We knew we were ingesting microplastics. They’re in food, they’re in water, they’re even in the air we breathe. And now researchers have provided the clearest evidence yet that they are ending up in our brains. In large amounts. A spoonful, to be precise. New research compared brains from people who died in 2016 and those who died in 2024 and found fifty percent higher concentrations in the more recent brains. A doubling in eight years. Horrific, stunning and barely believable. The brains from people diagnosed with dementia had the highest concentrations. Truly dystopian.
This isn’t the only way our brains are under attack. Sars-Cov-2 is a neurotropic virus capable of infecting the nervous system. And it often does. Unlike seasonal flu the virus is year-round, and unlike other brain invading viruses, it mutates rapidly, which means infection provides us no lasting immunity.
The long-term consequences of this one-two punch are horrific but easily foreseen: more early-onset Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia. More chronic illness due to nervous system inflammation. More disability. We’re already seeing it, with country after country reporting a higher burden of chronic illness than ever before. Yet nowhere do we see the political initiative to do anything about the plastics or the viruses. Our brains are being plasticised and virally calcified for growth, corporations and billionaires.
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One million kids in the US likely developed long covid in 2024. This news comes after virus minimisers were platformed across the media from 2021 claiming that kids had nothing to fear from covid. That parents shouldn’t worry about sending them back to school. That they shouldn’t worry at all about children suffering ill-effects from the virus. Only the weak and the old need fear covid, we were told. Kids, with their strongly developing immune systems, will just absorb the virus, get the antibodies and become immune. That was never true. It wasn’t true for one million kids last year, and hasn’t been true for nearly six million since 2020. This is also a massively over-looked class issue, with the latest study finding long covid is far more prevalent in lower income households. The tragedy is that minimising lines came not from conspiracy kooks but from the ‘sensible’ pro-vaccine, pro-public health people like Michael Mina. In December, Mina tweeted how he had never been ‘overly concerned’ about his kid getting covid. In January, he tweeted that he had to rush his kid to ER because they were experiencing respiratory distress. The kid tested positive for covid.
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The Trump administration is, in large part, a product of covid. Elon Musk got addicted to Twitter and pilled by viral anti-woke outrage content during covid. People started making fun of him, he became convinced Twitter was part of the woke agenda, so he bought it. RFK Jr solidified his platform and found a much wider audience for his anti-vax message because of covid. The National Institutes of Health, which funds a huge amount of key health research, will be headed by Great Barrington Declaration author, mass infection proponent and key covid minimiser Jay Bhattacharya. The pandemic made his ascension to public personality possible.
And now the US has pulled out of the WHO, public health websites are going dark, the CDC has stopped all communications and the spread of bird flu is a mystery. It’s incredible that just four short years ago, covid health policy was the main reason Biden beat Trump. On the back of this win, the Biden administration had a historic, once-in-a-generation mandate to create a public health infrastructure fit for purpose. They had the opportunity to clean the air, to take viruses seriously, to set the US and even the world up to face the next pandemic. To give everyone healthcare, as Biden had promised. But the Democrats fucked it up. The fucked it up like they were bound to fuck it up as slavish corporations-first liberals. They paved the way for the cranks. Now, with America’s public health functions being dismantled and the cranks in situ, bird flu stalks the land.
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Elon Musk once said, in response to someone pointing out that planning a coup in Bolivia for its lithium was not in the best interests of Americans, that, ‘we will coup whoever we want!’ Last year he supported the CIA-backed far right candidate in Venezuela who baselessly claimed she had won the election.
Yet some people seriously think one of Musk’s motivations for abolishing America’s foreign aid agency, USAID, was because of its role in fuelling right-wing insurgencies and planning coups. No. He told us why. He said it was because USAID was full of ‘radical-left Marxists who hate America.’ He was referring to the pride parades and other supposed woke line items they found in USAID’s budget. Line items that provided cover for all the other stuff. Because USAID did fuel and fund coups to try and install US-friendly regimes. But that isn’t why it has gone. It’s gone because of the woke. And people will suffer. Because USAID also funded health programmes, including HIV prevention, especially in Africa. Marco Rubio has announced he is now the USAID boss, so the coup functions have essentially been merged into the State Department. The covert attempts to install American puppets (especially for their lithium and other rare earth minerals) will continue. But this time without any of the good stuff.
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Trump just announced America and Israel plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Sitting next to a smirking Netanyahu, he said the US will ‘take over’ Gaza. He suggested again that the Palestinians in Gaza are moved to Egypt or Jordan or ‘somewhere else.’ He said Gaza is a ‘hellhole’, a ‘demolition site’ and ‘a symbol of death and destruction’ unfit for human habitation. He’s not wrong. However to see him say it while sitting next to the man who made it this way is so utterly shameless. So utterly Trump.
I don’t expect Democrats and liberal centrist governments led by the likes of Trudeau, Starmer and Scholz will have much in the way of condemnation to offer. If they do, the words will be hollow and no action will follow. They materially supported genocide. Why wouldn’t they support ethnic cleansing? They have already revealed their identical evil.
Regular liberals are using Trump’s announcement as a chance to gloat about the consequences of not voting for Kamala Harris. They just never see their own depravity, do they?
It is moral and political degeneracy of the highest order to argue that the way to have avoided the ethnic cleansing would have been to vote for the people who created in full the conditions for the ethnic cleansing. To have affirmatively voted for genocide.
These sorts of people only see the suffering of Palestinians as a weapon in their rhetorical armoury. They do not identify with the suffering of Palestinians in any material way. They do not and did not call out the suffering of Palestinians when their team was launching the missiles.
In any case, the reality is not going to be what Trump, Netanyahu or liberals might envisage. Anyone who thinks 1.8 million people are going to just get up and leave their own land hasn’t been paying attention for the last 15 months. The Palestinians have demonstrated levels of resilience and resistance that puts smirking settler-colonialists to shame. They have a connection to their land that the colonial mind, that the globe-hopping, five-mansions elite mind, cannot grasp.
The Palestinians will not be cleansed quietly, and we must continue to stand with them.
P.S. I’m trying to increase the frequency of my posts. Let me know if you like this 3-4 items news digest format and if you’d like to see it more often.
Give Michael Mina, MD, PhD his due as he did not allow his child's misfortune to interfere with his professed allegiance to minimizing COVID. In this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/upshot/covid-illnesses-mild-winter.html
he declares that we lucky duckies in the US have had the mildest COVID winter yet!
I guess for the fascists that run our democracy (US) culling us with viruses is a cost saving over using machine guns. Send those bullets to Israel instead!
Let me say this in conclusion: Trump is the culmination of a long slide into fascism. This country fetishes the projection of lethal force and indulges in the myth of exceptionalism. The Powell Memo written in 1971, the year of my high school graduation, laid the template for the right wing takeover of our discourse and governing principles. Corporate whims became ascendant and any protection for mere individuals like unions, for example were demolished.
Love the new digest format, although I'd like to see more of your long form pieces too.
There's something in the USAID segment that caught my eye. Venezuelan elections - I'm very sceptical of the mainstream narrative. I heard an interesting take from Red Nation, who went out to Venezuela during the election campaign, and they said you only have to attend a Socialist rally to see that the Western media reports are wrong. I know Venezuela has an exemplary system of checks and balances on its elections, but I've not been able to find any concrete evidence contradicting the MSM narrative. Even Al Jazeera is going along with it. Progressive International election monitors say the election was free and fair, but they don't cite any evidence. Do you have any sources I can follow up?