Methyl Isocyanate

Nasty Stuff

Capital’s regime of profitability is one of permanent instability and restlessness. Even in the ruling class, no one “rules” without perpetually proving himself, and the CEO who does not increase the rate of profit will be swiftly tossed aside. Nor can anyone rest content with the given, but must constantly try to expand it. Growth is simply equated with survival as a capitalist, for anyone who fails to grow will simply disappear, his assets acquired by another. No matter how much one has, one never really has anything; everything must be proved to exist anew the next day. Hence that well-known trait of the bourgeoisie: no matter how rich they become, they always need to become richer: notice the behavior of Wal-Mart or Microsoft. All of the fabulous “growth” of the last decades has not by one iota reduced the drive to accumulate still more, nor can it ever so long as capital reigns. The sense of having and possessing dominates all others precisely because its reality can never be secured. Strictly speaking, individuals can step off this wheel - make their fortune and retire to raise polo ponies or cabbages, or become an environmental guru. But they cease thereby being personifications of capital; and others immediately step forward to take their role.

Money - the form of capitalist value - abstracts and dissolves all relationships, replacing them with the cash nexus. This sets going the ruthless competitiveness inherent to capital, since if money is the only true bond, then there are no true bonds at all, and universal envy, suspicion, and mistrust reign. The “system works,” for the competition so induced becomes the motor forcing eternal growth as the price of survival. And because money can effortlessly expand even as its material substrate is bound by the laws of nature, the great pools of capital emerging from the ceaseless transactions provide the benchmark of growth, and, as they gather, press yet further for expansion. The pressure of capitalist growth is therefore exponential, that is, it becomes proportional to the total magnitude of the accumulated capital pressing for discharge. —Joel Kovel

BigPharma as a typical capitalist enterprise - a personal view laced with annoyance and disgust

When the COVID shots—now admitted to be genetic treatments and not vaccines—first became available we received an email from a close friend of the family urging us to rush right out and get the life-saving shot, as he and his wife had done. Having followed the COVID situation from early on—and admittedly, my wife and I were both somewhat fearful of being infected—I had been reading several Substack threads that sent strong signals to not rush into anything whatsoever. I had read Luc Montagnier’s early assessment

A Conversation with Perplexity AI

…that the virus was almost certainly a laboratory creation as well as other opinions clearly from outsiders, yet still quite authoritative. And, the whole thing just had a stink of BigMoney and oxidizing sulfur about it. As an expression of my exasperation about people rushing into things, I wrote “Clams and other entities” in hopes that a little sarcasm might urge some caution among those who were seized by irrational fear and a belief that “pharmaceutical companies save lives”. That was the reaction of the friend when I tried to suggest to him that Marcia Angell’s indictment of BigPharma, “The Truth About the Drug Companies” might help him to decide what the COVID situation was all about. No cigar, so I had to write a lament for him

(which of course I did not send to him as he had threatened to “no longer be my friend” if I did not cease and desist from sending him fake news.)

Well, my wife and I did cease and desist from the least idea that the shot would be of benefit to us, even though were were in a “high risk” category (age). VAXSCAM© and Pandemic — The Next Big Thing summed up my views.

Both of these essays rather disappointingly became my top two in terms of reads, thousands for each. Disappointingly, because muckraking is not my strong suit, and what I consider my best work on Substack seems to get more yawns than reads.

As for COVID, we did buy some Ivermectin from a pharmaceutical dealer in Moscow and miraculously the French Customs didn’t detect it. They had been routinely seizing such dangerous substances. And not miraculously, for the success of the remedy had been adequately documented, we both quickly got through our first infection of an early and quite vicious COVID version without even developing a fever. We both did lose sense of smell that only returned slowly over a month or two. For me, that was the worst consequence of the disease, for there was simply no question of enjoying any of my 1990 Bordeaux Grand Cru Classé until I recovered my olfactory acuity. The other regrettable consequence was of course a damaged friendship. I apologize if others had a more difficult time of it, but the warnings—and remedies—were definitely there.

And then for my New Year’s Glad Tidings of 2021, I just had to relay it to the world that

Another more general consequence of all this disgusting nonsense was that it confirmed for me and others the overall nature of BigPharma, and by extension yet another lesson about what our treasured Capitalist System will do when Big Bucks Beckon.

They All Do It

All the above has been just an introduction, straying a bit far afield I will admit, for a little exposé about Corporations and Capitalism, a theme I’ve tried to incite some interest for in this Substack. BigPharma has surely been revealed as a rather amoral player during the Covid abomination, but there is more, much more. Are Corporations The Bad Guy? They most assuredly don’t seem like The Good Guy despite the undeniable role they have long played in generating prosperity. Are their faults correctable? Could we have Corporations that exist first and foremost for the bettering of the Human Condition? Could we have pharmaceutical corporations whose primary undertaking was, indeed, to save lives? I invite you first to view an excellent film from long before COVID, The Corporation. I have taken the liberty to make a copy of the film available here, strictly for non-profit and educational purposes:

The Corporation

Now let us proceed to a rather ugly incident that illustrates from a highly analytical standpoint the same conclusions and questions I have raised about BigPharma, an incident whose analysis will be seen to depict what Corporations do and must do or die. Business interests and most of the public would strongly prefer to classify such incidents as just unfortunate accidents and a mere side-effect of the beneficent miracle of Capitalism. The unfortunate part of it is, in fact, something else entirely. Here is an excerpt from Joel Kovel’s masterful examination of Capitalism, The Enemy of Nature, that shows that what BigPharma has done is par for the course and that—as that famous message to Houston said it, “We have a problem”. A problem that threatens the entire mission.

The following is quite long, so I will have to post it in 2 or 3 installments. But it will be highly worthwhile to progress through this story for it provides the necessary wealth of detail that goes way beyond what a film can cover, to lead to a very high resolution picture of what Capitalism truly is. My beginning story above can be seen as a personal reflection on the matter, while the following being an externally-viewed micro-and macroscopic view of the situation. Read on to find out what methyl isocyanate is. Part 2 follows soon.