The Social Dilemma: Why is the World Going to Hell?

This article from Counterpunch is a commentary of the insightful movie: The Social Dilemma, analyzing the  impact of Social Medias on our lives. This being Counterpunch, many arguments are anticapitalist, rightly or wrongly: You judge. But many points are interesting and should be discussed more than they are! 

 October 2, 2020

Why is the World Going to Hell?

by Jonathan Cook

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and the other in its conclusion. Nonetheless, the film is good at exploring the contours of the major social crises we currently face – epitomised both by our addiction to the mobile phone and by its ability to rewire our consciousness and our personalities.

The film makes a convincing case that this is not simply an example of old wine in new bottles. This isn’t the Generation Z equivalent of parents telling their children to stop watching so much TV and play outside. Social media is not simply a more sophisticated platform for Edward Bernays-inspired advertising. It is a new kind of assault on who we are, not just what we think.

According to The Social Dilemma, we are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse. We face what several interviewees term an “existential threat” from the way the internet, and particularly social media, are rapidly developing.

I don’t think they are being alarmist. Or rather I think they are right to be alarmist, even if their alarm is not entirely for the right reasons. We will get to the limitations in their thinking in a moment.

Like many documentaries of this kind, The Social Dilemma is deeply tied to the shared perspective of its many participants. In most cases, they are richly disillusioned, former executives and senior software engineers from Silicon Valley. They understand that their once-cherished creations – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat (WhatsApp seems strangely under-represented in the roll call) – have turned into a gallery of Frankenstein’s monsters.

That is typified in the plaintive story of the guy who helped invent the “Like” button for Facebook. He thought his creation would flood the world with the warm glow of brother and sisterhood, spreading love like a Coca Cola advert. In fact, it ended up inflaming our insecurities and need for social approval, and dramatically pushed up rates of suicide among teenage girls.

If the number of watches of the documentary is any measure, disillusion with social media is spreading far beyond its inventors.

Children as guinea pigs

Although not flagged as such, The Social Dilemma divides into three chapters.

The first, dealing with the argument we are already most familiar with, is that social media is a global experiment in altering our psychology and social interactions, and our children are the main guinea pigs. Millennials (those who came of age in the 2000s) are the first generation that spent their formative years with Facebook and MySpace as best friends. Their successors, Generation Z, barely know a world without social media at its forefront.

The film makes a relatively easy case forcefully: that our children are not only addicted to their shiny phones and what lies inside the packaging, but that their minds are being aggressively rewired to hold their attention and then make them pliable for corporations to sell things.

Each child is not just locked in a solitary battle to stay in control of his or her mind against the skills of hundreds of the world’s greatest software engineers. The fight to change their perspective and ours – the sense of who we are – is now in the hands of algorithms that are refined every second of every day by AI, artificial intelligence. As one interviewee observes, social media is not going to become less expert at manipulating our thinking and emotions, it’s going to keep getting much, much better at doing it.

Jaron Lanier, one of the computing pioneers of virtual reality, explains what Google and the rest of these digital corporations are really selling: “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception – that is the product.” That is also how these corporations make their money, by “changing what you do, what you think, who you are.”

They make profits, big profits, from the predictions business – predicting what you will think and how you will behave so that you are more easily persuaded to buy what their advertisers want to sell you. To have great predictions, these corporations have had to amass vast quantities of data on each of us – what is sometimes called “surveillance capitalism”.

And, though the film does not quite spell it out, there is another implication. The best formula for tech giants to maximise their predictions is this: as well as processing lots of data on us, they must gradually grind down our distinctiveness, our individuality, our eccentricities so that we become a series of archetypes. Then, our emotions – our fears, insecurities, desires, cravings – can be more easily gauged, exploited and plundered by advertisers.

These new corporations trade in human futures, just as other corporations have long traded in oil futures and pork-belly futures, notes Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard business school. Those markets “have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”.

Flat Earthers and Pizzagate

The second chapter explains that, as we get herded into our echo chambers of self-reinforcing information, we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each other. With it, our ability to empathise and compromise is eroded. We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.

Anyone who has spent any time on social media, especially a combative platform like Twitter, will sense that there is a truth to this claim. Social cohesion, empathy, fair play, morality are not in the algorithm. Our separate information universes mean we are increasingly prone to misunderstanding and confrontation.

And there is a further problem, as one interviewee states: “The truth is boring.” Simple or fanciful ideas are easier to grasp and more fun. People prefer to share what’s exciting, what’s novel, what’s unexpected, what’s shocking. “It’s a disinformation-for-profit model,” as another interviewee observes, stating that research shows false information is six times more likely to spread on social media platforms than true information.

And as governments and politicians work more closely with these tech companies – a well-documented fact the film entirely fails to explore – our rulers are better positioned than ever to manipulate our thinking and control what we do. They can dictate the political discourse more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than ever before.

This section of the film, however, is the least successful. True, our societies are riven by increasing polarisation and conflict, and feel more tribal. But the film implies that all forms of social tension – from the paranoid paedophile conspiracy theory of Pizzagate to the Black Lives Matter protests – are the result of social media’s harmful influence.

And though it is easy to know that Flat Earthers are spreading misinformation, it is far harder to be sure what is true and what is false in many others areas of life. Recent history suggests our yardsticks cannot be simply what governments say is true – or Mark Zuckerberg, or even “experts”. It may be a while since doctors were telling us that cigarettes were safe, but millions of Americans were told only a few years ago that opiates would help them – until an opiate addiction crisis erupted across the US.

This section falls into making a category error of the kind set out by one of the interviewees early in the film. Despite all the drawbacks, the internet and social media have an undoubted upside when used simply as a tool, argues Tristan Harris, Google’s former design ethicist and the soul of the film. He gives the example of being able to hail a cab almost instantly at the press of a phone button. That, of course, highlights something about the materialist priorities of most of Silicon Valley’s leading lights.

But the tool box nestled in our phones, full of apps, does not just satisfy our craving for material comfort and security. It has also fuelled a craving to understand the world and our place in it, and offered tools to help us do that.

Phones have made it possible for ordinary people to film and share scenes once witnessed by only a handful of disbelieved passers-by. We can all see for ourselves a white police officer dispassionately kneeling on the neck of a black man for nine minutes, while the victim cries out he cannot breathe, until he expires. And we can then judge the values and priorities of our leaders when they decide to do as little as possible to prevent such incidents occurring again.

The internet has created a platform from which not only disillusioned former Silicon Valley execs can blow the whistle on what the Mark Zuckerbergs are up to, but so can a US army private like Chelsea Manning, by exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so can a national security tech insider like Edward Snowden, by revealing the way we are being secretly surveilled by our own governments.

Technological digital breakthroughs allowed someone like Julian Assange to set up a site, Wikileaks, that offered us a window on the real political world – a window through we could see our leaders behaving more like psychopaths than humanitarians. A window those same leaders are now fighting tooth and nail to close by putting him on trial.

A small window on reality

The Social Dilemma ignores all of this to focus on the dangers of so-called “fake news”. It dramatises a scene suggesting that only those sucked into information blackholes and conspiracy sites end up taking to the street to protest – and when they do, the film hints, it will not end well for them.

Apps allowing us to hail a taxi or navigate our way to a destination are undoubtedly useful tools. But being able to find out what our leaders are really doing – whether they are committing crimes against others or against us – is an even more useful tool. In fact, it is a vital one if we want to stop the kind of self-destructive behaviours The Social Dilemma is concerned about, not least our destruction of the planet’s life systems (an issue that, except for one interviewee’s final comment, the film leaves untouched).

Use of social media does not mean one necessarily loses touch with the real world. For a minority, social media has deepened their understanding of reality. For those tired of having the real world mediated for them by a bunch of billionaires and traditional media corporations, the chaotic social media platforms have provided an opportunity to gain insights into a reality that was obscured before.

The paradox, of course, is that these new social media corporations are no less billionaire-owned, no less power-hungry, no less manipulative than the old media corporations. The AI algorithms they are rapidly refining are being used – under the rubric of “fake news” – to drive out this new marketplace in whistleblowing, in citizen journalism, in dissident ideas.

Social media corporations are quickly getting better at distinguishing the baby from the bathwater, so they can throw out the baby. After all, like their forebears, the new media platforms are in the business of business, not of waking us up to the fact that they are embedded in a corporate world that has plundered the planet for profit.

Much of our current social polarisation and conflict is not, as The Social Dilemma suggests, between those influenced by social media’s “fake news” and those influenced by corporate media’s “real news”. It is between, on the one hand, those who have managed to find oases of critical thinking and transparency in the new media and, on the other, those trapped in the old media model or those who, unable to think critically after a lifetime of consuming corporate media, have been easily and profitably sucked into nihilistic, online conspiracies.

Our mental black boxes

The third chapter gets to the nub of the problem without indicating exactly what that nub is. That is because The Social Dilemma cannot properly draw from its already faulty premises the necessary conclusion to indict a system in which the Netflix corporation that funded the documentary and is televising it is so deeply embedded itself.

For all its heart-on-its-sleeve anxieties about the “existential threat” we face as a species, The Social Dilemma is strangely quiet about what needs to change – aside from limiting our kids’ exposure to Youtube and Facebook. It is a deflating ending to the rollercoaster ride that preceded it.

Here I want to backtrack a little. The film’s first chapter makes it sound as though social media’s rewiring of our brains to sell us advertising is something entirely new. The second chapter treats our society’s growing loss of empathy, and the rapid rise in an individualistic narcissism, as something entirely new. But very obviously neither proposition is true.

Advertisers have been playing with our brains in sophisticated ways for at least a century. And social atomisation – individualism, selfishness and consumerism – have been a feature of western life for at least as long. These aren’t new phenomena. It’s just that these long-term, negative aspects of western society are growing exponentially, at a seemingly unstoppable rate.

We’ve been heading towards dystopia for decades, as should be obvious to anyone who has been tracking the lack of political urgency to deal with climate change since the problem became obvious to scientists back in the 1970s.

The multiple ways in which we are damaging the planet – destroying forests and natural habitats, pushing species towards extinction, polluting the air and water, melting the ice-caps, generating a climate crisis – have been increasingly evident since our societies turned everything into a commodity that could be bought and sold in the marketplace. We began on the slippery slope towards the problems highlighted by The Social Dilemma the moment we collectively decided that nothing was sacred, that nothing was more sacrosanct than our desire to turn a quick buck.

It is true that social media is pushing us towards an event horizon. But then so is climate change, and so is our unsustainable global economy, premised on infinite growth on a finite planet. And, more importantly, these profound crises are all arising at the same time.

There is a conspiracy, but not of the Pizzagate variety. It is an ideological conspiracy, of at least two centuries’ duration, by a tiny and ever more fabulously wealth elite to further enrich themselves and to maintain their power, their dominance, at all costs.

There is a reason why, as Harvard business professor Shoshana Zuboff points out, social media corporations are the most fantastically wealthy in human history. And that reason is also why we are reaching the human “event horizon” these Silicon Valley luminaries all fear, one where our societies, our economies, the planet’s life-support systems are all on the brink of collapse together.

The cause of that full-spectrum, systemic crisis is not named, but it has a name. Its name is the ideology that has become a black box, a mental prison, in which we have become incapable of imagining any other way of organising our lives, any other future than the one we are destined for at the moment. That ideology’s name is capitalism.

Waking up from the matrix

Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on. The seeds of neoliberalism’s current, all-too-obvious destructive nature were planted long ago, when the “civilised”, industrialised west decided its mission was to conquer and subdue the natural world, when it embraced an ideology that fetishised money and turned people into objects to be exploited.

A few of the participants in The Social Dilemma allude to this in the last moments of the final chapter. The difficulty they have in expressing the full significance of the conclusions they have drawn from two decades spent in the most predatory corporations the world has ever known could be because their minds are still black boxes, preventing them from standing outside the ideological system they, like us, were born into. Or it could be because coded language is the best one can manage if a corporate platform like Netflix is going to let a film like this one reach a mass audience.

Tristan Harris tries to articulate the difficulty by grasping for a movie allusion: “How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you’re in the matrix?” Later, he observes: “What I see is a bunch of people who are trapped by a business model, an economic incentive, shareholder pressure that makes it almost impossible to do something else.”

Although still framed in Harris’s mind as a specific critique of social media corporations, this point is very obviously true of all corporations, and of the ideological system – capitalism – that empowers all these corporations.

Another interviewee notes: “I don’t think these guys [the tech giants] set out to be evil, it’s just the business model.”

He is right. But “evilness” – the psychopathic pursuit of profit above all other values – is the business model for all corporations, not just the digital ones.

The one interviewee who manages, or is allowed, to connect the dots is Justin Rosenstein, a former engineer for Twitter and Google. He eloquently observes:

“We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. A world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way, and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know it is going to leave a worse world for future generations.

“This is short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs. As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilisation as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.”

Here is the problem condensed. That unnamed “flawed theory” is capitalism. The interviewees in the film arrived at their alarming conclusion – that we are on the brink of social collapse, facing an “existential threat” – because they have worked inside the bellies of the biggest corporate beasts on the planet, like Google and Facebook.

These experiences have provided most of these Silicon Valley experts with deep, but only partial, insight. While most of us view Facebook and Youtube as little more than places to exchange news with friends or share a video, these insiders understand much more. They have seen up close the most powerful, most predatory, most all-devouring corporations in human history.

Nonetheless, most of them have mistakenly assumed that their experiences of their own corporate sector apply only to their corporate sector. They understand the “existential threat” posed by Facebook and Google without extrapolating to the identical existential threats posed by Amazon, Exxon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and thousands more giant, soulless corporations.

The Social Dilemma offers us an opportunity to sense the ugly, psychopathic face shielding behind the mask of social media’s affability. But for those watching carefully the film offers more: a chance to grasp the pathology of the system itself that pushed these destructive social media giants into our lives.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/

 

 This article from Pepe Escobar is a great follow up to my previous article about "The murder of peace".

The American attitude towards China is nonsensical. Yes, in the long term, China does represent a danger to US hegemony but trade restrictions is probably the worst possible way to approach the issue since eventually restrictions lead necessarily to war without achieving any meaningful objectives as this article makes clear. 

First of all it is important to understand that the Chinese do have a long term strategy which will be hard to derail short of a direct conflict. But should it be derailed? In the short term, the danger that China represents is not military nor even imperialistic but the risk that the repressive system of China will spread and slowly undermine Western democratic principles as is already the case. This is a fundamental systemic challenge that cannot be answered by short term fixes such as banning Wawei, Tik Tok or SMIC.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Saker blog, originally posted at The Asia Times,

China deploys Sun Tzu to prevail in the Chip War

Let’s cut to the chase: with or without a sanction juggernaut,

China simply won’t be expelled from the global semiconductor market.

The real amount of chip supply Huawei has in stock for their smart phone business may remain an open question.

But the most important point is that in the next few years – remember Made in China 2025 remains in effect – the Chinese will be manufacturing the necessary equipment to produce 5 nm chips of equivalent or even better quality than what’s coming from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Conversations with IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei reveal the basic contours of the road map ahead.

They explain that what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5nm to 3nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.

Additionally, there is no knowledge gap – or a communication problem – between Chinese and Taiwanese engineers. And the predominant modus operandi remains the revolving door.

China’s breakthroughs involve a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in it, and is nearly ready to transpose their lab work into industrial production.

In parallel, the Chinese are updating the US-privileged photo-lithography procedure to get nanometer chips to a new, non-photo lithography procedure capable of producing smaller and cheaper chips.

As much as Chinese companies, moving forward, will be buying every possible stage of chip manufacturing business in sight, whatever the cost, this will proceed in parallel to top US semiconductor firms like Qualcomm going no holds barred to skirt sanctions and continue to supply chips to Huawei. That’s already the case with Intel and AMD.

Huawei’s game

Huawei for its part is investing deeply in a very close R&D relationship with Russia, recruiting some of their best tech talent, notoriously strong in math, physics and rigorous design work. An example is Huawei’s purchasing of Russian face recognition company Vocord in 2019.

Some of the best tech brainpower in South Korea happens to be Russian.

Huawei has also established a “5G ecosystem innovation center” in Thailand – the first of its type in ASEAN.

In the medium term, Huawei’s strategy for their top notch smart phones – which use 7nm chips – will be to hand over the business to other Chinese players such as Xiaomi, OPPO and VIVO, collect patent fees, and wait for the inevitable Chinese chip breakthrough while keeping production of 5G equipment, for which it has sufficient chips.

Huawei’s Harmony OS is considered by these IT experts to be a more efficient system than Android. And it runs on less demanding chips.

With the expansion of 5G, most of the work on smart phones can be handled by cloud servers. By the end of 2020, at least 300 cities across China will be covered by 5G.

Huawei will be concentrating on producing desktop computers and digital displays. These desktops will come with a Chinese processor, the Kunpeng 920, and run by a Chinese Unified Operating System (UOS).

UOS is a Linux system developed by China’s Union Tech and commissioned by Beijing to – here’s the clincher – replace Microsoft Windows. These desktops will not be sold to the general public: they will be equipping China’s provincial and national administrations.

It’s no wonder a steady rumor in IT circles is that the best bet ahead would be to put money in a Chinese Chip Investment Fund – expecting to collect big time when major tech breakthroughs happen before 2025.

The East Asian tech core

Whatever the trials and tribulations of the chip war, the inescapable trend ahead is China positioned as the indispensable tech core of East Asia – encompassing ASEAN, Northeast Asia, and Eastern Siberia linked to both Koreas.

This is the hard node of the incoming Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the biggest free trade deal in the world – which is bound to be signed by 2021.

India has opted for self-exclusion from RCEP – which in geoeconomic terms condemns it to a peripheral role as an economic power. Compare it to South Korea, which is boosting its integration with ASEAN and Northeast Asia.

East Asia’s tech core will be at the heart of a global production chain integrating the very best in science and technology conception and the very best production specialists scattered around all nodes of the global supply chain.

That’s a natural consequence, among other factors, of East Asia introducing patent applications at a multiple of 3.46 times the US.

And that brings to the very special Samsung case. Samsung is increasing its R&D drive to in fact bypass US-branded technologies as soon as possible.

When South Korea’s President Moon turbo-charges his appeal for the official end of the Korean War that should be seen in tandem with Samsung eventually reaching a wide-ranging tech cooperation deal with Huawei.

This pincer movement graphically spells out South Korean independence from the American bear hug.

It does not escape the Beijing leadership’s attention that the emergence of South Korea as a stronger and stronger geopolitical and geoeconomic actor in East Asia must be inextricably linked to access by China to the next generation of chips.

So a crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic process to watch in the next few years is how Beijing progressively attracts Seoul to its area of influence as a sort of high-tech tributary power while banking on the future of what would be a Korea Federation.

This is something that has been discussed every year, at the highest level, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Wang Huiyao of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization notes how China and South Korea already have a free trade agreement and “will start the second phase of negotiations to establish a new mechanism for China-South Korea economic cooperation, which is developing fast.”

The next – immensely difficult – step will be to set up a China-Japan free trade mechanism. And then a closer, interconnected China-Japan-South Korea mechanism. RCEP is just the first step. It will be a long sail all the way to 2049. But everyone knows which way the wind is blowin’.

Covid-19: A pandemic within a pandemic? (Must read by Jeffrey Bland, PhD)

 

Great article which explains why Covid-19 beyond the virus pandemic is actually acting as an indicator of a much deeper social disease: Metabolic syndrome which is in fact the real pandemic which has been raging over the last 30 years all over the world.

  COVID-19: A Pandemic Within a Pandemic

 by Jeffrey Bland, PhD

“The race is on throughout the world to develop Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics and end a pandemic that threatens to infect a substantial portion of the planet’s population, and perhaps kill millions of people, especially older adults. As billions of dollars flow into research and development efforts aimed at controlling the virus, the pandemic response remains hamstrung by our limited understanding of how to generate effective immunity, particularly in the elderly.”[1]

COVID-19 officially became a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) had been closely monitoring this novel coronavirus since early January, when a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China was reported. Past experiences with infectious respiratory viruses such as SARS and MERS informed decision-making in the weeks that preceded the declaration of a public health emergency. Two factors were of high concern: spread and severity. These concerns proved to be more than justified.

As of June 17, 2020, more than 8,000,000 cases of COVID-19 infection have been confirmed globally, and at least 440,000 deaths have been reported. COVID-19 has provided us with the opportunity to examine emerging data in real time. By tracking the history of the infection, it quickly became clear that there are significant differences among people in terms of both risk to infection and — if infected — severity of disease.

The Lancet, a highly respected professional journal, published the first international medical report about COVID-19 infection in Wuhan, China on February 15, 2020, and this article indicated that the infection was associated with acute respiratory symptoms and many other complex medical problems.[2] A March 2020 follow-up study, also in Lancet, discussed the clinical course of the infection and risk factors associated with mortality.[3] Specifically, they looked at how comorbidities (preexisting health conditions) might increase the risk for COVID-19 complications. The researchers noted that older age, hypertension, obesity, and diabetes were all associated with increased disease severity. As the virus spread, so too did support for this finding. From Seattle to New York, patients with COVID-19 did worse when comorbidities were present.[4],[5]

Thankfully, there is some positive news. Among people with COVID-19, it appears that less than 20% become seriously ill, and for those who do experience severe symptoms, the majority seem to fully recover. Outliers — patients who follow no established trend — have also been noted. The wide range of possible outcomes has created anxiety for both the public and the medical community alike. Why do some people fare so poorly while others have only mild symptoms? The answer may be tied to the functional status of an individual’s immune system.

Certain chronic conditions, including the comorbidities mentioned above, result in altered immune system function, which can include unhealthy forms of inflammation. We have also come to understand that the COVID-19 virus can impact the function of many critical organ systems. So what’s the link? Respiratory, cardiovascular, neurological, gastrointestinal, renal, and hepatic performance are all associated with alteration in immune system function. Inflammation is a hallmark of immune system dysfunction and is also strongly associated with COVID-19 infection. We know this because of a term that has recently entered the public dialogue: cytokine storm. A cytokine storm results when there is a breakdown in control of the immune system. An overwhelming inflammatory response takes place in the body, similar to a septic shock event.[6] The title of an opinion piece published online in Lancet Rheumatology on May 29, 2020 perfectly captures the situation: “Coronavirus is the Trigger, but the Immune Response is Deadly.”[7]

This means we have to think very carefully about how our immune systems can become dysfunctional. Are there early signals that might tell us when things are going wrong? As it turns out, there is a condition called metabolic syndrome which is characterized by altered immune function. In fact, it overlaps with the comorbidities that contribute to COVID-19 severity, and has been steadily rising in frequency over the last several decades. What happens when the world’s most prevalent non-communicable health condition and a highly infectious viral disease collide? We find ourselves in our new reality: a COVID-19 pandemic within a pandemic of metabolic syndrome.

Running the Numbers

Among 5700 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in and around New York City, most had a comorbidity associated with metabolic syndrome. These included hypertension (56%), obesity (42%), and diabetes (34%).[8] Another report, this one published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), analyzed COVID-19-related data for the five boroughs of New York City. In this review, they found that, compared to other boroughs, the Bronx and Queens had the highest rates of hospitalizations and deaths per 100,000 residents. Notably, people in these two boroughs also had the highest prevalence of comorbidities.[9]

Clearly, there’s an important connection here. In fact, researchers around the world have been examining this link from multiple angles and many hypotheses are being offered for consideration. Angela Saini, a noted science journalist, published an article in the May 23, 2020 issue of Lancet that cautioned against associating comorbidities with genetic susceptibility based on race: “Such speculation runs the risk of forgetting that the demographic categories we recognise socially do not in fact have very much biological meaning and betrays a wider problem in medicine when it comes to race.”[10] There has been a global effort to determine specific genetic linkages to infection with COVID-19, but to date no strong genetic determinants have been found. Social determinants and lifestyle have emerged as the major factors determining risk to serious disease associated with COVID-19 infection.[11]

My study of metabolic syndrome and inflammation — an undertaking that now spans more than 30 years — leads me down a different path of thinking. I believe these comorbidities result from the complex interaction of individual genetics, lifestyle, environment, diet, and the social determinants of disease.

In a number of ways, the pandemic of metabolic syndrome had already been on the radar of public health groups, as well as clinical care providers and planners. Morbidity and mortality related to non-communicable disease (NCD) was identified as a global concern in recent years. The World Health Organization had been tracking a constellation of NCDs for some time and was well aware that they had overtaken infectious disease as the most significant global cause of illness and premature death. An article published in the May 30, 2020 issue of Lancet addressed the fact that COVID-19 provided a new layer of urgency to the prevention and control of NCDs. The authors, who are affiliated with the WHO Regional Office for Europe write: “The COVID-19 response and continued and strengthened focus on NCD prevention and management are key and interlinked aspects of public health at the present time.”[12]

As noted above, all of the comorbidities linked to both metabolic syndrome and COVID-19 severity are associated with altered immune function and a chronic state of inflammation.[13] “Inflammaging” is a term that has come to be used as a descriptor for chronic inflammation related to aging or chronic non-communicable conditions such as hypertension, insulin resistance, and obesity.[14] Right now, the attention of the world is clearly focused on threats like COVID-19 and the potential for additional outbreaks. With this in mind, certain important questions must be prioritized. When did this state of altered immune function begin to be a global health issue? What is the cause of chronic inflammation that is impacting populations in so many countries? What can be done to rectify this situation?

Working the Problem

To answer these questions, we need to take a close look at the last 50 years. In the late 1970s, comorbidities started to become more prevalent in industrialized countries like the United States. Within a few short decades, the trend had reached developing nations. In April 2011, Margaret Chan, OBE, JP, FRCP (at that time was Director-General of the WHO), said the following: “The rise of chronic noncommunicable diseases presents an enormous challenge. For some countries, it is no exaggeration to describe the situation as an impending disaster; a disaster for health, for society, and most of all for national economies.”[15] COVID-19 is the impending disaster that Dr. Chan predicted nine years ago.

David Stuckler, MPH, PhD, is currently a Professor of Political Economy and Sociology at the University of Oxford. In 2011 — the same year that Dr. Chan spoke about the WHO’s concerns about non-communicable diseases — Dr. Stuckler edited a textbook called Sick Societies: Responding to the Global Challenge of Chronic Disease. The arc of data that Dr. Stuckler has been tracking for more than a decade is compelling. In a 2008 article titled “Population Causes and Consequences: A Comparative Analysis of Prevailing Explanations,” he utilized four decades of male mortality rates to demonstrate that the division between infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases is shrinking and becoming increasingly problematic for health policy makers and health economists.[16]

In 2006, British physician and global health analyst Luke Allen penned an article that was titled “Are We Facing a Noncommunicable Disease Pandemic?” The article abstract conveys a powerful message: “The global boom in premature mortality and morbidity from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) shares many similarities with pandemics of infectious diseases, yet public health professionals have resisted the adoption of this label. It is increasingly apparent that NCDs are actually communicable conditions, and although the vectors of disease are nontraditional, the pandemic label is apt.” Dr. Allen proposed that the response to the global pandemic of chronic noncommunicable disease should be modeled after the WHO viral pandemic response plan because of shared features and impact on both population health and the global economy.[17]

Let’s use Japan as a case study to examine this issue of the rising prevalence of comorbidities more closely. Japan historically had a very low incidence of obesity, hypertension, prediabetes, and diabetes. This started to shift in the 1980s. From 1988 through 2012, the rapid increase in these conditions was resembled the exponential growth of an infectious disease epidemic. In this case, there was no infectious agent. Rather, the population of Japan experienced dramatic changes in lifestyle, environment, diet, and stress.[18]

Unfortunately, what happened in Japan was anything but an isolated event. Instead, it reflected a trend that was spreading across the world: a global epidemic of metabolic syndrome.[19] Metabolic syndrome, as I’ve already stated, is defined as a state of chronic inflammation. It is also characterized by an imbalance of immune system function, and people with this condition typically have elevated blood pressure, blood triglycerides, and body mass index, as well as reduced levels of HDL cholesterol and impaired insulin sensitivity. Today, more than 30% of the adult population in the United States has metabolic syndrome.

Technically, metabolic syndrome is not a disease. It is probably better described as a state of lowered resilience to disease, as is evidenced by the number of associated comorbidities. People with metabolic syndrome are at increased risk to both non-communicable and infectious diseases such as COVID-19. In a May 2020 publication titled “Diabetes and Metabolic Syndrome as Risk Factors for COVID-19,” a group of authors affiliated with the University of Maribor in Slovenia point out that the disturbances associated with metabolic syndrome not only result in increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection, but also reflect alterations in the immune system that sets the stage for more serious outcomes.[20]

Connecting the Dots

COVID-19 is a new virus within the coronavirus family. As we all know now, it has a very high infection rate. Additionally, COVID-19 has some unusual infectivity features: it can be transmitted by asymptomatic individuals, plus the severity and clinical manifestations of the infection can vary widely (from mild to life-threatening). Seemingly, all body systems can be impacted by a COVID-19 infection; serious cases of respiratory, cardiovascular, immunological, kidney and liver, gastrointestinal, and neurological crises have all been reported.[21] In the organ systems affected by COVID-19, cells have been found to express the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor. The ACE2 receptor is thought to represent a target for the virus which allows it to bind to and enter our cells.[22] Recent studies show that the virus binds to the ACE2 receptor more easily in the presence of inflammation.[23]

The COVID-19 virus has spike-like proteins on its surface. These give the virus the unique ability to bind tightly to the ACE2 receptors. The spike-like proteins are also what differentiate the COVID-19 virus from other coronaviruses. These spikes have what are called high affinity furin binding sites (furin is an enzyme in human blood that activates specific proteins).[24] Researchers believe a slight change in the genetic architecture of the virus resulted in a modification at the furin binding site in the spike proteins. This is what makes COVID-19 such a formidable foe. How? It enables the virus to hijack furin, which allows it to attach to the ACE2 receptors on tissues more readily and facilitate penetration into cells. Given that so many tissues express the ACE2 receptor, this mutation and sequence of events makes COVID-19 uniquely more infective than other coronaviruses.[25]

Regulation of furin levels in the blood is influenced, in part, by the immune system and inflammation. When cholesterol in the blood is elevated, furin is more vulnerable to being hijacked by the virus, and there is a greater opportunity for COVID-19 to convert to its more infective form. It is speculated that this can contribute to the comorbidity-related priming of COVID-19 in people with elevated cholesterol who are at risk to cardiovascular problems.[26] The ability of this virus to impact furin and increase infectivity is unique to COVID-19 (SARS-COV-2); it does not occur (to the same extent) with other coronaviruses, including SARS-COV-1.

Furin belongs to a family of nine proteins that are called proprotein convertases (PCSKs). The function of these proteins is to regulate various biochemical processes, both in times of good health and when a disease state is present. Furin is produced by a number of different cell types, including some within immune cells.[27] In people who have comorbidities that are associated with metabolic syndrome (hypertension, obesity, elevated triglycerides, impaired insulin sensitivity, and inflammation), furin levels have been found to be abnormal.[28],[29] Interestingly, David Harrison, MD, who leads a research team at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, published work in 2015 indicating that hypertension is related to inflammation derived from an activated immune system.[30]

In 2018, researchers at the Department of Clinical Sciences at Lund University in Sweden and the School of Pharmacology at Helsinki University in Finland collaboratively reported the results of a study involving 4678 individuals with metabolic syndrome and diabetes that revealed elevated levels of furin in the blood.[31] Prior to that, a group representing several clinical and academic institutions in Japan had reported that certain variations in the genes that control furin production were related to metabolic syndrome.[32] This work suggests that the influence of furin on the comorbidities associated with COVID-19 may have a genetic connection. Finally, it’s well established that furin levels are elevated in people with inflammatory autoimmune disorders.[33] In sum, this research shows furin may be a key link between metabolic syndrome, inflammation, and COVID-19 complications.

Let’s now draw a straight line between the non-infectious pandemic of metabolic syndrome pandemic and the infectious pandemic of COVID-19. Metabolic syndrome dramatically increases our risk of developing comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes. These in turn predispose us to contracting COVID-19 and for developing more severe systems after infection. This is likely due to the chronic inflammatory state (altered immunity) associated with metabolic syndrome. Furthermore, the comorbidities associated with metabolic syndrome may compromise our immune function through increased levels of furin in the blood. Let’s put this together. When an individual with metabolic syndrome is exposed to COVID-19, the virus gets the benefit of a compromised immune system and extra furin to facilitate binding to our cells. This is a mechanistic explanation of the situation that the world now finds itself in: a pandemic (COVID-19) within a pandemic (metabolic syndrome).

Mapping a Strategy

We know quite a lot about COVID-19. Its genetic profile has been sequenced, and we understand the unique composition of its spike proteins. Within the body, we know that infectivity depends upon the action of the virus binding to ACE2 receptors, which are expressed on many tissues. We know that COVID-19 has the ability to hijack an enzyme in our blood — furin — and when this happens the spike protein architecture is remodeled, making the virus even more active and pathogenic. We know that the comorbidities associated with COVID-19 infection and its severity are all associated with a dysfunction in our first line of immune defense, which is called our innate immunity. Innate immunity is known to be heavily involved in chronic inflammation.[34]

How can this information inform our actions, not only in terms of mitigating the spread of the present pandemic, but also in preparing for future pandemic events? The best and most logical step is to reduce the prevalence of metabolic syndrome. Many lifestyle, environmental, and dietary factors are associated with abnormal immune function related to chronic inflammation and metabolic syndrome.[35] Studies of the COVID-19 pandemic are being published every day, and some researchers are already positing that diet and metabolic syndrome could be partially responsible for the high variability that has been noted in infection and death rates.[36] The Mediterranean diet — which is plentiful in fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, virgin olive oil, nuts, seeds, and fish that are high in omega-3 fats, while also low in sugar and processed foods — has been extensively studied for its positive influence on the comorbidities associated with metabolic syndrome and its ability to reduce chronic inflammation.[37] Food as medicine? A recent article suggests that it’s a valid concept to consider for the prevention of coronavirus disease.[38] Emerging evidence even shows that dietary intervention could potentially reduce the probability of infection with COVID-19 or the severity of symptoms in infected individuals.[39] Recently, a multinational research consortium published work indicating that a diet associated with lowering the incidence of metabolic syndrome both improves immune system function and reduces inflammation, which — as already noted — are important considerations in minimizing the severity of COVID-19.[40]

Why diet? Vegetables and fruits contain a class of nutrients called phytochemicals that play important dietary roles in reducing the comorbidities associated with metabolic syndrome.[41] Certain phytochemicals, such as the flavonoids quercetin and luteolin, have been found to bind to the ACE2 receptor on COVID-19, which can potentially help to protect against infection.[42],[43] A recent study evaluated how quercetin and vitamin D may contribute to the mitigation of COVID-19 through their impact on immune system function and the reduction of chronic inflammation.[44] It is clear that improvement in the lifestyle, environmental, and dietary factors associated with the comorbidities that are linked to both metabolic syndrome and COVID-19 can have a positive impact on enhancing immunity.[45] Studies have shown that improved physical fitness, reduction in obesity, and increased quality of sleep can all positively influence immunity and reduce the severity of viral infections like COVID-19.[46],[47],[48]

In a sense, COVID-19 represents an alarm bell — “a tocsin to our aging and unfit society,” to paraphrase one author’s recent work; I would add “immune compromised” to that description.[49] In 2008, Scott M. Grundy, MD, PhD, a researcher I greatly admire who is Director of the Center for Human Nutrition, Chairman of the Department of Clinical Nutrition at UT Southwestern Medical Center, published a seminal article titled “Metabolic Syndrome Pandemic.”[50] Today, twelve years later, that pandemic swirls around an infectious threat called COVID-19. The good news is we know how to manage the pandemic of metabolic syndrome. Doing so, however, will require significant changes in how health care is structured and funded, as well as a shift in the cultural context of disease.[51] Successful implementation of new thinking and new strategies has become critically important in this new era of pandemic awareness.

The Election Has Already Been Hijacked and the Winner Decided: 'We the People' Lose

 

I do not care much about the current circus that the elections in the US has become and here's below the reason why.

 Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

 This is a little extreme as a position but just a little. Nothing much has changed since George Carlin eloquently stated it 20 years ago. Just worse with the media in full propaganda mode and the social platform censoring left and right. Your opinion just does not matter.

The Election Has Already Been Hijacked and the Winner Decided: 'We the People' Lose

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.” ― Herbert Marcuse

Republicans and Democrats alike fear that the other party will attempt to hijack this election.

President Trump is convinced that mail-in ballots are a scam except in Florida, where it’s safe to vote by mail because of its “great Republican governor.”

The FBI is worried about foreign hackers continuing to target and exploit vulnerabilities in the nation’s electoral system, sowing distrust about the parties, the process and the outcome.

I, on the other hand, am not overly worried: after all, the voting booths have already been hijacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs.

The outcome is a foregone conclusion: the Deep State will win and “we the people” will lose.

The damage has already been done.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been tasked with helping to “secure” the elections and protect the nation against cyberattacks, is not exactly an agency known for its adherence to freedom principles.

After all, this is the agency largely responsible for turning the American republic into a police state. Since its creation, the DHS has ushered in the domestic use of surveillance drones, expanded the reach of fusion centers, stockpiled an alarming amount of ammunition (including hollow point bullets), urged Americans to become snitches through a “see something, say something” campaign, overseen the fumbling antics of TSA agents everywhere, militarized the nation’s police, spied on activists and veterans, distributed license plate readers and cell phone trackers to law enforcement agencies, contracted to build detention camps, carried out military drills and lockdowns in American cities, conducted virtual strip searches of airline passengers, established Constitution-free border zones, funded city-wide surveillance cameras, and undermined the Fourth Amendment at every turn.

So, no, I’m not losing a night’s sleep over the thought that this election might by any more rigged than it already is.

And I’m not holding my breath in the hopes that the winner of this year’s popularity contest will save us from government surveillance, weaponized drones, militarized police, endless wars, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, profit-driven private prisons, graft and corruption, or any of the other evils that masquerade as official government business these days.

You see, after years of trying to wake Americans up to the reality that there is no political savior who will save us from the police state, I’ve come to realize that Americans want to engage in the reassurance ritual of voting.

They want to believe the fantasy that politics matter.

They want to be persuaded that there’s a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there’s not).

Some will swear that Donald Trump has been an improvement on Barack Obama (he is not).

Others are convinced that Joe Biden’s values are different from Donald Trump’s (with both of them, money talks).

Most of all, voters want to buy into the fantasy that when they elect a president, they’re getting someone who truly represents the citizenry rather than the Deep State (in fact, in the oligarchy that is the American police state, an elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots in cooperation with a political elite).

The sad truth is that it doesn’t matter who wins the White House, because they all work for the same boss: Corporate America. Understanding this, many corporations hedge their bets on who will win the White House by splitting their donations between Democratic and Republican candidates.

Politics is a game, a joke, a hustle, a con, a distraction, a spectacle, a sport, and for many devout Americans, a religion. It is a political illusion aimed at persuading the citizenry that we are free, that our vote counts, and that we actually have some control over the government when in fact, we are prisoners of a Corporate Elite.

In other words, it’s a sophisticated ruse aimed at keeping us divided and fighting over two parties whose priorities, more often than not, are exactly the same so that we don’t join forces and do what the Declaration of Independence suggests, which is to throw the whole lot out and start over.

It’s no secret that both parties support endless war, engage in out-of-control spending, ignore the citizenry’s basic rights, have no respect for the rule of law, are bought and paid for by Big Business, care most about their own power, and have a long record of expanding government and shrinking liberty. Most of all, both parties enjoy an intimate, incestuous history with each other and with the moneyed elite that rule this country.

Despite the jabs the candidates volley at each other for the benefit of the cameras, they’re a relatively chummy bunch away from the spotlight. Moreover, despite Congress’ so-called political gridlock, our elected officials seem to have no trouble finding common ground when it’s time to collectively kowtow to the megacorporations, lobbyists, defense contractors and other special interest groups to whom they have pledged their true allegiance.

So don’t be fooled by the smear campaigns and name-calling or drawn into their divide-and-conquer politics of hate. They’re just useful tactics that have been proven to engage voters and increase voter turnout while keeping the citizenry at each other’s throats.

It’s all a grand illusion.

It used to be that the cogs, wheels and gear shifts in the government machinery worked to keep the republic running smoothly. However, without our fully realizing it, the mechanism has changed. Its purpose is no longer to keep our republic running smoothly. To the contrary, this particular contraption’s purpose is to keep the Deep State in power. Its various parts are already a corrupt part of the whole.

Just consider how insidious, incestuous and beholden to the corporate elite the various “parts” of the mechanism have become.

Congress. Perhaps the most notorious offenders and most obvious culprits in the creation of the corporate-state, Congress has proven itself to be both inept and avaricious, oblivious champions of an authoritarian system that is systematically dismantling their constituents’ fundamental rights. Long before they’re elected, Congressmen are trained to dance to the tune of their wealthy benefactors, so much so that they spend two-thirds of their time in office raising money. As Reuters reports, “For many lawmakers, the daily routine in Washington involves fundraising as much as legislating. The culture of nonstop political campaigning shapes the rhythms of daily life in Congress, as well as the landscape around the Capitol. It also means that lawmakers often spend more time listening to the concerns of the wealthy than anyone else.”

The President. What Americans want in a president and what they need are two very different things. The making of a popular president is an exercise in branding, marketing and creating alternate realities for the consumer—a.k.a., the citizenry—that allows them to buy into a fantasy about life in America that is utterly divorced from our increasingly grim reality. Take President Trump, for instance, who got elected by promising to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump has paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the rest of the Deep State (also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”) to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic. The lesson: to be a successful president, it doesn’t matter whether you keep your campaign promises, sell the American people to the highest bidder, or march in lockstep with the Corporate State as long as you keep telling people what they most want to hear.

The Supreme Court. The U.S. Supreme Court—once the last refuge of justice, the one governmental body really capable of rolling back the slowly emerging tyranny enveloping America—has instead become the champion of the American police state, absolving government and corporate officials of their crimes while relentlessly punishing the average American for exercising his or her rights. Like the rest of the government, the Court has routinely prioritized profit, security, and convenience over the basic rights of the citizenry. Indeed, law professor Erwin Chemerinsky makes a compelling case that the Supreme Court, whose “justices have overwhelmingly come from positions of privilege,” almost unerringly throughout its history sides with the wealthy, the privileged, and the powerful.

The Media. Of course, this triumvirate of total control would be completely ineffective without a propaganda machine provided by the world’s largest corporations. Besides shoveling drivel down our throats at every possible moment, the so-called news agencies which are supposed to act as bulwarks against government propaganda have instead become the mouthpieces of the state. The pundits which pollute our airwaves are at best court jesters and at worst propagandists for the false reality created by the American government. When you have internet and media giants such as Google, NBC Universal, News Corporation, Turner Broadcasting, Thomson Reuters, Comcast, Time Warner, Viacom, Public Radio International and The Washington Post Company donating to political candidates, you no longer have an independent media—what we used to refer to as the “fourth estate”—that can be trusted to hold the government accountable.

The American People. “We the people” now belong to a permanent underclass in America. It doesn’t matter what you call us—chattel, slaves, worker bees, it’s all the same—what matters is that we are expected to march in lockstep with and submit to the will of the state in all matters, public and private. Unfortunately, through our complicity in matters large and small, we have allowed an out-of-control corporate-state apparatus to take over every element of American society.

We’re playing against a stacked deck.

The game is rigged, and “we the people” keep getting dealt the same losing hand. The people dealing the cards—the politicians, the corporations, the judges, the prosecutors, the police, the bureaucrats, the military, the media, etc.—have only one prevailing concern, and that is to maintain their power and control over the citizenry, while milking us of our money and possessions.

It really doesn’t matter what you call them—Republicans, Democrats, the 1%, the elite, the controllers, the masterminds, the shadow government, the police state, the surveillance state, the military industrial complex—so long as you understand that while they are dealing the cards, the deck will always be stacked in their favor.

As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, our failure to remain informed about what is taking place in our government, to know and exercise our rights, to vocally protest, to demand accountability on the part of our government representatives, and at a minimum to care about the plight of our fellow Americans has been our downfall.

Now we find ourselves once again caught up in the spectacle of another presidential election, and once again the majority of Americans are acting as if this election will make a difference and bring about change. As if the new boss will be different from the old boss.

When in doubt, just remember what the astute commentator George Carlin had to say about the matter:

The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls. They got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork…. It’s a big club and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club. ...The table is tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice…. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on…. It’s called the American Dream, 'cause you have to be asleep to believe it.