Gluten-Free Pretzels from Outer Space:
Do Those “Crazy” Anti-Vaxxers Have a Point?
Joe Moncarz, March 2021
A pandemic is an excellent time to talk about survival and the survival mentality. Without a doubt, a pandemic is a strange, unsettling, and frightening experience (much like getting married, actually.) We've never been through one, we hope we never go through one ever again, and we just try to make it through our current situation alive (much like being married.) That's what survival situations are all about, and how we approach those situations makes all the difference. That's why a survival mentality is very relevant to how we think about the Covid-19 vaccines now being forced upon everyone on the planet.
Of course, the first priority in survival is avoiding the survival situation. In the wilderness, this has to do with being prepared, having the right gear, watching the weather, and not rubbing yourself with salmon grease before going to sleep in your tent (even if it is a fantastic skin moisturizer). In an urban environment, avoiding survival situations may involve avoiding bars late at night, not treating your neighborhood streets like the Indianapolis 500, and not turning into the Incredible Hulk when a strange man looks at your girlfriend. Much more than in the wild, civilization throws at us an endless parade of potentially damaging or deadly situations, and we have to always be sharp and thinking. There's scam artists, trigger-happy police, shody construction, toxic chemicals in everything, biological weapons labs, genetic engineers, tax auditors, car salesmen, government propaganda, misleading advertising, deceitful school textbooks, a TV full of lies, and football referees who clearly have money on the game. (Come on, that was pass interference!)
The survival mindset requires that we maintain a healthy scepticism, and that we not base our behavior or beliefs just on what other people are doing, or what “the authorities” claim. There were Jews prescient enough to leave Europe before World War Two began, or to refuse to get on the trains heading to the death camps, or even to jump from the moving trains. The young men who fled the U.S. or went to jail rather than go to fight in Vietnam are also good examples. Women who prefer to give birth at home rather than in a hospital, mothers who breastfeed rather than feed their babies formula (“It looks like real milk!”), parents who unschool their children, and men who shave their elbows are all more common examples of people who don't just follow along blindly. There are those who don't need other people to do anything before they spring into action. The key is to avoid the Bystander Effect, which is when people only act if someone else acts. A survivor doesn't wait for others to act.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the authorities and media have been talking of developing “herd immunity”. Actually, the most important skill for us is to avoid the herd mentality. Just because countless parents send their sons off to war, doesn't mean you should. Just because everyone with shaky credit is buying a home, doesn't mean you should. Just because hundreds of thousands of people do drugs, doesn't mean you should. (Unless you have “glaucoma”. Then go for it.) Just because hundreds of millions of people are addicted to Pop Tarts, or marshmallows, or shampoo, doesn't mean you should be, too. You see what I'm getting at? Just because the authorities are pushing vaccines and everyone is rushing to get vaccinated, doesn't automatically mean the vaccines are safe, effective, necessary, or the smart thing to do. We need to rely on our critical thinking skills and a realistic assessment of the situation.
When a hunter tracks an animal, as humans have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, the hunter looks for signs and patterns. From their past study of the animal, the hunter knows how it acts, and how it is likely to act. All animals have established patterns of behavior. They act in certain ways. The tracker then looks for any signs in the environment that fit in with that established pattern of behavior. For example, in New Zealand when you see the the top few centimeters of ground dug up, you know it's from a pig, because that's what they do, and there's no other animal here that does that (with the exception of Members of Parliament.) Their rooting is an established pattern of behavior. If your boyfriend would rather spend his Sundays watching football with the guys, that is an established pattern of behavior (and you better not mess with it.) And if your wife complains every time you walk in the house, then this is also an established pattern of behavior (and it's best to avoid the house altogether.) This idea of looking for established patterns of behavior can help in this situation regarding vaccines as well.
The word alone, “anti-vaxxer” has a negative connotation. Those who speak critically about vaccines are commonly described in any number of condescending ways, such as “conspiracy-theorists”, “anti-science”, “anti-evidence”, “anti-bacterial”, “murderers”, “dumb as a duck” (which is really unfair to ducks), “extra-terrestrial life forms”, “parallelograms”, “dirty underwear”, “gluten-free pretzels”, and just plain “crazy.” Now, I may not agree with many of their arguments, but the most important thing to remember is that their position against vaccines generally stems from a distrust of governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex. So the next question is: Have governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex done anything to warrant this distrust? Have they done anything in the past that would lead people to suspect their motivations and products? Or are anti-vaxxers just gluten-free pretzels from outer space who are imagining things? We could answer this with a nine-hundred-page-long, detailed list of rotten behavior by governments, corporations and scientists. But you don't need 900 pages. All it takes is two pages, an open mind, and a peanut butter sandwich.
Let's start with governments, and see if they have an established pattern of behavior, and see if we have any reason to be suspicious of them. Governments have been around for about 6,000 years. That's how long ago civilization arose. For the preceding two million years humans lived primarily as hunter-gatherers, in which governments did not exist, and people lived healthy and meaningful lives, without hair spray, within the Earth's limits. So in this 6,000 year history, have governments done anything to warrant a lack of trust? Anything? Can you think of anything? (I know you can, and those were just annoyingly sarcastic, rhetorical questions that always help in persuading readers.)
Here's some of what governments have been up to over the last 6,000 years:
Okay, you get the idea. And that's just the short list. That is the established pattern of behavior for governments. That's what they do, and that's what you can expect them to keep doing.
Let's turn to corporations. Corporations are a legal structure with it's overriding and legally-mandated priority being profit. To repeat: the number one legal requirement of a corporation is to generate a profit for its shareholders. That is it's guiding priority – by law! Not safety, not sustainability, not oceans full of whales, not forests full of pandas, certainly not oceans full of pandas (which would be terrible, actually), and definitely not the health and well-being of the people – all that is just advertising, PR, and greenwashing – ie, lies. (Bakan 2005) So, given that by law they must put profits before the well-being of people and the environment, have corporations ever done anything to make us distrust them? Have they ever? Anyone?
Since I don't see any hands up, I'll give a short list:
But let's not make the mistake of separating governments from corporations. They are essentially one and the same. That's like arguing that there's a fundamental difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb, or between a Whopper and a Big Mac, or between watching opera and being waterboarded. Because remember, governments created corporations.
Just look:
So in a nutshell, two institutions which have a long history of poisoning and killing are now allowed to experiment on the global population with a guarantee that they will never be held responsible for the unintended consequences. And make no mistake, there are always unintended consequences.
Okay, but what about scientists? What is their established pattern of behavior? Well, to begin with, the foundational assumption of modern science (as opposed to indigenous science) is the idea that humans can do whatever the hell they want with the natural world and that humans are superior to all other life. That's arrogance. So that's trouble right there. A superiority complex is never the basis of a healthy relationship. What it means is that nothing on Earth is sacred. While many scientists are well-meaning, the results of modern science should be obvious: the destruction of life on Earth. Well done, fellas! Give yourselves each a Nobel Prize!
You see, we can go on and on with these lists, which all point to the same thing: These institutions are fucked up. And they are incapable of acting any different. The established pattern of behavior of these institutions - even if there are well-meaning participants - clearly shows that the health and well-being of the Earth and all its inhabitants is not their priority. As is usually the case, money and power is the name of the game, and they will kill, poison, irradiate, cheat, lie, imprison, torture, deforest, prod with needles, destroy anything in their way, and they'll sell their own mothers to a traveling circus, then they'll buy popcorn and a soda, and then sit down and watch the circus while their mother takes turns with the tigers jumping through flaming hoops.
As for modern medicine, we know damn well that doctors and pharmaceutical companies push untested and dangerous drugs and procedures onto people all the time. We know that they, the FDA, the CDC, and the WHO, are incredibly corrupt and dishonest. (Angell 2005; Light 2013; Light 2013; Peterson 2009; Posner 2020; Seife 2015) We know they perform cruel procedures. Pfizer, among many other scandals, tested a deadly drug on children without consent from their parents. (Mattera 2017) Johnson & Johnson has known since 1957 that their baby powder is often contaminated with asbestos – and purposely hid that knowledge from the public. (Girion 2018; Mattera 2020) Look at the history of mental hospitals and their love of shock treatment. Or how – today – young people are drugged up because they can't sit still in school – and not with the good drugs that teens actually want (you know which ones.) Or the opiod crisis. Thalidomide. Vioxx. Diethylstilbestrol (DES). Or how dentists stick mercury (the metal, not the planet) in our mouths. The list can go on and on. It takes years and years and many deaths and injuries before their dangerous drugs and procedures are stopped, if they're stopped at all. Millions of people are hospitalised unnecessarily, millions are subjected to unnecessary procedures, millions are prescribed unnecessary antibiotics, millions get a ham sandwich when they ordered a tuna sandwich, and millions suffer adverse effects from medicine. Prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. and Europe. (Gotzche 2014) Other iatrogenic deaths (due to medical errors, adverse reactions, hospital infections, and doctors with poor social skills) are also a leading cause of death.
But somehow we've been indoctrinated to believe that modern medicine is our saviour. This is based on wishful thinking and ignorance (Thank you, school!) The drop in infectious diseases around the world happened before widespread immunizations. As Michael and Joyce Huesemann point out in their brilliant and under-appreciated book, Techno-Fix, (2011, p.161) “antibiotics and immunizations have contributed very little, possibly less than 5 percent, to the total decline in death rates from infectious diseases during the past 100 years.” The increase in life expectancy over the last 150 years was largely due to better nutrition, hygiene and sanitation – it was not from pills, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, who continue to experiment on the world. (Hammond 2021 May 28; McKinlay 1977) Our best defense against infectious diseases like Covid-19 are still: nutrition, hygiene and sanitation.
Now, there is no doubt that some modern medicine is effective some of the time – just as it's true that the placebo effect may be just as powerful. (Davidson 2004; Huesemann 2011; Silberman 2009) Or that traditional indigenous medicine and alternative medicines can be very effective. Or that if you eat more than four bean burritos in one sitting, that you will get diarrhea. But the medicines we rely on most have been around a long time and have been extensively tested – and even then we cannot be sure. (Darvon and Darvocet, opioids, were on the market for fifty-five years before being banned.) And given the long, painful, cruel history of governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex, any rush to take an experimental, untested vaccine is out of ignorance, fear, and desperation. In a survival situation, acting out of ignorance and desperation usually gets you killed. In a dating situation, acting out of ignorance and desperation will lead to either an abortion clinic, a venereal disease, or, in some cases, a dead camel. In fact, the debate is still out on whether these same people created Covid-19 to begin with. They create biological weapons all the time. They perform dangerous experiments all the time. They go to the bathroom and then don't wash their hands afterwards. A brief glance at history tells us to beware.
In fact, there are numerous red flags regarding the Covid-19 vaccines which include:
So why were prevention and alternatives not explored? That's because sales of Covid-19 vaccines are worth US$50 billion in 2021 alone. Yeah, there's money to be made – by pharmaceutical corporations which already “own” (wink wink) the the U.S. Government and international trade organizations. You think they would promote low-cost options such as Vitamin C, Vitamin D, sunlight, fresh air, Ivermectin, and sardine sandwiches when there is so much money to be made? The pharmaceutical industry relies on people being sick. Just like the cancer industry depends on more people getting cancer. Just like your toilet depends on your shit. Like the common huckster, they need desperate and scared people to sell their products to. Sometimes it works (or is it placebo?), sometimes it has no effect, sometimes it makes you worse, and sometimes it kills you. Who the hell cares? As usual, they're making shitloads of money – with zero accountability.
To sum up, people should think again before condemning those who have little trust in governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex. We've had six thousand years of proof of why they should not be trusted. The real question is, with all this evidence of how dishonest, manipulative and psychopathic they are, why do so many people trust them? Why are people so quick to believe them? And why do so many people choose to go to Disney World? Don't they realize how scary that giant smiling rat is to little kids? I suppose that part of it is that humans are gullible and easily manipulated - which isn't necessarily bad, because we're social and tend to trust others. That's the way communities work. But it's the psychopaths and narcissists of the world (and there are a lot of them) who take full advantage of the inherent goodness of people, who take power, who double-park, who hog the blanket in bed, who fart in the kitchen, and who fuck up everything for everyone. We want to believe the best in others and want to trust them, but we have not yet learned that the institutions of civilization cannot be trusted. Ever.
Imagine you're married (even if you already are). It's an okay marriage, you figure. There's good and bad times, ups and downs. Then you find out your spouse was cheating on you. You forgive him (or her) and try to continue. Then you discover that your spouse has been secretly making extra cash on the side, moonlighting as coach of the New England Patriots. They promise to stop. You continue in the marriage, trying to make it work. Then you discover that they cheated again – this time with Tom Cruise's uncle (who looks nothing like him). Then you find out that their “weekend business trip” was actually an experimental NASA voyage through a wormhole to visit another galaxy. At what point do you stop trusting them? At what point do you realize that they are dishonest and will always be dishonest, that they probably have an alien girlfriend in another galaxy, that you need to question everything they say, and that you should just ditch them? The best advice is always to end the abusive relationship as quickly as possible.
So why don't we? Why do we keep ignoring the established pattern of behavior – of lies, deceit, greed, corruption, exploitation, death, and destruction?
Developing a survival mentality means using your critical thinking and a realistic assessment of the situation. Those who attack anti-vaxxers, who demonize those hesitant to get the vaccine, who declare with such confidence that everyone needs to be vaccinated, who parrot the government and corporate talking points ad nauseum, need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are so trusting, when so damn little merits trust.
Who are the crazy ones here?
References and Further Reading:
Angell, Marcia. (2005). The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. Random House.
Bakan, Joel. (2012). Childhood Under Seige: How Big Business Targets Your Children. Free Press.
Bakan, Joel. (2005). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Free Press.
Bullough, Oliver. (2020). Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World. Griffin.
Chomsky, Noam. (1992). Deterring Democracy. Hill & Wang.
Chomsky, Noam. (2002). Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky. The New Press.
Chomsky, Noam. (2017). Who Rules the World? Picador.
Corrigan, Doug. (2020). “Will an RNA Vaccine Permanently Alter My DNA?” Science with Dr. Doug. Retrieved from https://sciencewithdrdoug.com/2020/11/27/will-an-rna-vaccine-permanently-alter-my-dna/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Can+the+Shots+Alter+Your+DNA%3F&utm_campaign=Can+the+Shots+Alter+Your+DNA%3F
Davidson, Keay. (2004). “Kids' cough medicine no better than placebo / Study of OTC meds shows syrup is just as effective.” SF Gate. Retrieved from https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Kids-cough-medicine-no-better-than-placebo-2743392.php
“The Dirty Dozen: PEG Compounds and their contaminants.” The David Suzuki Foundation. Retrieved from https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/dirty-dozen-peg-compounds-contaminants/
Fanelli, Daniele, and Tregenza, Tom. (2009 May 29). “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data.” Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/
Gielow, Harold R. (September 11, 2020). “A Dangerous Inactive Ingredient.” Children's Health Defense. Retrieved from https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/a-dangerous-inactive-ingredient/
Girion, Lisa. (2018 Dec 14). “Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder.” Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/
Goldacre, Ben. (2014). Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gotzche, Peter. (2014). “Our Prescription Drugs Kill Us in Large Numbers.” Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25355584/#:~:text=Our%20prescription%20drugs%20are%20the,of%20a%20drug%20despite%20contraindications.
Grundvig, James Ottar. (2016). Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC. Skyhorse.
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2019). “5 Horrifying Facts About the FDA Vaccine Approval Process.” Worldview Publications. Retrieved from https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/fda/
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2021 May 28). “COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Hesitancy’ and Vaccine Mythology vs. Data.” Retrieved from https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2021/05/28/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-and-vaccine-mythology-vs-data/
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2021). The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board. Skyhorse.
Harriet A Washington. (2008.) Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor.Harris, Marvin. (1991). Cannibals and Kings. Vintage Books.
Horton, Richard. (2015). “Offline: What is Medicine's 5 Sigma?” The Lancet. Retrieved from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1/fulltext
Huessemann, Michael and Joyce Huessemann. (2011). Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Planet. New Society Publishers.
Humphries, Mark. (2021). “The Absurdity of Peer Review.” Elemental. Retrieved from https://elemental.medium.com/the-absurdity-of-peer-review-1d58e5d9e661
Keith, Lierre. (2009). The Vegetarian Myth. PM Press.
Kennedy, Robert F. (2021). The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. Skyhorse.
Klein, Naomi. (2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador.
Light, Donald W. and Lexchin, Joel and Darrow, Jonathan J. (2013 June 1). “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, 2013, Vol. 14, No. 3: 590-610. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2282014
Light, Donald W. (2013 July 17). “Risky Drugs: Why The FDA Cannot Be Trusted.” Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Retrieved from https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/risky-drugs-why-fda-cannot-be-trusted
Macy, Beth. (2019). Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. Back Bay Books.
Mattera, Philip. (2020). “Johnson & Johnson: Corporate Rap Sheet.” Corporate Research Project. Retrieved from https://www.corp-research.org/jnj
Mattera, Philip. (2017). “Pfizer: Corporate Rap Sheet.” Corporate Research Project. Retrieved from https://www.corp-research.org/pfizer
McKinlay, John B. and Sonja M. McKinlay. (1977). “The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century.” Retrieved from https://www.milbank.org/wp-content/uploads/mq/volume-55/issue-03/55-3-The-Questionable-Contribution-of-Medical-Measures-to-the-Decline-of-Mortality-in-the-United-States-in-the-Twentieth-Century.pdf
Moynihan, Roy and Cassels, Alan. (2006). Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients. Bold Type Books.
Palast, Greg. (2004). The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Plume.
Parenti, Michael. (1977). Democracy for the Few. St. Martin's Press.
Paul Ham. (2014.) Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath. Thomas Dunne Books.
Perkins, John. (2005). Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Plume.
Peterson, Melody. (2009). Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. Picador.
Ponting, Clive. (2007). A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Penguin.
Posner, Gerald. (2020). Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. Avid Reader Books.
Robin, Marie-Monique. (2012). The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply. The New Press.
Russell, Dick. (2017). Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who Are Destroying Life on Earth―And What It Means for Our Children. Hot Books.
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Of course, the first priority in survival is avoiding the survival situation. In the wilderness, this has to do with being prepared, having the right gear, watching the weather, and not rubbing yourself with salmon grease before going to sleep in your tent (even if it is a fantastic skin moisturizer). In an urban environment, avoiding survival situations may involve avoiding bars late at night, not treating your neighborhood streets like the Indianapolis 500, and not turning into the Incredible Hulk when a strange man looks at your girlfriend. Much more than in the wild, civilization throws at us an endless parade of potentially damaging or deadly situations, and we have to always be sharp and thinking. There's scam artists, trigger-happy police, shody construction, toxic chemicals in everything, biological weapons labs, genetic engineers, tax auditors, car salesmen, government propaganda, misleading advertising, deceitful school textbooks, a TV full of lies, and football referees who clearly have money on the game. (Come on, that was pass interference!)
The survival mindset requires that we maintain a healthy scepticism, and that we not base our behavior or beliefs just on what other people are doing, or what “the authorities” claim. There were Jews prescient enough to leave Europe before World War Two began, or to refuse to get on the trains heading to the death camps, or even to jump from the moving trains. The young men who fled the U.S. or went to jail rather than go to fight in Vietnam are also good examples. Women who prefer to give birth at home rather than in a hospital, mothers who breastfeed rather than feed their babies formula (“It looks like real milk!”), parents who unschool their children, and men who shave their elbows are all more common examples of people who don't just follow along blindly. There are those who don't need other people to do anything before they spring into action. The key is to avoid the Bystander Effect, which is when people only act if someone else acts. A survivor doesn't wait for others to act.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the authorities and media have been talking of developing “herd immunity”. Actually, the most important skill for us is to avoid the herd mentality. Just because countless parents send their sons off to war, doesn't mean you should. Just because everyone with shaky credit is buying a home, doesn't mean you should. Just because hundreds of thousands of people do drugs, doesn't mean you should. (Unless you have “glaucoma”. Then go for it.) Just because hundreds of millions of people are addicted to Pop Tarts, or marshmallows, or shampoo, doesn't mean you should be, too. You see what I'm getting at? Just because the authorities are pushing vaccines and everyone is rushing to get vaccinated, doesn't automatically mean the vaccines are safe, effective, necessary, or the smart thing to do. We need to rely on our critical thinking skills and a realistic assessment of the situation.
When a hunter tracks an animal, as humans have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years, the hunter looks for signs and patterns. From their past study of the animal, the hunter knows how it acts, and how it is likely to act. All animals have established patterns of behavior. They act in certain ways. The tracker then looks for any signs in the environment that fit in with that established pattern of behavior. For example, in New Zealand when you see the the top few centimeters of ground dug up, you know it's from a pig, because that's what they do, and there's no other animal here that does that (with the exception of Members of Parliament.) Their rooting is an established pattern of behavior. If your boyfriend would rather spend his Sundays watching football with the guys, that is an established pattern of behavior (and you better not mess with it.) And if your wife complains every time you walk in the house, then this is also an established pattern of behavior (and it's best to avoid the house altogether.) This idea of looking for established patterns of behavior can help in this situation regarding vaccines as well.
The word alone, “anti-vaxxer” has a negative connotation. Those who speak critically about vaccines are commonly described in any number of condescending ways, such as “conspiracy-theorists”, “anti-science”, “anti-evidence”, “anti-bacterial”, “murderers”, “dumb as a duck” (which is really unfair to ducks), “extra-terrestrial life forms”, “parallelograms”, “dirty underwear”, “gluten-free pretzels”, and just plain “crazy.” Now, I may not agree with many of their arguments, but the most important thing to remember is that their position against vaccines generally stems from a distrust of governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex. So the next question is: Have governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex done anything to warrant this distrust? Have they done anything in the past that would lead people to suspect their motivations and products? Or are anti-vaxxers just gluten-free pretzels from outer space who are imagining things? We could answer this with a nine-hundred-page-long, detailed list of rotten behavior by governments, corporations and scientists. But you don't need 900 pages. All it takes is two pages, an open mind, and a peanut butter sandwich.
Let's start with governments, and see if they have an established pattern of behavior, and see if we have any reason to be suspicious of them. Governments have been around for about 6,000 years. That's how long ago civilization arose. For the preceding two million years humans lived primarily as hunter-gatherers, in which governments did not exist, and people lived healthy and meaningful lives, without hair spray, within the Earth's limits. So in this 6,000 year history, have governments done anything to warrant a lack of trust? Anything? Can you think of anything? (I know you can, and those were just annoyingly sarcastic, rhetorical questions that always help in persuading readers.)
Here's some of what governments have been up to over the last 6,000 years:
- Enslaving their own population – in fact, the majority of people in any civilization have always been slaves, including today. (“Welcome to Walmart.”)
- Nearly always at war and all too happy to sacrifice their own people (“Welcome to Warmart”)
- Waging wars for the purpose of capturing more slaves (“Those pyramids aren't going to build themselves.”)
- Implementing policies which result in widespread famine, with millions of people dying of hunger (“Come on people, it's either this or Zumba!”)
- Continuing to export food while their own people are starving (“I said Zumba.”)
- Committing genocide in order to secure land, gold, and other resources (“Can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.”)
- Committing genocide to wipe out indigenous people (More omelettes)
- Committing genocide to wipe out “inferior” people (Omelettes again – man, they really love eggs)
- Breaking every single treaty they sign with indigenous people (“I don't remember signing that.”)
- Implementing policies which impoverishes the majority of people, thereby forcing them to sell their labor to the elite (“Welcome to Walmart. Hey, didn't I just see you?”)
- Spending more money on wars, weapons and monuments, than on increasing the well-being of their own people (“That's not true. Our missiles are 100% organic.”)
- Always doing what the rich want, rather than what's good for the majority of people (“Hey, it's the world's oldest profession.”)
- Telling lies as an excuse to go to war (“I don't remember saying that.”)
- Invading other countries which pose no military threat (“Spreading democracy.”)
- Overthrowing and killing the elected leaders of other countries. (“He overthrew himself.”)
- Imposing economic embargoes which impoverishes and kills millions of people in the target country (“Sometimes even horses eat chicken.”)
- Invading other countries in order to control oil (“We didn't even know there was oil there. I swear!”)
- Killing, torturing, and locking up people who oppose them, criticize them or expose them (“He tortured himself.”)
- Committing massacres and rapes as a military tactic during war (“I don't remember doing that.”)
- Purposely dropping bombs on civilian cities and civilian infrastructure (“We call it 'Love Bombing'.”)
- Building detention camps, concentration camps, and gas chambers (“Composting Centers”)
- Subsidizing and passing legislation to further enable and strengthen extractive industries such as oil, coal, natural gas, and mining, responsible for climate change, pollution, and ecological collapse (“What's your point, hippie?”)
- Making promises they never keep (“I never promised that.”)
- Pretending as if they care about people and the planet, while doing the opposite (“Let's show our love – with Roundup!”)
- Approving and using technologies which are not safe (“Hey guys, look what happened when I split this atom!”)
- Never following the Precautionary Principle (“The Precautionary Principle is for losers.”)
- Experimenting on their own unsuspecting people (“Do you want mermaids or not?”)
Okay, you get the idea. And that's just the short list. That is the established pattern of behavior for governments. That's what they do, and that's what you can expect them to keep doing.
Let's turn to corporations. Corporations are a legal structure with it's overriding and legally-mandated priority being profit. To repeat: the number one legal requirement of a corporation is to generate a profit for its shareholders. That is it's guiding priority – by law! Not safety, not sustainability, not oceans full of whales, not forests full of pandas, certainly not oceans full of pandas (which would be terrible, actually), and definitely not the health and well-being of the people – all that is just advertising, PR, and greenwashing – ie, lies. (Bakan 2005) So, given that by law they must put profits before the well-being of people and the environment, have corporations ever done anything to make us distrust them? Have they ever? Anyone?
Since I don't see any hands up, I'll give a short list:
- Impoverishing people
- Underpaying workers
- Using slave labor
- Purposely killing people to secure land, resources, etc.
- Cutting back on safety in order to maximize profit
- Lying to and misleading the public and government regulators
- Blackmailing, threatening, hurting, and killing whisteblowers
- Knowingly putting poison on food crops
- Knowingly putting poison in food
- Knowingly poisoning the land with toxic waste and chemicals
- Knowingly poisoning the water with toxic waste and chemicals
- Knowingly poisoning the air with toxic chemicals
- Knowingly selling dangerous products
- Knowingly filling the planet with radiation
- Knowingly causing climate change
- Always thinking up new ways to kill people
- Always thinking up new ways to get people addicted to their products
But let's not make the mistake of separating governments from corporations. They are essentially one and the same. That's like arguing that there's a fundamental difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb, or between a Whopper and a Big Mac, or between watching opera and being waterboarded. Because remember, governments created corporations.
Just look:
- Governments protect corporations and defend them when they poison or kill people and harm the natural world – and are always allowed to continue operating, no matter what they do
- Governments pay these corporations hundreds of billions of dollars for their poisonous, deadly, and ecocidal products
- Governments bail out or subsidize corporations with trillions of dollars to continue to exploit and impoverish people and destroy the environment – while the general population is left to struggle to survive, to live on the verge of homelessness, and to barely get enough to eat
- Corporate executives and government officials take turns working for each other in revolving-door fashion
- Governments pass legislation which allows corporations to sue governments for getting in the way of profits
- Government officials and corporate executives often have slumber parties together in which they stay up all night, doing each other's hair, talking about who they like, and making hamburgers out of the neighbor's dog.
- And regarding vaccines, governments have removed all liability and responsibility from the pharmaceutical companies should the vaccines have serious side effects
So in a nutshell, two institutions which have a long history of poisoning and killing are now allowed to experiment on the global population with a guarantee that they will never be held responsible for the unintended consequences. And make no mistake, there are always unintended consequences.
Okay, but what about scientists? What is their established pattern of behavior? Well, to begin with, the foundational assumption of modern science (as opposed to indigenous science) is the idea that humans can do whatever the hell they want with the natural world and that humans are superior to all other life. That's arrogance. So that's trouble right there. A superiority complex is never the basis of a healthy relationship. What it means is that nothing on Earth is sacred. While many scientists are well-meaning, the results of modern science should be obvious: the destruction of life on Earth. Well done, fellas! Give yourselves each a Nobel Prize!
- First of all, nearly all scientists work for corporations and governments (not a good start)
- Scientists knowingly create poisons (including more than 80,000 largely untested synthetic chemicals so far)
- Scientists knowingly create harmful technologies (they are all harmful, who are we kidding)
- Scientists ignore the consequences of their actions
- Scientists routinely work on ever-more deadly ways of killing people
- Scientists disregard the sacredness of life by genetically-modifying and gene-editing life forms
- Scientists, from their superior intellect, declare certain life forms “pests” or “weeds” which justifies poisoning and killing them
- Scientists justify the imprisoning, torture, experimentation on, and killing of countless animals in labs, zoos, and in the wild
- Scientists frequently manipulate, misrepresent or lie about their findings (Fanelli and Tregenza 2009)
- Scientific research is full of poorly-designed studies and poor research practices (Horton 2015)
- Even the peer review process is unreliable (Humphries 2021; Smith 2006)
- Bottom line is, scientists need jobs, they get paid, and they do what they're told (“I was just following orders, Your Honor”)
You see, we can go on and on with these lists, which all point to the same thing: These institutions are fucked up. And they are incapable of acting any different. The established pattern of behavior of these institutions - even if there are well-meaning participants - clearly shows that the health and well-being of the Earth and all its inhabitants is not their priority. As is usually the case, money and power is the name of the game, and they will kill, poison, irradiate, cheat, lie, imprison, torture, deforest, prod with needles, destroy anything in their way, and they'll sell their own mothers to a traveling circus, then they'll buy popcorn and a soda, and then sit down and watch the circus while their mother takes turns with the tigers jumping through flaming hoops.
As for modern medicine, we know damn well that doctors and pharmaceutical companies push untested and dangerous drugs and procedures onto people all the time. We know that they, the FDA, the CDC, and the WHO, are incredibly corrupt and dishonest. (Angell 2005; Light 2013; Light 2013; Peterson 2009; Posner 2020; Seife 2015) We know they perform cruel procedures. Pfizer, among many other scandals, tested a deadly drug on children without consent from their parents. (Mattera 2017) Johnson & Johnson has known since 1957 that their baby powder is often contaminated with asbestos – and purposely hid that knowledge from the public. (Girion 2018; Mattera 2020) Look at the history of mental hospitals and their love of shock treatment. Or how – today – young people are drugged up because they can't sit still in school – and not with the good drugs that teens actually want (you know which ones.) Or the opiod crisis. Thalidomide. Vioxx. Diethylstilbestrol (DES). Or how dentists stick mercury (the metal, not the planet) in our mouths. The list can go on and on. It takes years and years and many deaths and injuries before their dangerous drugs and procedures are stopped, if they're stopped at all. Millions of people are hospitalised unnecessarily, millions are subjected to unnecessary procedures, millions are prescribed unnecessary antibiotics, millions get a ham sandwich when they ordered a tuna sandwich, and millions suffer adverse effects from medicine. Prescription drugs are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. and Europe. (Gotzche 2014) Other iatrogenic deaths (due to medical errors, adverse reactions, hospital infections, and doctors with poor social skills) are also a leading cause of death.
But somehow we've been indoctrinated to believe that modern medicine is our saviour. This is based on wishful thinking and ignorance (Thank you, school!) The drop in infectious diseases around the world happened before widespread immunizations. As Michael and Joyce Huesemann point out in their brilliant and under-appreciated book, Techno-Fix, (2011, p.161) “antibiotics and immunizations have contributed very little, possibly less than 5 percent, to the total decline in death rates from infectious diseases during the past 100 years.” The increase in life expectancy over the last 150 years was largely due to better nutrition, hygiene and sanitation – it was not from pills, doctors and pharmaceutical companies, who continue to experiment on the world. (Hammond 2021 May 28; McKinlay 1977) Our best defense against infectious diseases like Covid-19 are still: nutrition, hygiene and sanitation.
Now, there is no doubt that some modern medicine is effective some of the time – just as it's true that the placebo effect may be just as powerful. (Davidson 2004; Huesemann 2011; Silberman 2009) Or that traditional indigenous medicine and alternative medicines can be very effective. Or that if you eat more than four bean burritos in one sitting, that you will get diarrhea. But the medicines we rely on most have been around a long time and have been extensively tested – and even then we cannot be sure. (Darvon and Darvocet, opioids, were on the market for fifty-five years before being banned.) And given the long, painful, cruel history of governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex, any rush to take an experimental, untested vaccine is out of ignorance, fear, and desperation. In a survival situation, acting out of ignorance and desperation usually gets you killed. In a dating situation, acting out of ignorance and desperation will lead to either an abortion clinic, a venereal disease, or, in some cases, a dead camel. In fact, the debate is still out on whether these same people created Covid-19 to begin with. They create biological weapons all the time. They perform dangerous experiments all the time. They go to the bathroom and then don't wash their hands afterwards. A brief glance at history tells us to beware.
In fact, there are numerous red flags regarding the Covid-19 vaccines which include:
- a complete lack of long-term testing (or even adequate short-term testing)
- safety promises by the same corporations which will have zero responsibility for any future consequences
- a thoroughly corrupt and unreliable vaccine approval process (Hammond 2019)
- that this is the first time an mRNA vaccine has ever been used on humans (Seneff and Nigh 2021)
- widespread immediate negative side effects from the injection itself
- the real possibility that mRNA vaccines can alter human DNA (Corrigan 2020)
- vaccine-conferred immunity fades extremely fast
- the superiority of natural immunity over vaccine-conferred immunity (and yet even those recovered from Covid-19 are still forced to be vaccinated)
- an ingredient (Polyethylene Glycol – PEG) which is often contaminated with 1,4 Dioxane, a known carcinogen (“Dirty Dozen”; Gielow 2020)
- Moderna's vaccine is the first product it has ever brought to market (and the U.S. government gave them $2.5 billion dollars for it)
- the repeated message that it's either vaccines or nothing, that there's no other effective way to handle Covid-19 – but this is not true
- the fact that billions of dollars were not spent on prevention and alternative low-cost treatments with already-existing medicines for which long-term safety has already been established
- the clear attempts by governments and their corporate brothers to attack and censor anyone who raises concerns, and to actively suppress knowledge of prevention and alternative treatments.
So why were prevention and alternatives not explored? That's because sales of Covid-19 vaccines are worth US$50 billion in 2021 alone. Yeah, there's money to be made – by pharmaceutical corporations which already “own” (wink wink) the the U.S. Government and international trade organizations. You think they would promote low-cost options such as Vitamin C, Vitamin D, sunlight, fresh air, Ivermectin, and sardine sandwiches when there is so much money to be made? The pharmaceutical industry relies on people being sick. Just like the cancer industry depends on more people getting cancer. Just like your toilet depends on your shit. Like the common huckster, they need desperate and scared people to sell their products to. Sometimes it works (or is it placebo?), sometimes it has no effect, sometimes it makes you worse, and sometimes it kills you. Who the hell cares? As usual, they're making shitloads of money – with zero accountability.
To sum up, people should think again before condemning those who have little trust in governments, corporations, scientists and the medical-industrial complex. We've had six thousand years of proof of why they should not be trusted. The real question is, with all this evidence of how dishonest, manipulative and psychopathic they are, why do so many people trust them? Why are people so quick to believe them? And why do so many people choose to go to Disney World? Don't they realize how scary that giant smiling rat is to little kids? I suppose that part of it is that humans are gullible and easily manipulated - which isn't necessarily bad, because we're social and tend to trust others. That's the way communities work. But it's the psychopaths and narcissists of the world (and there are a lot of them) who take full advantage of the inherent goodness of people, who take power, who double-park, who hog the blanket in bed, who fart in the kitchen, and who fuck up everything for everyone. We want to believe the best in others and want to trust them, but we have not yet learned that the institutions of civilization cannot be trusted. Ever.
Imagine you're married (even if you already are). It's an okay marriage, you figure. There's good and bad times, ups and downs. Then you find out your spouse was cheating on you. You forgive him (or her) and try to continue. Then you discover that your spouse has been secretly making extra cash on the side, moonlighting as coach of the New England Patriots. They promise to stop. You continue in the marriage, trying to make it work. Then you discover that they cheated again – this time with Tom Cruise's uncle (who looks nothing like him). Then you find out that their “weekend business trip” was actually an experimental NASA voyage through a wormhole to visit another galaxy. At what point do you stop trusting them? At what point do you realize that they are dishonest and will always be dishonest, that they probably have an alien girlfriend in another galaxy, that you need to question everything they say, and that you should just ditch them? The best advice is always to end the abusive relationship as quickly as possible.
So why don't we? Why do we keep ignoring the established pattern of behavior – of lies, deceit, greed, corruption, exploitation, death, and destruction?
Developing a survival mentality means using your critical thinking and a realistic assessment of the situation. Those who attack anti-vaxxers, who demonize those hesitant to get the vaccine, who declare with such confidence that everyone needs to be vaccinated, who parrot the government and corporate talking points ad nauseum, need to look in the mirror and ask themselves why they are so trusting, when so damn little merits trust.
Who are the crazy ones here?
References and Further Reading:
Angell, Marcia. (2005). The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. Random House.
Bakan, Joel. (2012). Childhood Under Seige: How Big Business Targets Your Children. Free Press.
Bakan, Joel. (2005). The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power. Free Press.
Bullough, Oliver. (2020). Moneyland: The Inside Story of the Crooks and Kleptocrats Who Rule the World. Griffin.
Chomsky, Noam. (1992). Deterring Democracy. Hill & Wang.
Chomsky, Noam. (2002). Understanding Power: The Indispensible Chomsky. The New Press.
Chomsky, Noam. (2017). Who Rules the World? Picador.
Corrigan, Doug. (2020). “Will an RNA Vaccine Permanently Alter My DNA?” Science with Dr. Doug. Retrieved from https://sciencewithdrdoug.com/2020/11/27/will-an-rna-vaccine-permanently-alter-my-dna/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Can+the+Shots+Alter+Your+DNA%3F&utm_campaign=Can+the+Shots+Alter+Your+DNA%3F
Davidson, Keay. (2004). “Kids' cough medicine no better than placebo / Study of OTC meds shows syrup is just as effective.” SF Gate. Retrieved from https://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Kids-cough-medicine-no-better-than-placebo-2743392.php
“The Dirty Dozen: PEG Compounds and their contaminants.” The David Suzuki Foundation. Retrieved from https://davidsuzuki.org/queen-of-green/dirty-dozen-peg-compounds-contaminants/
Fanelli, Daniele, and Tregenza, Tom. (2009 May 29). “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data.” Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/
Gielow, Harold R. (September 11, 2020). “A Dangerous Inactive Ingredient.” Children's Health Defense. Retrieved from https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/a-dangerous-inactive-ingredient/
Girion, Lisa. (2018 Dec 14). “Johnson & Johnson knew for decades that asbestos lurked in its Baby Powder.” Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/
Goldacre, Ben. (2014). Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Gotzche, Peter. (2014). “Our Prescription Drugs Kill Us in Large Numbers.” Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25355584/#:~:text=Our%20prescription%20drugs%20are%20the,of%20a%20drug%20despite%20contraindications.
Grundvig, James Ottar. (2016). Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC. Skyhorse.
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2019). “5 Horrifying Facts About the FDA Vaccine Approval Process.” Worldview Publications. Retrieved from https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/fda/
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2021 May 28). “COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Hesitancy’ and Vaccine Mythology vs. Data.” Retrieved from https://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2021/05/28/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-and-vaccine-mythology-vs-data/
Hammond, Jeremy R. (2021). The War on Informed Consent: The Persecution of Dr. Paul Thomas by the Oregon Medical Board. Skyhorse.
Harriet A Washington. (2008.) Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. Anchor.Harris, Marvin. (1991). Cannibals and Kings. Vintage Books.
Horton, Richard. (2015). “Offline: What is Medicine's 5 Sigma?” The Lancet. Retrieved from https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1/fulltext
Huessemann, Michael and Joyce Huessemann. (2011). Techno-Fix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Planet. New Society Publishers.
Humphries, Mark. (2021). “The Absurdity of Peer Review.” Elemental. Retrieved from https://elemental.medium.com/the-absurdity-of-peer-review-1d58e5d9e661
Keith, Lierre. (2009). The Vegetarian Myth. PM Press.
Kennedy, Robert F. (2021). The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. Skyhorse.
Klein, Naomi. (2008). The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Picador.
Light, Donald W. and Lexchin, Joel and Darrow, Jonathan J. (2013 June 1). “Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs.” Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics, 2013, Vol. 14, No. 3: 590-610. Retrieved from https://ssrn.com/abstract=2282014
Light, Donald W. (2013 July 17). “Risky Drugs: Why The FDA Cannot Be Trusted.” Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Retrieved from https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/risky-drugs-why-fda-cannot-be-trusted
Macy, Beth. (2019). Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America. Back Bay Books.
Mattera, Philip. (2020). “Johnson & Johnson: Corporate Rap Sheet.” Corporate Research Project. Retrieved from https://www.corp-research.org/jnj
Mattera, Philip. (2017). “Pfizer: Corporate Rap Sheet.” Corporate Research Project. Retrieved from https://www.corp-research.org/pfizer
McKinlay, John B. and Sonja M. McKinlay. (1977). “The Questionable Contribution of Medical Measures to the Decline of Mortality in the United States in the Twentieth Century.” Retrieved from https://www.milbank.org/wp-content/uploads/mq/volume-55/issue-03/55-3-The-Questionable-Contribution-of-Medical-Measures-to-the-Decline-of-Mortality-in-the-United-States-in-the-Twentieth-Century.pdf
Moynihan, Roy and Cassels, Alan. (2006). Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients. Bold Type Books.
Palast, Greg. (2004). The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Plume.
Parenti, Michael. (1977). Democracy for the Few. St. Martin's Press.
Paul Ham. (2014.) Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath. Thomas Dunne Books.
Perkins, John. (2005). Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Plume.
Peterson, Melody. (2009). Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs. Picador.
Ponting, Clive. (2007). A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. Penguin.
Posner, Gerald. (2020). Pharma: Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America. Avid Reader Books.
Robin, Marie-Monique. (2012). The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption, and the Control of Our Food Supply. The New Press.
Russell, Dick. (2017). Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who Are Destroying Life on Earth―And What It Means for Our Children. Hot Books.
Ryan, Christopher. (2019). Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. Avid Reader Press.
Schmidt, Jeff. (2001). Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-battering System That Shapes Their Lives. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Scott, James C. (2017). Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States. Yale University Press.
Seife, Charles. (2015 Feb 9). “Are Your Medications Safe?” Slate. Retrieved from https://slate.com/technology/2015/02/fda-inspections-fraud-fabrication-and-scientific-misconduct-are-hidden-from-the-public-and-doctors.html
Seneff, Stephanie and Greg Nigh. (2021, May 10). “Worse Than the Disease? Reviewing Some Possible Unintended Consequences of the mRNA Vaccines Against COVID-19.” International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research. Retrieved from https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/23
Silberman, Steve. (2009). “Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.” Wired. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2009/08/ff-placebo-effect/?currentPage=all
Smith, Jeffrey. (2003). Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating. Yes! Books.
Smith, Richard. (2006). “Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science and journals.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/
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Vicki Oransky Wittenstein. (2013.) For the Good of Mankind? The Shameful History of Human Medical Experimentation. Twenty-First Century Books.
Zerzan, John. (2018). A People's History of Civilization. Feral House.
Zuboff, Shoshana. (2020). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs.