‘Is the world’s richest man made primarily out of corn syrup?’

In 2015, New York Magazine ran an article — “Is the World’s Richest Man Made Primarily Out of Corn Syrup?” — in the Intelligencer’s “Diets” section.

The article told a light-hearted story about how Warren Buffett loves Coke, potato chips and other foods with high quantities of corn syrup so much — just like he did when he was a kid — that he bought up the companies that made them.

Buffett is the fifth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $108 billion. His wealth comes from investments in Berkshire Hathaway, the publicly traded multinational conglomerate company of which he has been CEO and chairman since 1970.

Berkshire Hathaway’s investment strategy is to identify valuable companies and acquire increasingly large portions of them.

A look into the history of Berkshire Hathaway’s holdings reveals the deeper truth behind the New York Magazine article showing that for more than two decades, Berkshire Hathaway acquired large stakes in all stages of production in the HFCS industry, from farmland to processed food companies.

This vertical integration investment strategy means that a substantial portion of Berkshire Hathaway’s profits is linked to the proliferation of corn syrup in the food system.

[…]

Berkshire Hathaway also owns major stakes in some of the largest processed food companies — like Coca-Cola and Kraft Heinz — that use HFCS and other obesogens in their products, which they directly market to kids.

These companies profit off of rising food prices, while consumers’ food bills soar. Kraft Heinz’s quarterly sales rose 10% to $7.38 billion in the last quarter of 2022, beating Wall Street’s expectations, the Wall Street Journal reported. The food conglomerate raised prices 15% last year.

They also benefit from close relationships with organizations meant to protect people’s health — and particularly children’s health — from the damage associated with commodities like HFCS.

For example, peer-reviewed research reveals Coca-Cola’s “close collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) … The Obesity Society (TOS), and the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP).”

[…]

When Berkshire Hathaway profits, Gates profits

Warren Buffett isn’t the only one of the world’s richest people to make his fortune from Berkshire Hathaway. It is nearly impossible to separate Buffett’s wealth from that of his friend and business associate of 32 years, Bill Gates.

Gates, the fourth-richest person in the world with a net worth of $133 billion, holds much of his wealth in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Berkshire Hathaway is the foundation’s largest holding.

Gates served on the board of Berkshire Hathaway from 2004 to 2020. Since 2006, Buffett has given $45 billion to the Gates Foundation and he served as a member of the three-person board of directors of the foundation until Bill and Melinda Gates split up in 2021.

So Berkshire Hathaway’s profits have been Gates’ profits.

[…]

According to a 2020 investigation published in the Columbia Journalism Review, media coverage that tends to depict billionaires like Buffett and Gates as leaders, geniuses and benevolent stewards of society is linked to the fact that as funding for media collapsed over the last decade, the Gates Foundation stepped in to fill the gap.

In 2020 alone, for example, the foundation gave more than $250 million to news organizations including BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera, ProPublica, National Journal, The Guardian, Univision, Medium, the Financial Times, The Atlantic, the Texas Tribune, Gannett, Washington Monthly, Le Monde, and the Center for Investigative Reporting, BBC Media Action and the New York Times’ Neediest Cases Fund.

The money comes with strings attached, limiting the reporting it funds to issues it wants to be covered.

So, while billionaire philanthropists like Buffett and Gates finance media coverage that celebrates them for bankrolling public health initiatives and paints their critics as conspiracy theorists, they continue to make massive profits off the destruction of the food system — and the corresponding destruction of public health.

Obesity makes kids sicker — pandemic lockdowns made kids more obese

Gates and Buffett profited massively from the COVID-19 pandemic because they “bet on Big Pharma” to yield major profits from vaccines.

But the pandemic they profited from was made worse by the obesity epidemic their investments in corn syrup helped drive, according to numerous studies.

Peer-reviewed studies published in major journals like The BMJ established early in the pandemic period that obesity was a major risk factor in poor COVID-19 outcomes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that obesity may triple the risk of hospitalization from a COVID-19 infection.

Obesity is a major COVID-19 risk factor even in young people who are much less susceptible to severe disease.

Systematic reviews and meta‐analyses found that children with obesity are at a higher risk of both severe respiratory disease and multisystem inflammatory syndrome due to COVID-19 relative to healthy children.

The CDC also reported numerous studies showing children diagnosed with obesity may suffer worse outcomes from COVID-19.

Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D., and others advocated early in the pandemic in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine for dietary interventions to fight the negative effects of COVID-19.

But billionaires and politicians ignored these calls and instead promoted pandemic mitigation measures like lockdowns and school closures that increased rates of childhood obesity to unprecedented levels and made COVID-19 outcomes worse.

Research shows lockdowns and school closures increased childhood obesity because they reduced physical activity, worsened children’s mental health leading to over-eating and increased levels of food insecurity, which is linked to increased processed food consumption.

Coca-Cola, Mondelez and others ‘COVID-washed’ processed foods to grow profits

Peer-reviewed research shows that processed food corporations used the pandemic as a marketing opportunity to promote their unhealthy products to vulnerable populations during a time of increased stress and hardship — what researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand call “COVID-washing.”

The CEO of Coca-Cola told investors at the start of the pandemic in 2020 in “every previous crisis, military, economic or pandemic, in the last 134 years, the Coke Company has come out stronger.”

A report by researchers from the Global Health Policy Unit at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, working with the NCD Alliance, found that major processed food corporations like Coca-Cola were able to “adapt quickly and exploit new opportunities” during the COVID-19 pandemic.

They wrote:

“This is illustrated via the pivoting of marketing and promotions to leverage both the pandemic and associated policy responses. For example, snack manufacturers Mondelez [a Berkshire Hathaway company] quickly recognised how lockdown led to increased in-house consumption whereby ‘more grazing, more continuous eating, and snacking takes up a much bigger role.’”

Processed food producers sought to “present themselves and their employees as heroes in the context of the pandemic,” they said.

The report linked to a Kraft Heinz video promoting “everyday heroes” in their processed food supply chain emoting “We Got You America” while visibly promoting core products such as Heinz Tomato Ketchup.

Heinz also partnered with food banks in its Kraft Heinz Project Pantry and Twitter campaign, invoking national solidarity to bring processed foods to low-income people.

According to Paula Johns, director general of ACT Health Promotion, Brazil, quoted in the report during the pandemic, “Unhealthy commodity industries have taken advantage of an adverse environment to sell their products and improve their image in the eyes of consumers.”

For example, Coca-Cola rebranded bottles and cans in Mexico to invoke COVID-19 solidarity, promoted the fact that it shifted advertising budgets to “fight COVID-19,” partnered with the United Nations Development Programme in several countries, funded Red Cross initiatives to link its brand with COVID-19 aid and partnered with the Gates Foundation to promote COVID-19 vaccination in Africa.

Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts gave away free donuts to people who showed their vaccination cards in 2021.

This branding was supported by the highest levels of government. In May 2021, McDonald’s and the Biden administration partnered to promote COVID-19 vaccines by advertising together on billboards and on McDonald’s cups and other items.

HFCS is as bad as you thought

Strong and consistent evidence links high sugar consumption and obesity in children and adolescents, with many studies pointing specifically to the role of sugary drinks like Coca-Cola.

Excess dietary sugar adds “empty calories” to the diet, affects hormone and blood sugar levels, stimulates appetite and overeating and replaces healthy foods in a child’s diet.

In the U.S., sugar in processed foods often takes the form of HFCS, a processed sweetener with high levels of fructose — which is harder for the body to break down than natural glucose.

HFCS is cheaper, sweeter and more quickly absorbed into the body than regular sugar. Eating too much can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure.

It can trigger processes that cause liver toxicity and a host of other chronic diseases, and it increases appetite and promotes obesity even more than regular sugar.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bill_gates_warren_buffett_obesity_corn_syrup/

By Emanuel Pastreich

When people think of the great attack on humanity, they often refer to 9.11, the start of the Iraq war, the COVID-19 operation, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But perhaps the deadliest attack on humanity is that of the “silent weapon” for a “quiet war” the smart phone. This weapon is aimed at the intellectual classes as a means of destroying their minds from within.

I have watched how the smart phone, combined with social media, has degraded the capacity of citizens to think for themselves over the last decade. This attack by the multinational corporations on our minds is far more dangerous than any bombing or shooting for it renders us passive, like GHB (gamma hydroxybutyric acid) (the date- rape drug) prone to exploitation and destruction.

The smart phone was launched in full force around 2009. I do not doubt that it had its positive aspects, and I was eventually forced to use one myself. Now you cannot travel without one in many parts of the world, and increasingly governments require them in order to be recognized as a citizen. There is a sinister plan behind all of this, the great dumbing down, we call it.

The passivity and openness to suggestion that exposure to the smart phone induces is best described as a “procedure of conditioning,” to use the term of the German philosopher Günther Anders.

Anders wrote about a previous bid for totalitarian rule that was remarkably successfully, and never completely ended,

“The stage-managing of masses that Hitler specialized in has become superfluous: if one wants to transform a man into a nobody (and even make him proud to be a nobody), it is no longer necessary to drown him in a mass, or to bury him in a cement construction mass-produced by masses. No depersonalization, no loss of the ability to be a man is more effective than the one that apparently preserves the freedom of the personality and the rights of the individual. If the procedure of conditioning takes place in a special way in the home of every person—in the individual home, in isolation, in millions of isolated units—the result will be perfect. The treatment is absolutely discreet, since it is presented as fun, the victim is not told that he must make any sacrifices and he is left with the illusion of his privacy or, at least, of his private space.”

Below is my article on the smart phone from the Korea Times published in 2018:

“Imagine Korea without smartphones”

By Emanuel Pastreich, Korea Times, December 2, 2018

When I make this suggestion, the response I receive from Koreans is one of intense fascination. But the assumption they make is that I am going to describe a futuristic “smart city” in which we no longer will use smart phones because information will be projected on to our eyeglasses, or our retinas, or perhaps relayed directly to our brain via an implanted chip.

But I mean exactly what I say. The unrelenting takeover of our brains and of our society by the smartphone is taking an ominous turn.

Each day I watch almost every person on the subway lost in their smartphones, and increasingly lacking empathy for those around them as a result. They are mesmerized by video games; they flip quickly past photographs of chocolate cakes and cafe lattes, or fashionable dresses and shoes, or watch humorous short videos.

Few are reading careful investigative reporting, let alone books, that address the serious issues of our time. Nor are they debating with each other about how Korea will respond to the crisis of climate change, the risk of a nuclear arms race (or nuclear war) between the United States, Russia and China. Most media reporting is being dumbed down, treated as a form of entertainment, not a duty to inform the public.

Few people are sufficiently focused these days even to comprehend the complex geopolitical issues of the day, let alone the content of the bills pending in the National Assembly.

We are watching a precipitous decline in political awareness and of commitment to common goals in South Korea. And I fear that the smartphone, along with the spread of a social media that encourages impulsive and unfocused responses, is playing a significant role in this tragedy.

What do those smartphones do? We are told that smartphones make our lives more convenient and give us access to infinite amounts of information. IT experts are programming smartphones to be even more responsive to our needs and to offer even more features to make our lives more comfortable.

But Nicholas Carr’s book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains” presents extensive scientific evidence that the internet as a whole, and smartphones in particular, are in fact reprogramming our brains, encouraging the neurons to develop lasting patterns for firing that encourage quick responses but that make contemplation and deep thought difficult.

Over time, we are creating a citizenship through that technology that is incapable of grasping an impending crisis and unable or unwilling to propose and implement solutions.

If smartphones are reprogramming our brains so that we are drawn to immediate gratification, but lose our capacity for deeper contemplation, for achieving an integrated understanding of the complexity of human society, and of nature, what will become of us?

But consumption, not understanding, let alone wisdom, is the name of the game for smartphones.

In the case of the worsening quality of the air in Korea, I observe a disturbing passivity, and also a painful failure of citizens to identity the complex factors involved. Even highly educated people seem not to have thought carefully about the exact factors behind the emissions of fine dust in Korea, and in China, and how that pollution is linked to the deregulation of industry, or to their behavior as consumers.

That is to say those phenomena in society have been broken down into discrete elements, like postings on Facebook, and that no overarching vision of complex trends is ever formed in the mind.

We float from one stimulating story to the next, like a butterfly flitting from one nectar-laden flower to another. We come away from our online readings with a vague sense that something is wrong, but with no deep understanding of what exactly the problem is, how it relates to our actions, and no game plan for how to solve it.

[…]

Via https://www.globalresearch.ca/imagine-world-without-smartphones/5811177

Episode 12: Wider Mississippian Culture

Ancient Civilizations of North America

Dr Edwin Barnhart (2018)

Film Review

This lecture concerns the spread of Mississippian culture following the fall of Cahokia (see Human Sacrifice in the Mississippian City of Cahokia). By 1000 AD, Mississippian civilization encompassed millions of people with shared religious beliefs and artistic expression. The introduction of corn (between 900-1000 AD) led to armed conflict between villages (apparent from skeletons revealing violent deaths and the appearance of palisades and other military fortifications around 1000 AD on).

David Graeber and David Wengrow comment on this in the The Dawn of Everything. As they point out, the absence of food surpluses in hunter gatherer societies gave neighboring villages no incentive to instigate violence to steal them.

Barnhart divides what he calls Southeast Ceremonial Complex art into five periods:

• The Developmental Cult Period 900 – 1150 AD (characterized by crossed circles, long nosed gods and swastikas)
• The Southern Cult Period 1250 – 1350 AD (characterized by bilobed arrows, striped poles, chunkey players, piazzas and birds of prey)
• The Attenuated Cult Period 1350 – 1450 AD (in which trade networks beak down and artifacts are based on local materials and themes)
• The Post-Southern Cult Period 1450 – 1550 AD (characterized by a big increase in regional diversity.
• Historic Period 1550 – present (in which European colonization leads to breakdown of Mississippian civilization).

Post-Cahokia Mississippian civilization saw the development of numerous thriving villages throughout eastern North America modeled on Cahokia and participating in wide trade networks, resulting in numerous religious artifacts made from imported  materials, such as mica, copper, shell and ceramics.

Specific settlements Barnhart describes include

• Aztalan (Wisconsin) 900-1250 AD – a mound building village covering 35 acres, with a central plaza that featured both circular houses (like Cahokia) and rectangular houses (similar to Hopewell culture). Archeological remains indicate residents grew corn, squash, gourds and sunflowers hunted dear, played chunkey* and engaged in extensive trade with other Mississippian communities.
• Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung (Ontario – aka Manitou Mounds) – name means “place of the long rapids.” This allowed for year round fishing because rapids don’t freeze. Contains  Mississippian burial mounds dating from both the Laurel (300 BC – 1100 AD) and the Blackduck (800-1650 AD) cultures.
• Tabor Hill (Toronto) – believed to date from the 14th century AD.
• Moundville (Alabama) – 1100 – 1450 AD – second largest city north of Mexico, becoming the largest after Cahokia’s collapse. Had a clear three tiered social structure, consisting of a chief class (less than 10 people), an elite class and commoners.
• Spiro Mounds (Oklahoma) 850-1450 AD – only Mississippian village west of the Mississippi river. Very similar layout to Cahokia, with chunkey court and central plaza surrounded by mounds.

Around 1375 AD, all Mississippian villages experienced a big drop in population as people migrated to more rural settings.

Graeber and Wengrow also comment on this population shift (page 491) after Cahokia:

“The overall direction in the wake of Cahokia was a broad movement away from overlords of any kind  and constitutional structures carefully worked out to distribute power in such a way they could never return.”

*Chunkey was a Mississippian game in which players rolled flat disk-like stones and other players threw spears at them.

Film can be viewed free with library card on Kanopy.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/video/5713021/5712760

By Naveen Athrappully

Donald Trump heaped praise on Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson for releasing unseen footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol breach revealing that events which unfolded on the day were not as violent or part of an insurrection as portrayed by mainstream media.

The Jan. 6 committee investigating the breach as well as other lawmakers, including Republicans like former Rep. Liz Cheney, have been claiming that protestors were part of an insurrection campaign. Carlson pointed out that even though a few protestors inside the building were “hooligans” engaging in vandalism, many others were not. Some were even assisted by the police. One footage shows Jacob Chansley, also known as the “Qanon Shaman,” being calmly escorted by officers through the Capital. Trump praised Carlson for the exposé and for breaking the mainstream narrative.

“Congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in U.S. history. The New Surveillance Footage of the January 6th Events sheds an entirely different light on what actually happened. The Unselect Committee was a giant SCAM, and has now unequivocally been stamped as CRIMINAL FABRICATORS OF THIS MOST IMPORTANT DAY,” Trump said in a March 7 Truth Social post.

“Pelosi & McConnell failed on security. The Police story is sad and difficult to watch. ‘Trump’ and most others are totally innocent, LET THEM GO FREE, NOW!”

In another post, Trump praised the “great courage” shown by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in releasing the surveillance footage to Carlson.

Officer Death

One clip revealed by Carlson concerns deceased Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. The New York Times had initially reported that Sicknick was beaten to death by a fire extinguisher during the breach—a claim the outlet retracted a month later.

However, Democrats like Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Vice President Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden have continued to cite his death as proof of an insurrection at the Capitol.

According to Carlson, the new footage reveals that Sicknick was alive after the time when he was said to be allegedly killed by the protestors. The Jan. 6 committee members who had seen the footage are said to have refused to release it to the public.

The DC Medical Examiner’s office eventually cited natural causes as the reason behind Sicknick’s death—a conclusion accepted by the U.S. Capitol Police.

“Truth is beginning to be revealed. Thank you @SpeakerMcCarthy, @TuckerCarlson & company for showing America the rest of the Jan. 6 story. When will judges begin applying justice equally? Doesn’t look like ‘thousands of armed insurrectionists’ to me,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a March 7 tweet.

In June 2021, Johnson wrote a letter to the acting chief of U.S. Capitol Police Yogananda Pittman, requesting information regarding unauthorized access to the Capitol via the upper west terrace doors on Jan. 6.

Criticism and Support For Footage Release

Democrats have attacked McCarthy’s decision to hand over Jan. 6 footage to Carlson. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former member of the Jan. 6 committee, called Carlson a “right-wing propagandist” who spreads “the Big Lie.”

McCarthy insists that the footage release is in the public’s interest as the American people have a right to know the truth of events that took place on Jan. 6.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) thanked McCarthy for releasing the footage. “J6 video tapes will also be available for all J6 defendants. All 42,000+ hours. Thank you Speaker McCarthy,” she said in a Feb. 20 tweet.

“For two years, the Department of Justice has selectively leaked footage to shape their preferred narratives. And for two years, Democrats in Congress worked to ‘establish’ their own narrative,” Jan. 6 defendant William Pope told The Epoch Times in February.

[…]

Via https://peckford42.wordpress.com/2023/03/07/totally-innocent-trump-praises-tucker-carlson-for-debunking-insurrection-narrative-with-jan-6-footage/

William Makis MD

A flying instructor died in-flight after suffering a cardiac arrest, but his co-pilot thought he was fooling around (click here).

According to a newly published safety report on the incident, the pilot thought the instructor was pretending to be asleep as the pair flew a circuit near Blackpool Airport in Lancashire, England, on June 29, 2022.

Shortly after takeoff, the instructor’s head rolled back. The pilot knew the 57-year-old instructor well and thought he was just pretending to take a nap. However, when he landed the plane and his co-pilot was still resting on his shoulder and not responding, he realized something was amiss (click here).

A post-mortem examination concluded that the instructor died from acute cardiac failure. He had passed a medical four months earlier. The report found there was no indication that the instructor was unwell.

“People who had spoken to him on the morning of the incident said he was his normal cheerful self and there were no indications that he was feeling unwell,” the report said.

American Eagle (Envoy) pilot, age 54, died in-flight after departure from Chicago O’Hare (Nov.2022)

n American Eagle flight 3556 operated by Envoy Air from Chicago to Columbus returned to O’Hare airport on November 20, 2022, after the captain passed out and became incapacitated not long after departure (click here).

Data shows that the flight was only 10 minutes from take-off when the situation arose. The captain in training was subsequently declared dead at the hospital.

Envoy did not comment on the cause of the medical emergency. The Air Line Pilots Association, the union which represents Envoy’s pilots, didn’t comment (click here)

One story reported that the 54 year old pilot, Patrick Ford, had a COVID-19 booster shot 2 days prior, and was feeling “lightheaded and dizzy” during take-off (click here).

Ikar Airlines Boeing pilot died in-flight across Russia (Sep.2022)

A pilot died suddenly during a flight between the Russian cities of Novokuznetsk and St.Petersburg on Sunday (Sep.18, 2022), officials told state-run media (click here)

Authorities told RIA Novosti that the unnamed pilot, identified as a flight commander, felt sick during the trip. The commander died before medical attention could be given to the pilot, officials said. Ikar Airlines is also known as Pegas Fly.

The cause of death of the pilot has not been revealed.

Citilink Indonesia Flight pilot, age 48, died after landing plane (July 2022)

Citilink Indonesia flight – an Airbus A320 carrying more than 100 passengers – had departed from Surabaya’s international airport in East Java province and was headed to Ujung Pandang city in South Sulawesi province on July 21, 2022 (click here)

The pilot, 48 year old Boy Awalia, suffered a health emergency 15 minutes after take-off and was forced to return to the airport before being rushed to a hospital where he later died (click here).

The airline said it had conducted health checks prior to the flight for all crew on duty and that they were “declared fit or airworthy,” according to a statement from Dewa Kadek Rai, the president director of PT Citilink Indonesia.

Biman Bangladesh Airlines pilot, age 44, died in-flight after massive heart attack (Aug.2021)

Capt Nawshad Ataul Quaiyum, a pilot of Biman Bangladesh Airlines, who suffered a massive heart attack while in command of a Muscat-Dhaka flight on August 30, 2021, died in an Indian hospital. He was 44.

Quaiyum was piloting a flight carrying 124 passengers. After he took ill, the plane was taken over by the co-pilot (click here).

Air Albania flight attendant, age 24, died suddenly in-flight after plane landed in the UK (Dec.2022)

Greta Dyrmishi, 24, a cabin crew member for Air Albania, was travelling from Tirana, the Albanian capital, to Essex in the UK, on December 21, 2022 when she suddenly fainted after the plane landed. Paramedics provided CPR but she died (click here).

A post-mortem found that the 24-year-old had died from sudden adult death syndrome (SADS).

A statement issued by Air Albania at the time of the flight attendant’s death said: “On December 21, after disembarking the passengers from our flight to London, one of our cabin crew Greta Dyrmishi had a heart attack.

“Even after all medical assistance was provided immediately, we still lost her.”

Gulf Air Flight attendant died from heart attack in-flight (Nov.2022)

Air steward Yasser Saleh Al Yazidi fell ill after the seven and a half hour Gulf Air flight took off from Bahrain en route to Paris (click here).

The pilots were forced to make an emergency landing just a few hours into the journey, in Erbil, Iraq. They had reached 34,000 feet in the air when the crew member suffered the heart attack, the director of Erbil airport said.

Despite the crew member being taken to hospital immediately after landing, Yasser was pronounced dead on arrival.

[…]

Via https://makismd.substack.com/p/pilots-and-flight-attendants-who/