BBC Reports Healthy 32 y.o. COVID Vaccine Death, Clearview AI Erases Privacy, The Amazing Minds of Bees
Revealing News Articles
May 2, 2023

Dear friends,

Explore below key excerpts of revealing news articles on a prominent psychologist's death caused by the AstraZeneca vaccine, how Clearview AI erased privacy in the U.S. by scraping 30 billion images from social media and providing law enforcement with access to their database, the controversial use of phone location tracking to recruit high school children to the Georgia Army National Guard, and more.

Read also wonderfully inspiring articles on a book about the amazing minds of bees, a finding that the magnetic mineral magnetite is present in the human brain, evidence that mushrooms can communicate with the equivalent of fifty words, and more. You can also skip to this section now.

Each excerpt is taken verbatim from the major media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails, see this page. The most important sentences are highlighted. And don't miss the "What you can do" section below the summaries. By educating ourselves and spreading the word, we can and will build a brighter future.

With best wishes for a transformed world,
Mark Bailey and Amber Yang, for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

Special note: Switzerland public health guidelines have stopped recommending the COVID-19 vaccine for individuals, including those considered high risk. Read a detailed investigation about how Pfizer gave special funding to groups across the country that lobbied in favor of government policies to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine. Medical doctor and hematologist-oncologist Vinay Prasad explores a new scientific paper that reveals how “long-COVID” symptoms are more accurately associated with psychosocial factors like loneliness and poor physical activity, rather than the COVID infection itself.

Quote of the week: Truth has a power of its own. Art has a power of its own. That age-old lesson – that everything we do matters – is the meaning of the people’s struggle here in the United States and everywhere. A poem can inspire a movement. A pamphlet can spark a revolution. Civil disobedience can arouse people and provoke us to think, when we organize with one another, when we get involved, when we stand up and speak out together, we can create a power no government can suppress. We live in a beautiful country. But people who have no respect for human life, freedom, or justice have taken it over. It is now up to all of us to take it back. ~~ Howard Zinn

Video of the week: Watch an excellent 6-minute summary that explains why foreign aid to other countries creates more inequality and power imbalances between the rich and the poor.

Psychologist's death due to AstraZeneca Covid vaccine reaction
April 19, 2023, BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-65321937

The death of a psychologist after his Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab was due to "unintended complications of the vaccine", an inquest has ruled. Stephen Wright, an NHS employee in south-east London, died 10 days after his first dose in January 2021, senior coroner Andrew Harris found. Dr Wright, 32, suffered a blood clot to the brain after receiving the vaccine. His wife Charlotte has been trying to get the "natural causes" wording on her husband's death certificate changed. She is pursuing legal action against the pharmaceutical company. At London Inner South Coroner's Court, Mr Harris described it as a "very unusual and deeply tragic case". Dr Wright suffered from a combination of a brainstem infarction, bleed on the brain and "vaccine-induced thrombosis", the inquest heard. His condition rapidly worsened, but the nature of the bleed meant he was unfit for surgery. After the inquest, Mrs Wright ... said: "It was made clear that Stephen was [previously] fit and healthy and that his death was by vaccination of AstraZeneca. For us, it allows us to be able to continue our litigation against AstraZeneca. This is the written proof." Speaking about the coroner's ruling, mother-of-two Charlotte Wright said: "It provides relief but it doesn't provide closure. I think we're only going to get that when we have an answer from AstraZeneca and the government." From May 2021, the AZ jab was no longer offered to adults under 40 after it became clear the vaccine carried [a] risk of blood clots which could be fatal.

Note: Dr. Wright's death is one of many tragedies related to the COVID-19 vaccine, as revealed in a powerful documentary that follows the lives of people significantly harmed by the vaccine, yet were discredited and abandoned by the medical system and our media systems. A recent analysis report estimates that in 2022 alone, out of 148 million people, the mass COVID-19 inoculations injured 26.6 million, disabled 1.36 million, and caused 300,000 excess deaths, with an estimated economic cost of nearly $150 billion. For more along these lines, explore revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

Clearview AI scraped 30 billion images from Facebook and other social media sites and gave them to cops: it puts everyone into a 'perpetual police line-up'
April 2, 2023, Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/clearview-scraped-30-billion-images-facebook...

A controversial facial recognition database, used by police departments across the nation, was built in part with 30 billion photos the company scraped from Facebook and other social media users without their permission. The company, Clearview AI, boasts of its potential for identifying rioters at the January 6 attack on the Capitol, saving children being abused or exploited, and helping exonerate people wrongfully accused of crimes. But critics point to privacy violations and wrongful arrests fueled by faulty identifications made by facial recognition, including cases in Detroit and New Orleans, as cause for concern over the technology. Once a photo has been scraped by Clearview AI, biometric face prints are made and cross-referenced in the database, tying the individuals to their social media profiles and other identifying information forever — and people in the photos have little recourse to try to remove themselves. CNN reported Clearview AI last year claimed the company's clients include "more than 3,100 US agencies, including the FBI and Department of Homeland Security." BBC reported Miami Police acknowledged they use the technology for all kinds of crimes, from shoplifting to murder. The risk of being included in what is functionally a "perpetual police line-up" applies to everyone, including people who think they have nothing to hide, [said] Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst for the international non-profit digital rights group Electronic Frontier Fund.

Note: Read about the rising concerns of the use of Clearview AI technology in Ukraine, with claims to help reunite families, identify Russian operatives, and fight misinformation. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Georgia National Guard Will Use Phone Location Tracking to Recruit High School Children
April 16, 2023, The Intercept
https://theintercept.com/2023/04/16/georgia-army-national-guard-location...

The Georgia Army National Guard plans to combine two deeply controversial practices — military recruiting at schools and location-based phone surveillance — to persuade teens to enlist, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept. The federal contract materials outline plans by the Georgia Army National Guard to geofence 67 different public high schools throughout the state, targeting phones found within a one-mile boundary of their campuses with recruiting advertisements “with the intent of generating qualified leads of potential applicants for enlistment while also raising awareness of the Georgia Army National Guard.” Geofencing refers generally to the practice of drawing a virtual border around a real-world area. The ad campaign will make use of a variety of surveillance advertising techniques, including capturing the unique device IDs of student phones, tracking pixels, and IP address tracking. It will also plaster recruiting solicitations across Instagram, Snapchat, streaming television, and music apps. The campaign plans not only call for broadcasting recruitment ads to kids at school, but also for pro-Guard ads to follow these students around as they continue using the internet and other apps, a practice known as retargeting. While the state’s plan specifies targeting only high school juniors and seniors ages 17 and above, demographic ad targeting is known to be error prone, and experts told The Intercept it’s possible the recruiting messages could reach the phones of younger children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and the disappearance of privacy from reliable major media sources.

Johns Hopkins study shows lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 death rate by .2%
February 2, 2022, Fox News
https://www.foxnews.com/us/lockdowns-reduced-covid-19-mortality-by-2...

Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by .2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. "While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument." The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen's Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths. "We find little to no evidence that mandated lockdowns in Europe and the United States had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality rates," the researchers wrote. The researchers also examined shelter-in-place orders, finding that they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 2.9%. Studies that looked at only shelter-in-place orders found they reduced COVID-19 mortality by 5.1%, but studies that looked at shelter-in-place orders along with other lockdown measures found that shelter-in-place orders actually increased COVID-19 mortality by 2.8%. The researchers concluded that limiting gatherings may have actually increased COVID-19 mortality. 

Note: Why did other major media platforms overlook this vitally important news? You can find this critical study on the Johns Hopkins University website at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19
January 31, 2022, Washington Times
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-had-little-or-no...

Lockdowns in the U.S. and Europe had little or no impact in reducing deaths from COVID-19, according to a new analysis by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The lockdowns during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 reduced COVID-19 mortality by about 0.2%, said the broad review of multiple scientific studies. “We find no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality,” the researchers wrote. But the research paper said lockdowns did have “devastating effects” on the economy and contributed to numerous social ills. “They have contributed to reducing economic activity, raising unemployment, reducing schooling, causing political unrest, contributing to domestic violence, and undermining liberal democracy,” the report said. “Such a standard benefit-cost calculation leads to a strong conclusion: lockdowns should be rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument,” the paper concluded. Early on, many states and 186 countries imposed bans on work, socialization, in-person schooling, travel and other restrictions to limit the spread of the disease, citing recommendations by top health care experts. Researchers at the Imperial College London, for example, predicted that such steps could reduce death rates by up to 98%. That never happened, according to the new study by researchers Steve Hanke, Jonas Herby, and Lars Jonung at Johns Hopkins.

Note: Why did other major media platforms overlook this vitally important news? You can find this critical study on the Johns Hopkins University website at this link. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and the coronavirus from reliable major media sources.

Possible links between Covid shots and tinnitus emerge
April 23, 2023, NBC News
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-vaccine-side-effects-tinnitus...

Thousands of people say they've developed tinnitus after they were vaccinated against Covid. Shaowen Bao, an associate professor in the physiology department of the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona, Tucson, believes that ongoing inflammation, especially in the brain or spinal cord, may be to blame. Bao, a longtime tinnitus sufferer and a representative of the American Tinnitus Association's scientific advisory board, has studied tinnitus for more than a decade. A Facebook group of people who developed tinnitus after getting a Covid vaccine convinced Bao to look into the possible link. One man told Bao that he couldn’t hear the car radio over the noise in his head while driving. Along with ringing in their ears, participants reported a range of other symptoms, including headaches, dizziness, vertigo, ear pain, anxiety and depression. Significantly more people first developed tinnitus after the first dose of the vaccine, compared with the second. This suggests "that the vaccine is interacting with pre-existing risk factors for tinnitus. If you have the risk factor, you will probably get it from the first dose," Bao said. As of Sunday, at least 16,183 people had filed complaints with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they'd developed tinnitus, or ringing in their ears, after receiving a Covid vaccine. [Vaccine expert Dr. Gregory] Poland, who was stricken with tinnitus after he received his Covid vaccines two years ago, suggested that the CDC remains "unconcerned" about these reports of tinnitus.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

As Drug Crisis Mounted, Sacklers Gave Millions to Group That Advises on Opioids
April 23, 2023, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/23/health/sacklers-opioids-national...

For the past decade, the White House and Congress have relied on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a renowned advisory group, to help shape the federal response to the opioid crisis, whether by convening expert panels or delivering policy recommendations and reports. Yet officials with the National Academies have kept quiet about one thing: their decision to accept roughly $19 million in donations from members of the Sackler family, the owners of Purdue Pharma, the maker of the drug OxyContin that is notorious for fueling the opioid epidemic. The opioid crisis has led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths, spawned lawsuits and forced other institutions to publicly distance themselves from Sackler money or to acknowledge potential conflicts of interest from ties to Purdue Pharma. The National Academies has largely avoided such scrutiny as it continues to advise the government on painkillers. Institutions that more publicly examined their use of Sackler donations include Tufts University, which released a review of possible conflicts of interest related to pain research education funded by Purdue Pharma. Concerns noted in the report included a senior Purdue executive’s delivering lectures to students each semester. The World Health Organization in 2019 retracted two guidance documents on opioid policy after lawmakers aired concerns about ties to opioid makers, including a Purdue subsidiary, among report authors and funders.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Big Pharma corruption from reliable major media sources.

Key Articles From Independent Media

TikTok: Chinese “Trojan Horse” is Run By State Department Officials
April 13, 2023, MintPress News
https://www.mintpressnews.com/tiktok-chinese-trojan-horse-run-by-state...

A MintPress News investigation has found dozens of ex-U.S. State Department officials working in key positions at TikTok. Many more individuals with backgrounds in the FBI, CIA and other departments of the national security state also hold influential posts at the social media giant, affecting the content that over one billion users see. The influx of State Department officials into TikTok’s upper ranks is a consequence of “Project Texas,” an initiative the company began in 2020 in the hopes of avoiding being banned altogether in the United States. During his time in office, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the charge to shut the platform down, frequently labeling it a “spying app” and a “propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party.” It was widely reported that the U.S. government had forced the sale of TikTok to Walmart and then Microsoft. But in late 2020, as Project Texas began, those deals mysteriously fell through, and the rhetoric about the dangers of TikTok from officials evaporated. Project Texas is a $1.5 billion security operation to move the company’s data to Austin. In doing so, it announced that it was partnering with tech giant Oracle, a corporation that, as MintPress has reported on, is the CIA in all but name. Evidently, Project Texas also secretly included hiring all manner of U.S. national security state personnel to oversee the company’s operations – and not just from the State Department. Virtually every branch of the national security state is present at TikTok.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corruption in intelligence agencies and in the corporate world from reliable major media sources.

Renowned Medical Researcher & Colleague Publish Systematic Review of Serious Harms From COVID-19 Vaccines
April 4, 2023, The Pulse
https://www.thepulse.one/p/renowned-medical-researcher-and-colleague

Dr. Peter Gøtzsche is a well known Danish physician with four decades of research experience, publishing 97 papers in the “big five” (BMJ, Lancet, JAMA, Annals of Internal Medicine, and New England Journal of Medicine) and 19 Cochrane reviews. He is a co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration. Gøtzsche, along with ... Maryanne Demasi, PhD, have published a new paper titled “Serious harms of the COVID-19 Vaccines: A Systematic Review.” It’s been a task for academics to look into this phenomenon given the fact that vaccine manufacturers and drug regulators never allowed independent researchers to examine the raw trial data, forcing transparency advocates to sue the FDA for access to the documents. The adenovirus vector vaccines increased the risk of venous thrombosis and thrombocytopenia. (Authorities have responded by suspending the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine across many European countries, and in the US, regulators have advised restricted use of Janssen’s vaccine). The mRNA-based vaccines increased the risk of myocarditis, with a mortality of about 1-2 per 200 cases. It was more common in younger males. We found evidence of serious neurological harms, including Bell’s Palsy, Guillain-Barré syndrome, myasthenic disorder and stroke, which are likely due to an autoimmune reaction from mRNA and adenoviral vector vaccines. Severe harms, i.e. those that prevent daily activities, were underreported in the randomized trials.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on coronavirus vaccines from reliable major media sources.

Key Articles From Years Past

Reassessing Technology for Time-Warp Space Travel
August 30, 1998, Los Angeles Times
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-30-me-18021-story.html

A 17-year-old boy ... received the Air Force’s highest science award in the 1960s. This young man had the audacity and guts to build and test a new and unusual rocket. The boy’s name was David Adair, and the engine he built was a nuclear-fusion electromagnetic containment engine. This rocket was tested successfully and had an eventful landing in that land beyond lands that doesn’t exist, the famous Area 51. This vehicle had the capability of achieving light speed and, according to the builder, was capable of exceeding light speed with capabilities to propel an interstellar ship to the stars. Where did David Adair, now head of Intersect Inc. in Atlanta, get the design for this engine? As he tells it, directly from NASA. The organization evidently had 18 engine designs, and guess what? Only two were solid- or liquid-propelled rocket engines. This was in the 1960s. I wonder what happened to the rest of those engine types in the past 30 years. I also wonder what type of engines have been and are being tested at the old Rocketdyne facility in the Santa Susana Mountains above Simi Valley. One might ask if the massive class-action lawsuit against Rocketdyne, which alleges contamination of the nuclear type, has any relationship to the engines that were developed and continue to be developed today. If we look at some of these modern concepts and then consider the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation, it doesn’t seem quite so impossible.

Note: Don’t miss this mind-blowing video of prodigy rocket scientist David Adair describing a most stunning and intriguing encounter with an ET craft in an underground hanger at Area 51. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on UFOs from reliable major media sources.

Political ties to a secretive religious group
April 3, 2008, MSNBC News
http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/03/857959.aspx

For more than 50 years, the National Prayer Breakfast has been a Washington institution. Every president has attended the breakfast since Eisenhower. Besides the presidents ... the one constant presence at the National Prayer Breakfast has been Douglas Coe. Although he’s not an ordained minister, the 79-year-old Coe is the most important religious leader you've never seen or heard. Scores of senators in both parties ... go to small weekly Senate prayer groups that Coe attends, [including] senators John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Observers who have investigated Coe’s group, called The Fellowship Foundation, [describe] a secretive organization. Coe repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It’s a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded. "Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler. Think of the immense power these three men had.” Coe also quoted Jesus and said: “One of the things [Jesus] said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple.’" Writer Jeff Sharlet ... lived among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric. “We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. Hitler’s genocide wasn’t really an issue for them. It was the strength that he emulated,” said Sharlet, who ... has now written about The Fellowship, also known to insiders as The Family, in [a] book called The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

Note: This article strangely has been removed from the MSNBC website, though you can still access it using the Internet Archive. Watch the incredible four-minute NBC video clip showing Coe praising a communist Red Guard member for cutting the head off his mother at this link. For more on Coe's powerful links to Congress and corruption, see the MSNBC article available here. And for powerful inside information from a mind programmer who claims to have escaped from "the family," and another who says he is from a very high level there, click here and here. To develop an understanding of the bigger picture behind all of this, click here.

Inspiring Articles

'Bees are sentient': inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers
April 2, 2023, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence...

When Stephen Buchmann finds a wayward bee on a window inside his Tucson, Arizona, home, he goes to great lengths to capture and release it unharmed. This March, Buchmann released a book that unpacks just how varied and powerful a bee’s mind really is. The book, What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories and Personalities of Bees, draws from his own research and dozens of other studies to paint a remarkable picture of bee behavior and psychology. It argues that bees can demonstrate sophisticated emotions resembling optimism, frustration, playfulness and fear, traits more commonly associated with mammals. Experiments have shown bees can experience PTSD-like symptoms, recognize different human faces, process long-term memories while sleeping, and maybe even dream. Approximately one-third of the American diet, including many fruits, vegetables and nuts, relies on bees for pollination. In the past, bee research has focused on their role in crop pollination, but the work being pioneered by Buchmann and his contemporaries could force an ethical reckoning with how the animals are treated. Can large-scale agriculture and scientific research continue without causing bees to suffer, and is the dominant western culture even capable of accepting that the tiniest of creatures have feelings, too? Buchmann hopes an ethical shift will happen as details about the emotional lives of invertebrates – especially bees – are shared with the public.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Magnetic Crystals, Guides for Animals, Found in Humans
May 12, 1992, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/12/science/magnetic-crystals-guides-for...

An intriguing claim that human brain cells possess crystals of a highly magnetic mineral known as magnetite was described today by Dr. Joseph Kirschvink, a professor at the California Institute of Technology. The 38-year-old geobiologist said he believed that magnetite crystals enabled animals from bees to whales to navigate by using the earth's magnetic field. He said he doubted that they supported any sensory capability in humans, although he suspected that they might account for the possible influence of strong electromagnetic fields on human health. That magnetite, one of the hardest metals on earth, is synthesized by the human brain "is sure to astound most scientists," Dr. Kirschvink said, but what it is doing there is a "total mystery." It might be a vestige from evolution and serve no purpose, he said. Or it could play a role in biology, explaining why electromagnetic fields have been associated with brain cancer and leukemia and why certain odd blips, called spin echoes, show up on magnetic resonance images of the brain. Each human brain on average contains seven billion particles of magnetite, weighing a total of one-millionth of an ounce. Magnetite interacts over a million times more strongly with external magnetic fields than any other biological material, Dr. Kirschvink said, including the iron in red blood cells. If only one cell in a million contains magnetite, he said, magnetic fields could exert an effect on the tissue.

Note: Robert O. Becker’s classic book “The Body Electric” presents amazing scientific experiments showing the importance of electrical fields and magnetic crystals in the human body. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Mushrooms communicate with each other using up to 50 ‘words’, scientist claims
April 5, 2022, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/apr/06/fungi-electrical-impulses...

Mathematical analysis of the electrical signals fungi seemingly send to one another has identified patterns that bear a striking structural similarity to human speech. Previous research has suggested that fungi conduct electrical impulses through long, underground filamentous structures called hyphae – similar to how nerve cells transmit information in humans. It has even shown that the firing rate of these impulses increases when the hyphae of wood-digesting fungi come into contact with wooden blocks, raising the possibility that fungi use this electrical “language” to share information about food or injury with distant parts of themselves, or with hyphae-connected partners such as trees. Prof Andrew Adamatzky at the University of the West of England’s unconventional computing laboratory in Bristol analysed the patterns of electrical spikes generated by four species of fungi – enoki, split gill, ghost and caterpillar fungi. The research, published in Royal Society Open Science, found that these spikes often clustered into trains of activity, resembling vocabularies of up to 50 words, and that the distribution of these “fungal word lengths” closely matched those of human languages. The most likely reasons for these waves of electrical activity are to maintain the fungi’s integrity – analogous to wolves howling to maintain the integrity of the pack – or to report newly discovered sources of attractants and repellants to other parts of their mycelia, Adamtzky suggested.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.

Who's in charge here? No one
April 26, 2003, The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/apr/27/theobserver.observerbusiness7

Semco, Brazil's most famous company ... made its name by standing the conventional corporate rulebook on its head. Semco doesn't have a mission statement, its own rulebook or any written policies. It doesn't have an organisation chart, a human resources department or even, these days, a headquarters. Subordinates choose their managers, decide how much they are paid and when they work. Meetings are voluntary, and two seats at board meetings are open to the first employees who turn up. Salaries are made public, and so is all the company's financial information. Six months is the farthest ahead the group ever looks. Its units each half-year decide how many people they require for the next period. Naturally it doesn't plan which businesses to enter. Instead it 'rambles' into new areas by trial, error and argument. Its current portfolio is an odd mixture of machinery, property, professional services and fledgling hi-tech spin-offs. That's right, Semco is the epitome of managerial incorrectness. Sounds like a recipe for chaos, eh? Yet Semco has surfed Brazil's rough economic and political currents with panache, often growing at between 30 and 40 per cent a year. It turns over $160 million, up from $4m when [company founder Ricardo] Semler joined the family business two decades ago, and it employs 3,000 [people]. $100,000 invested in this barmy firm 20 years ago would now be worth $5m. But conventional control attitudes are deeply programmed. Even now, laments Semler, 'we're only 50 or 60 per cent where we'd like to be'.

Note: Ricardo Semler's wonderfully subversive book, The Seven Day Weekend is available on amazon.com. Don't miss the inspiring TedTalk of this highly innovative man.

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