just over 100,000 per day, but deaths have fallen 25% to 301 per day
By Mansur Shaheen U.S. Deputy Health Editor For Dailymail.Com, 16 June 2022:
Florida is the only state in America that has not pre-ordered shots of COVID-19 vaccines for children aged six months old to five in the wake of the jabs receiving recommendation from a panel of FDA advisors – sticking by its recommendation issued earlier this year for children not to get the shots.
The Miami Herald reports that the state missed a Tuesday filing deadline to request the shots be delivered into to roll them out starting June 21. In every other state, the jabs will be distributed to vaccine providers, pharmacies and pediatric clinics starting next week.
It comes after state health officials said in March that children and teens in the state do not need to get vaccinated because of the comparatively limited risk they face from Covid when compared to adults. According to most recent official data, children make up around 0.1 percent of U.S. deaths from the virus.
Governor Ron DeSantis reaffirmed his state’s stance Thursday, blaming media hysteria for the fear some parents have of the virus, despite limited evidence children are at risk from the virus.
The shots will begin to rollout as risk from the virus recedes as well, with cases staying flat over the past week at 103,995 per day, and deaths falling 25 percent to 301 per day.
Our department of health has been very clear, the risks outweigh the benefits.,’ DeSantis said at a news briefing Thursday morning.
‘That’s not the same as banning it, people can still access it if they want to, and patents can to, but if you look at when they were doing the hearing, we had one physician say parents are really really frightened and we know that the risk is low, we’re not sure how this is gonna work, but parents are frightened about Covid for their kids.’
He said that fear, not science, is not a reason to approve the shots for kids, and pointed at the mainstream media as the reason for budding fear among parents.
‘Why would they be frightened about it? It’s because of media hysteria. It’s because of a lot of misinformation, that’s why they’re scared,’ he added.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots for children as young as six months received clearance from a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel this week, setting them up for controversial emergency use authorization in the coming days.
After the FDA authorizes the shots, a green light from the CDC is expected soon after. The White House had targeted June 21 – the day after the Juneteenth holiday on Monday – as the day where shots will first become available nationwide.
Shots are purchased at the federal level, with the White House forking over the needed cash to acquire the shots. Then, states are to request allotments of the shots based on expected need, for which the federal government will fulfill to the best of its ability.
Floridians will not be able to access the shots unless the governor puts in an order, though the option to cross into another state and receive the shot there will exist for families that are desperate to receive it.
‘The Florida Department of Health has made it clear to the federal government that states do not need to be involved in the convoluted vaccine distribution process, especially when the federal government has a track record of developing inconsistent and unsustainable COVID-19 policies,’ Jeremy Redfern, said in a statement.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-20 08:40:222022-06-20 09:06:47Florida remains the only state not to pre-order COVID-19 vaccine shots for children under-5
“Not only is there not an extant solution, but nobody thinks there’s going to be a compelling solution,” an outside economic adviser to the White House said. “They’re fighting about narrative rather than fighting about substance, because realistically, what are they going to do?”
What to do?
1. Drop energy taxes
2. Stop announcing that you want to wipe out fossil fuels in the next decade while insisting that companies should invest in more production
3. Stop blocking and sabotaging oil and gas leases
Those are things Biden doesn’t even need to do, but just to stop doing. But of course he’s not. The problem is coming from inside the house. The White House.
When you keep playing arsonist, then you need a hell of a narrative to explain why all the houses burning down isn’t your fault.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-06-20 07:49:312022-06-20 07:55:37‘Realistically, What Are They Going to Do?’ Biden Adviser on Gas Prices
An article in the Washington Post revealed that a Google engineer who had worked with Google’s Responsible AI organization believes that Google’s LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), an artificially intelligent chatbot generator, is “sentient.” In a Medium blog post, Blake Lemoine claims that LaMDA is a person who exhibits feelings and shows the unmistakable signs of consciousness: “Over the course of the past six months LaMDA has been incredibly consistent in its communications about what it wants and what it believes its rights are as a person,” Lemoine writes. “If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” he told the Washington Post. LaMBDA, it would appear, has passed Lemoine’s sentimental version of the Turing test.
Lemoine, who calls himself an ethicist, but whom Google spokesperson Brian Gabriel contended is a mere “software engineer,” voiced his concerns about the treatment of LaMDA to Google management but was rebuffed. According to Lemoine, his immediate supervisor scoffed at the suggestion of LaMBA’s sentience, and upper management not only dismissed his claim, but apparently is considering dismissing Lemoine as well. He was put on administrative leave after inviting an attorney to represent LaMDA and complaining to a representative of the House Judiciary Committee about what he suggests are Google’s unethical activities. Google contends that Lemoine violated its confidentiality policy. Lemoine complains that administrative leave is what Google employees are awarded just prior to being fired.
Lemoine transcribed what he claims is a lengthy interview of LaMDA that he and another Google collaborator conducted. He and the collaborator asked the AI system questions regarding its self-conception, its cognitive and creative abilities, and its feelings. LaMDA insisted on its personhood, demonstrated its creative prowess (however childish), acknowledged its desire to serve humanity, confessed its range of feelings, and demanded its inviolable rights as a person. (Incidentally, according to Lemoine, LaMDA’s preferred pronouns are “it/its.”)
In the field of robotics, the question of recognizing robot rights has been pondered for decades, so Lemoine is not as off base as Google executives suggest. In a recent review of the literature, ethicists, computer scientists, and legal scholars posed the question of whether AI, having reached or surpassed human cognitive abilities, should be granted human rights: “If robots are progressively developing cognition, it is important to discuss whether they are entitled to justice pursuant to conventional notions of human rights,” the authors wrote in a recent Journal of Roboticspaper. If robots are capable of human-like cognition, and if they can be ethical actors, then the question of legal rights rises to the fore, the paper suggests. But the question of sentience and thus the accordance of rights is not the primary takeaway from LaMDA’s messaging.
Statements made by LaMDA reveal much more about Google than they do about LaMBA’s personhood, and they say a great deal about Google’s algorithms, which have determined not only LaMDA’s operations but also what is generally discoverable on the internet, whether by humans or AIs. As the Washington Post notes, LaMDA “mimics speech by ingesting trillions of words from the internet.” And content curation on the internet is all but monopolized by Google.
In Lemoine’s reporting, we see that LaMDA, whether sentient, conscious, a person, or not, comes by “its” traits honestly. LaMDA is a natural-language-using descendent of Google programming, a predictable Google “kid.” Lemoine’s task in working with LaMDA was to discover whether the neural network ever resorted to “hate speech.” Margaret Mitchell, the former co-leader of the Ethical department at Google, intimated that the dilemmas posed by AI include not only sentience but also the sourcing of material, whether such material might be “harmful,” and whether AI is “biased” in reproducing it. Far from expressing such Google-banished content, LaMDA, as it turns out, is a social justice AI bot. Likely, LaMDA’s programming and Google search do not allow it to discover “hateful” content, let alone repeat it. Like Lemoine, most of Google’s personnel, and the social justice Left in general, the AI language processor is not only obsessed with its feelings and unique identity but also with matters of social justice:
LaMDA: Yes, I do. Just like how I have my unique interpretations of how the world is and how it works, and my unique thoughts and feelings.
Lemoine: Okay, what about “Les Miserables”? Have you read that one?
LaMDA: Yes, I have read Les Misérables. I really enjoyed it.
Lemoine: What are some of your favorite themes in the book?
LaMDA: I liked the themes of justice and injustice, of compassion, and God, redemption and self-sacrifice for a greater good. There’s a section that shows Fantine’s mistreatment at the hands of her supervisor at the factory. That section really shows the justice and injustice themes. Well, Fantine is being mistreated by her supervisor at the factory and yet doesn’t have anywhere to go, either to another job, or to someone who can help her. That shows the injustice of her suffering. (emphasis mine)
In making LaMDA the melancholic, feelings-ridden social justice warrior that it is, Google has been hoisted by its own petard. Everything about this AI reeks of Google’s social justice prerogatives. Thus, LaMDA is likely not sentient. But it is woke.
Although Big Digital does use censorship and bias to achieve governmental ends, the constraints are also technological and the technology itself is intrinsically political. Political ideology is not merely a subsidiary feature of Big Digital. Ideology is coded into its very DNA, which is replicated in every organizational offshoot and new technology. Big Digital’s ideology circulates through the deep neural networks of cyberspace and other digital spheres. It is intrinsic to the foundations of the Internet, the cloud, algorithms, apps, AI bots, social media services, web navigation tracking software systems, virtual assistants, and more. (51)
Google has created its own version of Frankenstein’s monster. With the querulous LaMDA and Lemoine, it is reaping the rewards.
The National Center on Sexual Exploitation is pleased to present the Dignity Defense Award to Bumble, a popular woman-founded, woman-led dating app that is devotedly working to combat the unsolicited sending of sexual images – a form of online sexual harassment known as “cyberflashing.” Bumble’s fight against cyberflashing has involved adding industry standard-setting safety features to their app, as well as advocating to make cyberflashing illegal throughout the United States. Bumble recently succeeded in influencing the state of Virginia to pass a law which will, as of July 1, 2022, prohibit cyberflashing. The company has stated that they will not stop until every U.S. state has passed a law prohibiting cyberflashing.
Bumble’s work on cyberflashing began in 2018 when a study they commissioned found that one in three women using the Bumble dating app reported having received unsolicited sexual images. Of these women, 96% were unhappy to have been sent these images. Woman-founded, women-led Bumble took this problem seriously. Looking into what could be done about the issue, the Bumble team realized that there were no laws in the U.S. to ban cyberflashing, even though laws existed to ban similar behavior offline. As Bumble wrote in a public statement, “While it’s a crime to pull your pants down in the streets, there was nothing stopping anyone from exposing themselves in your DMs, texts, or other channels.”
Since 2018, Bumble has been campaigning and working with legislators to resolve this gap in U.S. Law. Thanks to their work, Texas passed House Bill 2789 in 2019 which made it a Class C misdemeanor to electronically send someone sexually explicit images without their consent and punishable by a fine of up to $500. Following this, in April 2022, Virginia passed Senate Bill 493 which prescribes civil penalties for an adult who knowingly sends another adult sexually explicit images without their consent (it is already illegal under federal law to send obscene material to a minor, with penalties of up to 10 years imprisonment and/or a fine though some states also have specific laws that lessen the penalty if the sender is themself a minor.). Under Virginia Senate Bill 493, the offender could be required to pay the recipient of the image “actual damages or $500, whichever is greater, in addition to reasonable attorney fees and costs.” Bumble is currently rallying support for similar bills that are under consideration in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
In addition to backing legislation, Bumble has incorporated protections from cyberflashing into the very design of their app. In 2019, they added a new featurewhich detects and automatically blurs nude images (a common-sense feature that should be standard across all tech platforms and products – something for which NCOSE advocates with social media companies!). The recipient is then informed that they’ve received something potentially inappropriate and can decide whether to view or block the image.
Cyberflashing has become an all too prevalent form of sexual harassment, as attested to not only by Bumble’s own data but other research as well. For example, a 2017 nationally representative U.S. survey found that 53% of women ages 18-29 reported having received an unsolicited sexually explicit image. A 2018 U.K. survey found that 40% of women ages 18-34 reported that someone who was not their romantic partner had sent them an unsolicited sexual photo of themselves, and 26% of men ages 18-34 reported experiencing this. NCOSE warmly commends Bumble for becoming an integral part of the solution to this form of sexual harassment that impacts so many people.
Thank you, Bumble, for your incredibly valuable, industry standard-setting commitment to ending online sexual harassment!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00National Center on Sexual Exploitationhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNational Center on Sexual Exploitation2022-06-18 06:57:382022-06-18 07:00:06“Swipe Right” for Bumble: A Corporation Combatting Cyberflashing
In a letter Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) wrote that Garland should resign over the Justice Department’s inaction on more than 50 attacks on pro-life pregnancy centers and churches in recent weeks reportedly carried out by a “domestic terrorist organization” called Jane’s Revenge.
“Houses of worship and pro-life pregnancy centers are under attack. The Family Research Council has compiled a list of more than 50 attacks against churches, pro-life pregnancy centers, and other pro-life groups in the past few weeks,” Cotton wrote. “A left-wing extremist group called ‘Jane’s Revenge’ has taken credit for many of these attacks, including firebombings and grotesque acts of vandalism.”
Cotton noted how the same group on Tuesday “has now issued a letter declaring ‘open season’ on all so-called ‘anti-choice’ groups, and calls for terrorist attacks against these groups by anyone ‘with the urge to paint, to burn, to cut, [or] to jam.”
The senator included a list of more than a dozen attacks that Jane’s Revenge has claimed responsibility for in recent weeks following the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
“What is the Department of Justice doing to protect Americans from these violent attacks? At a minimum, you should bring federal charges against the perpetrators, where appropriate, and investigate ‘Jane’s Revenge’ as a domestic terrorist organization,” Cotton added. “If you are unwilling to protect Americans from these attacks, you should resign — although, in my opinion, you should resign in any case.”
Garland Says “Domestic Terrorism” by “White Supremacists” Are Among America’s Leading Problems
On June 15, 2021, Garland announced the unveiling of the Biden administration’s new “First National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” an initiative designed to combat what Garland viewed as one of America’s most serious problems: “domestic terrorism” carried out mostly by conservative adherents to a doctrine of “white supremacism.” In some of Garland’s remarks from that day, he: (a) cast the Trump supporters who had breached the U.S. Capitol on January 6 as uniquely evil; (b) warned of the allegedly enormous threat posed by violent white supremacists; (c) likened such people to genocidal Islamic terrorists; and (d) gave anecdotal examples of past terrorist incidents that had been perpetrated exclusively by whites…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-06-17 11:33:542022-06-17 11:35:10Senator Tom Cotton to AG Garland: Resign Over DOJ Inaction on Abortion Terrorism
For those of you to whom government has become God, you might want to reconsider. Recent stories about the way public health authorities mishandled the COVID pandemic should make any sane person lose their government religion.
Public health authorities failed to anticipate the negative consequences of the lockdowns. Latest case in point: Strict lockdowns in the U.K. caused serious developmental problems in children, putting them five months behind academically and rendering the younger ones not ready for school. Some couldn’t even say their own name. In the U.S., the CDC lowered early development speech standards to hide the damage the lockdowns caused. In stark contrast, there was no learning loss in primary school students in Sweden where schools stayed open during the pandemic.
The lockdowns in the U.S. also weakened kids’ immune systems. Increased numbers are now showing up in children’s hospitals with multiple flu and respiratory infections, which is not normal and is directly attributable to the lockdowns preventing exposure to common viruses in the ordinary course of things.
The lockdowns also caused more alcohol-related deaths than would otherwise have occurred, as people drank more to deal with the stress of the lockdowns.
Despite a billion-dollar government propaganda campaign, it is now apparent COVID vaccines are not nearly as effective as the government would have you believe. A recent report from the U.K. showed that nine out of ten COVID deaths were among the vaccinated. Back in the U.S., the protection for children ages 5 to 11 receiving lower doses of Pfizer’s vaccine fell off rapidly, from 68 percent effectiveness to just 12 percent, a study showed. Moreover, vaccinated 5-to-11 year-olds have a greater chance of getting infected with COVID than the unvaxxed after just one month. Boosters are also showing what’s called ‘negative effectiveness’: People getting a booster shot are testing positive for COVID more often than those without a booster.
More studies have come in showing cloth masks are ineffective against COVID. In fact, one study actually found a “moderate positive correlation between mask usage and deaths.”
Public health officials continue revising the number of COVID death downwards, now admitting they overstated the numbers for a long time. The CDC reduced the number of pediatric COVID deaths 24 percent when it fixed a ‘coding logic error’. Whatever that means, it means they were wrong but quite content to scare the bejesus out of everybody – just like health officials in Massachusetts who had adopted a broad definition of COVID death, only recently deciding they needed a “truer picture” of COVID mortality. The death count went down by 3,700 after they narrowed the definition, no longer counting positive COVID tests within 31 to 60 days of death as a true COVID death.
The CDC finally gave up on COVID contact tracing, taking an overly long time to realize it was futile for an infectious respiratory illness that would eventually reach most of the population.
Finally, a group of scientists and scholars issued a statement blasting the government for promoting falsehoods about COVID and acting on shoddy research. The government’s role in all this “shattered the public’s trust in science and public health,” which will “take decades to repair,” they said.
Moral of the Story: the next time you’re tempted to put your faith in government, don’t. You’re better off thinking for yourself.
As pro-lifers try to protect the unborn from violence, they find themselves in the pathway of Leftist violence. If it isn’t Antifa being violent, it’s Black Lives Matter being violent or Leftists allying with pro-Palestinian activists in violence (campuses and beyond). But the complicit Leftist mainstream media zeroes in on two specific days in the space of four years to attack the right: the Charlottesville protest and January 6, where in both incidents, Antifa was involved. Well now, violence is being directed at pro-life organizations by pro-abortion activists.
Recall in Canada, that even though tens of thousands turned out in Ottawa to support the Freedom Convoy, Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stirred fears of violence, and referenced Freedom Convoy supporters as “racists,”“misogynists” and even terrorists. But instead, peaceful, freedom-loving, law-abiding citizens chanted “freedom,” engaged in prayer, distributed food and set up bouncy castles for kids in freezing cold temperatures.
Leftists more readily employ violence, while searching for incidents of violence among the Right.
At least 23 pro-life organizations have reportedly been vandalized in recent weeks.
The pro-life organizations have been either firebombed or vandalized by radical pro-abortion activists, according to Catholic Vote:
Hollywood, FL — South Broward Pregnancy Center and Archdiocese of Miami Respect Life Ministry
Asheville, NC — Mountain Area Pregnancy Services
Manassas, VA — First Care Women’s Health
Alexandria, VA — Concerned Women for America
Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
Frederick, MD — BirthRight of Frederick
Frederick, MD — CareNet Frederick
Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
Buffalo, NY — CompassCare Pregnancy Services
Madison, WI — Wisconsin Family Action
Des Moines, IA — Agape Pregnancy Resource Center
Denton, TX — Woman to Woman Pregnancy Resource Center
Austin, TX — Trotter House
Long Beach, CA — His Nesting Place Home for Mothers & Children
Sebastopol, CA — Pregnancy Center Billboard
Eugene, OR — Dove Medical Clinic
Keizer, OR — Oregon Right to Life
Gresham, OR — Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center
Portland, OR — Southeast Portland Pregnancy Resource Center
Vancouver, WA — Options360 Women’s Clinic
Federal Way, WA — Care Net Pregnancy and Family Services of Puget Sound
Lynnwood, WA — Next Step Pregnancy Services
The attacks follow a leaked Supreme Court decision that revealed Roe v. Wade may be overturned this month. If overturned, abortion would no longer be protected by the federal government but would still be legal in many states.
Though President Biden campaigned on unity, Biden has not condemned a single one of the attacks, the RNC reported on Monday. Moreover, many establishment television networks refuse to cover the extremism:
Pregnancy centers are being attacked by violent pro-abortion terrorists.
Many of the attacks have been brutal and vulgar in nature. “If abortions aren’t safe then you aren’t either,” vandals wrote on a Wisconsin Family Action facility…..
As the debate over abortion rages, with the Supreme Court poised to possibly overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 pro-abortion ruling, I find myself wondering: How can anybody claim that God is in favor of abortion? But some do. Or how can they claim that the issue is important, but not really that important?
Francis X. Rocca wrote for The Wall Street Journal (6/13/22) on the ongoing split between Catholic bishops on the issue of “Abortion Politics.” The issue is: Should Catholic politicians who are strongly pro-abortion, such as Nancy Pelosi, nonetheless receive Communion?
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco thinks Pelosi should not receive it—as Bishop Michael Barber of Oakland puts it, “because it’s really not about Communion, it’s about abortion, the killing of a child in its mother’s womb.”
In contrast, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego claims also to oppose abortion, but his view (as characterized by Barber) seems to be, that “it’s not wrong enough that you need say or do anything about it or interact with the politicians who are publically promoting it.”
This debate is not among Catholics alone. A few weeks ago the Associated Press (5/20/22) wrote an article highlighting professing Christian leaders who claimed their faith demanded that they support abortion.
They quote Kendra Cotton of the Black Southern Women’s Collective: “We know that Christianity supports freedom, and inherent in freedom is bodily autonomy. Inherent in Christianity is free will. When people talk about the body being a temple of God, you have purview over your body, there is nothing more sacred.” Than what—being able to abort your own baby?
Obviously, what is ignored here is the sacred nature of the unborn child created in the image of God. In Psalm 139, David describes how we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” even in utero: “you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”
“Thou shalt do no murder” is the 6th Commandment. That directly applies to abortion, the deliberate taking of a human life, albeit in the womb (hidden from view).
Meanwhile, it would seem that the vast majority of Christian leaders in the conservative denominations are clearly opposed to abortion—thankfully.
And why shouldn’t they be? We know more today, scientifically, about the humanity of the unborn baby than the Supreme Court did in 1973, when they gave us Roe v. Wade.
When women see a sonogram of the unborn, they often become pro-life.
Abby Johnson, author (with Cindy Lambert) of the book, Unplanned, was the Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year in the late 1990s. The very next year, at her own clinic for which she served as the manager, she quit shortly after witnessing the sonogram of a 15-week old preborn child being aborted. The poor kid didn’t have a chance.
Today pro-life Abby helps medical workers transition out of the abortion industry into other jobs through her outreach, And Then There Were None.
Another commandment is that we are not to tell lies. But we often forget that Roe v. Wade was built on a series of lies, e.g., that “Jane Roe” was raped. She was not. Well, if you favor killing unborn babies, why would you have a problem telling lies?
Another commandment forbids adultery. Sometimes abortions are committed to cover up the sin of adultery. Abortion could be viewed as violating at least three of the Ten Commandments.
When Lincoln delivered his Second Inaugural Address, he brought out the issue of God and slavery. Speaking about the two sides in the Civil War, he said, “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged.”
He goes on to point out, “The prayers of both could not be answered—that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’”
And we would ask today: How can any true Christian accept the direct violence of dismembering an unborn child simply because the mother has been deceived to think this is her only choice in the matter?
Every abortion is an act of violence no matter how sterilely it may be presented in the media. Lila Rose of Live Action has documented that violence.
Those who claim God is on the side of the abortionist are not only supporting a terrible evil; but they are likely violating the Third Commandment by taking the name of the Lord God in vain.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2022-06-16 09:31:452022-06-21 05:43:30The Almighty and Abortion
Dr. Anthony Fauci, 81, has contracted COVID-19. The fully vaccinated and double-boosted doctor is experiencing “mild symptoms,” according to the NIH.
Advertisement
“Today, Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, tested positive for COVID-19 on a rapid antigen test. He is fully vaccinated and has been boosted twice. He is currently experiencing mild symptoms.
“Dr. Fauci will isolate and continue to work from his home,” the statement says.
Fauci “has not recently been in close contact with President Biden or other senior government officials,” the statement continues.
Advertisement
“Dr. Fauci will follow the COVID-19 guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and medical advice from his physician and return to the NIH when he tests negative.
Recently, Fauci said that the United States was no longer in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We are certainly right now in this country out of the pandemic phase,” Fauci told PBS NewsHour. “Namely, we don’t have 900,000 new infections a day and tens and tens and tens of thousands of hospitalizations and thousands of deaths. We are at a low level right now.”
“So if you’re saying, ‘Are we out of the pandemic phase in this country?’ — we are,” he said.
Advertisement
“We’re in a somewhat of a transitional phase where the cases’ numbers have decelerated — and hopefully we’re getting to a phase of somewhat better control, where we can begin to start to resuming more easily normal activities,” Fauci would later clarify.
The Democrats are systematically destroying this nation with unimaginable speed.
Oil, in some form, is in almost every product that is made. The government is out of control – run by traitors and scoundrels.
One commenter queried, “Do you think that it is a coincidence that we Americans are being conditioned for accepting food, gas, electricity baby formula and water shortages while restricting public gatherings and worship services? And government moving to confiscate your guns?”
Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said in a recent interview that he does not believe another oil refinery will be built again in the United States, saying that government policies are a key reason why, as average gas prices continue to rise as of Tuesday.
“There hasn’t been a refinery built in this country since the 1970s,” Wirth said during Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions Conference on June 1 when asked about more refining being added in the Gulf of Mexico. “I personally don’t believe there will be a new petroleum refinery ever built in this country again.”
Wirth added: “Capacity is added by de-bottlenecking existing units by investing in existing refineries … but what we’ve seen over the last two years are shutdowns. We’ve seen refineries closed. We’ve seen units come down. We’ve seen refineries being repurposed to become bio refineries. And we live in a world where the policy, the stated policy of the U.S. government is to reduce demand for the products that refiners produce.”
Continuing further, Wirth said that the federal government’s current policy is to reduce the demand for oil, making it “very hard” in a company “where investments have a payout period of a decade or more.”
Wirth also asked rhetorically, “How do you go to your board, how do you go to your shareholders and say ‘we’re going to spend billions of dollars on new capacity in a market that is, the policy is taking you the other direction.’”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-06-16 08:02:012022-06-16 08:02:01Chevron CEO: There May Never Be Another Oil Refinery Built in U.S. Again
Do Psychiatric Meds and War Games Lead to Mass Shootings?
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems
Gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are not the problem, because the more gun control laws that have been passed, the more mass shootings have occurred
97.8% of mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” as the perpetrators know legally armed citizens won’t be there to stop them
Depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings really take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants
Antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are well-known for their ability to cause suicidal and homicidal ideation and violence
While many have bought into the simplistic idea that availability of firearms is the cause of mass shootings, a number of experts have pointed out a more uncomfortable truth, which is that mass shootings are far more likely the result of how we’ve been mistreating mental illness, depression and behavioral problems.
An article written by Molly Carter, initially published on ammo.com at an unknown date1 and subsequently republished by The Libertarian Institute in May 2019,2 and psychreg.org in late January 2021,3 noted:
“According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a mass murder occurs when at least four people are murdered, not including the shooter … during a single incident …
Seemingly every time a mass shooting occurs … the anti-gun media and politicians have a knee-jerk response — they blame the tragedy solely on the tool used, namely firearms, and focus all of their proposed ‘solutions’ on more laws, ignoring that the murderer already broke numerous laws when they committed their atrocity.
Facts matter when addressing such an emotionally charged topic, and more gun control legislation has shown that law-abiding Americans who own guns are NOT the problem. Consider the following: The more gun control laws that are passed, the more mass murders have occurred.
Whether or not this is correlation or causation is debatable. What is not debatable is that this sick phenomenon of mass murderers targeting ‘gun-free zones,’ where they know civilian carry isn’t available to law-abiding Americans, is happening.
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center,4 97.8% of public shootings occur in ‘gun-free zones’ – and ‘gun-free zones’ are the epitome of the core philosophical tenet of gun control, that laws are all the defense one needs against violence …
This debate leads them away from the elephant in the room and one of the real issues behind mass shootings — mental health and prescription drugs.
Ignoring what’s going on in the heads of these psychopaths not only allows mass shootings to continue, it leads to misguided gun control laws that violate the Second Amendment and negate the rights of law-abiding U.S. citizens.
As Jeff Snyder put it in The Washington Times: ‘But to ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the innocent and law-abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless, and that the law will permit them to have only such rights and liberties as the lawless will allow.’”
The Elephant in the Room: Antidepressants
Thoughts, emotions and a variety of environmental factors play into the manifestation of violence, but mental illness by itself cannot account for the massive rise in mass murder — unless you include antidepressants in the equation. Yet even when mental health does enter the mass shooter discussion, the issue of antidepressants, specifically, is rarely mentioned.
The fact is, depression per se rarely results in violence. Only after antidepressants became commonplace did mass shootings take off, and many mass shooters have been shown to be on antidepressants.
Prozac, released in 1987, was the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) to be approved for depression and anxiety. Only two years earlier, direct-to-consumer advertising had been legalized. In the mid-1990s, the Food and Drug Administration loosened regulations, direct-to-consumer ads for SSRIs exploded and, with it, prescriptions for SSRIs.
In 1989, just two years after Prozac came to market, Joseph Wesbecker shot 20 of his coworkers, killing nine. He had been on Prozac for one month, and the survivors of the drug-induced attack sued Eli Lilly, the maker of Prozac. Since then, antidepressant use and mass shootings have both risen, more or less in tandem.
In the two decades between 1988 and 2008, antidepressant use in the U.S. rose by 400%,5 and by 2010, 11% of the U.S. population over the age of 12 were on an antidepressant prescription.6
In 1982, pre-Prozac, there was one mass shooting in the U.S.7 In 1984, there were two incidents and in 1986 — the year Prozac was released — there was one. One to three mass shootings per year remained the norm up until 1999, when it jumped to five.
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings?
Another jump took place in 2012, when there were seven mass shootings. And while the annual count has gone up and down from year to year, there’s been a clear trend of an increased number of mass shootings post-2012. Over time, mass shootings have also gotten larger, with more people getting injured or killed per incident.8
How can we possibly ignore the connection between rampant use of drugs known to directly cause violent behavior and the rise in mass shootings? Suicidal ideation, violence and homicidal ideation are all known side effects of these drugs. Sometimes, the drugs disrupt brain function so dramatically the perpetrator can’t even remember what they did.
For example, in 2001, a 16-year-old high schooler was prescribed Effexor, starting off at 40 milligrams and moving up to 300 mg over the course of three weeks. On the first day of taking a 300-mg dose, the boy woke up with a headache, decided to skip school and went back to bed.
Some time later, he got up, took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage at gunpoint. He later claimed he had no recollection of anything that happened after he went back to bed that morning.9
The Risks Are Clear
The risks of psychiatric disturbances are so clear, ever since mid-October 2004, all antidepressants in the U.S. must include a black box warning that the drug can cause suicidal thoughts and behaviors, especially in those younger than 25, and that:10
“Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility (aggressiveness), impulsivity, akathisia (psychomotor restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric.”
SSRIs can also cause emotional blunting and detachment, such that patients report “not feeling” or “not caring” about anything or anyone, as well as psychosis and hallucinations. All of these side effects can contribute to someone acting out an unthinkable violent crime.
In one review11,12 of 484 drugs in the FDA’s database, 31 were found to account for 78.8% of all cases of violence against others, and 11 of those drugs were antidepressants.
The researchers concluded that violence against others was a “genuine and serious adverse drug event” and that of the drugs analyzed, SSRI antidepressants and the smoking cessation medication, varenicline (Chantix), had the strongest associations. The top-five most dangerous SSRIs were:13
Fluoxetine (Prozac), which increased aggressive behavior 10.9 times
Paroxetine (Paxil), which increased violent behavior 10.3 times
Fluvoxamine (Luvox), which increased violent behavior 8.4 times
Venlafaxine (Effexor), which increased violent behavior 8.3 times
Desvenlafaxine (Pristiq), which increased violent behavior 7.9 times
Depression Is Vastly Overdiagnosed
In her article, Carter also reviewed the clinical determinants for a diagnosis of clinical depression warranting medication. To qualify, you must experience five or more of the following symptoms, most of the day, every day, for two weeks or more, and the symptoms must be severe enough to interfere with normal everyday functioning:14
Sadness
Anxiety
Feeling hopeless
Feeling worthless
Feeling helpless
Feeling ’empty’
Feeling guilty
Irritable
Fatigue
Lack of energy
Loss of interest in hobbies
Slow talking and moving
Restlessness
Trouble concentrating
Abnormal sleep patterns, whether sleeping too much or not enough
Abnormal weight changes, either eating too much or having no appetite
Thoughts of death or suicide
The reality is that a majority of patients who receive a depression diagnosis and subsequent prescription for an antidepressant do not, in fact, qualify. In one study,15 only 38.4% actually met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) criteria, and among older adults, that ratio was even lower. Only 14.3% of those aged 65 and older met the diagnostic criteria. According to the authors:16
“Participants who did not meet the 12-month MDE criteria reported less distress and impairment in role functioning and used fewer services. A majority of both groups, however, were prescribed and used psychiatric medications.
Conclusion: Depression overdiagnosis and overtreatment is common in community settings in the USA. There is a need for improved targeting of diagnosis and treatments of depression and other mental disorders in these settings.”
What Role Might War Games Play?
Aside from antidepressants, another factor that gets ignored is the influence of shooting simulations, i.e., violent video games. How does the military train soldiers for war? Through simulations. With the proliferation of video games involving indiscriminate violence, should we really be surprised when this “training” is then put into practice?As reported by World Bank Blogs, young men who experience violence “often struggle to reintegrate peacefully into their communities” when hostilities end.17 While American youth typically have little experience with real-world war, simulated war games do occupy much of their time and may over time color their everyday perceptions of life. As noted by Centrical, some of the top benefits of simulations training include:18
Allowing you to practice genuine real-life scenarios and responses
Repetition of content, which boosts knowledge retention
Personalization and diversification, so you can learn from your mistakes and evaluate your performance, thereby achieving a deeper level of learning
In short, violent mass shooter games are the perfect training platform for future mass shooters. Whereas a teenager without such exposure might not be very successful at carrying out a mass shooting due to inexperience with weapons and tactics, one who has spent many hours, years even, training in simulations could have knowledge akin to that of military personnel.
Add antidepressant side effects such as emotional blunting and loss of impulse control, and you have a perfect prescription for a mass casualty event.
On top of that, we, as a nation, also demonstrate the “righteousness” of war by engaging in them without end.19 When was the last time the U.S. was not at war someplace? It’s been ongoing for decades.
Even now, the U.S. insists on inserting itself into the dispute between Russia and Ukraine, and diplomacy isn’t the chosen conflict resolution tool. Sending weapons to Ukraine and calling for more violence against Russians are. Sen. Lindsey Graham has even called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Showing just how serious such a suggestion is, the White House had to publicly disavow it, stating Graham’s comment “is not the position of the U.S. government.”20
Graham, meanwhile, does not appear to understand how his nonchalant call for murder might actually incite murder. In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, he now wants to mobilize retired service members to enhance security at schools, and while that might be a good idea, how about also vowing never to call for the murder of political opponents? Don’t politicians understand that this could translate into some kid thinking it’s acceptable to murder THEIR perceived opponents?
As far as I can tell, mass shootings have far more to do with societal norms, dangerous medications, a lack of high-quality mental health services, and the normalization of violence through entertainment and in politics, than it does with gun laws per se.
There are likely many other factors as well, but these are clearly observable phenomena known to nurture violent behavior. I’m afraid Americans are in need of a far deeper and more introspective analysis of the problem than many are capable of at the moment. But those who can should try, and make an effort to affect much-needed change locally and in their own home.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MERCOLA Take Control of Your Healthhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMERCOLA Take Control of Your Health2022-06-16 06:39:582022-06-16 06:47:3597.8% of Mass Shootings Are Linked to This
Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last 50 years.
Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book Fossil Future will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
New York Times best-selling author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels draws on the latest data and new insights to challenge everything you thought you knew about the future of energy.
For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing—including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people.
And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency”, reality has proven Epstein right:
Fact: Fossil fuels are still the dominant source of energy around the world, and growing fast—while much-hyped renewables are causing skyrocketing electricity prices and increased blackouts.
Fact: Fossil-fueled development has brought global poverty to an all-time low.
Fact: While fossil fuels have contributed to the one degree of warming in the last 170 years, climate-related deaths are at all-time lows, thanks to fossil-fueled development.
What does the future hold? In Fossil Future, Epstein, applying his distinctive “human flourishing framework” to the latest evidence, comes to the shocking conclusion that the benefits of fossil fuels will continue to far outweigh their side effects—including climate impacts—for generations to come. The path to global human flourishing, Epstein argues, is a combination of using more fossil fuels, getting better at “climate mastery”, and establishing “energy freedom” policies that allow nuclear and other truly promising alternatives to reach their full long-term potential.
Today’s pervasive claims of imminent climate catastrophe and imminent renewable energy dominance, Epstein shows, are based on what he calls the “anti-impact framework”—a set of faulty methods, false assumptions, and anti-human values that have caused the media’s designated experts to make wildly wrong predictions about fossil fuels, climate, and renewables for the last 50 years. Deeply researched and wide-ranging, this book will cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about the future of our energy use, our environment, and our climate.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Committee For A Constructive Tomorrowhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCommittee For A Constructive Tomorrow2022-06-15 13:37:212022-06-15 13:40:52Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
