कल्याणानन्दनाथ

सदाशिवसमारम्भां शङ्कराचार्यमध्यमाम्। अस्मदाचार्य पर्यन्तां वन्दे गुरु परम्पराम्॥

[कल्याणानन्दनाथ @labbykittu]

Some threads:

[Handre @Handre]

Every major famine of the 20th century happened under government control of food supply. The Soviet Holodomor (1932-33): 3.5-7 million dead in Ukraine while Stalin exported grain. The Great Leap Forward (1959-61): 15-55 million dead while Mao's cadres seized harvests and falsified production records. Ethiopia 1983-85: the Derg regime used food as a weapon against Tigray and Eritrea while Western aid money subsidized the military. Bengal 1943: Churchill carries blame, yes, but wartime price controls and export requisitions crushed the local market's ability to signal scarcity.

Free market economists have documented this pattern for decades. Amartya Sen (not an Austrian, which makes this more interesting) laid it out in 1981: no famine has ever occurred in a functioning democracy with a free press and market prices. Prices communicate scarcity. When you suppress prices, you suppress the signal. Farmers stop producing, traders stop moving goods, and by the time bureaucrats notice the spreadsheets are wrong, people are already starving.

Every time you hear someone say food is "too important to leave to markets," ask them to name a counterexample. A single one. Because the 20th century ran the experiment at scale, with hundreds of millions of people as the test subjects, and the results came back the same way every time.

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

Dear socialist friend,

Nothing is stopping you.

If collective ownership works so much better, you can prove it by next Tuesday. Pool your savings with your comrades. Elect a planning committee. Run a bakery, a farm, a repair shop – shared ownership, equal pay, decisions by vote. All of it is fully legal, today, everywhere in the West. No revolution needed.

And yet.

You want the workers to seize the factories – but you won’t open a food truck with three people from your group chat. You demand collective housing – but you won’t sign a joint lease with people who agree with you about everything.

People have tried voluntary socialism for two hundred years. The communes keep dissolving – the members simply walk out. The only socialist countries that lasted were the ones that locked the borders.

That’s the whole story. Where leaving is allowed, everyone leaves. Socialism only survives where leaving is banned. The people voted – on foot.

Just do it. Or admit that "collective" was always just a word for other people’s property.

[Ritu #सत्यसाधक @RituRathaur]

ATTN HINDUS: 🚨🚨🚨

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat vomits again ..says jaati and varna are outdated and must be dismantled so Hinduism can adopt a “new system.”

Who gave this senile old man the right to change Hindu dharma? Is he a dharma guru? Has he done sadhana or serious adhyayan of the scriptures?

Why does this Sanghi want us to abandon pride in our jaati? Jaati is not a slur. It is DNA, ancestry, lineage the memory of those who died for dharma and desh. It is our identity.

Why does he want us to erase ourselves? Who is this dhurt?

And why is the head of a chandachor organisation repeating the old missionary line?
Christian missionaries attacked jaati and varna because they saw them as the greatest obstacle to conversion.

👉Is the RSS doing Vatican’s work quietly?

This is the same man who told Hindus to forget their Devi-Devtas, who declared that “RSS has not taken a contract to protect Hindus,” and who wants Hindu daughters traded away in inter-caste marriages yet still claims the right to lecture Hindu society.

If Hindus do not defang these Sanghis and remove them from power, Hindu society itself will pay the price.

RSS mukt Bharat is not optional. It is necessary.

[Crystal Clear @Crystal_x_Clear]

WHY MODI GOVT IS IN THE LINE OF FIRE IN THE RESERVATION DISCOURSE?🖋️

[Must Read Post]

Unlike any other party, there has been two groups within BJP on the issue of reservation. One who sides with the General category’s view of restricting reservation, while the other group represents the OBC view of enlarging it.

To make my point clear I will take you to the year 2006 when under UPA govt OBC reservation was given for the first time in central educational institutions.

There was internal debate in BJP on this issue and there were two groups.

Arun Shourie, Sushma Swaraj, V K Malhotra, Kalraj Mishra, B C Khanduri, SS Ahluwalia, Kharabela Swain - this was one group that opposed such reservation.

Then there was another group that supported UPA’s amendment to grant OBC reservation in central edu institutes, they were - Gopinath Munde, Bandaru Dattatrey, Sushil Modi and Narendra Modi.

These two warring factions finally made a compromise under which BJP will support this reservation with vague proviso that creamy layer be excluded and merit shall not be squeezed.

This was then in 2006 and not much was done by Congress party later.

But with Modi govt, scope of reservation for OBCs was expanded to the hilt. Though 2006 amendment had given OBC reservation in central educational institutes but many institutes and exams were kept out of its ambit and no reservation given. But under Modi, it all changed.

1. Most important was All India Quota (AIQ) - UG, PG, Dental - in all OBC reaervation was given in 202-21.

2. Jawahar Navoday Schools - OBC reservation extended for the first time in 2020-21.

3. Sainik School - OBC reservation extended for the first time in 2021-22.

4. Law Schools were not left untouched - OBC reservation implemented in National Law School Bangalore & National Law Univ Delhi in 2021.

5. In 2019 Modi govt brought in Central Educational Institute (Reservation in Teachers Cadre) Act 2019 to change older department-wise roster system that would help reserved candidates.

6. Modi govt gave constitutional status to National Commission for Backward Classes NCBC in 2018.

7. Modi govt did not pursue Rohini Commission recommendation for sub-categorision of OBC, under the pressure of OBC demands.

8. Modi govt conceded to the demand to conduct caste census under pressure from OBC politics.

9. Modi govt gave 10% quota to EWS above 50% cap which may prove to be an excuse to implement future OBC demands to breach 50% cap.

10. Modi govt bundled SC, ST, OBC together against General Category in UGC regulation 2026.

So, you can rightly gauge that the balance within BJP has been broken and it has skewed towards OBC and thats why Modi govt is in the line of fire of its supporters.

No other govt would have dared to extend and increase the scope of reservation the way BJP did during 2018-26. More so, it expanded the reservation without going for sub-categorisation. Thats doubling down.

[Bhavika Kapoor @bhavi_kap]

Subhash Chandra took loans from various banks amounting to ₹22,006 crore. He didn't repay them and willfully defaulted on all the loans. He took the matter to the NCLT, and do you know how much he was asked to pay to settle the ₹22,000-crore default?

Just ₹6.5 crore.

Can you get away with that for your loans? Needless to mention Subhash Chandra was Rajya sabha M.P. from BJP.

https://t.co/FXqbfHalre

[Handre @Handre]

Paul Krugman wrote in 1998 that the internet's economic impact would be no greater than the fax machine's. You read that correctly. The man who won a Nobel Prize in 2008 and spent the following decade lecturing you about stimulus spending predicted that a technology reshaping every sector of human commerce was basically a novelty.

This matters beyond the embarrassment.

Krugman's error flowed directly from his methodology. Central planners and their academic allies consistently underestimate decentralized, emergent systems because those systems don't fit their models. Prices aggregate dispersed knowledge that no single mind holds. The internet turbo-charged exactly that process. By 2026, e-commerce alone exceeds $6 trillion annually in global sales. Amazon, founded in 1994, turned Krugman's fax-machine comparison into a punchline worth roughly $2 trillion in market capitalization.

Voluntary exchange, entrepreneurial discovery, and the profit-loss system direct resources toward genuine human needs.

Krugman kept writing columns. He championed the 2009 stimulus, called for even more spending, and watched inflation hit 9.1% in June 2022 while insisting it was transitory, while it very clearly wasn't. The internet prediction wasn't a one-off stumble. It revealed a man who trusts institutions over markets, models over reality, and his own prestige over the evidence.

[Shadmehr @oceanswon]

Una delle migliori critiche allo stato assistenziale:

"Di recente ho chiesto alla bambina del mio amico cosa volesse fare da grande.

Lei ha detto che voleva diventare il presidente degli Stati Uniti.

Entrambi i suoi genitori, democratici liberali, erano lì in piedi, così le ho chiesto: «Se tu fossi presidente, quale sarebbe la prima cosa che faresti?»

Bene, lei rispose: «Darei cibo e case a tutti i senzatetto». I suoi genitori raggianti.

«Wow, che obiettivo meritevole», le dissi, «ma non devi aspettare di essere presidente per farlo.

Vedi, puoi venire a casa mia proprio adesso, tagliare l’erba, estirpare le erbacce e spazzare il mio vialetto, e ti pagherò cinquanta dollari.

Poi ti porterò al negozio di alimentari dove quel senzatetto passa il tempo, e tu puoi dargli i cinquanta dollari da usare per il cibo e una casa nuova».

Lei ci ha riflettuto sopra per qualche secondo, poi mi ha guardato dritto negli occhi e ha chiesto: «Perché il senzatetto non viene qui a fare il lavoro, e tu puoi semplicemente pagargli i cinquanta dollari?»

Ho detto: «Benvenuto nel Partito Repubblicano».

I suoi genitori ancora non mi parlano." ☠️💀

Ronald Reagan

#socialism #communism

[क्षत्रिय इतिहास RAJPUT HISTORY @rajputr_itihas]

ये दिया है तुम्हारी बीजेपी ने

1989 में बीजेपी के घोषणा पत्र में ओबीसी आरक्षण था, फिर वीपी सिंह के साथ मिलकर पहली बार देश में ओबीसी आरक्षण लाई।

​2019 के पहले नीट (NEET) के केंद्रीय कोटा में ओबीसी आरक्षण नहीं था, जो पहली बार बीजेपी ने दिया।

​आईआईटी (IIT) और आईआईएम (IIM) की फैकल्टी में कोई आरक्षण नहीं था, जिसे 2019 में बीजेपी ने एक्ट बनाकर दिया।

​ओडिशा के मेडिकल क्षेत्र में बीजेपी के आने के पहले सिर्फ 30% आरक्षण था, जिसे बीजेपी ने बढ़ाकर 50% किया।

​2015 में सत्ता संभालते ही मोदी ने एससी-एसटी (SC-ST) एक्ट में 47 नए कड़े (ड्रैकोनियन) प्रावधान जोड़े।

​भारत के किसी भी कानून में जातिगत भेदभाव के दायरे में ओबीसी नहीं आते थे, लेकिन बीजेपी ने यूजीसी (UGC) एक्ट में ओबीसी को जोड़ा। चूंकि 90% मुसलमान भी ओबीसी में आते हैं, इसलिए अब मुसलमानों को भी हमारे ऊपर एक्ट लगवाने का अधिकार यूजीसी के जरिए दे दिया गया।

​बीजेपी 'हिंदू-हिंदू' करती है, लेकिन 1989 में जब मंडल कमीशन आया तो इसी बीजेपी ने मुसलमानों को भी ओबीसी आरक्षण दिया। आज भी पूरे देश में बीजेपी मुसलमानों को ओबीसी आरक्षण दे रही है।।

बीजेपी कभी भी मुस्लिम को ओबीसी से नहीं निकालेगी यह सिर्फ सामान्य वर्ग को हिंदुत्व के नाम पर उल्लू बनाकर उनका वोट लेगी

[STUNNER @Cr7Godbrand]

Let me explain women’s biology to you that your MOTHER wouldn’t teach you.

Women cannot survive by strength. So nature gave them a different survival trick: fit in or die.

They don't have a truth filter. They have a SAFETY filter.

A man hears an idea and thinks: "Is this true or false?"
A woman hears an idea and thinks: "If I say this, will other women still like me? Will I be cancelled? Will I be alone?"

Belonging matters to women more than truth. Always.

That's why mass media owns them.

You put the same slogan on every TV, every TikTok, every Instagram ad - "girlboss," "finding myself," divorce glow "you don't need a family," "freeze your eggs"

and her brain thinks it's REAL because every woman is saying it.

You don't need to convince her with evidence. You just need to make her think EVERYONE ELSE already believes it.

She will swallow any lie if it makes her feel included.

Tell her being a single mother at 35 with a corporate job is empowerment and she'll clap, even while she's on antidepressants and crying herself to sleep.

Tell her being a wife at 20 with 3 kids is oppression, and she'll laugh at her own mother.

The media doesn't win by being right. It wins by making her scared to be LEFT OUT!!!

Real intellectual independence requires the ability to stand alone and defend yourself when the whole crowd turns on you. That kind of courage is built on physical strength. Only a mind that knows it can survive outside the herd dares to ask:

"Is it true - even if everyone says it's false?"

Only men can do that.

_"It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies..."_
*- George Orwell, 1984*

[Handre @Handre]

Rome handed out free grain to 40,000 citizens in 73 BC. By 46 BC, Julius Caesar found 320,000 people lining up for their monthly ration. That eight-fold expansion happened in under three decades, and it shows you how welfare states actually grow.

No Roman senator stood up and announced a plan to addict a third of the city to government bread. It happened incrementally, through political competition. Each magistrate who wanted votes expanded eligibility. Each expansion normalized the next one. The citizen who once considered the dole shameful eventually expected it, then demanded it, then organized politically to protect it.

This is the core mechanism free market thinkers have identified across every era: once you create a transfer program, you create a constituency for that program. Recipients vote. Administrators build careers. Grain merchants who supply the state develop a stake in keeping the contracts flowing. The political economy locks in.

Caesar, to his credit, actually cut the rolls back to 150,000 through verification audits. It was one of his more economically coherent moves, though the Senate still murdered him. His successors quietly let the numbers climb again.

What did the dole require? Massive grain imports from Sicily, Sardinia, and Egypt, organized through state logistics at state expense, funded by taxation and conquest. When the conquest revenue dried up, the obligation remained. Rome had written a check against future military success, and future military success eventually failed to arrive.

The lesson is not complicated. Distribute a benefit and you distribute dependency. Distribute dependency and you distribute political power to whoever controls the distribution. The grain dole didn't weaken Rome overnight, but it made every subsequent reform politically impossible.

[Dr. Neha Das @neha_laldas]

ABSOLUTELY WRONG!!

1. Reservation in jobs/education are not mandatory Constitutional provisions.
Supreme Court has already clarified that neither Reservation is a Constitutional right, nor it's the duty of the state to provide it.
Reservations are mere enabling provisions. They aren't "Constitutional/Fundamental rights".

2. Reservation in politics (articles 330-332) are only mandatory constitutional provisions and they had a duration of 10 yrs (article 334), which has been amended 7 times to increase duration from 10 to 80 yrs.

3. Article 16-1 (equality of opportunity for all citizens) & 15-1 (no discrimination based on caste, religion, sex, place etc) ARE the fundamental rights!

4. Articles 15-4 & 16-4 are EXCEPTION clauses, to articles 15-1 & 16-1 respectively.
Without these exception clauses, any special provision, for any community, couldn't be provided! So these clauses had to be added under these articles.
That doesn't make them mandatory provisions!
Even Dr. Ambedkar clearly said that reservation is an "exception".

5. Language of articles 15-4 & 16-4 clearly show that govts are permitted or enabled (if they want) to make any "special provision" for specific communities, one of the special provisions could be reservation!
So reservation in job/education is indeed a policy issue!

6. We are raising voice against reservation misuse, FROM LAST 5 YEARS.
-We are giving solutions (keeping 50% limit sacrosanct, creamy layer in SC/ST, subcategorization, review of list/criteria, removal of over represented castes, economic criteria consideration, removal of Muslims/Christians/Buddhists from reservation), FROM LAST 5 YEARS.

-We are debunking fake narratives, fighting against demonization of GC, FROM LAST 5 YEARS.

-We have targeted every political party (Congress, RJD, SP, BSP, DMK, TMC), FROM LAST 5 YEARS.

So just because you can't see something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist!
And just because you believe something, doesn't mean it's true!

[Mr. Pool @looP_rM_3117211]

For 45 years, the world called her a living saint.

Mother Teresa. Nobel Peace Prize. Blessed by three Popes. Worshipped by billions.

She was running the largest child trafficking pipeline in history.

And the Vatican knew.

THE CALCUTTA OPERATION

Between 1962 and 1997, Teresa's Missionaries of Charity processed over 3 million orphans through 517 homes in 100+ countries.

Exposed records show:

* Babies taken from mothers who were told their children died at birth.
* Adoption papers signed by nuns with no government oversight.
* Children shipped to wealthy families in Europe and America for $15,000 to $50,000 each.
* Estimated annual revenue: $50 to $100 million. Tax-free. Unaudited. Untraceable.

She didn't save those children. She sold them.

THE CONNECTIONS THEY HID

* Baby Doc Duvalier — Haitian dictator. Gave Teresa access to orphanages across Haiti. The same Haiti that feeds children into the Epstein pipeline today.
* Charles Keating — Criminal banker. Donated $1.25 million to Teresa. She wrote a personal letter to the judge begging for his release. The money came from stolen savings of 23,000 Americans.
* Robert Maxwell — Father of Ghislaine Maxwell. Media mogul. Connected to Teresa through Vatican fundraising channels. His daughter became Epstein's chief recruiter.
* Hillary Clinton — Co-founded a toddler home in Washington DC with Teresa in 1995. The home was quietly shut down in 2012. No records of where the children went.

THE VATICAN VAULT

In 2017, Indian police raided a Missionaries of Charity home in Ranchi.

They found nuns selling babies for $1,800 each.

The Vatican's response? Silence.

Pope Francis fast-tracked Teresa's sainthood in 2016 — one year BEFORE the raid. They canonized her to make her untouchable.

The Vatican Bank processed $8 billion in anonymous donations through Teresa's network between 1970 and 1997. No receipts. No records. No questions.

Where did the money go?

Where did the children go?

Same answer. Same network. Same people.

THE EPSTEIN CONNECTION

Haiti → Dominican Republic → Virgin Islands.

This was Epstein's route. But it was Teresa's route 30 years earlier.

The orphanages she built became the supply chain for what came after.

Brunel used her agencies. Maxwell used her contacts. Epstein used her infrastructure.

She built the machine. They just turned it on.

The Nobel Prize. The sainthood. The hospitals named after her.

All of it — a cover for the greatest child trafficking operation ever constructed.

3 million orphans. Zero accountability. One "saint."

The truth doesn't care about your feelings.

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

SHOCK IN BRUSSELS: EUROPE JUST VOTED FOR MASS DEPORTATIONS – AND IT’S HUGE!

They thought Europe would surrender… but the tide has turned dramatically!

In a stunning landslide, the European Parliament has approved sweeping new deportation rules with a vote of 389 to 206.

Center-right parties teamed up with conservatives and patriots to ram through the toughest deportation framework in over a century: longer detentions, stricter returns, offshore deportation hubs, and lifetime bans for security risks.

Germany is gearing up to repatriate almost 800,000 Syrians. Return centers in Africa are already in negotiation.

The politicians who once called this “extremism” are now doing what the people have begged for years.
The great globalist experiment is collapsing before our eyes.

Europe is taking back control — and the shift feels permanent.

This is history in the making. A real turning point for the continent and the entire West

[M. Nageswara Rao IPS (Retired) @MNageswarRaoIPS]

The Constitution of India contains no inherently Christian elements. Instead, it possesses a blatantly anti-Hindu character, exemplified by the following:

1. Denial of Equal Rights: Articles 25 to 30 deny #EqualRightsForHindus on par with Muslims and Christians.

2. Civilisational Vandalisation: Schedules 5 and 6 vandalise Hindu civilisation.

3. Societal Vivisection: Caste-based reservations vivisect Hindu society.

4. Knowledge Disruption: Article 28 disrupts Hindu civilisation by banning the teaching of its civilisational knowledge and texts in public education.

5. Civilisational Inversion: Individual rights are given primacy over duties, putting the cart before the horse and inverting Hindu civilisational values.

6. Social Atomisation: The state directly enforces individual allegiance, de-legitimising non-state institutions like family and community. This constitutional intolerance destroys the family and social fabric, leading to the atomisation of Hindu society.

Therefore, saying that the Constitution of India is Christian is a serious category error.

[Dexter (Financial Oligarch) @dexterfinbar]

~ $204m for drones that were shot down by the Houthis, for a simple lease. I said this before 2023 in a different context and I'll say it again, Modi's stupidity and the ineptness of his own ministers will be his downfall.

[Handre @Handre]

Here are the most important lessons from the Austrian School of Economics in one post:

The entire edifice of modern economic policy rests on a lie: that a group of planners can manage an economy better than the people living in it.

Start with value. Nothing has value in the abstract. You value a glass of water differently when you're drowning than when you're dying of thirst in the Sahara. Value lives inside individual human minds, not in objects, not in labor hours, not in government decree. Every price control, every subsidy, every centrally administered wage floor ignores this and produces predictable wreckage.

Money didn't come from a government committee. It emerged spontaneously from markets, as traders across centuries converged on commodities like gold and silver because they held value across time and space. Governments didn't invent money; they hijacked it.

Inflation is the expansion of the money supply itself. Rising prices are the symptom. When the Federal Reserve expanded its balance sheet from roughly $4 trillion to nearly $9 trillion between 2020 and 2022, the price explosion that followed wasn't a mystery. It was the direct, mechanical consequence of that expansion. The Fed caused it.

Prices do something irreplaceable: they transmit information across millions of actors simultaneously. When lumber prices spiked in 2021, builders across North America cut waste and sought alternatives without a single bureaucrat issuing a memo. No central planner can replicate that signal, because no central planner possesses the knowledge embedded in it.

This connects directly to the knowledge problem. You know your neighborhood, your suppliers, your customers, your own tolerance for risk. Your competitor knows his. A bureaucrat in Washington knows none of it. The knowledge required to run an economy is dispersed, personal, and contextual. It cannot be extracted, aggregated, and fed into a planning model. The Soviet Union ran that experiment for seventy years and produced chronic shortages of basic goods.

Bad businesses must be allowed to fail. When they fail, they release labor, capital, and resources to producers who will use them more effectively. When Washington handed General Motors $49.5 billion in 2009 to prevent exactly that process, it kept misallocated capital locked inside a failing structure and punished every competitor who had managed their business responsibly.

Every function government performs, a voluntary market arrangement performs better: faster, cheaper, and responsive to actual human preferences rather than political incentives. Education, roads, security, dispute resolution, all of it. Government agencies face no profit and loss signal, no competition, and no mechanism to reward performance. They optimize for budget preservation and political survival, and the people using the service have no exit option.

The political class and the central banking apparatus that sustains it are the villains. Both benefit directly from the idea that expert management beats voluntary exchange. They will not surrender that idea willingly.

What would you add?

[Ritu #सत्यसाधक @RituRathaur]

Here comes another IT cell chatukar trying to defend & protect Modi and we all know why.

Muslims abuse Hindu deities regularly, yes. And your Modi still keeps increasing scholarships and funds for them. Why?
He is directly responsible for empowering muzzies, have been shouting about it for years.
As for the weaponisation of caste it is entirely thanks to Modi, BJP and RSS that we are now witnessing it at the national level.
It is your Modi who elevated anti-Hindu figures like Ambedkar & the Phules into demi gods.
It is your Modi who spoke of “hisab chukta”.
It is your Modi who made the SC/ST Act draconian.
It is your Modi who brought the UGC bill to settle scores with our children.

Everyone else is simply responding to his neech caste politics.

He is single handedly responsible for these attacks on General caste Hindus by bhimtas.

#Watch this & then go fly a kite.

[Ritu #सत्यसाधक @RituRathaur]

IMPORTANT READ ⬇️

It was in 2018, Modi govt had announced to open 5 minority universities with this FORMULA: ⬇️

minorities (both boys & girls)
SC (boys & girls)
ST (boys & girls)

And where GC and OBC girls could get admission but not their boys 😂

Now Maulaana’s govt has extended the same FORMULA for free coaching in Jamia Milia university funded by central govt

How smartly they created Love Jihad Addas 😂

I had been warning about this govt a filthy intentions since then, but was abused and name called

Now see the consequences ⬇️

[M. Nageswara Rao IPS (Retired) @MNageswarRaoIPS]

Don’t use weasel words to shield the real perpetrator; the blame belongs to 'Christianity,' not 'Euro-America.' Europe belonged to the Greeks and Romans, and America belonged to the Native Americans. It was Christianity that not only occupied Europe and America but also carried out the kinds of actions you mentioned.

The foundational root of this destruction is the theology/ideology of Prophetic Monotheism, the doctrinal framework that birthed the world-conquering intolerant religions of Christianity, Islam, and their secular offshoot, Marxism. Individually and collectively, these three are responsible for the genocide of millions of people, the annihilation of numerous civilisations, and every enduring religious, political, and social problem the world has faced over the past two thousand years. What is worse, their destructive march continues even today, completely unchecked.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

If you had trusted the settled science of the day, here is how it would have gone.

1890s: you dose the baby with Bayer's new cough syrup, the non-addictive alternative to morphine, marketed for children. It was heroin. They named it after the German for heroic.

1900s: you rub calomel teething powder on your infant's gums. It is a mercury compound, and it leaves a generation with pink disease. Swollen, peeling hands and feet, screaming for months, and some of them died.

1910s: you cook in Crisco, launched by a soap and candle company, because cottonseed oil is modern and lard is what your mother used. The process that made it solid produced trans fat, banned outright a century later.

1920s: you drink Radithor, certified radioactive water, on prescription. Eben Byers took fourteen hundred bottles for his vitality. His jaw was removed in pieces and he was buried in a lead coffin.

1930s: a chemist dissolves a new sulfa drug in diethylene glycol, which is antifreeze. It kills 107 people, mostly children, and only then does America give the FDA power to demand safety testing.

1940s: your doctor lights a Camel in the surgery. More doctors smoke them than any other brand, and the advert runs in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which sold him the page.

1950s: DDT is sprayed over your kitchen, your garden and your children at school. The man who found its insecticidal properties has already been given a Nobel Prize.

1960s: your wife takes thalidomide for morning sickness because it is remarkably safe. More than ten thousand children are born with missing and shortened limbs.

1970s: the country puts down the butter and picks up the margarine, on the instruction of the American Heart Association. The fat everybody switched to was banned in 2015 as unsafe at any level.

1980s: the fat comes out of everything and sugar goes back in to make it edible. Obesity begins a climb it has never come off.

1990s: your father is prescribed OxyContin, because fewer than one per cent get addicted. The company later pleads guilty to criminal misbranding, and the overdose count runs into hundreds of thousands.

2000s: you take Vioxx for your knee. It is pulled in 2004, and the FDA's own safety officer estimates tens of thousands of excess heart attacks.

Not one of those was fringe. Every one had a professional body, a literature and a man in a white coat standing behind it.

Nobody who followed that advice was stupid. They were obedient, to the most qualified people available.

Settled is a word about money. It means the questions stopped being funded, so they stopped being asked.

So which of today's instructions will your grandchildren read out in disbelief.

The oil washed in hexane and built into every cell you own. The statin that blocks the pathway making your hormones, to prevent one heart attack per hundred people. The injection where a third of the loss is muscle. The infant formula built out of vegetable oil.

All settled. None of it funded to be otherwise.