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Sunday, July 9, 2023

Decades Of Mass "Colonizing Immigration" Could Lead To "Collapse": Former French Counter-Intel Head

 by Olivier Bault via Remix News,

After mass riots during the past week shocked France and the world, the former head of France’s powerful DGSE intelligence agency says the root cause of his country’s tragic situation is above all “the dominant ideology, which has justified and even glorified the massive colonizing immigration that has been taking place over the last half-century.”

Pierre Brochand was head of France’s DGSE counter-intelligence agency from 2002 to 2008. Since 2019, he has made repeated calls for a radical change in his country’s immigration policy over what he says is the looming threat of civil war.

In a discussion about immigration on the public radio station France Culture last April, Brochand issued a warning which found its full expression in the week of violent rioting and looting that took hold of France after the shooting of a teenager of Algerian origin on June 27:

“If we do nothing or if we do little, we are going to head either towards a progressive implosion of social trust in France, that is to say towards a society where the quality of life will collapse and where it will be less and less pleasant to live, or, by successive explosions, towards confrontations that will make France a country where one will not be able to live at all.”

Now, in an interview published on July 6 on the website of Le Figaro daily newspaper, Brochand exposes, as Le Figaro puts it, “the deadly cocktail of a society of individuals based on openness and democracy and the arrival of entire diasporas with totally different cultural backgrounds.”

The least that can be said is that the former counter-intelligence chief’s analysis stands in sharp contrast to Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin’s own analysis made in the National Assembly on July 5. According to Darmanin, the riots of the previous days are not linked to immigration as “only” 10 percent of the rioters were foreigners.

In Darmanin’s eyes, the non-White youth that caused mayhem on the streets of France for days, often invoking the Quran and the name of Allah, have no link to immigration as they are French citizens. The French minister contradicted himself, however, saying that as the average age of rioters was 17, they were born under the presidency of Jacques Chirac, and it is too late to control immigration anyway.

Sadly, this is a perfect illustration of Brochand’s pessimistic observation last April on France Culture, when he said he did not think there is currently enough courage among the French political class to do what is necessary to avoid the worst-case scenario: that of confrontation.

Pierre Brochand was director of the Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) from 2002 to 2008, as well as an ambassador of France in Hungary and Israel.

“Closing borders in the name of the precautionary principle – the Polish way – has never been seriously considered in our country,” Brochand said to Le Figaro after the recent rioting, which has seen over 700 members of security forces injured, some 4,000 arrested, and many towns and cities devastated. For Brochand, the reason is a mixture of humanism and economic interests, i.e. the need to import cheap labor.

Brochand says the changes that have led to the current decomposition of French society happened in the 1970s, when France made its transition from a modern national state to a society of individuals.

Together with the immigration of workers, France began to experience what increasingly became an immigration of settlers (Brochand uses the French term “immigration de peuplement”, which can also be translated as “colonizing immigration”). The transition to a society of individuals has created what he calls a scissor effect. Hence, in Brochand’s eyes, internal partition is the natural inclination of the multicultural societies of Western Europe.

This is not new, as Pierre Brochand said that he remembers when he was the French ambassador to Hungary in the years 1989-93, just after the fall of communism in that part of Europe, he would often hear from his Hungarian interlocutors: “We are lucky we can see first-hand the damage that non-European immigration is causing in your country, and we certainly don’t want to imitate you.”

“In everyone’s eyes, we are now the ‘sick man’ of the continent, the Security Council, the G7, and the G20,” laments the former head of France’s counter-intelligence, as France is indeed the country with the highest proportion of inhabitants with a non-European immigrant background, and immigration figures have been beating new historic records under President Emmanuel Macron.

Others, like in neighboring Italy where mass immigration began at the beginning of the 2010s when Berlusconi’s right-wing government was overthrown with the help of Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, know very well that what is happening in France now will likely happen in their country in a decade or two if nothing is done.

An illustration of such apprehension can be found, for example, in an article published on July 5 by the Italian conservative daily newspaper Il Giornale with the title: “The roots of France’s ill and the fear that looms over Italy.”

Meanwhile, a large majority of French people are strongly opposed to what increasingly appears to be a dangerous social engineering experiment by the liberal elites, something Éric Zemmour has called a Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Western liberals and Islam against the White, heterosexual, Catholic French man. Indeed, 74 percent of French people now think there are too many immigrants in their country and 62 percent would want France to disobey EU treaties and EU law to stop immigration.

The latter is an important point, in particular in light of the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Switzerland that was delivered just a few days ago, which extends the right to family reunification even to refugees who have only obtained a temporary residence permit and not asylum. Let us not forget that EU member states have the obligation, as per the EU treaties, to abide by the rulings of the ECHR.

“When diasporas swell out of all proportion — with at least 5 million additional arrivals since 2005 — reaching a critical mass that makes them confusedly aware of their irresistible strength, when compromises and unilateral concessions become confessions of weakness calling for transgression, when these counter-societies have the audacity to set themselves up as competing sovereignties in the same ‘one and indivisible’ space, well, the pressure cooker’s lid blows off, as soon as the opportunity arises,” explains Brochand in his July 6 interview published in Le Figaro.

“It is worth pointing out, first of all, that isolated riots have been commonplace for 40 years, in every corner of the country, under the technocratic label of ‘urban violence,'” goes on the former DGSE director, noting things have evolved “to the point where no one pays any attention to them anymore, as if they were part of the landscape.”

According to Brochand, somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 may have taken part in the urban violence, creating a situation much more dangerous than in 2005, when similar rioting took place in France’s suburbs. Nothing comparable had ever happened since the French Revolution of 1789, notes Brochand, and, this time, even provincial towns have been affected by the troubles alongside the centers of big cities, in contrast to what happened 18 years ago when most of the rioting was constricted to the so-called sensitive neighborhoods.

“I would describe the present catastrophe as an uprising or revolt against the French national state, by a significant proportion of the youth of non-European origin present on its territory,” says Brochand.

“Will we draw the right lessons from this, given that the country’s vital prognosis is at stake? Will we consider remedies other than yet another ‘plan for the suburbs?’ Things being what they are, I doubt it,” he concludes on a pessimistic note.

Brochand’s words echo those pronounced on the CNews French news channel on July 2 by Gendarmerie Colonel Philippe Cholous:

“We need to analyze this situation not in terms of what is happening now, which is terrible, but in terms of what could happen if it gets out of hand. There’s obviously anger in the suburbs, but I think there’s also anger among the middle classes, the good people, France’s working people. There’s also a great deal of resentment on the part of the forces of law and order, who are very often abandoned by politicians. (…) The level of exasperation and resentment, the level of violence, and above all, the fact that in certain areas there is a real hatred of France, with weapons circulating, means that the potential is explosive. And just because there are fewer vehicles burned or businesses attacked doesn’t mean that the potential risk is decreasing.”

It is worth noting that after a week of chaos, the French government has not renounced its plans to legalize the stay of hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants who work in sectors lacking labor, which is going to greatly reinforce the pull factor for illegal immigration to Europe, as each such legalization in a major European country has done in the past.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/french-riots-show-decades-mass-colonizing-immigration-could-lead-collapse-says-former

Governors Of The Mind: "We Must Remake History"

  by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

The assault on enterprise of the last few years — meaning not the biggest politically connected businesses but smaller ones reflecting vibrant commercial life — has taken very strange forms.

Ever since The New York Times said the way forward was to “go medieval,” the elites have been attempting just that. But this medievalism has not come at the expense of Big Data, Pharma, Ag or Media.

It mainly hits products and services that impact our freedom to buy, trade, travel, associate and otherwise manage our own lives.

What began in lockdowns mutated into a thousand forms. That continues with daily new outrages. Maybe it’s not random.

It was never really about health care. It was about the exercise of power over the whole population by a tiny elite in the name of science.

The government locked down society, and then tried to make us get the shots through hook and crook, an experimental medicine we did not need and which was proven neither safe nor effective.

Since those days, other strange things have been unleashed: the campaign to eat bugs, end fossil fuel, abolish wood-burning pizza ovens, impose all-electric ovens and cars, stop air conditioning, own nothing and be happy with your digital consumption and even block out the sun, while indulging in every farce such as pretending that men can get pregnant.

Many cities are falling apart, abandoned by well-to-do residents and consumed by crime. It’s all madness but maybe there is rhyme to the reasons for all this?

‘We Must Remake Society!’

In August of 2020, Anthony Fauci and his long-time co-author wrote a piece in Cell that called for “radical changes that may take decades to achieve: rebuilding the infrastructures of human existence, from cities to homes to workplaces, to water and sewer systems, to recreational and gatherings venues.”

They wanted social distancing forever but that was only the start of it. They imagined the dismantling of cities, mass social events, the end of international travel and really all travel, no more owning pets, the end of domesticated animals and a strange non-pathogenic world that they imagined existed 12,000 years ago.

We can’t go back, they said, but we can “at least use lessons from those times to bend modernity in a safer direction.”

There we have it. Preserve “essential” services (and people) but get rid of everything else. The lockdowns were merely a test case of a new social system. It’s not capitalism. It’s not socialism as we’ve come to understand it.

It feels like corporatism but with a twist. The big businesses that gain favor are not heavy industry but digital tech designed to live off scraped data and power the world with sunbeams and breezes.

There’s nothing new under the sun. So where did this strange new utopianism come from?

The Counter-Revolution of Science

Three years ago, Matt Kibbe and I recalled that in 1952, F.A. Hayek wrote what became The Counter-Revolution of Science. The idea is that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new conception of science was born, which reversed a previous understanding.

Science was not a process of discovery by research, but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite.

This elite would impose its view on everyone else. Hayek called this “the abuse of reason” because genuine reason defers to uncertainty and discovery while scientism as an ideology is arrogant and imagines it knows what is unknown.

I did not have time to reread the book but Kibbe did. I asked him if Hayek said anything that touched on our current problems. His response: “This book explains everything.”

That’s quite the recommendation. So I dug in. Yes, I had read it years ago but every book from the before times has a different feel and message in the after times.

It is indeed prescient. Hayek explores in great detail the thinkers of the early 19th century — successors to and reversers of the original French Enlightenment — and its origin in the writings and influence of Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825).

Simply put, Saint-Simon dreamed of a world without privilege of birth or inherited wealth. The aristocracy can be damned for all he cared.

He imagined a world of what he called merit but it was no merit by means of hard work and enterprise as such.

It was a world run by geniuses or savants with unusual intellectual gifts. They would comprise the managerial and ruling elite of society.

The Council of 21

His preferred system of government would consist of 21 men: “three mathematicians, three physicians, three chemists, three physiologists, three men of letters, three painters, three musicians.”

The council of 21! I’m sure they would get along great and not be corrupt in the slightest. And they would surely be benevolent!

We would find out who these people are by having votes placed at the grave of Isaac Newton (Saint-Simon’s god of choice) and eventually the consensus concerning the elite council would be chosen.

They would not be a government as such, at least not as traditionally understood, but elite planners who would use intelligence to shape the whole society the same way that scientists understand and shape the natural world.

You see, to his way of thinking, this is far more rational than having an hereditary aristocracy in charge. And these men would in turn deploy their rationality in service of society, which would be enormously inspired by it, just as MSNBC is so enthused for Dr. Fauci and his friends.

Saint-Simon wrote:

Men of genius will then enjoy a reward worthy of them and of you; this reward will place them in the only position which can provide them with the means of giving you all the services they’re capable of; this will become the ambition of the most energetic souls; it will redirect them from things harmful to your tranquility. By this measure, finally, you will give leaders to those who work for the progress of your enlightenment, you will invest these leaders with immense consideration and you will place a great pecuniary power at their disposition.

So there you go: The elite get unlimited power and unlimited money and everyone will aspire to act like these people and this aspiration will improve the whole of society.

It reminds me of the pre-modern system in China in which only the best students could enter into the class of the mandarins, which were the nine levels of high-ranking officials in Imperial China’s government.

Governors of the Mind

Indeed, Saint-Simon invited his followers to “consider yourselves as the governors of the operation of the human mind.”

He imagined “spiritual power in the hands of the savants; temporal power in the hands of the possessors; the power to nominate those called to fulfill the functions of the great heads of humanity, in the hands of everyone.”

Saint-Simon lived a life that oscillated between wealth and poverty, and regretted that condition would befall any man of his genius. So he cobbled together a politics that would protect him and his ilk from the vicissitudes of the market.

He wanted a permanent class of bureaucrats that would be completely insulated from the liberal world that had been celebrated only a quarter century earlier by the likes of Adam Smith.

Here was the core of what Hayek called the counter-revolution of science. It was not science but scientism in which freedom for everyone is a hell, geniuses seizing control was the transition and permanent rule by savants to shape the human mind was heaven on Earth.

The best book I’ve seen that captures the essence of this dream is Thomas Harrington’s The Treason of the Experts. They turn out to be not altruists or competent overseers of society but cowardly sadists who rule with career-driven cruelty and refuse to admit when their “science” produces the opposite of their stated goal.

“Scientism” as an ideology is the reverse of science as traditionally understood. It is not supposed to be the codification and entrenchment of an elite class of social managers but rather a humble exploration of all the fascinating realities that make the world around us work.

It is not about imposition but curiosity, and not about norms and force but facts and an invitation to look more deeply.

Saint-Simon celebrated science but became the anti-Voltaire. Instead of freeing the human mind, he and his followers imagined themselves to be governors of it. Anthony Fauci followed in that tradition.

Their actual goal is to become permanent “governors of the operation of the human mind.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/governors-mind-we-must-remake-history

Saturday, July 8, 2023

NATO flexes muscle to protect Vilnius summit near Russia, Belarus

 NATO has turned Vilnius into a fortress defended by advanced weaponry to protect U.S. President Joe Biden and other alliance leaders meeting next week only 32 km (20 miles) from Lithuania's razor-wire topped border fence with Russian ally Belarus.

Sixteen NATO allies have sent a total of about 1,000 troops to safeguard the July 11-12 summit, which will take place only 151 km (94 miles) from Russia itself. Many are also providing advanced air defence systems which the Baltic states lack.

"It would be more than irresponsible to have our sky unprotected as Biden and leaders of 40 countries are arriving," Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said.

The Baltic countries of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, once under Moscow's rule but part of both NATO and the European Union since 2004, all spend above 2% of their economies on defence, a larger share than most other NATO allies.

But for the region with total population of about 6 million people, this is not enough to sustain large militaries, invest in their own fighter jets or advanced air defence.

Germany deployed 12 vehicles Patriot missile launchers, used to intercept ballistic and cruise missiles or warplanes.

Spain has brought a NASAMS air defence system, France is sending Caesar self-propelled howitzers, France, Finland, and Denmark are basing military jets in Lithuania, and the United Kingdom and France are supplying anti-drone capabilities.

Poland and Germany sent helicopter-enhanced special operations forces. Others are sending measures to deal with any potential chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear atacks.

For Nauseda, the allied effort to ensure air safety during the leader's gathering means NATO needs to urgently set up permanent air defences in the Baltic states.

"We think about what happens after the summit ends, and we will work with allies to create a rotating force for a permanent air protection", he told reporters.

Solomon Islands leader visits security partner China with focus on infrastructure

 Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare arrives in China on Sunday for his first visit since striking a security deal, pledging to "remain neutral" amid rising China-U.S. competition and prioritise his nation's development needs.

Western analysts said Sogavare would be feted after signing the security pact that alarmed Washington and some Pacific Islands neighbours including Australia last year. Concern over China's naval ambitions in the strategically-located region prompted Washington to strike a defence agreement with Papua New Guinea last month.

Sogavare highlighted his focus on infrastructure in a speech to mark the 45th anniversary of independence from Britain on Friday, where he said bigger countries were jostling for influence.

"We want to remain neutral because it is not in the interest of our people and country to take sides and align ourselves with interests that are not our interests. Our national interest is development," he said.

The need for infrastructure on islands outside the capital Honiara was urgent, he added.

Already, Chinese telecoms giant Huawei is building a cellular network financed by a $66 million Chinese EXIM bank loan, prompting concern by a parliamentary committee about the debt burden, and a Chinese state company will redevelop Honiara's port.

On a week-long trip funded by Beijing, Sogavare will open the nation's embassy, meet Chinese companies, and visit Jiangsu and Guangdong, his office said.

"The relationship continues to thrive and expand, a testament of a serious connection," his office said.

China's foreign ministry said China and the Solomon Islands had "contributed to peace, stability and development in the region", and the two countries leaders would discuss international and regional issues.

In a local television interview, Sogavare said the Solomon Islands was dependent on aid from Australia, but was shifting its foreign policy to look for opportunities with China, as well as India and Gulf states.

New Biden initiative targets controversial hospital ‘facility fees’ that often surprise patients

 As part of the Biden administration’s broader efforts to lower health care costs, the White House announced new guidelines on Friday targeting a few of the most common sources of sticker shock. The new policy initiatives target some of the usual suspects: surprise billing, which was restricted in 2020 yet persists as health care providers exploit loopholes; short-term insurance policies that often fail to cover essential treatment; and high-interest credit cards and payment plans especially marketed to help patients cover medical debt.

The proposal also takes aim at surprise facility fees — a controversial charge that’s received less widespread attention. Facility fees are the extra charges tacked on by hospitals when they provide services in an outpatient location. For instance, patients might be expected to pay a facility fee for seeing a physician in a hospital-operated clinic or office. Independent doctor’s offices, as well as freestanding clinics, aren’t allowed to charge facility fees.

Biden plans to force health plans and providers to share information about these fees, with the goal of making them more transparent and less of a shock to patients who might not be informed about the fees ahead of time or even be familiar with the concept.

Hospitals have been charging these fees for more than two decades, ostensibly to cover the maintenance costs of the facilities they operate. “What the hospitals try to do is unload some of their fixed costs or overhead costs onto each of the facilities they control,” said Alan Sager, a professor of health law, policy, and management at Boston University.

The charges can be hefty, and are often liberally applied. One woman who received regular steroid injections to treat her arthritis was startled to receive an additional $1,262 facility fee when the office where she received the injections was re-classified as a “hospital setting,” despite not being located in a hospital, KFF Health News reported. Another hospital attempted to charge a patient a facility fee of up to $350 for a telehealth visit because the doctor was on hospital property.

These charges can significantly up health care costs for both patients and insurers. In 2022, a 15-minute doctor visit in a hospital-owned clinic cost Medicare $189, of which facility fees accounted for $121 of the total charge (see page 146 of this report). The same visit cost $92 in a freestanding doctor’s office.

And because hospitals aren’t required to have any particular method required for determining facility fees, they can hike prices at will. Between 2004 and 2021, facility fees in emergency departments rose by 531%, according to research from KFF — four times as much as professional fees from emergency health care providers, which rose by 132%.

Hospitals say that facility fees cover the cost of maintaining equipment, medical and technical supplies, and support staff. Critics aren’t so sure. “Do hospitals really need this extra money? The answer is no one knows. I don’t think they do,” said Sager. But it’s hard to prove either way, he said, since there is not “solid evidence on how much revenue they require to deliver efficiently the services that patients need.”

The Biden administration is targeting the “surprise” part of the charges rather than trying to eliminate or reduce the facility fees themselves, requiring health plans and providers to “make information about these facility fees publicly available to consumers.”

Whether that measure will have any effect in lowering health care costs remains to be seen. The approach is similar to the requirement that hospitals be transparent about their pricing, based on the free-market economic belief that patients who are aware of pricing are empowered to shop comparatively, therefore keeping health care costs down. Yet while transparency is important for fair billing practices, so far hospital price transparency has shown limited impact in reducing the financial burden of health care for patients.

Some states have introduced bills that aim to actually curb facility fees. The National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, has put forward a legislation template that can be adapted by states looking to prohibit unjustified facility fees. In March, the Texas legislature examined a proposal to ban facility fees, to the outrage of hospitalsColorado, Massachusetts, and Indiana are considering similar proposals. And in New York state, as of this year, providers can charge a facility fee but have to inform patients ahead of time.

For now, there is little reason to believe transparency in facility fees will have more sizable effects, said Sager. In his view, the idea that it would move the needle is “either a delusion, or a cynical attempt to shift the burden of cost control, shift the job of containing cost from payers who actually have leverage to patients who are sick and don’t have leverage.”

https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/07/hospital-facility-fees-biden-initiative/

'Aspartame in Diet Coke and Coke Zero probably isn’t worth worrying about'

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that is used in a lot of products, including Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Like most artificial sweeteners, we have a wonderful love/hate relationship with it. It’s sweet but doesn’t have any calories, so it’s great for people who want to lose a bit of weight. Also, a bunch of people are convinced that anything artificial is basically poison, and that diet soft drinks are probably killing us all.

This has hit the headlines recently, because apparently the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a World Health Organization body, is preparing to declare aspartame a class 2B carcinogen. This has caused a huge uproar, because aspartame is one of the most commonly used artificial sweeteners in the world, and also because cancer is very scary.

Fortunately for people like me who really like our diet drinks, the evidence really isn’t that compelling. Aspartame probably isn’t giving you cancer.

IARC categories

The first point to consider in this discussion about aspartame is the way that the IARC classifies things that could potentially cause cancer in human beings. They have four categories:

1. Causes cancer

2A. Probably causes cancer

2B. Possibly causes cancer

3. Unclassifiable as a cancer risk

There are a few interesting points to make here off the bat. Firstly, the IARC doesn’t ever consider the magnitude of risk. There are class 1 carcinogens that cause cancer in every person exposed to them, and other class 1s that almost never cause cancer even in massive, lifelong doses. For example, both processed meat and plutonium are considered class 1 carcinogens, even though the risk from bacon is decidedly lower than that posed by nuclear explosions.

Now, as the headlines state, the IARC is moving aspartame up to a class 2B carcinogen, which means it “possibly” causes cancer. For context, I downloaded the IARC database of human carcinogens, and the class 2B also includes:

  1. Coconut oil soaps
  2. Aloe vera
  3. Pickled vegetables
  4. Talcum powder
  5. Working in the textiles industry
  6. Nickel

And a whole host of other things as well. Class 2B does not mean that something definitely or even probably causes cancer — it means that there is some suggestion that the thing could plausibly cause cancer, and perhaps a small amount of evidence indicating that it does.

The evidence

So we know that class 2B isn’t necessarily a problem — in practice, it’s mostly a way for the IARC to call for more research into a question. But what has the evidence shown thus far?

Well, there have been quite a few studies looking at aspartame and other artificial sweeteners over the years. Generally, they have overwhelmingly been quite reassuring about the potential for cancer risk.

In fact, there are quite a few large epidemiological studies looking at hundreds of thousands of people that have failed to find a link between aspartame or other sweeteners and different forms of cancer.

There’s this one from 2012, which grouped together two large cohorts called the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, which together include more than 100,000 people, and found no association between non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myeloma, or leukemia, and diet soda. There’s this study, which looked at the same two groups of study participants and found no increased risk of pancreatic cancer except in one small subgroup. Another paper from 2014 looked at another large cohort of people and found no increased risk of a range of cancers even in people who drank diet drinks daily. One very recent case-control study looked at a range of other cancers and specifically aspartame consumption, and found that in general there was no increased risk observed for people who had more aspartame.

A recent systematic review of epidemiological studies, which also included a review of the toxicological literature, summarized this evidence — over more than a dozen large studies, there is very little evidence that aspartame and other sweeteners cause an increased risk of cancer. In fact, I could only find a single paper, which was published in 2022, that found a reasonably consistent correlation between aspartame intake and cancer, and even then it was not a strong connection.

Do I drink the Diet Coke?

Now, this literature isn’t perfect. All of these studies have issues, and it’s entirely possible that there is some very vague link that we’ve missed despite decades of research into this question. It is relatively simple to identify when something probably does cause cancer, but it takes an enormous amount of effort to show that it probably doesn’t.

However, as an epidemiologist who looks into these issues regularly, I found the studies very reassuring.

Part of this is the actual risks that we’re talking about here. Remember what I said right at the start — the IARC does not ever define how risky something is, just what the evidence says about whether it can cause cancer at all.

Take the study I mentioned just before, which found an association between aspartame and cancer. In this paper, researchers looked at the Nutri-Net cohort of people, which includes more than 100,000 individuals followed up between 2009-2021, and checked to see whether those who reported having more aspartame were more likely to get cancer than those who had none.

They found that, on average, people who ingested no aspartame got cancer at a rate of about 31 in 1,000 during this period. For people who had a “higher” intake of the chemical, the risk of cancer was instead 33 in 1,000. In other words, going from having no aspartame at all, to drinking it regularly for a decade, increased the risk of cancer by 0.2%.

That’s a tiny risk by any measure. Ignoring all of the potential confounders here and why it’s unlikely that this is a causal relationship, it’s still a bit of a meaningless risk for the average individual. It might be meaningful to population health workers but even then possibly not.

It’s also always useful to remember the alternative to artificial sweeteners: sugar. While there’s some very vague evidence that aspartame might be bad for your health, there’s strong and consistent evidence that excess adiposity (too much body fat) is worse. Drinking water is probably the best thing to do for you in many ways — if nothing else, it’s free — but if the choice is between sugar-sweetened and aspartame-sweetened, it’s a bit more of a complex question.

And that’s why I’m personally not worried about my Diet Coke/Coke Zero intake. Yes, there’s some vague evidence that aspartame may be associated with an increased risk of cancer. There’s also some evidence it isn’t! But even the evidence suggesting that it might be shows a risk so low that it’s unlikely to mean much to my life.

Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz is an epidemiologist from the University of Wollongong and a science writer and communicator. 

https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/08/diet-coke-cancer-aspartame-who-world-health-organization/

Texas floating barriers will cause ‘imminent and irreparable harm,’ lawsuit claims

 A Texas kayaking company has sued Gov. Greg Abbott (R) over his plan to install floating barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande River that would prevent people from being able to swim across it.

Jessie Fuentes, owner of Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team, filed a suit in Austin, Texas on Friday to stop the state from placing the buoys which he claimed would prevent him from giving tours on the river and cause his company “imminent and irreparable harm.”

The buoy construction near Eagle Pass, Texas, has already forced Fuentes to cancel a number of activities and even prevented his company’s access to the river, he claimed.

Abbott is using a natural disaster declaration to place the buoys in the river as part of “Operation Lone Star,” a power Fuentes is challenging. Construction workers started placing the floating barriers on Friday.

The operation is meant to reduce the flow of undocumented immigrants into Texas, something Abbott has called a “crisis.” Last week, four people drowned while attempting to cross the Rio Grande in the Eagle Pass section of river.

“This strategy will proactively prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry by making it more difficult to cross the Rio Grande and reach the Texas side of the southern border,” Abbott’s office said in a statement last month.

The lawsuit alleges that the buoys unjustly hurt Fuentes’ business and are also unconstitutional. 

“A plain reading of the [disaster declaration] reveals as a matter of law that this statute cannot be used to regulate the Texas-Mexico border because none of its definitions address immigrants, the border, or crimes committed by immigrants,” the suit reads.

“The definition of disaster cannot be read so broadly to allow Governor Abbott to create his own border patrol agency to regulate the border and prevent immigrants from entering Texas by installing a buoy system in the Rio Grande,” it continues.

The suit asks a judge to halt the construction of the buoys in the river.

“The Governor proclaims to support law and order, yet he initiated Operation Lone Star without legal authority and seeks to install buoys to score political points without a legitimate public policy objective,” Fuentes’ attorney, Carlos Flores, said in a press release.

Abbott responded on Twitter, pledging to fight the suit.

“We will see you in court. And don’t think the Travis Co. Court will be the end of it. This is going to the Supreme Court. Texas has a constitutional right to secure our border,” he said

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4087039-texas-floating-barriers-will-cause-imminent-and-irreparable-harm-lawsuit-claims/