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someofparts
Talk about colonialism in the last thread made me remember on of the books that is currently on the bookshelf I have in the den for things I am currently reading,
Burmese Days, by George Orwell.
Orwell is a long-standing favorite for me. Anything of his I have read is always engaging and eye-opening. As is so often the case with artists, his lesser-known works are usually more interesting than the works that made him famous.
In addition to Burmese Days (which seemed apt because it is a study of colonialism), he wrote a stunning/heartbreaking book about life for coal miners in the UK, Road to Wigan Pier (which is my personal favorite among his works). Another good one was Down and Out in Paris and London, which is an interesting tale of the life of a poor working stiff in Paris restaurants and on the welfare dole in the UK.
Curt Kastens
I came to the conclusion back around 2005 that Israel, and the pro Israeli lobby is not a tail that wags the dog. I had held that idea for quite a long time. Because of that I understand how easy it is to fall in to this trap. And not only that even though I now take the view that the Israelis are puppets of the US MIC, they are willing executioners for the US MIC so their guilt is in no way shape or form diminished. But believing that it is Israel that calls the shots for the US allows US decision makers to at least have a mitigating circumstance for their crimes by using the Israeli excuse to claim that they were coerced in to supporting an Israeli attack on Iran (and everyone else in the region) rather than the aggrevating circumstance which is that the non Zionist leaders of the US MIC orders Israel to carry out these attacks. Which the Israelis then carry out with enthusiasm.
Not that it all matters much because the whole collective west is a giant system with no accountability for the leadership at all. None of the leaders will be punished. And if they eventually are it will not matter because that punishment will not serve as a warning to leaders in the future. Because humanity has no future beyond 2050 if not 2040 if not 2030 if not 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPAFvlPf-UE
Oakchair
“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” –Invisible Monsters
“Why, it might be argued, should anyone think it is anything but inevitable that the preeminent schools of a capitalist society produce professionals to serve the society’s preeminent capitalist?” –Calvin Trillin
—–
“A systematic review and meta-analysis were undertaken of RCTs(Randomized controlled trials), published prior to 1983”
“The reductions in mean serum cholesterol levels were significantly higher in the intervention groups; this did not result in significant differences (Risk ratio .99) in CHD or all-cause mortality.”
https://openheart.bmj.com/content/2/1/e000196
——
This is a meta-analysis of corporate designed, performed, and selectively released studies on statins.
One of the authors was paid by 4 of multiple Statin drug corporations as stated in the competing interests section.
Besides conflict of interests biasing the results in favor of statins these studies contained other various flaws/bias favoring the drugs.
-Exclusion and inclusion criteria. It’s standard practice to selectively choose patients who are expected to tolerate the drugs and exclude those who are expected to have a higher risk of adverse events.
-Use of a run in period. This is where the patients are given the drug and those who have negative effects are removed before the study starts. Likewise, this results in the placebo group
receiving a period of harm from the drugs.
-Ending the study prematurely. For example the ASCOT-LLA atorvastatin trial started as a 5 year long study but it was ended after 3.3 years. Everyone could recognize how this practice was absurd when Trump called for the vote counting to stop part way through.
-Drop out bias a portion of the participants results are excluded.
The results were:
“median postponement of death for primary and secondary prevention trials were 3.2 and 4.1 days, respectively.”
Put differently, in corporate studies designed to make Statins look good they extend life expectancy by 3-4 days.
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/5/9/e007118
—-
“Lipid-lowering drugs produce myopathic side effects in up to 7% of treated patients, with severe rhabdomyolysis occurring in as many as 0.5%”
“persistent symptoms occurred in 68% of patients despite cessation (of statins)”
Statins caused long term damage to the metabolic and muscle systems that did not resolve after withdrawing from the drugs.
This highlights the bias favoring statins in all the clinical trials because remember they gave the “placebo” group a statin for 6 weeks.
A common way drug corporations hide drug harms is to ensure that the “placebo” group is actually a group harmed in one way or another.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16671104/
——
In a 2 month long French study clinical levels of muscle pain were reported in
“10.5%” of users with 38% and 4% of those people being prevented from moderate daily activities or being confined to bed respectively.
A dose dependent relationship was found with stronger statins and doses causing larger amounts of negative effects.
The authors were employed by a statin manufacture and the study was funded by that same drug corporation (Acknowledgment section).
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16453090/
—–
In a randomized study done by authors who were paid by a dozen drug companies and funded by a drug corporation grant (acknowledgment section) they found:
“35.8% experienced muscle pain on SIMVA (statins) but not placebo, exhibiting confirmed SAMS (statin-associated muscle symptoms)”
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6083851/
—-
“Real critical thinking means uncovering and questioning social, political and moral assumptions; applying and refining a personally developed worldview” —Disciplined minds, Jeff Schmidt
“Truth is a pathless land –the moment you follow someone you cease to follow truth.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.” –Invisible monsters
As always sci-hub can be used to get past paywalls and read the entire published study.
https://sci-hub.se/
elkern
I haven’t been able to get to Turcopolier blog for several days now. First, it looked like my Browser (MS Edge) didn’t want to let me go to a site it considers unsafe, but now it looks like the site has disappeared (again).
Anybody else having same issue?
Joe
I would recommend also the Orwell work, the essay, Shooting an elephant.
Marc Level
I attended the Duluth, MN “No Kings” Rally today, it was a cold 50 degrees with high winds where we were in sight of Lake Superior. Good crowd, certainly a bit over 2,000, more than that with people coming and going the 90 minutes plus I was there.
I did not realize that Governor (and Netanyahu buddy c. 2009) Tim Walz had encouraged Minnesota residents NOT to attend especially in the Twin Cities, because of the targeted assassination of the Democratic House speaker Melissa Hortman & her husband by a deranged CHUD impersonating a cop yesterday. https://www.startribune.com/brooklyn-park-police-searching-for-suspect-in-multiple-targeted-shootings/601372993 (A comment on this article– the photos of Cops “protecting” from a fake Cop with their semi-automatics did not comfort me. I’m reminded of the old classic “Police and Thieves,” by Junior Murvin, 1976. I know I heard the Joe Strummer/ Clash version first when I was 17 or so.
I saw some old friends and made some new ones. I had to shop for groceries, liquor and art supplies to make my placard before the rally started at noon. By coincidence, my food store is near the starting point of the march to the crossing to Minnesota Point/ Lake Park, so I talked to a few folks there before rushing home and making my sign. One lady I briefly interacted with was waving an American flag, so I asked her in a friendly, non-confrontational way, “I hope you don’t support the Gaza Genocide since you are waving THAT flag?” She responded of course not, and we had a friendly tete-a-tete. I told her I’d be attending the rally and somehow Ukraine came up. I told her I support Russia because Ukraine is a Nazi-ideology regime, she said “I’ve never heard that!” (She’s American, I’m not surprised.) I told her to goggle Stepan Bandera, I told her stuff I shared recently with L & S (Lie and Suborn), about the 5 million dead Russians after 1991, about doing a reverse BLM with statues in Ukraine, going from anti-Nazi to pro-Nazi, Russian being outlawed as a language, Western Ukraine having been fascist in WW II, etc. I recommended she buy Hopkirk’s The Great Game if she wanted to learn about Russian history . . . it was a respectful and friendly conversation, might (or might not) have changed somebody’s mind, it never hurts to try.
My sign at the rally was as follows, and several people took pictures of it, evidently were in agreement. It was as follows:
DEFEAT FASCIST GENOCIDAL AXIS OF EVIL: U$A + UK + ZIONAZIS + GERMANY + UKRAINE (all in black except Zionasis was in Red, with blood drips down from the letters)
REST of the World (=RoW) BRICS + U.N., Global South says U$A Fuck Off, Hands off! (all black except RoW red)
WHITE SUPREMACY, Your Days Are Numbered! (in Blue)
Stop Sending All My Taxes to Right Wing, Looting Regimes! (in red)
Put Down the Billionaire Oligarchs and Restore Roads, Bridges, Health Care, Schools, Safety Net! (in black)
American “Exceptionalism” = Showing R.o.W how fat, stupid, violent, & ignorant White Majority is!! Stop! (in red. I was not “fat shaming per se, but this is a case where I figured referencing the Donald directly would engender more openness to the message)
NO GODS, NO MASTERS, No Kings! (in Blue– I put the Anarchist motto in all Caps, not so for name of the Demo, as Donald is just a figurehead, if a particularly egregious and ugly one. And as I shared already, I went to Zero of the local Shit-Libs Virtue “Resistance” Rallies, oh, if Kamala were here it wouldn’t be so bad!! Fuck dat noise.)
Closer was “FREE YOUR MIND, YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW!– Bootsy Collins (in black)
An older lady I know from the Unitarian Church was first to complement it, she said “Too bad you couldn’t include more.” I said yes, only so much room for Bumper Sticker wisdom.
No violence or mayhem, no counter-protesters. Lots of supportive honking by 90% of cars coming thru the Central intersection. Old, young, mostly white (it is Duluth) a very friendly vibe. Last group to ask to photo the poster were 3 women with one having an “Eat the Rich!” sign, I had complimented it, saying “Hey, Eat the Rich, that’s genuine Radicalism.”
It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing to know that others are disgusted and fed up. The fact that young people are checked out from the consensus was shared with me by a new friend. Other than the one conversation sans placard, nobody disputed my inclusion of Ukraine in the fascist Axis.
La Lucha sigue. El orden viejo esta matando. Hasta la Victoria contra el fascismo.
bruce wilder
Statins are such a scam! Read the package insert carefully, says I.
Seriously, I do not understand the medical judgment at all. Cholesterol is central to such fundamental mechanisms of tissue repair, why would anyone focus on serum levels? Something is certainly going wrong in the processes of arterioscelerosis, but is it plausibly the quantity of cholesterol of whatever types floating in the blood? Granting that that the blood test is a statistical indicator, does it make sense as a treatment to manipulate an indicator? Does it make any sense at all to prescribe a drug and use as feedback the results of a blood test that correlates rather loosely with the disease?
Call me old school, but I expect an investigation of disease processes and mechanisms with interventions logically related to process/mechanism. A drug to manipulate an “instrumental variable” in an almost certainly false linear model? Are you kidding? What is wrong with these people?
mago
As I’ve often noted I live remote and my internet access is sketchy at best; I have to catch a signal from space using my cellphone.
Anyway, today I repeatedly received the message that “the page cannot be opened because the server stopped responding”, which reminded me that UNFI’s (the largest US natural foods distributor—practically a monopoly) servers were hacked and have been down for about 10 days.
What this means is Whole Foods and your local mom and pop , if such exits in your neighborhood, have serious inventory shortages. The interdependence, it burns.
There’s no going back, unless some dystopian scenario takes effect, in which case we’re going way back. But for now we’re internet reliant and vulnerable. Gotta have security systems to guard against malware and hackers and who knows what. There are some sinister players lurking out there ready to create chaos and mayhem. I’m surprised there isn’t more disruption occurring. There will be of course with cyber warfare accelerating. It ain’t natural is all I’m saying.
In the unnatural department, I took note of a posting at NC this week about the Millennials and the X’s and Z’s I guess not getting it on so much. Porn and stress and who knows what dulling mundane desire. Horny ain’t what it used to be, apparently. I don’t know. Don’t get around much anymore, I’m attributing this phenomenon to endocrine disrupters and hormonal imbalances from corporate food, environmental toxins and all the other usual suspects that I usually cite. Testosterone and estrogen levels aren’t what they used to be. Kind of amazing that we function at all. Even those who rely on Whole Foods for their sustenance are mostly consuming organic processed foods. I used to care, but not so much anymore.
I hear there are some wars happening that are bigger than chat room food fights. Wishing all those in the ‘free world ‘ a peaceful and pleasant weekend.
mago
It’s possible to love everyday people.
Ian Welsh
I was AFK for over 12 hours. I understand there was a period where the site was slow or not loading, sorry about that. It’s due to DDOS, not sure why we get hit.
If comments aren’t approved fast it just means that I’m AFK. I sometimes sleep a long time and when I’m out of the house I usually don’t carry a phone.