Lew Rockwell Institute

It has long been a commonplace among commentators of the Confessions that the first nine books are about Augustine’s ardent search for truth, leaving reflections on its meaning for the remaining four books. In other words, now that he’s determined to cleave to Christ, to commune with Him in the most intimate way in the life of the Church, certain implications follow which Augustine is only too eager to flesh out over the course of the final number of books.

Putting it another way, one could say that while the first nine tell the story of his conversion, including the major bumps along the way, the last four focus on various applications thereof. For instance, the use of memory (Book X); the problem of time (Book XI); unpacking Genesis (Book XII); further exposition of Genesis (Book XIII).

Meanwhile, with Book IX what we have is a description of everything that has happened to Augustine since his conversion. These are the events of real and compelling importance which transpired in the immediate period following his dramatic turn to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the Church He founded, of which there are several worth taking a look at.

Two of them, by the way, happen almost at once, beginning with Augustine’s resignation as a teacher of Rhetoric, followed by his retirement to the country for a life of prayer and study. Concerning the first, his professorial post, he writes to the people of Milan, “notifying them that they must find another vender of words for their students.” And then, as always, he acknowledges before God: “The deed was done, and you rescued my tongue, as you had already rescued my heart.”

At the same time, he and a handful of others elect to leave the public life altogether, sequestering themselves outside Milan for a more single-minded pursuit of the contemplative life. “Once we were there,” he tells God, “I began at last to serve you with my pen.” Which he proceeds to do, drawing upon a number of the psalms for nourishment and inspiration. “How I cried out to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those songs of a pious heart in which the spirit of pride can find no place!”

“How they set me on fire with love of you!” he continues, very much in the same rhapsodic vein. “I was burning to echo them to all the world, if only I could, so that they might vanquish man’s pride.” He reads on, quoting from Psalm 4: “Tremble and sin no more,” which, he tells God, moves him deeply, “because now I had learnt to tremble for my past, so that in future I might sin no more. And it was right that I should tremble,” he adds, recalling years spent inoculated against the truth of God and His creation because it was not some other nature belonging to the tribe of darkness that had sinned in me, as the Manichees pretend. They do not tremble, but “they store up retribution for themselves against the day of retribution, when God will reveal the justice of His judgments.”

Yes, the love of God ignites no end of fire in Augustine’s heart. And yet, at the same time, it leaves him little possibility of spreading that fire to others. All those “dead corpses,” he calls them, of whom I had myself been one. For I had been evil as the plague. Like a cur I had snarled blindly and bitterly against the Scriptures, which are sweet with the honey of heaven and radiant with your light. And now I was sick at heart over the rebellion of those who hate them. (citing Psalm 138)

He will soon need the grace of baptism to heal his heart, which is another of those salient events that follow his conversion. And when at last it comes, it fills him with a certitude of joy he had never felt before. “All anxiety over the past melted away,” he reports, for I was lost in wonder and joy, meditating upon your far-reaching providence for the salvation of the human race…The music surged in my ears, truth seeped into my heart, and my feelings of devotion overflowed, so that the tears streamed down. But they were tears of gladness.

Soon thereafter, Augustine, along with Monica, his mother, and several others, leave Milan for the long journey home, stopping at Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, along the way. It is there that Monica will die, an event on which Augustine will dilate for the balance of Book IX, omitting not a word, he says, “that my mind can bring to birth concerning your servant, my mother. In the flesh she brought me to birth in this world: in her heart she brought me to birth in your eternal light.”

Clearly, after God, it is to Monica his mother that Augustine owes everything. And he heaps upon every memory he has of her, of the great goodness of her life and example, all possible praise. Including the fact that in the days before her death, having at last seen her prayers answered, and thus nothing more remains to be done before taking leave of this world, she tells him that she no longer wishes her body to be returned to Africa for burial in her native soil, despite an earlier and oft-repeated anxiety that she lie alongside her husband in the grave she had prepared for herself.

“You will bury your mother here,” she tells him. “It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you! All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.”

Read the Whole Article

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Readers of LRC have long been treated to dissertations from the Midwestern Doctor that run counter to the medical ‘Conventional Wisdom’. I myself suffered through many years of seeing poor quality medical research. I was hired by an elite private medical center in 1999 specifically to fix the Clinical Trials software purchased from another elite private medical center but were unable to deploy because it did not work. It was my introduction to research in the medical world. Disclaimer: I do not now and never had have a phd, but I am good at applied mathematics and do know how to make computer systems work. I have spent a fair portion of my professional life in research. This was the background I brought to medicine; math, computers and  total lack of healthcare knowledge beyond finding my doctor’s office. What I learned in the first fifteen years was eye opening and not in a good way.

Jakob Bernoulli was an 18th century Swiss mathematician that first recognized that statistical correlation is not causation. It was named after him Bernoulli’s Fallacy. There is a superb book on this topic on Amazon; well worth the $30 cost. Here is a great example of the correlation issue: all criminals breathe oxygen thus anyone that breathes oxygen is a criminal. Clearly bad logic. The correlation is criminals and breathing oxygen; the illogic is equating breathing oxygen with criminality. What Bernoulli was really saying is look at the data and draw conclusions from it. This is also known as Bayesian statistics. Not doing this is the province of speculation a fancy word for guessing.

I soon learned that modern medicine has ‘biostatistics’. After a little research I realized why: mathematical statistics is a rigorous discipline based upon proof. The diamond hard concept that all of math, physics and engineering are based upon. Biostatistics are not rigorous mathematics in fact just the opposite. It is solutions in search of problems. It is literally the reification of Bernoulli’s Fallacy that Naomi Wolf, a Rhodes Scholar at New College Oxford, is a superb author but may not have a mathematical bone in her body nonetheless her book The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity is literally all about how correlation isn’t sound science by any stretch of the imagination. In the case of COVID-19 bad science equates with bad outcomes. Outcomes are the only criteria any medical treatment or drug must be measured against using Bayesian Statistics not what the Congress, a Big Pharma CEO, their Board’s of Directors and marketing department dreamed was true.

Medical biostatistics is literally the worst offender when it comes to Bernoulli’s Fallacy. It’s riddled with p-hacking aka data dredging, publication bias, and overreliance on frequentist methods, which often treat statistical significance as proof of causation rather than just as an observation.

The Problem: Correlation ≠ Causation

• Most medical research relies on observational studies, which inherently suffer from confounding variables.
• Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are often misinterpreted because they don’t prove causation; they just reduce bias in correlation measurements.
• P-values are the worst culprits. If p < 0.05, researchers treat results as “significant,” ignoring Bayesian probability and effect sizes.

Example: The Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) Disaster

• In the 1980s and 1990s, studies showed that women on HRT had lower rates of heart disease.
• Doctors assumed HRT prevented heart disease and prescribed it widely.
• Later RCTs showed no protective effect—the correlation was due to wealthier, healthier women choosing HRT (confounding factor).

Modern Biostatistics Still Falls for This

• COVID-19 Studies: Many studies used relative risk reduction (RRR) instead of absolute risk reduction (ARR), misleading the public about vaccine efficacy.
• Nutrition Studies: Coffee is bad for you. Wait, no, coffee is good for you. Nutritional epidemiology is a dumpster fire of correlation-based claims.
• Genetic Research: GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Studies) link genes to diseases, but they rarely prove a causal mechanism.

The Fix? Bayesian Thinking

• Instead of p-values, use Bayesian credible intervals—but frequentist stats dominate because they are easier to publish and explain.
• Mendelian randomization tries to fix correlation issues, but it’s not foolproof.
• More RCTs, fewer observational studies—but funding biases favor quick, cheap correlations.

This is my opinion, buyt based on my experience modern medical research is not based upon Bayesian probability and statistics thus any results from biostatistic’s might be taken with a grain of salt, possibly even the whole shaker’s worth. When you understand Bernoulli’s Fallacy and the difference between statistical significance and the errors inherent in using correlation as causation we come upon the gross problem with so much of medical research.

Researchers have a disquieting tendency to find what they were looking for. The window they see through when looking is the correlation/causation dichotomy. President Trump is a lot of things but I would bet all my bitcoin that he is not a mathematician. President Biden might not have even been conscious during 2021 and it is for this reason that bad science and ruthless marketing led to billions of taxpayer dollars going straight into Big Pharma’s pockets while potentially creating millions of cripples around the world for a non-solution to a non-problem. That is where the data leads.

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A significant amount of US military power has been on the move over this past week, including several B-2 strategic bombers which have landed at the US military base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean just over 2,000 miles southeast of Iran. According to press reports this is the most significant B-2 presence on the Island in nearly half a decade. In addition flight trackers are showing increased activity by at least nine KC-135R refueling aircraft in the region. Several C-17 cargo planes have also been spotted by satellites on the Island.

The US President has ordered US Carrier Strike Group Carl Vinson to the Mideast.

While the Administration continues to escalate its illegal bombing campaign against Yemen – some are reporting more than 60 strikes today alone and President Trump promises that they will continue “for a long time” – speculation is increasing that the Diego Garcia build-up is the beginning of the long process of positioning US military muscle for an attack on Iran.

President Trump today warned although his “big preference is we work it out with Iran…if we don’t work it out, bad bad things are gonna happen with Iran.”

So is the US president elected with the promise to end wars rather than start them ready to launch a war against the modern, technologically-advanced nation of 90 million with an extremely complicated terrain, advanced military capabilities, and a newly-signed strategic partnership treaty with Russia?

No one knows.

Congress seems uninterested in its Constitutional obligation to serve as the red light or green light for war – there has been nary a peep over Trump’s bombing of Yemen to, as his top aides were caught saying, “send a message.” Does anyone believe they will come out of their slumber as Hegseth, Waltz, Rubio, and the rest of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight (or at least plan a war on Signal straight) position the US for an attack on Iran?

Trump has continued – and perhaps even accelerated – in his second term a pattern of extreme rhetorical escalation followed by retrenchment possibly as a means of gaining the attention of the party he is addressing. For example he warned Russia earlier this month that he would increase sanctions and destroy its economy before backing down to a series of lengthy phone calls and lately capitulating to all of Russia’s demands.

So is this a big bluff to get Tehran back to negotiate the deal that Trump himself abrogated when he took office the first time? (And if so, why would Iran trust Washington this time)? Or will Trump (again) heed the call of Israel’s Netanyahu and expend US blood and treasure to take out Israel’s enemies?

Already Trump’s top picks, including his ambassador to Tel Aviv Mike Huckabee who is doing his best Colin Powell impression – claiming that as soon as Iran takes out Tel Aviv it will turn its sights to Tennessee – are urging action against “the head of the snake” as Bibi is wont to describe Iran. The pieces are falling into place and Trump’s entire cabinet is chock full of individuals for whom a war with Iran is the single most important item on the foreign policy agenda.

As analyst William Schryver points out, Iran is certainly not Yemen, Afghanistan, Saddam’s Iraq, Gaddafi’s Libya, or Noriega’s Panama. The United States under four years of mismanagement by whoever was acting as Biden’s brain has already thrown everything it had available in attempt to secure a strategic defeat for Russia and lost. The DC neocons move from failure to failure without skipping a beat, even as the US economy is bled dry by the war machine.

This war would be the end of Trump’s presidency and could well be the end of the US economy itself. All for an outrageous domino theory presented by (to a large degree) US religious extremists not unlike the religious extremists they claim to oppose abroad – that Tehran is seeking to “take over” the United States. It’s bonkers…yet for those of us who spend decades watching US foreign policy bonkers usually wins the day. Strap in…

Reprinted with permission from The Ron Paul Institute.

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I was impressed by Elon Musk’s fine more moral sensibility in his recent interview with Fox News Brett Baier.

BAIER: Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly posted on X about his trip to Ukraine to push for continuing to send US weapons and support there, and you posted that he was a traitor. Why do that?

MUSK: Well I think somebody should care about the interests of the Untied States above the interests of another country, and if they don’t, they’re a traitor.

BAIER: [Kelly] is a decorated veteran, a former astronaut, a sitting US senator.”

MUSK: It doesn’t mean it’s ok for him to put the interests of another country above America.

MUSK: We should have empathy for the thousands of people dying everyday in the trenches. For no movement in the lines. For the past two years thousands of people have died every week for nothing. … I take great offense at those who put the appearance of goodness over the reality of it. Those who virtue signal and say we can’t give into Russia, but have no solution to stopping thousands of kids dying every day. … I have contempt for such people and I want to make that clear. Because they’re virtue signaling and their lack of a solution means that kids don’t have a father. It means parents lost a son. For what? Nothing.

Baier’s remark that Kelly is a “decorated veteran” was a reference to Kelly’s service as a Naval aviator during the Gulf War. He flew 39 combat missions off the USS Midway carrier in an A-6E intruder attack aircraft, used primarily for dropping ordnance on enemy targets. He served as part of the coalition’s air campaign against the Iraqi army in which the U.S and it allies flew more than 116,000 combat air sorties and dropped 88,500 tons of bombs to destroy the Iraqi army in preparation for the ground campaign.

During the Gulf War, US forces experienced 147 battle deaths and lost 28 fixed wing aircraft. According to the Middle East Research and Information Project:

The US unofficially estimates the number of Iraqi soldiers killed as a direct consequence of the air and ground war in January and February 1991 to be 75,000 to 105,000. Senior US military officials have said that 60,000 to 80,000 Iraqis died in bunkers during the air assaults and an additional 15,000 to 25,000 were killed during the ground offensive.

I am sure that Senator Kelly was a fine Naval aviator who trained hard and was animated with patriotic spirit when he was a young pilot. However, as the above numbers reveal, it wasn’t an an evenly matched fight.

Military service in one’s youth is rightfully revered, but it should not shield an elected representative from criticism of his war policy thirty-four years later.

Throughout history it has been observed that old men holding political power have an unfortunate way of becoming detached from the suffering of the young men they send to their deaths.

In Kelly’s case, this age-old problem may have been accentuated by the fact that he killed an awful lot of ill-trained and poorly-equipped Iraqi conscripts without seeing many (if any) of his own guys killed.

It seems to me that Elon Musk’s remarks are spot on. Apart from more lucre for the beneficiaries of the Materiel Gravy Train, there is nothing to be gained by continuing the senseless war in Ukraine. The longer the inevitable negotiated settlement is delayed, the more people will needlessly die. Watch interview on X.

Elon Musk becomes deeply moved, and deadly serious, when Bret Baier asks him why he called Sen. Mark Kelly a “Traitor” for pushing to send more US aid and weapons to Ukraine.

Watch every second of his response.

“We should have empathy for the thousands of people dying everyday… pic.twitter.com/FP3rZSFDzL

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 27, 2025

Reprinted with permission from Courageous Discourse.

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ust this morning, I opened an email from an online merchant. Its peppy message meant to encourage me: “We just want you know today that you’re enough. You’ve got this!”

Funny, but I didn’t feel that way when my temper flared on a busy day last week. I didn’t notice this special empowerment in my darkened mood following an argument. I wasn’t feeling “enough” when I received a rejection letter. But don’t worry— I’ve got this!

We encounter these kinds of well-meaning platitudes all the time. Most of us don’t take it too seriously; but inside, we’ve internalized their lies. In fact, these snake oils for discouraged hearts create a dangerous illusion of self-sufficiency. We are therefore talented, smart, virtuous, deserving, and fabulous—is there anything we can’t do?

Grand illusions are eventually exposed, though. We can use an example at national level: If anyone held illusions of American strength, they now know the ugly truth. As DOGE shines its light on our government’s dark and confounding places, the shocking revelations grow daily. The masses now realize that behind our leaders’ performance art—all the flashing veneers and virtue signals—evil was working its wasting mischief.

Truth be told, many of us could use a similar audit of our interior lives. We, too, could use a searching light to expose our lies, crooked schemes and shocking corruptions. Behind our admirable facade and self-delusion, we might find evils and weakness of every kind—the marks of a crumbling infrastructure.

Even a committed Christian requires a regular accounting of the inner life. None of us are immune to the corrosive effects of sin—not even pastors, worship leaders, teachers, elders, choir members, organists, or little old church ladies. In Jeremiah 17:9 we are warned, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Elon can’t help us here, though. To find out what’s really going on behind our carefully-guarded personas—and for a proper accounting of our hearts—we need the searching light of the Holy Spirit. Only he can bring the receipts on our hidden reserves of pride or our fraudulent attempts at playing God. Only he can restore our accounts and put things right.

Unfortunately, most of us dread such exposure. We don’t want to dissect our embarrassing record of addictions, idolatries or grudges; we’d also rather normalize the everyday stuff like lust, anger, or anxiety. When it comes to our jobs or talents, we are perfectionists; but when it comes to sin, we’re contentedly “only human.”

In fact—if we’re being honest—we often don’t want God’s word to bring its promised light at all. Therefore, if God demands too much of our hearts, we spiritual bureaucrats protest or attempt in vain to lock them up. Exposing the deep state, by comparison, seems much more enjoyable.

So we plow ahead, hopeful that our natural gifts or past professions will carry the day. We don’t have time to get too picky about spiritual things; life is moving fast. A loving God must accept our good intentions; surely church attendance and conservative values count for something! Buoyed by such thinking, we can find ourselves lulled into dangerous self-sufficiency. We unwittingly sing Sinatra’s popular but foolish anthem: I Did It My Way.

Eventually, though, “my way” doesn’t work out very well. An embarrassing failure, some family drama, tragic news, or a dark night of the soul—one way or another, we will find that our talents and treasures are not enough. Our resolve and tough talk founder on hidden rocks. Our vaunted talents become our liabilities. Even a steely temperament sags under its own weight. When this world disappoints us—and it will—we may find ourselves exposed in our own kingdoms, emperors without clothes.

Maybe today you are feeling exposed this way; maybe you’ve reached the end of your resources. Your talents are wasted, your strengths are negligible, and your performance pitiful. You observe others doing naturally what, for you, seems a massive undertaking. You take stock of your life and hold it up against the shining record of another and feel discouraged—-or even demolished.

Maybe you’ve been a high-performer but remain unsatisfied. You’ve exceeded your civic obligations, outshone your competitors, and even found time to attend mass or church. Your social graces and material wealth have enlarged your reputation and secured some privileges. Despite all this, you have no peace.

Maybe you tried some spiritual exploit, but failed. You thought yourself a “victorious Christian” and found yourself unexpectedly defeated. You sinned conspicuously, and perhaps even confessed it and found forgiveness—but now you are immobilized and shamefully humbled.

If you’ve reached such a wilderness of shattering weakness and need, there is good news: although you are indeed not enough, God is. Your enviable resources can’t cover your deepest needs or corral unruly desires, but his can. Your good works cannot buy the righteousness God requires, but his did. Your personal treasury is bankrupt, but his is not; and he holds far more than gold.

Can you admit to such corruption and bankruptcy? Knowing we are helpless is one thing; confessing it to God and others is another. Those who confess their insufficiency and sinfulness are drawing near to God. Those who cast themselves on his mercies will find restoration. Those who trade their boasts for his abundance will find treasure. They are poor in spirit, and the kingdom of heaven will be theirs.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Matthew 5:3-6

“Every degree of apostasy from gospel truth brings in a proportionate degree of inclination unto wickedness into the hearts and minds of men.”
John Owen

This originally appeared on Restoring Truth.

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The reasons why conservatives fight so adamantly for smaller government have never been more obvious than they are today. Even before the DOGE audits, the galactic cost of federal debt spending was clearly crushing our economy. The interest payments alone are costing the American taxpayer around $1 trillion annually. If nothing changes for the better the national debt will hit $54 trillion by 2034.

Of course, this is unsustainable. The system will completely collapse well before another decade ends; under the weight of rising interest rates or under the weight of exponential inflation. We are already seeing the results of the spending bonanza through ongoing stagflation. Prices on most goods are 30% higher (or more) in the past 5 years. Home prices and rent costs are up at least 50% on average. Americans are being financially suffocated.

The US public wants a reckoning for this theft – And yes, it is theft. Our government, like an MC Escher drawing, is an endless maze of dead ends and black holes. It’s a vampiric organism that siphons money from taxpayer pockets, infinitely churning and embezzling and feeding until there is nothing left. It will not stop, until we make it stop.

Part of this parasite’s defense is to pretend like it doesn’t exist. We know it exists because we can see our blood being drained; we can see the results. But proving that it exists is another matter and it was nearly impossible because the only entity that has been allowed to audit the government is the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In other words, the government audits itself.

Most of our government apparatus is NOT elected. The vast majority of it is created from thin air through bureaucracy. Each new tentacle, once created, grows without regulation and forms new tentacles until there is no way to tell what connects to what and where all the money is going.

The original source of this bureaucracy is a cabal of ultra rich elites backing unaccountable NGOs. They helped to create the system over decades so that they could slither back and forth from government to NGOs to corporations without being noticed. The revolving door became standard and the same wealthy moguls and social engineers heading up think tanks and non-profits and international conglomerates were now able to cycle into various government agencies and change policy to benefit them.

Without the bureaucracy the power of the elites is greatly diminished. That is to say, bureaucratic agencies ARE the true power in government – Not presidents, not congressmen, not senators, and certainly not the American people. Political parties can change, presidents can change, the US can go from red to blue and back again, and the system remains mostly the same.

Until the Trump Administration and DOGE, no one has even tried to audit the government and figure out what the majority of these agencies are doing. The same goes for the Federal Reserve Bank, which facilitates fiat cash beyond the limits of taxpayer funds. They make deficit spending possible and allow the bureaucracy to grow without restriction. The Fed has never faced a full audit either, and good luck trying to get Congress to institute one.

The bottom line is this: The government has been deliberately engineered in such a way that nothing can ever be fixed or reformed. The existence of “the bureaucracy” as we know it today was never intended by the Founding Fathers and it should not be allowed to remain. It is the “Shadow Government”, or at least, it is the primary mechanism by which the Shadow Government rules over the US. Get rid of the bureaucracy and the elites lose everything.

This is why the global geopolitical reaction to DOGE has been so insane and violent; the parasites are seeking to protect themselves and keep their blood supply flowing.

Why does the average American citizen need an agency like USAID? We don’t need it – It serves no purpose. It functions only as an embezzlement scheme for bureaucrats and NGOs.  So, we just get rid of it, right? Except it’s not that easy…

For now it appears that the bureaucracy is using the judicial apparatus in a bid to prevent DOGE and Trump from making necessary cuts. Trump is being told that as President, he’s not allowed to fire anyone in the Federal Government. Think about how insane that sounds.

The jurisdictional overreach and clear political bias is astonishing, but it makes sense. The US President is not supposed to have any real power, he’s only meant to act as a figurehead to make us peasants feel like our votes matter. He’s not supposed to actually follow through on his campaign promises and effect legitimate reform according to the will of the people. That’s crazy talk…

The bureaucrats are so used to running the country and controlling the cash behind the scenes that they are utterly shell-shocked by the notion of being independently audited. They think they are above scrutiny or accountability.

Democrats in particular are absolutely enraged, taking to social media and ranting about how “democracy is under threat” because employees within these agencies are being asked to justify their jobs. The reaction to DOGE is so unhinged I don’t think the public is processing it yet.

Again, the Shadow Government (the bureaucracy) is the real government. When leftists claim audits and cuts are a “danger to democracy” what they mean to say is, THEIR POWER is being threatened. The majority of American voters elected Donald Trump and by extension his administrative team based on his campaign platform of smaller government and balanced budgets. Democrats argue that the will of the voters is anti-democratic.

So what is the solution to this blatant obstruction of voter choice and government accountability?

I believe the situation may end up calling for public intervention by conservative citizens. Leftist activists are being organized by NGOs to thwart DOGE, but where are the conservative activists to help DOGE? Maybe unnecessary agencies need to be shut down by public mandate regardless of what woke Obama appointed judges say?

A mass of conservatives surrounding an agency building would shut operations down by default and send a message, wouldn’t it? Leftists had no problem picketing outside the houses of Supreme Court Judges when they overturned Roe V Wade; conservatives could do the same thing with leftist judges blocking deportations of illegal migrants. If leftists want to use political intimidation by setting fire to Tesla dealerships, conservatives could organize groups to watch over these businesses.

This is not necessarily an effort to protect some electric cars from being vandalized. The point is to send a message that conservatives are not going to sit at home doing nothing while leftists run rampant doing whatever they please. The political left has had a near monopoly on public action for far too long.

I get it – A lot of these people are being paid to do what they’re doing and the rest of us have real jobs and real lives to keep us busy. But frankly, this should galvanize people more. If so many of these activist groups are astroturf then there needs to be a grassroots response to confront them. If they need to be paid and we don’t, then we hold a more legitimate and powerful position in the long run.

In terms of judicial obstruction I see very little recourse other than citizen intervention.

The other option is for the Trump Administration to ignore the judges and continue forward, but even this strategy would require very public mass support from Americans. To be clear, I understand that this creates a slippery slope for presidential power. However, did any of us in the Liberty Movement really believe that the government would shrink itself or that the elites would release their hold over the system because of an election?

Did anyone really think that a reckoning would happen with the endorsement of the courts? The courts have never been the true counterbalance to tyranny, the American people are the counterbalance.

Make no mistake, this is a life or death struggle playing out in front of our eyes. If we continue down the current path of unrestricted government our economy will implode and the establishment elites are positioned to take full advantage of such a crisis. There will be nothing left of America when they are finished; our nation will be a dried up husk.

Now is the time to remove them and their institutions from our society. If we don’t accomplish this task soon our children and their children will live in a world controlled by a faceless bureaucratic mafia immune to all accountability; driving each new generation into perpetual poverty and oppression.

Reprinted with permission from Alt-Market.us.

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England and France, American puppet states for decades until the advent of Trump 2, are visibly at work disrupting Trump’s effort to reach a deal with Putin that ends the conflict in Ukraine.  The Russian Defense Ministry said that the second strike on the Sudzha pipeline infrastructure in Russia’s Kursk Region last Friday, which completed the destruction of the facility, was the work of Britain and France.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the targeting and navigation of the American HIMARS missiles (missiles Biden said he would not give to Zelensky but did) was provided by France. British specialists input the target coordinates and the launching command came from London.

What explains two American puppet states working against the United States government?  Is it another CIA operation against Trump? Is it the US military-security complex paying the British and French governments to keep the profitable (for the US military-security complex) conflict going?  Is it the Israeli-backed US Zionist neoconservatives continuing their efforts to diminish  Russia’s influence in world affairs?

Whatever is the answer, the Russian Foreign Ministry has no better idea than I do.  The spokeswoman, Zakharova, blames Zelensky for failing to observe the negotiated agreement that both sides cease attacking the other’s energy infrastructure.  Russia agreed to Trump’s proposal as a way of protecting nuclear power plants, the destruction which could be deadly for large numbers of civilians in Russia, Ukraine, and Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed the Ukrainian military for not following Zelensky’s orders.  It is a mystery how Zakharova and Peskov can continue to describe the situation as a Ukrainian issue when the two nuclear-armed (armed by Washington) NATO countries, Britain and France, are at work undermining the Trump-Putin peace negotiations.

If Trump and Putin were in the league with the great strategists in history, what would they do to bring this clown act to an end?  They would announce a military alliance. Putin can have Ukraine, the Baltics and as much of Europe as he wants.  Trump will take Canada, Greenland, and Panama.  No one on earth could do anything about this.

Putin does not want Ukraine, the Baltics, or Europe.  He only wants Russia to be left alone and to engage freely with the countries that comprise the world.  What Trump really wants, we don’t yet know.  But a Trump-Putin alliance would establish dominion over the rule of earth, Israel included.  Israel’s agenda of Greater Israel could easily be deep-sixed, Israel’s nuclear weapons destroyed, and justice given  to the Palestinians.  Israel would be reduced, instead of expanded, in boundary, and the Jews could use their talent for business to make the Middle East a prosperous area of the world.

President Trump seems to have the idea that the pursuit of mutual interests in business is far superior to the pursuit of war. Putin has shown himself to be the least combative of leaders of powerful countries. 

If only Trump and Putin could realize that a US-Russia military alliance would establish peace in the world, no more NATO, no more CIA overthrowing governments, no more propaganda about false news threats, we could enter a golden era of peace.

Of course, the military-security complex would assassinate both Trump and Putin.

Nevertheless, I believe both would risk it if only they could think of it. See this and this.

The post Trump and Putin Could Bring Peace to the World appeared first on LewRockwell.

The US launched 65 airstrikes in 24 hours in Yemen, and then Trump’s intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard tweeted, “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.”

These freaks have no connection with reality.

❖

I saw a video the other day of a father cradling the decapitated head of his son from an airstrike in Gaza, and I’m told I’m a terrorist supporter if I criticize the people who decapitated him.

❖

The word “terrorist” is a meaningless tool of imperial narrative control.

Want to bomb some people? Designate them as terrorists.

Want to silence protesters and dissidents? Say they’re supporting terrorists.

Want sweeping surveillance powers? Say you need them to fight terrorism.

❖

The list of people the Trump administration is working to deport for speech crimes against Israel is getting longer and longer, and includes a doctoral student whose sole offense was writing an op-ed critical of the Gaza holocaust.

Republicans spent years whining that government is too big and free speech is dying and everyone’s too weak and sensitive, only to turn around and applaud the government for stomping out free speech to protect their delicate little ears from hearing wrongthink about Israel.

❖

Two recent headlines:

“Israel admits firing at ambulances in Gaza,” from The Guardian,

and

“Israeli soldier tells CBS News he was ordered to use Palestinians as human shields in Gaza.”

The western press are only allowed to report on Israeli crimes when the Israelis admit to it themselves.

Half of the evidence of Israeli atrocities in Gaza comes from Palestinians filming their own genocide. The other half comes from Israelis telling the press what they’ve been up to.

❖

This you? https://t.co/iszrNEyTYm pic.twitter.com/OXPaVbOWB8

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 29, 2025

❖

The Democrats committed genocide. Now the Republicans are committing genocide. There you have it. Neither party is acceptable. Case closed. End of debate.

❖

Trump is as evil as Biden. Biden was as evil as Trump. If you can’t see this by looking at the raw data of the behavior of their administrations, it’s either because you’re looking at incomplete data or because you’re letting your political biases do your thinking for you.

Both presidents are guilty of extreme evils, and you can’t separate the evils of one from the evils of the other. Biden spent the latter part of his term incinerating Gaza, and then Trump began working to clear it of Palestinians. Trump managed to secure the Gaza ceasefire that Biden spent 15 months avoiding, but then he immediately began sabotaging that very ceasefire as soon as he took office. Biden has been waging a dangerous proxy war in Ukraine that Trump helped provoke in his first term, and now that he’s back in office Trump is tasked with winding that war down to focus on new wars.

The crimes of the Republican and Democratic parties are inseparably intertwined with each other. It’s not that they’re the same — there are some differences — it’s that they work in conjunction to advance the same evil agendas. Saying the Democrats are better than Republicans or vice versa is like saying the top teeth of the shark are nicer than the bottom teeth; they might look and function a bit differently, but they’re used toward the same deadly end.

❖

There are no anti-war Trump supporters. If you’re still supporting Trump after all his insane warmongering, you’re not anti-war.

❖

Trump supporters get so mad at me for listing facts about what a warmongering Israel cuck their president is. That big uncomfortable feeling you’re experiencing is called cognitive dissonance, fellas. It’s what being wrong feels like.

❖

Funny how the linguistic gymnastics of the mass media sometimes turns them into poets. They’ll go their whole dreary lives without making any art and then write a headline like “A blast disturbs the cool morning air. The smell of burnt flesh. A universe full of question marks.” https://t.co/Vf9mIJjSRV

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) March 26, 2025

❖

The single most bat shit insane conspiracy theory I’ve ever encountered on the internet is that all the death and destruction we’re seeing in the live-streamed genocide in Gaza is actually an extremely high-budget film studio hoax known as “Pallywood”. Flat earthers make more sense.

❖

If Israel doesn’t want westerners voicing their opinions about it then maybe it should stop making itself such a central character in the story of 21st century western imperial warmongering.

❖

Democrats pretended to support justice and oppose racism, then Biden exposed them all as frauds in Gaza. Republicans pretended to support free speech and oppose war, then Trump exposed them as frauds with his Israel policy. US politics is just empty noise draped over an empire.

That’s all it is. The pundits and politicians could all be speaking in baby talk gibberish and it wouldn’t matter. Presidential candidates could have their debates speaking Esperanto and it wouldn’t change anything. The only reason they bother using coherent English words at all is so people don’t get suspicious and start noticing that the politics of the United States are just empty noises fed to the public to let them feel like they’ve got some control while the tank treads of the empire roll onward.

It’s like this in all western “democracies”. The public is split into two equal factions who are then pitted against each other on issues that are guaranteed not to inconvenience the powerful in any way, and then the state just does what’s in the interests of the empire without regard for any of the noises being made in the political sphere. And the brainwashed masses just keep babbling on about their politics, completely unaffected by the fact that the things their government is doing run squarely counter to the values they purport to hold. There’s no real connection between the two.

__________________

My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece here are some options where you can toss some money into my tip jar if you want to. Go here to find video versions of my articles. If you’d prefer to listen to audio of these articles, you can subscribe to them on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud or YouTube. Go here to buy paperback editions of my writings from month to month. All my work is free to bootleg and use in any way, shape or form; republish it, translate it, use it on merchandise; whatever you want. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. All works co-authored with my husband Tim Foley.

The post The ‘President of Peace’ Just Bombed Yemen 65 Times in 24 Hours appeared first on LewRockwell.

Three years ago, a nationwide infant formula shortage shook America, and before long led to fights at grocery stores and stories like this flooding the media:

At the time, significant outrage was directed at the FDA since the shortage was due to pre-existing COVID-19 supply chain shortages exacerbated by a major recall by one of the leading formula producers (as at least two infants had recently died from contaminated formula, and the FDA had found the responsible bacteria at a major infant formula plant) which was then further exacerbated by a wave of panic buying that emptied many grocery stores.

This then led to many people pointing out it was ridiculous the FDA was willing to pull America’s formula supply over a relatively small production issue, but simultaneously was unwilling to do anything about the mRNA vaccines despite the fact the contamination in them and the deaths they were causing were orders of magnitude greater than anything which could possibly be attributed to the suspect infant formula lines.

As I watched this unfold, my thoughts were a bit different. Could there possibly be another way to feed your infants? Perhaps one that you could do at home that did not rely upon an unstable supply chain. I thus looked into how the homesteading and alternative health communities were addressing this dilemma and came across things like this:

I thus took the events of 2022 as a remarkable testament to just how effectively the formula industry had convinced mothers they needed to do anything besides breastfeed their children. At the same time however, I was hopeful these events would catalyze a public shift on this issue, so since then, I’ve gradually tried to put out the key points needed to understand what’s gone awry with infant formula and facilitate that change.

In turn, RFK Jr. recently announced an FDA initiative to make America’s infant formula healthy again (e.g., conducting a comprehensive review of its nutritional content, testing formula for heavy metals, and objectively assessing the health issues that arise from being formula fed). I believe that for “Operation Stork Speed” to succeed, it’s critical to understand the context of what’s happened with infant formula.

Note: in addition to heavy metals (and other harmful chemicals), infant formula has also repeatedly been found to be contaminated with aluminum, something which is quite problematic due to its adverse effects on the physiologic zeta potential (which the nervous system is very sensitive to disruptions of).

The History of Formula Feeding

While I strongly believe in the value of breastfeeding, throughout history and cultures, there are many references of mothers who could not sufficiently nourish their children with breastmilk who then sought out milk from other mothers or other supplemental sources of infant nutrition (which unfortunately were often not nutritionally adequate or contaminated with microorganisms).

Note: I believe that one of the primary causes of insufficient milk production from the mother was poor nutrition or malnutrition (something which was addressed in many early societies by having mothers eat specific diets).

This led to a variety of attempts to create a milk substitute that more accurately matched the safety and efficacy of human breastmilk (starting in 1865), a process which was revolutionized through the discovery of evaporated milk powder and its adaptation into infant formulas in the early 1900s. That was followed by various other attempts to produce more nutritionally adequate formulas.

As infant formulas improved in the 1920s, manufacturers began targeting physicians with their advertising. By 1929, the American Medical Association (AMA) established a committee to evaluate the safety and quality of formula compositions, leading many companies to seek the AMA’s “Seal of Acceptance,” bringing physicians closer to formula manufacturers. By the 1940s and 1950s, formula use became widely accepted as a safe alternative to breastmilk, and with the help of aggressive marketing and the inappropriate medicalization of childbirth, successfully displaced breastfeeding.

Note: the AMA’s seal of approval was created in 1905, and was designed to be a source of revenue to keep the struggling organization afloat (as it was given in return for advertising dollars rather than any assurance of safety—for instance the AMA widely promoted the benefits of smoking their sponsor’s cigarette brand). Sadly, once this funding allowed the AMA to begin establishing a foothold in the medical market, the organization then switched to blacklisting every competing therapy which would not sell out to the AMA (which is essentially why there are so many remarkable forgotten medical therapies exist from the early 1900s).

Many recognized this shift was harmful to both mothers and children. Hence, various groups (particularly the La Leche League, which was founded in 1956) mobilized the public to support breastfeeding mothers. In the 1970s, they finally reached the public (due to both scientific data emerging in support of breastfeeding and a growing societal dissatisfaction with the paternalistic and insensitive attitude medicine had to women). This shift began with middle-class mothers returning to natural breastfeeding, and gradually, governments eventually recognized the value of breastfeeding too (although it was not until 1984 that indecency laws against public breastfeeding began being updated). The decline in breastfeeding was, at last, reversed.

This chart combined a lot of different data sources.

One of the key events that catalyzed this shift away from formula was the Nestlé formula scandal (which began in 1973), which began after the public learned Nestlé was aggressively targeting poor women in undeveloped countries for infant formula sales. This was accomplish by paying hospitals to give free samples to mothers after delivery and telling mothers (frequently via sales reps impersonating nurses) that they would not be able to produce enough milk for their babies, which in turn let to the impoverished mothers frequently not only switching to infant formula but diluting it (as they could not afford standard doses). Millions of infants died as a result of these practices, and Nestlé eventually came under widespread public scrutiny (e.g., boycotts, celebrity protests, government investigations, and some of its predatory marketing practices being banned). The fact that Nestlé was able to convince millions of mothers to starve their babies to death again illustrates how predatory many of these marketing tactics were (particularly since some of those now outlawed practices still continue in the poorer nations).

Formula Marketing

During each pediatric “well-child” visit, in addition to pushing the currently scheduled vaccines on the child, the child will also be weighed and often told that, according to the growth chart, they are underweight, strongly encouraged to consume infant formula, and sent home with a free sample. One of the particularly concerning things for me about doctors pushing these products on children was that the ingredients in the most common brands were fairly unhealthy:

Additionally, because of how frequently the “underweight” diagnosis came up, I naturally became quite suspicious of it.

Note: somewhat analogously, patients will routinely be told that due to their blood pressure and cholesterol, they are at a high risk of having a heart attack in the next few years, so they must start a statin to prevent it. Given that almost everyone ended up being “high risk,” I was not surprised to learn that in 2016, Kaiser completed an extensive study which determined this calculator overestimated the rate of these events by 600%. Sadly, that has not deterred doctors from using this calculator (e.g., medical students are still tested on it for their board examinations).

I then came across a passage from “How to Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor,” (written in 1987 by one of the original medical dissidents—Robert S. Mendelsohn) which stated the growth charts were extremely inaccurate (e.g., that they did not take into account a wide range of genetic variabilities in weight or that breast fed babies weighed less than formula fed ones) and that:

What their doctor doesn’t tell them is that this [weighing] ritual has no medical significance whatsoever. They aren’t told that some formula manufacturer was probably the source of the growth chart the doctor is using, and that he gets them free. That leads to an obvious question: Why are the formula makers so eager to have your doctor check your baby’s weight? Answer: Because the weight gain of breastfed babies may not match the average weights shown on the formula maker’s chart. They hope that the pediatrician, instead of reassuring the mother that this is normal and nonthreatening, will tell her to stop breastfeeding and switch to their product, of which he has a handy reminder in his hand. Too often, that si exactly what he does, and the baby is subsequently denied the immunity and other benefits that breastfeeding provides.

Given Mendelsohn’s accuracy, integrity, and knowledge as an insider, I was quite intrigued about this and discovered that during his career, many dubious weight charts had circulated around, and that it was not until 1977 that the US government made a standardized one. Following this, in 2000, the CDC made a chart using the average weights of American children (who were often on formula), and in 2006, the WHO made a chart using the weights of children who had been breastfed. The CDC chart (which is what’s often used in the United States) in turn, was recognized to be more prone to classify children as being underweight.

Below age 24 months, the revised [CDC] weight-for-age curves are generally higher than in the 1977 charts. This will result in more frequently classifying infants as underweight. Similarly, this shift would be expected to result in lower comparative estimates of overweight when the revised charts are used.

As expected, there are important differences between the WHO and CDC charts that vary by age group, growth indicator, and specific Z-score curve. Differences are particularly important during infancy, which is likely due to differences in study design and characteristics of the sample, such as type of feeding. Overall, the CDC charts reflect a heavier, and somewhat shorter, sample than the WHO sample. This results in lower rates of undernutrition (except during the first 6 mo of life) and higher rates of overweight and obesity when based on the WHO standards. Healthy breast-fed infants track along the WHO standard’s weight-for-age mean Z-score while appearing to falter on the CDC chart from 2 mo onwards.

Thus, the scam was:

•Infant formula is composed of ingredients that will make children overweight and obese (the first ingredient is often corn syrup and then followed by seed oils).

•Children who have been made overweight from the formula are the “new normal,” and anyone who weighs less than them is diagnosed as being underweight and pushed to take the formula (e.g., see this 2010 blog post by a pediatrician about it).

In turn, many studies (and systematic reviews) have found formula feeding not only causes rapid weight gain but also makes children much more likely to be obese as adults.1,2,3,4,5,6

As such, formula’s role in the continually increasing childhood obesity rates (e.g., 19.7% in 2020) must be considered (but unfortunately we are instead “solving” it by putting children on Ozempic—a drug which has a great deal of issues).

Later, I got in touch with one of the (now retired) doctors Mendelsohn mentored, who shared a few other important things with me:

Mendelsohn told me that during his appointment as Medical Director of Project Head Start’s Medical Consultation Service in 1968, he was horrified by the discussions held privately in the White House with his medical colleagues. They were openly discussing how they could control the population of the poor by promoting infant formula, vaccinations, sadistic hospital birthing practices, deficient government schools, and neighborhood abortion clinics. This was just too much of an assault on his strong Jewish faith and his Hippocratic oath [and why he left the club to become a medical dissident].

The Similac and Enfamil drug reps used to leave infant boy and girl growth charts at my office front desk. The charts were in stacks joined with adhesive at the top, so that you could tear off a copy and place it in the child’s chart or give it to a parent. My recollection is that before the Nestle scandal, the company’s name and logo appeared on the growth chart, but I cannot be certain of this. All the growth charts currently available are distributed by the CDC and the WHO and bear only their logos. I have no doubt that the designers of the growth charts were captured by the formula manufacturers.

Along these same lines, the public educational systems were designed so that all children were expected to develop skills like potty training, speech acquisition, ability to read, etc. in a similarly regimented growth chart fashion.* Outliers are considered “abnormal” and their parents are subjected to fear, guilt, and intimidation, and the need for the involvement of more “caring professionals”.

Also while I was practicing, when an obstetric patient was discharged from the hospital, the drug companies gave each patient a “gift bag” which included coupons for discounts and a few bottles of their formula product [and what Nestlé had gotten in trouble for doing overseas]. My hospital had one or the other of Enfamil or Similac bottles which they administered to infants if the mother allowed their baby to go to the nursery, so that the mother could “rest”, or to prevent “neonatal hypoglycemia” or “neonatal jaundice” which were other scams applied to healthy newborns designed to undermine confidence in complete breastfeeding. I am certain that the formula was provided free to the hospital, because the manufacturers knew that hospital use endorsement would generate product loyalty. When a great lactation consultant joined the nursing staff, she strongly opposed these practices, and strongly encouraged rooming-in. She would visit each mother daily to supervise and help with nursing. The established nurses did not like the lactation consultant, because they preferred to stuff the newborns with formula and wrap them tightly in warm blankets so that they would sleep and remain quiet in the nursery.

Lastly, breastmilk is digested more quickly than formula. Breast suckling is hard physical work for the baby so the baby will stop feeding when satisfied. Therefore breastfed infants wake to feed more frequently. Formula fed babies more likely to over feed because the formula flows more easily. This goes along with the weight charts issue. A seasoned pediatrician can just look at a naked baby and immediately know if it is undernourished.

Fortunately, there is now growing awareness of the predatory tactics of the formula industry (which now has an annual growth rate of 10.15% and is a 90.91 billion annual market that costs the typical parent $1,500 to $2,500 a year). For example, to quote a recent investigation by the Lancet:

For decades, the commercial milk formula (CMF) industry has used [underhanded] marketing strategies, designed to prey on parents’ fears and concerns at a vulnerable time, to turn the feeding of young children into a multibillion-dollar business. The immense economic power accrued by CMF manufacturers is deployed politically to ensure the industry is under-regulated and services supporting breastfeeding are under-resourced.

[This] three-paper Series outlines how typical infant behaviours such as crying, fussiness, and poor night-time sleep are portrayed by the CMF industry as pathological and framed as reasons to introduce formula, when in fact these behaviours are common and developmentally appropriate. However, manufacturers claim their products can alleviate discomfort or improve night-time sleep, and also infer that formula can enhance brain development and improve intelligence—all of which are unsubstantiated. Infant feeding is further commodified by cross-promotion of infant, follow-on, toddler, and growing-up milks using the same branding and numbered progression, which aims to build brand loyalty and is a blatant attempt to circumvent legislation that prohibits advertising of infant formula.

Breastfeeding has proven health benefits…however, less than 50% of babies worldwide are breastfed according to WHO recommendations, resulting in economic losses of nearly US$350 billion each year. Meanwhile, the CMF industry generates revenues of about $55 billion annually, with about $3 billion spent on marketing activities every year.

The industry’s dubious marketing practices are compounded by lobbying, often covertly via trade associations and front groups, against strengthening breastfeeding protection laws and challenging food standard regulations. In 1981, the World Health Assembly adopted the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, a set of standards to prevent inappropriate marketing of formula. It includes prohibition of advertising of CMF to the public or promotion within health-care systems; banning provision of free samples to mothers, health-care workers, and health facilities; no promotion of formula within health services; and no sponsorship of health professionals or scientific meetings by the CMF industry. However, despite repeated calls for governments to incorporate the Code’s recommendations into legislation, only 32 countries have legal measures that substantially align with the Code. A further 41 countries have legislation that moderately aligns with the Code and 50 have no legal measures at all. As a result, the Code is regularly flouted without penalty.

The prioritization of trade interests over health was brought to the forefront in 2018, when US officials threatened to enforce trade sanctions and withdraw military aid to Ecuador unless it dropped a proposed resolution at the World Health Assembly to protect and promote breastfeeding. Some CMF lobby groups have cautioned against improved parental leave. Duration of paid maternity leave is correlated with breastfeeding prevalence and duration, and absence of, or inadequate, paid leave forces many mothers to return to work soon after childbirth. Lack of safe spaces for breastfeeding or expressing milk in workplaces, or facilities to store breastmilk, mean that breastfeeding is not a viable option for many women.

All information that families receive on infant feeding must be accurate and independent of industry influence to ensure informed decision making. Marketing by the CMF industry is an interconnected, multifaceted, powerful system that knowingly exploits parents’ aspirations.

Note: the complete lack of evidence for many of the medical claims on infant formulas is discussed further here.

Seed Oils In Formula

Since seed oils are linked to obesity, inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction, many parents do not want to give them to their children. In turn, I am frequently contacted by frustrated patients after they discovered that almost every infant formula is full of seed oils. After some digging, I discovered this remarkable situation (formula manufacturers refusing to sell the product customers want) was due to the following:

•FDA regulations require infant formulas to have at least 2.7% of their calories (300mg per 100 Kcal) come from linoleic acid (LA, the problematic omega-6 fat in seed oils), and the FDA aggressively enforces this. Additionally, no maximum is given, so the amount of calories from LA in formula is often much higher (e.g., 7-9% for many common brands and sometimes reaches 17%).

•This regulation arose from the Infant Formula Act of 1980 (which was virtually unanimously passed by Congress in response to more than 100 infants becoming seriously ill from nutritionally inadequate soybean oil-based formulas). Unlike most (fairly vague laws which defer to Federal agencies) this act was well-known for being extremely specific in the nutritional requirements it stipulated for infant formula.

•Those nutritional requirements were directly copied from the 1976 American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations that did not provide an explanation for why the LA requirements were put in (which is odd given that LA was not mentioned in the AAP’s 1967 recommendations).

•The Infant Formula Act had a provision [Section 412(a)(2)] that formula nutritional requirements could be revised at any time by the Secretary of the H.H.S. Remarkably, the only changes that were ever made were raising the minimum level of calcium per 100 kilocalories from 50 to 60 mg, phosphorus from 25 to 30mg and requiring 2.0-7.0 μg of selenium (which was instituted in 2016—27 years after the Institute of Medicine determined selenium was essential for children and formula manufacturers had already begun adding it in).

So, as you might guess, nutritional science no longer supports many of the requirements in the 1980 act, but virtually all of that science has been completely ignored.

In the case of linoleic acid, (the omega-6 fatty acid), at the time the act passed, the scientific consensus was that LA was essential for infant development. This was due to data like a pivotal 1963 study of 428 infants which found infants who had less than 0.1% of their calories come from LA developed skin symptoms (e.g., drying, shedding, irritation, or infections) due to a lack of oil in the skin (along with some degree of “reduced growth”) which disappeared in those who instead received 1% of their calories from LA.
Note: another pivotal 1972 study found almost identical results when infants who had to be fed through IVs were given fat-free nutrition (where the symptoms again were interpreted as a lack of LA rather than other essential fats).

However, beyond the “necessary” amount of LA being much lower than what was subsequently required (2.7%) or what ended up in formula (e.g., the current brands I checked ranged from 7-17.1%), it also became obsolete after it was discovered that the ratio between LA to ALA (omega-3) was much more important than the LA present (e.g., too high of a LA to ALA ratio created significant issues, as did a lack of DHA). For example:

•Those early studies did not include ALA in the experimental diets, and once a bit was present (e.g., 0.5%), the need for LA was halved.

•High dietary LA has repeatedly been found to interfere with the synthesis, accumulation, and incorporation of fatty acids such as DHA.1,2,3,4,5 Likewise, decreasing the ratio of LA present was found to significantly increase DHA in tissues, particularly the brain and retina.1,2
Note: DHA is essential for brain and eye development, but unfortunately like ARA, it is quite fragile and easily damaged during the manufacturing process (whereas in homemade formulas and human breastmilk they are not).

•One reason LA was considered “essential” is because the body converts it to arachidonic acid (ARA), which is critical for brain and nervous system development. However, in infants, the conversion is very poor (estimates range from 0.2-5%—this study for instance found infants only converted 1.2% of ingested LA to ARA), so infants require ARA rather than its LA precursor (e.g., 0.55% of the fats in human breastmilk are ARA).
Note: the levels of ARA and DHA are heavily dependent on the mother’s diet (e.g., one study found a Chinese community which consumed a traditional post-labor diet quite high in eggs, poultry and pork had significantly higher levels of DHA, ARA, and total fat content in their breastmilk, while when those mothers switched to consuming seed oils, harmful fats increased in their breastmilk). Likewise, the presence of choline (another critical nutrient for many developing tissues, including the brain) in breastmilk highly depends on the mother’s diet (e.g., eggs and liver being excellent dietary sources).

•High dietary LA does not support the growth of developing neurons, and in humans, it has been linked to atypical neurodevelopment and impaired motor and cognitive scores early in life.

•High dietary LA increases the brain’s vulnerability to inflammation.

In short, a strong case can be made that much of the original data arguing for the necessity of LA in formulas actually due to a lack of other essential fats, but rather than heed this, we opted to use an incredibly excessive amount of LA while simultaneously ignoring all of the science from the last 50 years that demonstrated the other fats needed to be focused on (and that, as a 2016 systematic review showed, we still have very poor data for these nutritional guidelines). Most remarkably, while other regulators (e.g., in China and Europe) have required fats like DHA to be included and lower LA to ALA ratios, the FDA has not (but will target companies who do not stuff their formulas with seed oils).

Note: while the government will often be extremely stubborn and refuse to correct a longstanding mistake (perfectly demonstrated by this example), I strongly suspect the unwillingness to fix the linoleic acid requirements was significantly influenced by lobbying (as LA is one of the cheapest ingredients available to the processed food industry). Likewise, many believe the medical literature is so hostile to home formula options because industry money was spent to eliminate any potential competition.

Read the Whole Article

The post Why Is What We Feed Infants So Unhealthy? appeared first on LewRockwell.

March 30 2025 By Kelvyn Alp, https://nzloyal.com/

The notion that viruses are the primary cause of many diseases has been a cornerstone of modern medicine for over a century.

However, a growing body of research suggests that this paradigm may be fundamentally flawed.

Dr. Mark Bailey’s seminal paper, “A Farewell to Virology,” (2022) and the work of Dr. Sam Bailey, Dr. Andrew Kaufman, and Dr. Tom Cowan, have collectively challenged the conventional wisdom on viruses and vaccines.

Their research posits that viruses do not exist as disease-causing entities, but rather as misidentified cellular components and other biological phenomena.

This idea is not new and builds on the pioneering work of former virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka and The Perth Group.

However, it has gained significant traction in recent years, largely because of the COVID-19 scamdemic.

The implications of this theory are profound, and they raise a crucial question: if viruses do not exist as claimed, what are we vaccinating against?

The vaccine schedules that govern our lives are based on the assumption that viruses are real and pose a significant threat to public health.

However, if this assumption is incorrect, then the justification for vaccines crumbles.

Are we simply creating a future dependent clientele for pharmaceutical companies?

READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE

The post If Viruses Do Not Exist As Claimed, What Are Vaccines For? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

Why am I laughing?  Perhaps because the world’s gone mad, myself included.

Not a day passes without  reported stabbings in Amsterdam, Paris, London, Berlin and Malmo . Or at least twice weekly in Dublin. Always with the suspect as an “ unamed migrant”. Never the country of origin. Which is code for an Islamist entity.

But this time, the knife wielder is from Ukraine. Which will provide a new problem for the politically suicidal EU, given the imperative of “ Saving Ukraine’s Democracy” from RUSSIA!

Of course,Europe is not collapsing under self imposed Islamization. Racism, xenophobia,Islamophobia and Extreme Rightwing White Nationalist Fascism,Putin apologists and Zionist empathizers are the greatest threat to EU Democracy ( aka native born white European citizens vs mass t class of whiteness is Ukraine! Maybe if the Ukrainian migrant stabbed a group of Islamists , they can pretend he’s really a Russian agent masquerading as Ukrainian to sow chaos! That works!

See here.

The post Suspect In Amsterdam Knife Rampage Is Ukrainian National, Police Confirm appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

O  Canada!  Rogan’s a no go, China just executed 4 Canadian nationals for drug dealing and raised tariffs an additional 20%. That’s the trade war you don’t hear about and it’s been ongoing for quite awhile due to a rift. Perhaps that’s what Trump is using as leverage.

See here.

The post Joe Rogan Skips UFC 315 In Montreal, Citing Deep Concern Over Canadian Government appeared first on LewRockwell.

Gail Appel wrote:

 Terrific. Meanwhile, the EU “ Crisis Manager” is a Muslim immigrant.

See here.

The post EU’s Push For War Leaves Citizens To Brace For Fallout appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

CNN News

The post Trump says he ‘couldn’t care less’ if auto prices rise because of tariffs appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Smith. 

USA Today

The post Trump says U.S. will ‘get Greenland’ doesn’t rule out military force appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

John Leake

The post Hijinks with “Giza Underground City” appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm. 

Infowars

The post Trump Cuts Billion Dollar Grant to Eugenicist Bill Gates’s GAVI Vaccine Program appeared first on LewRockwell.

Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

Broadcaster Brannon Howse conducts an interesting interview with technocracy expert Patrick Woods who has been warning about this “rule by experts” taking over the US and the world. With President Trump’s proclamation to place the US under the Commonwealth of Britain, we are now feeling, seeing and understanding technocracy’s tentacles.

See here.

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Ginny Garner wrote:

Lew,

I came across this very prescient 2015 article that provides some valuable background history on what we are witnessing unfolding and I thought your readers would appreciate it.

See here.

The post Technocracy: An AI-Based Dictatorship appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm. 

CNBC News

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