By Meryl Nass at Brownstone dot org.

My next post will be a slide deck on the meat industry that I put together months ago but had not used until now.

(Washington, D.C., October 22, 2025) - Today, US Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler announced a suite of actions to strengthen the American beef industry, reinforcing and prioritizing the American rancher's critical role in the national security of the United States. Since 2017, the United States has lost over 17% of family farms (I think it is 8-9% of all farms - Nass), more than 100,000 operations over the last decade (160,000 farms from 2017-2024 according to USDA figures - Nass). The national herd is at a 75-year low while consumer demand for beef has grown 9% over the past decade.

Because increasing the size of the domestic herd takes time, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is investing now to make these markets less volatile for ranchers over the long term and more affordable for consumers. (Investing in what? - Nass). "America's food supply chain is a national security priority for the Trump administration. We are committed to ensuring the American people have an affordable source of protein and that America's ranchers have a strong economic environment where they can continue to operate for generations to come," said Secretary Brooke Rollins.

"At USDA we are protecting our beef industry and incentivizing new ranchers to take up the noble vocation of ranching. Today, USDA will immediately expedite deregulatory reforms, boost processing capacity, including getting more locally raised beef into schools, and working across the government to fix longstanding common-sense barriers for ranchers like outdated grazing restrictions." "At Interior, the Department is slashing red tape and restoring grazing access on public lands to support the livelihoods of hardworking Americans in the ranching industry," said Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum….

Below, we hear how bad it is for farmers:

What to do? Here is the easiest and quickest solution:

Expand local meat processing. There is a meat slaughter and processing bottleneck in the US, which has been present for 10 years. Only meat slaughtered in a USDA-inspected plant can be sold across state lines. But there are not enough facilities and not enough inspectors.

USDA has put hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into expanding huge meat processing facilities or building new ones, while its regulations have led to the shutdown of more than a thousand small processing plants. Only one of the new facilities taxpayers helped pay for is east of the Mississippi, where most Americans live. So the processing bottleneck for most Americans will not be solved despite these considerable investments.

By relaxing USDA regulations and allowing the states to use their own inspectors to inspect "custom" meat processing facilities (which are currently not allowed to sell meat but only process it for personal use), this bottleneck could be eased quickly. This was done in Maine during the first year of the pandemic to alleviate meat shortages.

This is essentially what is called for in Thomas Massie's PRIME Act HR4700.

Republished from the author's Substack

By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org.

We are newly aware of the close relationship between industry and administrative agencies, a corrupting one that is building cartels and blocking serious reform of government. This is usually called agency "capture," but what if that is not the right term? Capture implies an institution that was previously pure and independent that was later taken over. In the case of the FDA, and its predecessor agencies, they have a deep history of industry involvement.

The usual story of the nation's first major food safety regulation posits a corrupt industry cleaned up by government. The deeper history offers a different story of an industry in trouble with consumers that went to government to shore up its market share.

The best documentation of this alternative view is offered by economic historian Murray Rothbard who wrote a short history of the meatpacking controversies. His article is reprinted here.

The Meatpacking Myth, by Murray N. Rothbard

One of the earliest acts of Progressive regulation of the economy was the Meat Inspection Act, which passed in June 1906. The orthodox myth holds that the action was directed against the "beef trust" of the large meatpackers, and that the federal government was driven to this anti-business measure by popular outcry generated by the muckraking novel, The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, which exposed unsanitary conditions in the Chicago meatpacking plants.

Unfortunately for the myth, the drive for federal meat inspection actually began more than two decades earlier and was launched mainly by the big meatpackers themselves. The spur was the urge to penetrate the European market for meat, something which the large meatpackers thought could be done if the government would certify the quality of meat and thereby make American meat more highly rated abroad. Not coincidentally, as in all Colbertist mercantilist legislation over the centuries, a governmentally-coerced upgrading of quality would serve to cartelize - to lower production, restrict competition, and raise prices to the consumers. It, furthermore, socializes the cost of inspection to satisfy consumers, by placing the burden upon the taxpayers instead of on the producers themselves.

More specifically, the meatpackers were concerned to with combating the restrictionist legislation of European countries, which, in the late 1870s and early 1880s, began to prohibit the import of American meat. The excuse was to safeguard the European consumer against purportedly diseased meat; the probable major reason was to act as a protectionist device for European meat production.

Partly at the behest of the major meatpackers, Chicago and other cities imposed and then strengthened a system of meat inspection, and the Secretary of the Treasury, on his own and without Congressional authorization, set up an inspection organization to certify exported cattle as free of pleuropneumonia in 1881. Finally, after Germany prohibited the importation of American pork, ostensibly because of the problem of disease, Congress, responding to the pressure of the large meatpackers, reacted in May 1884 by establishing a Bureau of Animal Industry within the Department of Agriculture "to prevent the exportation of diseased cattle" and to try to eliminate contagious diseases among domesticated animals.

But this was not enough, and the Department of Agriculture kept agitating for additional federal regulation to improve meat exports. Then, in response to the hog cholera epidemic in the United States in 1889, Congress, again pressured by the big meatpackers, passed a law in the summer of 1890 compelling the inspection of all meat intended for export. But the European governments, claiming to be unsatisfied because live animals at the time of slaughter remained uninspected, continued their prohibitions of American meat.

As a result, Congress, in March 1891, passed the first important compulsory federal meat inspection law in American history....

By Charles Eisenstein at Brownstone dot org.

I've been rereading John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. This passage from Chapter 5 is shockingly relevant to the farm crisis today. It describes the early stages of the consolidation and corporatization of farms that continue to accelerate. Even more relevantly, it illuminates the systemic nature of that process, which defies any attempt to locate blame. Here, agents of institutional landowners are coming to notify tenant farmers that they must leave their land.

Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.

These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.

Next comes a man driving a tractor, demolishing the homes and gardens of farmers who had farmed the land for generations. Steinbeck understood that no human being - not the man driving the tractor, nor the bank that hired him, nor the bank's local president, nor its board of directors back East, nor its shareholders and bondholders, were to blame for that loss. Or, perhaps, all were to blame. But really, it is the reflex of blame itself that he casts into doubt.

Blame allures the victims of a system with its promise of an easy solution. It substitutes a problem that we know how to fix for one that we do not. Here is an exchange between a tenant farmer and the tractor driver, who has warned the tenant that his house is in the way of the tractor:

"I built it with my hands. Straightened old nails to put the sheathing on. Rafters are wired to the stringers with baling wire. It's mine. I built it. You bump it down - I'll be in the window with a rifle. You even come too close and I'll pot you like a rabbit."

"It's not me. There's nothing I can do. I'll lose my job if I don't do it. And look - suppose you kill me? They'll just hang you, but long before you're hung there'll be another guy on the tractor, and he'll bump the house down. You're not killing the right guy."

"That's so," the tenant said. "Who gave you orders? I'll go after him. He's the one to kill."

"You're wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, 'Clear those people out or it's your job.'"

"Well, there's a president of the bank. There's a board of directors. I'll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank."

The driver said, "Fellow was telling me the bank gets orders from the East. The orders were, 'Make the land show profit or we'll close you up.'"

"But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don't aim to starve to death before I kill the man that's starving me."

"I don't know. Maybe there's nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn't men at all. Maybe like you said, the property's doing it. Anyway I told you my orders."

Maybe there is nobody to shoot. Then what? OK, within this monster made of men (and these days, women too), among those manning the machine, some are more cruel, more rapacious, more ruthless than others. But they did not design the system. It's more like the system designed them.

I just got off a call with some activists in the regenerative agriculture...

By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org.

Brownstone Institute was a proud exhibitor at the huge Children's Health Defense conference, Austin, Texas, November 7-9, 2025. The event was filled with exuberance and trust among the more than 1,000 attendees, all of whom were thrilled to be with real friends at a time in which trust in nearly everything else is in free fall. At last, we were with people on the right side of history.

Within this social context, two 30-something men with British accents were making the rounds to decry fake meat and proclaim the superiority of real meat. This is a position with which probably everyone there agreed. They also looked the part: well-dressed and clean-shaven. Of course we want our activists to look this way.

The main actor told people his name is Aldrich Willows, an entirely fictional name, though no one seemed to have checked. He explained that he runs the Alliance for Sustainable Protein. The site is down as of this writing but it was created in March 2025. If anyone doubted their authenticity, pulling up their website on the phone was the first riposte, which is what they did with me.

The goal was to get people on film with the camera they had set up outside the security zone. Just before going on camera, they present the victim with a study that they say proves that fake meat causes autism. They have you stand in front of a ridiculous graphic with a patty of real vs fake meat, then they turn on the camera, first eliciting permissions to use what is filmed.

Next they push the unsuspecting person to endorse their study. If you are wary, as I was, the cameraman acting like the producer says, "It would be best for you to clearly state that fake meat causes autism while holding the study." It's an intimidating moment because the people being interviewed hate fake meat, suspect that the cause of autism is environmental, and feel a bit of sympathy for these guys.

If the victim does not comply, they keep pushing, clearly trying to get people on camera to say something ridiculous. The study in question is entirely fake, with no author, and generated entirely by artificial intelligence. But they are moving so fast that it is hard to follow what is going on. The study is presumably embargoed, though it has been variously circulating here and there for weeks.

Just for gags, I generated another study using Grok that shows a causal link between eating waffles and going bald. Anyone can do this in about 5 seconds.

Finishing with my interview, after a long day of interviews, I quickly forgot about the entire strange episode. I figured that it was some naive activists who were drawing unconfirmed connections between two bad things. But in my mind, my attitude was whatever: such events draw all types.

It was not until the next morning when it dawned on me what they were doing. They were scammers who had targeted the health freedom movement. They were piecing together a film for a documentary that would claim that all of us are naive and rallying around fake science to advance our political agenda.

Very clever.

The next morning I confronted them and told them that their plot had been revealed. I explained that they should be kicked out and their film confiscated. Alarmed, they grabbed their camera and left everything else, including their lights and bags of material, and ran to the elevators.

Someone captured this image of the two being confronted.

Further research reveals that the main person is not Aldrich Willows but rather Luke or Louis Wilson. Lucio Eastman of Brownstone discovered this while perusing the code to their website, which is now down.

Wilson works for the Centre for Climate Reporting. This is their website. He is a major climate activist who does undercover reporting, affiliated with the Net-Zero movement that the WEF has promoted. The funding trail leads to the usual suspects in the NGO space with major funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ikea, Bloomberg, and others.

Here is...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

I recently purchased Aaron Siri's new book Vaccines, Amen. As I flipped through the pages, I noticed a section devoted to his now-famous deposition of Dr Stanley Plotkin, the "godfather" of vaccines.

I'd seen viral clips circulating on social media, but I had never taken the time to read the full transcript - until now.

Siri's interrogation was methodical and unflinching…a masterclass in extracting uncomfortable truths.

A Legal Showdown

In January 2018, Dr Stanley Plotkin, a towering figure in immunology and co-developer of the rubella vaccine, was deposed under oath in Pennsylvania by attorney Aaron Siri.

The case stemmed from a custody dispute in Michigan, where divorced parents disagreed over whether their daughter should be vaccinated. Plotkin had agreed to testify in support of vaccination on behalf of the father.

What followed over the next nine hours, captured in a 400-page transcript, was extraordinary.

Plotkin's testimony revealed ethical blind spots, scientific hubris, and a troubling indifference to vaccine safety data.

He mocked religious objectors, defended experiments on mentally disabled children, and dismissed glaring weaknesses in vaccine surveillance systems.

A System Built on Conflicts

From the outset, Plotkin admitted to a web of industry entanglements.

He confirmed receiving payments from Merck, Sanofi, GSK, Pfizer, and several biotech firms. These were not occasional consultancies but long-standing financial relationships with the very manufacturers of the vaccines he promoted.

Plotkin appeared taken aback when Siri questioned his financial windfall from royalties on products like RotaTeq, and expressed surprise at the "tone" of the deposition.

Siri pressed on: "You didn't anticipate that your financial dealings with those companies would be relevant?"

Plotkin replied: "I guess, no, I did not perceive that that was relevant to my opinion as to whether a child should receive vaccines."

The man entrusted with shaping national vaccine policy had a direct financial stake in its expansion, yet he brushed it aside as irrelevant.

Contempt for Religious Dissent

Siri questioned Plotkin on his past statements, including one in which he described vaccine critics as "religious zealots who believe that the will of God includes death and disease."

Siri asked whether he stood by that statement. Plotkin replied emphatically, "I absolutely do."

Plotkin was not interested in ethical pluralism or accommodating divergent moral frameworks. For him, public health was a war, and religious objectors were the enemy.

He also admitted to using human foetal cells in vaccine production - specifically WI-38, a cell line derived from an aborted foetus at three months' gestation.

Siri asked if Plotkin had authored papers involving dozens of abortions for tissue collection. Plotkin shrugged: "I don't remember the exact number…but quite a few."

Plotkin regarded this as a scientific necessity, though for many people - including Catholics and Orthodox Jews - it remains a profound moral concern.

Rather than acknowledging such sensitivities, Plotkin dismissed them outright, rejecting the idea that faith-based values should influence public health policy.

That kind of absolutism, where scientific aims override moral boundaries, has since drawn criticism from ethicists and public health leaders alike.

As NIH director Jay Bhattacharya later observed during his 2025 Senate confirmation hearing, such absolutism erodes trust.

"In public health, we need to make sure the products of science are ethically acceptable to everybody," he said. "Having alternatives that are not ethically conflicted with foetal cell lines is not just an ethical issue - it's a public health issue."

Safety Assumed, Not Proven

When the discussion turned to safety, Siri asked, "Are you aware of any study that compares vaccinated children to completely unvaccinated children?"

Plotkin replied that he was "not aware of well-controlled s...

By Lori Weintz at Brownstone dot org.

purse seine - a large wall of netting deployed around an entire area or school of fish. The seine has floats along the top line with a lead line threaded through rings along the bottom. Once a school of fish is located, a skiff encircles the school with the net. The lead line is then pulled in, "pursing" the net closed on the bottom, preventing fish from escaping by swimming downward.

Due to the relatively short lifespan of human beings, it can be difficult to put our own life experiences in perspective with history. This is why we have the saying, "Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." Combine a lack of historical knowledge with the fact that human nature doesn't change much, and you have a recipe for human-caused misery, repeated over and over.

In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado," we see an example of human nature gone awry, with lethal results. From the first, the reader is privy to Montresor's disgust toward Fortunato and his desire to exact revenge for a perceived insult. As the story progresses, it should be evident to Fortunato that Montresor has ill intent, but Fortunato cannot imagine the evil, so he continues into the depths of the catacomb, willingly walking toward his own demise while being plied with wine and called "friend."

Even as Montresor is about to place the last stone that will seal Fortunato's death in chains behind the brick wall, Fortunato calls it a good joke that they will laugh about later. Montresor agrees, drops his torch into the opening, places the final brick, and piles old bones of his ancestors in front, where half a century later "no mortal has disturbed them."

There are analyses interpreting Poe's story, and its intended message, but surely one lesson is to pay attention when all the signs indicate that you are in a bad situation, even as others try to convince you of their solicitude and concern for your well-being. This is the dire situation of humanity today, in the form of the digital prison that is being formed right before our eyes under the guise of convenience, efficiency, and safety.

Casting the Net

While most of us go about our lives working, playing, taking care of ourselves and our families, and interacting with others who are equally engaged in similar life activities, the tech and surveillance industries are barreling forward with plans to change everything. The partnerships forming and strengthening among corporate, tech, academia, and government are explained and celebrated with all the right language and ribbon-cutting ceremonies.

For example, Prime Minister Keir Starmer framed his recent announcement that digital ID will soon be mandatory in order to work in the United Kingdom as a policy that will appeal to all "decent, pragmatic, fair minded people." Starmer intoned that mandatory digital ID would address the illegal migrant problem, and help the UK to "tackle poverty, conflict, climate change…" Besides, wheedled Starmer, now you won't have to search through a drawer for your latest utility bill to show proof of residence; you can just show your digital ID. So convenient.

That citizens feel no need for digital ID, and don't want it, is not of concern to the tech billionaires and their corporate, academic, and government partners, only insomuch as they have to deal with the populace's viewpoints. That is, in democratic societies, they have to at least try to appeal to the public. In tyrannies, the purveyors of advanced technology only have to convince tyrants that it will help them better surveil and control their people. Money is exchanged and tyranny is strengthened.

Those Who Have Already Been Caught in the Purse Seine

Currently in North Korea, Dictator Kim Jong Un uses the death penalty for citizens caught watching and sharing foreign films. Kang Gyuri, who escaped in 2023, told the BBC that three of her friends were executed after being caught with South Korean content. Aided by advances i...

By Mattias Desmet at Brownstone dot org.

At the beginning of September, I settled for a couple of weeks in the Himalayas in northern India. I was there to give a few contributions at a conference on local economies. "Where exactly in the desert sand of this life is the line drawn that separates fiction from non-fiction?" - that thought occupies me as the Airbus 320 prepares to land at the airport of Leh. I'm not quite sure why I begin this text with that thought. What I actually want to write about is the human urge for order - and its connection to totalitarianism.

The plane weaves its way between mountain peaks that disappear into the clouds on either side. The ochre-grey rock of the Himalayan giants sometimes seems to come alarmingly close to the dipping and swaying tips of the wings. It feels more like stunt flying than commercial aviation. Just before the plane drops onto one of the highest public airstrips in the world, we're informed that, should we feel the need to vomit from lack of oxygen right after landing, we can make use of the plastic bag in the seat pocket in front of us.

Leh airport stands at 3,500 meters, in what can best be compared to a majestic lunar landscape - a cold desert above the tree line. The building itself is nothing but a series of barracks, where tourists gasp for air in the thin atmosphere and hope they won't fall prey to altitude sickness. A rickety conveyor belt bravely rattles its loads of suitcases inside. I drag off my large green suitcase, skip the long queue in front of the three sparse toilet doors, step out onto the asphalt square at the main exit, and after some searching, find a taxi to take me to the Slow Garden Guesthouse.

The first images of the Himalayas pass like a film across a taxi's window smeared with grease marks and dust, accompanied by a soundtrack of incessant honking. The view shudders to the rhythm of a road full of potholes, flanked on either side by unfinished sidewalks, heaps of stones, and leftover construction debris.Behind them rises a strip of houses and shops built from grey-brown cement blocks. Their fronts are often completely open, with segmented gates that are pulled down at night. Why all this honking from the taxi driver? I observe his weathered face beside me. There is no sign of irritation or frustration.

We approach the center of the city. A mass of pedestrians moves through the streets like a sluggish bloodstream - along the sidewalks and right through the middle of the road. Cows, donkeys, and dogs trudge resignedly along in this procession of everyday life. The crowd moves organically, parting for the honking taxi like a murky Red Sea before an ordinary Moses.

What do the animals eat in this desert of cement and asphalt? Cardboard and plastic, I am told time and again. A single blade of grass is a feast. After a few days in Leh, I begin to recognize certain animals as I wander the streets - the leather-colored dog with the black muzzle, the cow with a white patch on her chest that lies down each noon beside a car at a construction site, the five donkeys that seek out a terrace where they can huddle together for the night. I greet them and sometimes try to touch them with my fingertips. Together we wander, lost in thought, along this path of life - unknowing, moving toward a destination we dream of but cannot conceive.

They tell me that the cows are fed a little in winter, because they give milk. The bulls, dogs, and donkeys must fend for themselves. They often die in the winter ice, somewhere beneath a canopy or against a garden wall, while the mountain peaks that rise above the city stand as silent and unyielding witnesses to the end of their inglorious existence.

During the past four days, it has rained as much as it usually does in several years. The mud bricks used for building here cannot withstand it. Left and right, walls have partially collapsed; roads are impassable because of fallen bridges. Here and there I see gaping holes in walls, ...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org.

It began with a lie.

In 2001, the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) published a paper declaring that the antidepressant paroxetine (Paxil) was "generally well tolerated and effective" for adolescent depression.

That conclusion was false.

The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), knew from its own data that the drug failed to outperform placebo and carried a serious risk of suicidal behaviour.

Instead of telling the truth, GSK hired a public-relations firm to ghostwrite the paper, enlisted academic co-authors who never saw the raw data, and used the publication to promote Paxil to doctors treating children.

It became known as Study 329 - one of the most infamous cases of scientific fraud in modern psychiatry.

For years, the fraud stood unchallenged. Regulators issued warnings but never forced a correction. The journal refused to retract. The paper remained in circulation - cited hundreds of times, shaping prescribing habits, and legitimising a lie that cost young lives.

Now, more than 20 years later, one lawyer is taking on the medical establishment to hold the journal and its publisher accountable.

His lawsuit alleges they knowingly sold and profited from a false and deceptive scientific article - one that continues to mislead the public and endanger adolescent mental health.

Could Study 329 finally be retracted from the scientific record?

How GSK Rewrote Failure as Success

By the late 1990s, GSK had completed clinical trials testing Paxil in adolescents. The first, known as Study 329, failed to show any meaningful benefit.

In one internal email, company executives admitted the results were "commercially unacceptable" and that disclosure of the poor efficacy data would "undermine the profile of paroxetine."

Rather than accept the failure, GSK set out to disguise it as success. The company hired a PR firm to draft a manuscript that cherry-picked favourable outcomes and buried unfavourable data.

None of the drug's primary endpoints were met, but by selectively analysing secondary measures, the authors claimed Paxil was "effective and well tolerated."

The paper listed 22 authors - two were GSK employees, and most had never reviewed the raw data or disclosed their financial ties to the company.

Once the article appeared in print, GSK's sales force distributed it to thousands of doctors as "proof" that Paxil worked in teens.

Within three years, the company made more than a billion dollars from what it called the "adolescent market."

Fraud and Fatalities

The deception didn't stay hidden.

Regulators in the UK, Europe, and the US soon uncovered the safety concerns and warned that Paxil increased suicidal thoughts and offered no therapeutic benefit for young people.

In 2003, the FDA concluded: "There is currently no evidence that Paxil is effective in children and adolescents with major depressive disorder."

Nearly a decade later, in 2012, GSK pleaded guilty and paid a $3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil charges brought by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ explicitly cited Study 329 as evidence of fraud in promoting Paxil for adolescents, marking one of the largest healthcare fraud settlements at the time.

But here's the kicker.

JAACAP refused to retract the article - protecting its reputation, and its profits, while the fraudulent science stayed in print.

A Lawyer Takes on the Publishers

In September 2025, attorney George W. Murgatroyd III filed a complaint in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia under the 'DC Consumer Protection Procedures Act.'

The filing seeks to "redress the knowing publication, distribution, and continued sale of a false and deceptive medical article that has misled physicians, consumers, and institutions for over two decades and continues to endanger adolescent mental health and safety as well as public trust in scientific integrity."

The 2001 article - Efficacy of Paroxetine in the Treatment o...

By Thomas Harrington at Brownstone dot org.

The human capacity to sculpt the terrain that surrounds us is enormous but not without limits. While a farmer or a gardener may replace or modify the geographical and botanical features on a given piece of land, it is only quite rarely, and with the help of an enormous expenditure of very scarce resources, that he can, say, turn a sizable hill or mountain into a lake or a plain.

The work of tilling the land and making of culture are, in English and in numerous other languages, are linked on the etymological level, with both being derived from the Latin verb colere whose varied meanings include "to cultivate," "to care for," "to tend to," "to honor," "to revere," "to worship," or "to embellish."

And while it would be absurd to suggest that an implied element of one derivation of a given verb in some way conditions the semantic content of another, I can't help but wonder whether the limitations implicit in the act of cultivating the land as described above might nonetheless help us better understand those that relate to the making of culture.

In other words, could it be that there are "hard" cognitive structures and/or yearnings within us that might delimit the extent to which we can actually generate the wholesale ruptures with the past ways of being and thinking?

For example, it is quite common for historians to speak of the 19 century as the Age of Nationalism, which is to say, the time when the nation-state established itself as the normative form of social organization in Europe and much of the rest of the world.

And most of them, being secular people themselves, have sought to explain this "rise of the nation" in secular ways, which is to say in terms of grand political theories, sweeping economic transformations, the writings of intellectuals, and the actions of powerful politicians and generals.

However, a smaller number of scholars, observing the great and often bloody passions which the nation-state has evoked among the masses, and that its rise largely coincided with the first great decline in religious practice in most Western countries, have suggested that it might be more accurate to portray the nation as merely a new, secularly-inflected receptacle for timeless yearnings - such as a desire for social unity and an engagement with the transcendent - that were previously "serviced" by organized religion.

A small number from this latter group, such as Ninian Smart and David Kertzer, have gone on to analyze the myriad cultural practices deployed in the name of nationalism in light of traditional Western ritual, sacramental, and liturgical processes. Their work makes for fascinating reading.

Smart, for example, outlines several of the ways in which national movements partake of patterns common to religions. The first is to "establish the mark" which separates the believers from the non-believers. The second is to engage in performative rituals that celebrate the mark in the name of a set of spiritually "charged" materials (e.g. ancestors, war heroes, great scholars, or simply the "sacred" earth that provides sustenance to the community), rituals designed to lift the citizen from the humdrum of his everyday existence and into a relationship with forces that transcend his standard, lifespan-delimited, sense of space and time.

He also noted how the solemn celebration of the spilling of citizen blood in defense of the "marked" national terrain is customarily portrayed in this context as a sacramental act that greatly heightens the sacred "charge" within the collective while also cleansing it of some of its less desirable attributes or habits.

The end goal of these rituals, he argues, is to evoke a sense of psychic subordination in the common citizen, a lowering of the self that Smart compares to the way we - or at least those of us born before 1990 or so - were acculturated to abandon our customary modes of comportment when entering a church or another space identified as being...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org.

When delegates gather in Geneva on November 17 for the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), few will ask the obvious question: who pays for the room where it happens?

The FCTC is the world's only binding treaty on tobacco control. It now shapes national law far beyond its original remit, guiding taxation, packaging, advertising, and - indirectly - the regulation of new nicotine products. Yet the decisions that ripple out from Geneva are made within an ecosystem financed not by member-state dues but by a tight web of foundations, governments, and advocacy groups whose interests align with one another - and with parts of the pharmaceutical industry.

The Philanthropic Powerhouses

Since 2007, Bloomberg Philanthropies has poured more than $1.6 billion into global tobacco control. Through its Bloomberg Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, it funds Vital Strategies, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (CTFK), The Union, and the University of Bath's Tobacco Control Research Group. These organizations run the STOP consortium, a mainstay of FCTC side events and briefings.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation plays a complementary role, notably bankrolling the Knowledge Hub on Tobacco Taxation at the University of Cape Town, co-funded by Cancer Research UK. And donor governments - particularly the UK, Norway, Australia, and the European Commission - finance the FCTC 2030 program, which underwrites participation by poorer countries.

Between them, these actors pay for the travel grants, research networks, and technical papers that shape what becomes official orthodoxy. Their combined effect is to make global tobacco policy a donor-driven enterprise rather than a genuinely multilateral one.

The Quiet Pharmaceutical Presence

Article 5.3 of the FCTC excludes tobacco-industry involvement, but it says nothing about pharmaceutical companies. That leaves the door ajar for firms whose products - nicotine-replacement therapies, prescription cessation drugs - benefit directly from restrictive tobacco and vaping policy.

The connection is not theoretical. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, makers of Chantix and Nicorette, sponsored major WHO-endorsed conferences such as the 2006 and 2009 World Conferences on Tobacco or Health. Professional societies tied to the WHO, including the European Respiratory Society, routinely accept pharmaceutical sponsorship for congresses and fellowships while collaborating on cessation guidelines. The International Pharmaceutical Federation, an observer accredited to the FCTC, promotes pharmacist-led cessation within COP sessions.

Meanwhile, commercial NRT brands sustain visibility through sports and "quit-smoking" campaigns that echo WHO messaging. Each new guideline or subsidy for cessation pharmacotherapy expands its potential market. It is a tidy symmetry: what the FCTC defines as a public-health obligation also functions as product promotion for the companies supplying the sanctioned cure.

The Absent (and Excluded) Industry

By contrast, tobacco and vaping manufacturers are nowhere near the COP's official agenda. The Secretariat's donor lists include no industry money; Article 5.3 is interpreted to mean zero contact. When firms seek a hearing, they do so outside the tent - through events like the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum or the "counter-conferences" that coincided with COP10 in Panama. Delegates are advised to stay away.

Whatever one's view of the industry, this asymmetry matters. It ensures that only one side of the nicotine-policy spectrum has institutional access, and that side is heavily financed by donors and industries whose interests are presented as moral rather than commercial.

The Bootleggers, the Baptists - and Their Modern Merger

The economist Bruce Yandle first coined the phrase "Bootleggers and Baptists" in 1983 to describe how moral campaigners and profit-seekers can support the same...