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Sunday, November 7, 2021

2021-11-07

Regular Fare:

*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)


*** Manufacturing Stagnation

Intellectual property, industrial organization, and economic growth

$5.3 trillion of US federal government stimulus and relief spending have returned the economy to its pre-Covid growth trajectory. But that growth trajectory was hardly robust—either before or after the 2008 financial crisis. Nor was the slow decay of GDP growth rates unique to America. In the aggregate, the seven largest rich economies—the G7, composed of the US, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada—saw
growth in real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) slip by more than half from the 1980s to the 2010s.

Economists have called this slowdown “secular stagnation.” Secular stagnation is a seemingly permanent era of slower growth in productivity, investment, and output, and therefore also in per capita income. The Great Depression of the 1930s provoked the first debate about secular stagnation, which pitted John Maynard Keynes and MichaƂ Kalecki against Joseph Schumpeter.

…..

I refer to the present moment, which is characterized by this shift, as the “Franchise” era. Its most distinctive features are the concentration of profits into IPR-rich firms with small labor headcounts, a low marginal propensity to invest, and relatively easy tax avoidance. These qualities have slowed growth in consumption, investment, and government spending—the three conventional measures of GDP for G7 countries

…..

The Franchise structure also channels profits to firms with a low marginal propensity to invest, while starving firms with a high marginal propensity to invest.



Even in the context of a general decline in capital expenditure as a percent of gross profit, current high-profit sectors tend to transform much less of their gross profit into capital expenditure.



Denialistic Supernova

What we are witnessing is an infantile regression from fact and reality. Personally, I no longer react to climate change denial. Why? Because you see it as much now at these climate conferences as you do anywhere else. One side actually believes that Exxon is giving everyone beach front property, while the other side attends climate conferences which spew out non-stop empty promises. Really, who is more cynical?

The fact remains that a relatively innocuous pandemic did more to move the needle on climate change than any ten conferences. COVID was a wake up call that the modern consumption lifestyle is over. It was the most deflationary event in world history. So what did the Consumption Borg do? They went ALL IN on a massive consumption binge at the end of the cycle. The outcome of which will be collapsed demand and a glut of everything.



In summary, I predict this will be the fastest and most violent collapse in demand in U.S. history. This buying panic and its lagged indicators of inflation are now concealing a nascent collapse in demand as consumer sentiment hits decade lows. Every company missing revenue estimates this quarter is blaming supply chain problems while ignoring retreating demand. As is their norm, economists will realize the economy has collapsed about a year after it happens.



We Have Now Reached Terminal Idiocracy


The policy error began decades ago when greed was conflated as a national ideology. What began as a business imperative to maximize corporate profit somewhere along the line jumped the Maslow hierarchy of needs to become the meaning of life.



According to these lifelong aspirational morons, we are now to believe that a global pandemic has improved the global economy hence justifying record valuations in everything. You have to be brain dead to believe it, hence it goes largely unquestioned.

Even more lethal, is this fake inflation theme which is essentially at this point unquestioned. This pandemic was the most deflationary event in world history. It shut down the global economy. It shut down global travel. It has kept people away from their offices for almost two years now. It blighted small business, restaurants and shopping malls, and it essentially imploded the job market. Economists can't figure out why serial mass layoffs keep leading to lower labor participation each time.



Why are bond yields rolling over? Because the Fed is taking liquidity out of markets and hence inflation expectations are falling. And THAT is driving bond prices higher. Unlike the late 1970s when the U.S. middle class was at its apex, now the labor share of the economy and capacity utilization are at all time lows. In addition, we now have MILLIONS of workers missing from this fake recovery.



Ian Welsh: China’s Economic “Miracle” Was Normal

Over the last few weeks I’ve been reading books by some of the smarter members of the international elite. One thing they all seem to agree on is how amazing and unprecedented China’s economic rise was.

It wasn’t.

China industrialized and modernized the way almost all nations have: …



Meanwhile, the great danger to capitalism is capitalists being too successful, and buying the system, and then getting rid of necessary oversight and regulation. China has largely avoided that (though real-estate wealth is still a problem)

… To bring this back to Western elites, a lot of the mistakes come from drinking their own Kool-aid.



Viewpoint: Beneath Striketober Fanfare, The Lower Frequencies of Class Struggle

… in what some are calling the “Great Resignation” and others have described as an “unofficial general strike,” some 30 million U.S. workers have quit their jobs from January to August, a stunning collective rebuke—expressed on an individual level—to the common degradations of low-paying, demeaning jobs.



Here’s the sobering truth: The discontent fueling the current uptick in strikes and protests is incredibly important, but that uptick still pales in comparison to the 485,000 workers who went on strike in 2018 and the 425,000 in 2019 during a strike wave involving teachers in states from West Virginia to Arizona, as well as workers in auto plants and hotels. Go even further back to 1971, when more than 5,000 work stoppages involving over 3,000,000 workers occurred, and the comparison to today’s strike numbers puts the reality of labor’s situation in even starker relief. Tens of thousands of workers fighting back in 2021 is significant, but there are roughly 14 million union workers in the U.S. alone, according to the 2021 annual report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Basically, it’s a big country—and we still have a long way to go.



What remains to be seen are efforts to rebuild class organizations on an even more massive scale for a lasting rebalance of power in the struggle of the many against the rapacious few.



Heisenberg: Americans Just Don’t Care Anymore

October’s US jobs report was solid, but businesses are still struggling to find workers.

Like so many other pandemic distortions, labor scarcity isn’t a problem that’s likely to resolve overnight.

Employers will be frustrated for several more months (at least), but you’d be forgiven for suggesting that after four decades in decline, labor (as an economic actor) deserved an opportunity to reclaim some leverage. It’s tragic that a pandemic was the catalyst, but here we are.

There are competing explanations for why workers aren’t coming back faster. Until recently, it was all too easy to blame pandemic unemployment benefits, but as those programs roll off, we need new excuses.



There’s doubtlessly some truth to that. But, as ever, I’d contend we should be cautious about extrapolating our own fortuitous economic circumstances onto others. Most people’s circumstances aren’t fortuitous.



I’d postulate the dearth of labor in the post-pandemic era is a function of something far more nebulous: Fatalism, apathy and generalized despair, all of which have been gestating for decades.



I’m not a labor economist. It would be absurd for me to suggest I have something new (let alone novel or groundbreaking) to add to a debate that’s consumed brighter minds than mine for decades.

But what I’d not-so-gently suggest is that, over time, Americans have lost interest. In the labor market, in their communities and in life in general. Americans just don’t care anymore.



‘The Great Resignation’ Misses the Point

The phrase has come to describe record levels of job turnover. But it overlooks the bigger story: a radical rethinking of our relationship to work.



‘I’m afraid we’re going to have a food crisis’: The energy crunch has made fertilizer too expensive to produce, says Yara CEO



Other Charts: (links: one, two, ..)









Bubble Fare:


Legendary investor Jeremy Grantham says US stocks are in a 'magnificent bubble' even crazier than in 1929




Quotes Of The Week:



Once that happens and a generation watches their fake wealth vanish, societal acrimony will increase substantially. The comatose sheeple now partying like it's 1929 will finally wake up to the fact that U.S. wealth inequality has now reached Third World levels of insanity.



Canadian oil companies just seem unbelievably cheap. I do not understand why anyone is buying cryptocurrencies or the Robinhood bubble stocks when there are cheap pipelines, oil companies, tobacco companies, and banks. Capital markets have a good $5 trillion of worthless securities and coinz bouncing around. For that price, you could buy the entire energy industry, pipeline industry, tobacco industry, and community bank sector.





COVID-19 notes:


Groundbreaking Israeli Study Shows How COVID Proteins Attack The Heart And Blood Vessels



Canadian provinces nix mandatory Covid jabs for hospital workers


Canada’s most populated provinces said Wednesday said they will not force health care workers to get Covid vaccines, saying mass layoffs of staff who do not get shots would devastate hospitals. Canada’s government has mandated Covid vaccines for some 300,000 bureaucrats and anyone travelling on planes or trains in the country. The decisions by the governments of Ontario and Quebec — the provinces hardest hit by the pandemic — were announced separately.





(not just) for the ESG crowd:


Study Warns 'Luxury' Pollution by the Global Mega-Rich Is Imperiling the Planet


The richest people on the planet, representing a small sliver of the total population, are emitting carbon dioxide at a rate that's imperiling hopes of keeping global heating below 1.5°C, prompting fresh calls for government action to rein in "luxury" pollution and combat the intertwined crises of inequality and climate change.

New research by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) shows that by 2030, the carbon footprints of the wealthiest 1% of humanity are on track to be 30 times larger than the size compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C by the end of the century, the Paris Agreement's more ambitious temperature target.



Financing the climate.

COP26 trundles on in Glasgow with little sign that anything significant is being agreed towards reversing global warming and ending the degradation of nature.

… Meanwhile, well-meaning economists offer various schemes to solve the funding problem within the confines of the market economy.

… All these schemes fail on two levels. First, they require global action and global institutions to implement them. There is no prospect of that happening.

… Second, market solutions will not do the trick



As Jeff Sparrow says in his new book, Crimes against Nature, “Each year, the world spends over $1,917bn on guns, bombs, and other military equipment. The comparable figure on advertising is some $325bn. Those staggering numbers represent a mere fraction of what we could direct immediately to environmental programs on land, sea, and air. We could begin systemic decarbonisation, closing down coal-fired power stations, and replacing fossil fuels with electricity from renewables such as solar, using the process to reduce rather than increase our energy needs. We could massively expand low-carbon public transport, so that efficient, easy-to-use and convenient electric trains and trams replaced internal combustion engines. We could replan our cities and towns for human convenience rather than for the use of automobiles; we could establish methods of recycling and re-use that genuinely reduced material throughputs.”



The Only Winning Climate Policy Is a Pro-Worker Climate Policy

In the summer and fall leading up to a historic meeting of the United Nations Convention of the Parties (COP), the major US environmental organizations and the president got behind a legislative strategy to win a transformative climate policy.

But as time wore on, and the president refused to use executive action to spur decarbonization, it appeared the quicksand of Washington politics would again doom any meaningful climate action. Climate activists were left to hold their breath for yet another round of international COP negotiations, where the largest historic emitter would again act more as a barrier than leader in the climate struggle.

I am referring to president Barack Obama’s first term in 2009, but I could just as easily be describing president Joe Biden in 2021.

……..

It’s very easy to blame the downfall of Biden’s climate agenda on Joe Manchin. But while GND advocates spent much of 2018–20 demanding a transformative approach to climate policy, 2021 has been more of the same. When it comes to climate politics, Biden and elite Democrats seem to be saying, “We’ve tried nothing, and we’re all out of ideas.”



Jeremy Corbyn: We Need to Take Power From the People Who Are Destroying Our Planet.



Elites Won’t Save the Planet — We Need a Mass Movement


The problem isn’t simply that corporations often lie, using environmental rhetoric to “greenwash” their images. It goes much deeper than that. Capitalism must grow. Its blind search for profit might bring disaster, but it will still sniff out opportunities for expansion, indifferent to experience or consequences. As a result, even measures that might alleviate the environmental crisis become immediately weaponized against the planet.



Yet while some individual economies have reduced their dependence on nonrenewable resources, they’ve generally done so by outsourcing dirty industries. As a meta-analysis of 179 studies between 1990 and 2019 put it, “no evidence for the needed kind of decoupling currently exists.” … “Not only is there no empirical evidence supporting the existence of a decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures on anywhere near the scale needed to deal with environmental breakdown,” explained a major 2019 report for the European Environmental Bureau, “but also, and perhaps more importantly, such decoupling appears unlikely to happen in the future.”



if the tendency of capitalism to respond to a crisis with more capitalism gives the system its disastrous momentum, it also provides the capitalists themselves with insulation from the consequences of their actions. The intensified commodification resulting from each fresh calamity creates opportunities for those with disposable wealth to ensure that they and their loved ones remain more or less unaffected.



'Paralysing jargon' is preventing us from taking action on climate change, says new research



*** Energy Dilemma


The ecological bifurcation is not a gala dinner. After a summer of extreme climatic events and a new IPCC report confirming its most worrying forecasts, large parts of the world are now roiled by an energy crisis that prefigures further economic troubles down the road. This conjuncture has buried the dream of a harmonious transition to a post-carbon world, bringing the question of capitalism’s ecological crisis to the fore. At COP26, the dominant tone is one of powerlessness, where impending miseries have left humanity cornered between the immediate demands of systemic reproduction and the acceleration of climate disorders.

Prima facie, one might think that steps are being taken to address this cataclysm. More than 50 countries – plus the entire European Union – have pledged to meet net zero emissions targets that would see global energy-related CO2 emissions fall by 40% between now and 2050. Yet a sober reading of the scientific data shows that the green transition is well off track. Falling short of global net zero means that temperatures will continue to rise



The global and widespread repercussions of energy shortages and price increases underscores the complex fallout involved in the structural transformation necessary to eliminate carbon emissions. While a reduction is underway in the supply of hydrocarbon, increases in sustainable energy sources are not sufficient to meet growing demand. This leaves an energy mismatch that could derail the transition altogether. In this context, countries can either return to the most readily available energy source – coal – or cause an economic contraction driven by the surge in costs and their effects on profitability, consumption prices and the stability of the financial system. In the short term, then, there is a trade-off between ecological objectives and the requirement to foster growth. But does this energy dilemma hold in the medium and long term? Will we ultimately face a choice between climate and growth?

A successful carbon transition implies the harmonious unfolding of two processes complexly related at the material, economic and financial levels. First, a process of disbandment must take place. Sources of carbon must be drastically reduced: above all hydrocarbon extraction, electricity production by coal and gas, fuel-based transport systems, the construction sector (due to the high level of emissions involved in cement and steel production) and the meat industry. What is at stake here is degrowth in the most straightforward sense: equipment must be scrapped, fossil fuel reserves must stay in the soil, intensive cattle-breeding must be abandoned and an array of related professional skills must be made redundant.

All things being equal, the elimination of production capacities implies a contraction of supply which would lead to generalized inflationary pressure. This is even more likely because the sectors most affected are located at the commanding heights of modern economies. Cascading through the other sectors, pressure on costs will dent firms’ mark-up, global profits and/or consumer purchasing power, unleashing wild recessionary forces. In addition, degrowth of the carbon economy is a net loss from the point of view of the valorization of financial capital: huge amounts of stranded assets must be wiped out since underlying expected profits are foregone, paving the way for fire sales and ricocheting onto the mass of fictitious capital. These interrelated dynamics will fuel each other, as recessionary forces increase debt defaults while financial crisis freezes the access to credit.

The other side of the transition is a major investment push to accommodate the supply shock caused by the degrowth of the carbon sector. While changing consumption habits could play a role, especially in affluent countries, the creation of new carbon-free production capacities, improvements in efficiency, electrification of transport, industrial and heating systems (along with the deployment of carbon capture in some instances) are also necessary to compensate for the phasing out of greenhouse gas emissions. From a capitalist perspective, these could represent new profit opportunities, so long as the costs of production are not prohibitive relative to available demand. Attracted by this valorization, green finance could step in and accelerate the transition, propelling a new wave of accumulation capable of sustaining employment and living standards.

……

When one considers the economic challenges of restructuring economies to keep carbon emissions in line with the stabilization of the climate, this discussion acquires a new framing. Effectiveness must take precedence over efficiency in reducing emissions. That means abandoning the fetish of the price mechanism in order to plan how the remaining dirty resources will be used in the service of clean infrastructure. Such planning must have international reach, since the greatest opportunities for energy-supply decarbonation are located in the Global South.



*** COP26: Can a Singing, Dancing Rebellion Save the World?

Yves here. I know that Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies and the various climate change activists they recognize in the post below mean well. So I hate to make an unflattering but accurate comparison: their grasp on the magnitude of change needed to prevent the worst climate outcomes is as least as poor as Pete Buttigieg’s of what is required to get the West Coast ports unjammed.



Vid: Exploding Batteries Are A Killer Problem For Everyone




Other / Fun Fare:



*** Juice Media: HONEST GOVERNMENT AD | NET ZERO BY 2050



Animation: How the European Map Has Changed Over 2,400 Years





Pics of the Week:



These otherworldly photos convey climate change's effects on Arctic regions






Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [controversial or non-market-related] Fare:


*** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)



Regular Fare:



Nathan J. Robinson: Why Democrats Fold On Everything



Michael Hudson: Is This the End of the Unreformable Democratic Party?

… In today’s U.S. political duopoly the role of the Democratic Party is to protect the Republicans from attacks from the left.

… While downsizing these early popular elements, Congress has increased its giveaway to the Donor Class in an attempt to win them over.

… Put bluntly, is the Democratic Party an agent of democracy, or oligarchy? The past month’s Congressional debacle confirms Aristotle description of democracy. Many states have constitutions that are democratic in form, he wrote, but actually are oligarchies.

… Upon taking office, President Biden said that nothing would really change. This was the opposite of Barack Obama’s slogan of “hope and change,” but it was simply more honest.

… Identity politics is a strategy to fragment the wage-earning majority of voters into separate ethnic, racial and gender identities. That distracts attention from their class consciousness whose interests do not match those of the Donor Class that has gained control of the Democrat-Republican duopoly. This explains the DNCC’s refusal to back progressive candidates. Instead of appealing to wage earners, the Democratic leadership since the 1960s has aimed at getting voters to think of themselves as hyphenated Americans.



Democrats Quietly Nix Biden’s $100B for School Modernization From Infrastructure Package

Hat tip, Lambert, who notes: “A 2020 report the Government Accountability Office released just at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic found that 41% of districts required HVAC system upgrades or replacements in at least half of their schools.” So much for fixing ventilation, good job.



Taibbi: The Red-Pilling Of Loudoun County, Virginia

The drama that played out in upscale Loudoun County, Virginia over the last year or so, and cost Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe the governorship last night, is a book waiting to be written. In fact, if companies like HBO or Netflix have any sense, it will soon be a movie as well, because almost every hot-button issue in American national politics was rolled up somewhere in this sprawling, preposterous, rage-filled suburban drama.



Related:

no virginia, it's not white supremacy

a word from the new lieutenant governor


you may not have had a chance to hear her speak. you should watch this video. she’s wonderful.

she’s also a literal nightmare for the entitled progressives who rely on minority grievance as their political cornerstone, using black people as mascots and sputtering in disbelief that it could possibly be their message and not the prejudices of others that makes people dislike this overwrought movement.



she is the first woman LT GOV in virginia history and the first black woman to win statewide office. she was elected by these same alleged white supremacists. anyone else a little puzzled here?

clearly, these are oddly bent minds collapsing in on themselves and becoming overwhelmed by the crushing informational gravity of narrow obsession. data that fails to fit is simply ignored and hidden from sight by the cognitive processes that prop up bias. or perhaps worse, this is just a cynical form of manipulative populism.



is it any wonder their parents are waking up to the damage being done to their children in schools and want control back?

perhaps this is less “white moms protecting white sons" than it is black moms wanting this CRT poison out of the ears of their children. because this is the real alliance: ALL the parents together seeking to encourage and enable ALL their children to learn and strive and be their best selves and the obsessions of race hustlers be damned. they have done enough damage already.

performative anti bigotry is just, in fact, bigotry. it’s the same desire to bully and force, but twisted around to try to make it seem virtuous. it’s just a mask to hide their racist undertones because it’s now the more socially acceptable way to act like a supercilious, patronizing thug.



It's Not That Democrats Lost. It's That They Lost Everywhere

In an early vote of no-confidence in the Biden presidency, Republicans made inroads among suburban and Hispanic voters, while expanding their already long reach into rural precincts.



Ugo Bardi: The Propaganda Trap: How to get out of it?

… If you want to get some idea of the situation in Germany during the last year of the war, you may read the book by Florian Huber "Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself." It is a book that tells you of something not normally discussed: what did ordinary Germans think of the situation and how it was that they couldn't free themselves from the evil spell that their own propaganda had generated. To the point that a large, although unknown, number of them committed suicide. Choosing death was the ultimate strategy to avoid facing reality.

… But the Western propaganda machine, today, is enormously more sophisticated, effective, and pervasive than the German propaganda was at the time of the Nazis.

… Is there any hope to stop the evil machine? It looks difficult, even impossible. So far, propaganda has been stopped only by the complete collapse of the governments that had created it … Propaganda exists because there exists a centralized control of the information flow in society (we call it the "media").



Richard Norgaard: 4 ways in which humanity’s consciousness needs to shift

1 – From material progress to holistic survival and morality


The coevolution of economism with the Econocene has led humanity to the brink of disaster. Faith in progress has long been a part of the problem. Actions to stave off climate change have been trimmed and delayed on the presumption that countering environmental destruction has the opportunity cost of foregone human wellbeing through further investments in technology that further increase the production or provide novel forms of material goods. And yet studies show that wellbeing increases little, if at all, with further material assets after basic needs are met. Shifting from faith in progress toward a consciousness of holistic survival would be more appropriate given the challenges of climate change. I include the word holistic to remind us that we need to be more fully conscious of all peoples and other species too.

Most of the questions we face today are moral questions. We have neither fully faced our moral responsibilities to future generations raised by past environmental destruction nor faced climate change over the past three decades. Economists have avoided addressing moral issues in order to meet legislators’ and the public’s expectations and need for so-called “objective” answers. Hence economists talk of economic efficiency when moral issues are at stake. This shriveling of economists’ ability to think and discuss moral issues is the essence of economism. Economics, in theory, cannot say what is moral, but if political processes determine what is moral, economics can talk about alternative efficient economies that meet moral obligations and paths to them. It is past time for economics to work with moral reasoning and political decision-making rather than falsely standing in for them.

2 – From knowledge hubris to knowledge humility


We need to become much more humble with respect to how smart we are. If we were so smart, we would not be in this dire predicament. Science and the scientific community can become part of the solution, but we also need to acknowledge how science has been a part of the problem. Western hubris allowed technologies based on new findings in particular fields of science to be implemented in and spread through whole natural and social systems. Because we had scant knowledge of the whole, specialized innovations transformed the geosphere and biosphere as well as the sociosphere in unexpected ways. …

3 – From individualism to cooperation and care

Adam Smith wrote two books. We have neglected his first, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Economists found the logic of markets in The Wealth of Nations compelling while wealthy converts with political traction spread selected messages. We need a significant shift towards the messages of Smith’s first book. It still provides important insights into how empathy can build trust, responsibility, and care that are key to rethinking meaningful lives and social organization. And while Smith did not emphasize care across generations, we now need to care ahead.

4 – From private property to global commons


The belief that land could be owned by a private individual and used however its land-owner saw fit gained traction in the west only centuries ago, an extremely short time in human history. Throughout history, what an individual could do with land has been restrained, but in America in particular, the idea of land ownership as sacred and any restraint considered a deep imposition on liberty and freedom. The interconnectivity of natural systems assured that private land ownership, especially when connected to markets ever more distant, would result in environmental disaster, and it has. …. We need to both concentrate on survival and consciously expand our consciousness.



From Dreamland to Nightmareland


Quinones points out that the 21st-century history of drugs is supply-side-driven. Few drug addicts dream up new highs and make them happen. Instead, global capitalists, whether the Sacklers, Chinese manufacturers, or Mexican cartels and entrepreneurs, invent new drugs to solve their business problems.





Climate Crisis Fare:



Metals may become the new oil in net-zero emissions scenario



Mining the Planet to Death: The Dirty Truth About Clean Technologies


The poor South is being exploited so that the rich North can transition to environmental sustainability. Entire swaths of land are being destroyed to secure the resources needed to produce wind turbines and solar cells. Are there alternatives?




James Lovelock: Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth




Climate Tweets of the Week:



David Spratt: One after another politicians, business leaders, journalists & NGO advocates talk about "net zero 2050” & the 1.5°C Paris goal in the same breath. The Glasgow #COP26 #climate talks reek of cognitive dissonance. Here’s why:




COVID Fare:



*** Kirsch: 15 things everyone needs to know about COVID and how to treat it


This is my "essentials" article. The 15 most important things I think everyone should be aware of.



Kirsch: We will kill 117 kids to save one child from dying from COVID in the 5 to 11 age range


That's according to a risk-benefit analysis done by risk-benefit expert Dr. Toby Rogers. His analysis has been viewed by over 22,000 readers. No mistakes were found. Nothing but praise



How will one child be saved by the jab? Please explain.

1) The injection does not confer antibody immunity to the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2); it promotes antibodies to the ‘synthetic spike protein’; that spike protein is not specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus

2) The antibodies produced do not provide protection from the pathogen (SARS-CoV-2 virus)

3) The injection does not reduce hospitalizations or deaths

4) The injection does not reduce severe symptoms

5) The injection does not prevent the carrying of the pathogen

6) The injection does not stop transmission from one person to the next

So are these injections vaccines?

The conclusion therefore is NO. This injection for COVID-19 is NOT a vaccine (the vaccines do not stop infection, transmission, severe COVID, hospitalization, or death); it is best described as a gene manipulating platform. The mRNA shots has had disastrous results on laboratory test-animals for decades. Injecting RNA into the body to force the body to make SARS-CoV spike proteins, is itself very harmful. When our immune system detects the presence of the SARS-CoV spike protein, it attacks it with antibodies and lymphocytes. This causes cell death and other complications. Worse, the spike protein itself is toxic to cells. Among other things, it can cause bleeding and clotting throughout the body. In a very ugly twist, the spike protein is engineered in such a way that it especially attacks the testes and ovaries, potentially causing hormonal irregularities and sterility. The jab is very dangerous in multiple ways and in no way should it be considered a vaccine.



They all say they want to stop misinformation. Fine. All they have to do is agree to a recorded scientific discussion so where they can explain to us how we got it wrong and answer our questions. They will not do that. They will ignore and censor us to avoid being put in a situation where they will have to answer any pesky questions from people who know what is going on.

Wow. Just wow.



Kirsch: The COVID vaccines are the most dangerous vaccines in human history... by a long shot

According to multiple independent analyses summarized here, the death rate from the COVID vaccines used in the US is at least 400 deaths per million doses. That’s 800 deaths per million fully vaccinated. That makes the COVID vaccines the new leader by a long shot: the most dangerous vaccine ever created in history.



Kirsch: Dr. Paul Offit is lying to us about myocarditis rates

The New York Times recently reported that Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and member of the FDA outside advisory committee for vaccines (VRBPAC), said that COVID-19 is much more likely to cause myocarditis than the vaccine.

He’s lying. It’s the exact opposite. The FDA and CDC committee members are all misinformed and clueless just like our friend Paul. We know that because hospitals are filling up with kids who are vaccine injured. That never happened before we had vaccine rollouts for kids.

But you don’t have to believe me because now the proof is in plain sight thanks to one slide Pfizer mistakenly showed at the October 26, 2021 FDA meeting. …



Kirsch: According to Dr. Paul Offit, we should not use the COVID vaccines because they are too dangerous

… According to multiple independent analyses summarized here, the death rate from the COVID vaccines used in the US is at least 400 deaths per million doses. That’s 800 deaths per million fully vaccinated.

That makes the COVID vaccines the new leader by a long shot: the most dangerous vaccine ever created in history.



‘Hundreds of Thousands’ of COVID Vaccine Injury Reports Backlogged in VAERS, Analyst Says



Kirsch: Some examples of medical corruption that are being ignored by the medical community


I thought I'd start a list to capture what is going on. Nobody in the mainstream medical community seems to mind these abuses.

...

e.g. Fluvoxamine was shown in a large Phase 3 clinical trial to reduce death from COVID by 12X. This is the most effective drug ever discovered for COVID. Nothing else has a better effect size. All the earlier trials were 100% successful. It even works in hospitalized patients. The FDA, CDC, NIH, and WHO all ignored it. Stunning, but totally expected. It only works if it is from a major US drug company. Repurposed drugs don’t count.



Spontaneous Abortions and Policies on COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Use During Pregnancy

An important peer-reviewed study looked at the CDC’s data on pregnancy losses following the mRNA injections, and found that more than 80% of those who got the injections during the first 5 months of pregnancy ended up with a spontaneous abortion (which is 7- to 8-times higher than the expected baseline of around 11%)



SARS–CoV–2 Spike Impairs DNA Damage Repair and Inhibits V(D)J Recombination In Vitro

Here, by using an in vitro cell line, we report that the SARS–CoV–2 spike protein significantly inhibits DNA damage repair, which is required for effective V(D)J recombination in adaptive immunity. Mechanistically, we found that the spike protein localizes in the nucleus and inhibits DNA damage repair by impeding key DNA repair protein BRCA1 and 53BP1 recruitment to the damage site. Our findings reveal a potential molecular mechanism by which the spike protein might impede adaptive immunity and underscore the potential side effects of full-length spike-based vaccines.



Comprehensive investigations revealed consistent pathophysiological alterations after vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines


Large-scale COVID-19 vaccinations are currently underway in many countries in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we report, besides generation of neutralizing antibodies, consistent alterations in hemoglobin A1c, serum sodium and potassium levels, coagulation profiles, and renal functions in healthy volunteers after vaccination with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Similar changes had also been reported in COVID-19 patients, suggesting that vaccination mimicked an infection. Single-cell mRNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) before and 28 days after the first inoculation also revealed consistent alterations in gene expression of many different immune cell types. Reduction of CD8+ T cells and increase in classic monocyte contents were exemplary. Moreover, scRNA-seq revealed increased NF-ÎșB signaling and reduced type I interferon responses, which were confirmed by biological assays and also had been reported to occur after SARS-CoV-2 infection with aggravating symptoms. Altogether, our study recommends additional caution when vaccinating people with pre-existing clinical conditions, including diabetes, electrolyte imbalances, renal dysfunction, and coagulation disorders.



Mary Beth Pfeiffer: Top Doctors Rise Up: “We’re Going to Come and Show People How to End This Pandemic”

Dr. John Littell is bringing Pierre Kory, Peter McCullough, Robert Malone, Richard Urso & others to a Florida summit to fix dangerous policies on childhood vaccines, natural immunity, and treatments.



Kevin Roche: Thoughts on Vaccine Mandates

The current federal administration appears determined to set some kind of record for enacting the most stupid policies in the shortest period of time. It also is running out of feet to shoot. The vaccine mandate obsession is the most recent example. At a time when supply chain issues and labor shortages, including in health care, are a major drag on economic performance and a major contributor to “temporary” (meaning it won’t last longer than 20 or 30 years) inflation, pushing that almost-certainly illegal private company vaccine mandate is just plain inane. If you want to persuade people that vaccination makes sense, you need to do just that, be persuasive. Villainizing the unvaxed isn’t going to work. On the positive side, it is clear that this strategy is turning a lot of people away from the Democrat party. People are actually waking up to the totalitarian reality that is today’s Democrat party. And it might be helpful if we had vaccines that appeared to actually make a difference in terms of reducing the number of cases and the rate of spread. The current ones don’t appear to do that for any length of time. It might also be helpful if a vaccine limited serious disease in the elderly who are most at risk. Perhaps the impending more traditional attenuated virus vaccines will be more effective in these important areas. In the meantime, it makes little sense to mandate vaccines that have limited value and effectiveness.



Disturbing antivax numbers from the CDC!



British Medical Journal: “Researcher Blows the Whistle on Data Integrity Issues in Pfizer’s Vaccine Trial”


So far, no major US or UK press outlet has taken up an article at the British Medical Journal that calls the integrity of the Pfizer clinical trials for the Covid-19 vaccine into question. At a minimum, the results for 1 000 of the roughly 44,000 participants were compromised.

IM Doc, who was the first of several to send this link along, said it was also discussed at a conference yesterday. A participant told him a speaker said: “If true, this is terminally damning and none of the data of that trial can be believed.”



A credibility blow to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine

In what should have been international news, this latest whistle-blower case has barely registered in the mainstream media.



Repeated requests for access to COVID-19 vaccine data by independent researchers has proved futile.

“Data is the bedrock of science. If you cannot see the data, it’s not science, it’s business,” said Prof David Healy, from McMaster University, Canada.



“The point I am trying to make is very simple,” said Dr. Peter Doshi [editor of the British Medical Journal]. “The data from Covid vaccines are not available and won’t be available for years. Yet, we are not just ‘asking’ but ‘mandating’ millions of people to take these vaccines.”

We are told to ‘follow the science’….but we do so, without data. A healthy dose of transparency is the only remedy.



The CDC has deleted their deaths in the fully vaccinated page

The Ministry of Truth strikes again



Toby Rogers: Some thoughts on today's ACIP meeting


I watched all 6+ hours of the ACIP meeting today. Here are my initial reactions.

These people are batsh*t insane. They live in an alternative universe. As cartoonish as the FDA’s VRBPAC meeting was last week, this was even worse.



The reason no safety signal makes an impression on these people is because anytime they encounter a fact that they do not like, they just make up a new number, whole cloth, without any reference to reality at all.



Crawford: Natural Immunity and Martin Kulldorff's Study Autopsy

Two Studies, Two Highly Different Conclusions


A few days ago, Martin Kulldorff wrote up an evaluation of two studies that each compare vaccination to immunity conferred by natural defenses marshalled upon recovering from COVID, but came to wildly different conclusions. One study out of Israel suggested that those who were vaccinated were 27 times as likely to suffer COVID than those who had recovered from COVID already.

Breakthrough cases = 27 x Reinfection+Symptoms

The other study, by the Center for Discourse Control (see what I did there), found that cases of reinfection were five times as likely as breakthrough cases per individual.

Breakthrough cases = 0.18 x Reinfection+Symptoms

The relative results differ by over two orders of magnitude! And that's quite bizarre. Even quick and dirty methods from a reasonable database shouldn't be wildly different from true effect comparisons. Was one or both of the studies flawed?

Kulldorff points out that the Israeli study looks pretty straight forward and solid as an epidemiological comparison: …

On the other hand, the CDC study worked backward from a point at which any number of conditionals or statistical sieves could apply factors to the final result: …

… Understand that this is nothing like a slam on Kulldorff's article. He clearly explains why the superior paper is a quality study by design and why the second study design is open to problematic conditionals.



Siri: One Brave ICU Physician Reporting Vaccine Injuries Leads to a Dozen More

One act of bravery begins to snowball. Dr. Patricia Lee “risked it all” to step forward, after being ignored by public health officials, to reveal the serious series of harms she witnessed from Covid-19 vaccines in her intensive care unit. With that one act, my firm has now been contacted by more than a dozen other physicians. Attached are 11 declarations from physicians across the country attesting to serious harms from Covid-19 vaccines. These physicians, like Dr. Lee, reached out to public health authorities at the CDC, FDA, and NIH for over ten months only to have their concerns dismissed or ignored. These agencies typically respond by saying that VAERS is not showing a safety signal so there is nothing to worry about.



What If I Told You Vaxxed and Unvaxxed Shed the EXACT SAME Amount of Virus?


It would be a significant erosion of the Narrative "Pandemic of the Unvaxxed"



UK vaccines weekly INeffectiveness report

…Over 82% of deaths in the UK are among the vaccinated.

… No doubt, continued efforts will be made to conceal or besmirch this information, but it is my firm opinion that the vaccinators have lost, that they are on the way down, will slowly retreat and the joke “vaccines” will be a story for all of us to remember. (I will soon write another post on the grim future of vaccinated people).

UKHSA definitely played a very honorable role in bringing light to the vaccine failure that applies to many more countries than the UK.



eugyppius: UKHSA Efficacy Stats Death Watch: Week 44

The UK has backed itself into publishing some less-than-useful numbers. Now the office responsible for this publishing will have to work closely with a gaggle of political commissars, responsible for cleansing official discourse of anything that might be “used to argue that vaccines are ineffective.”

….

Remember, always, that all Corona statistics are propaganda.



Crawford: Systemic COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy, Part 3

Let's talk about the chart above. For each of the 219 nations with data pulled from the Github repository of Our World in Data, I tallied COVID-19 cases and deaths from day 1 of each nation's vaccination program through 10/20/2021.

Observations:

· Every correlation is positive, meaning that more vaccination is associated with more COVID-19 cases and more COVID-19 deaths, as reported. I plan to set up various time-lagged endpoints and create heat maps for a bigger picture view.

· Correlations trended more strongly positive as vaccination campaigns matured toward their nearly present state.

"But, but, but Pfizer said…"

I don't know who needs to hear this, but sometimes you just have to consider that the mafia might be lying to you. Also, the tooth fairy isn't real and athletes are dropping like flies. There is something very wrong with these vaccines and our public health system.



Are Vaccines Driving Excess Deaths in Scotland, a Professor of Biology Asks



Igor Chudov: UK Data shows the Vaxxed are Superspreaders


And "protection from death" keeps dropping



Igor Chudov: VAERS Data is NOT fake and NOT made up!


Even to people who are not data analysts, this graph says “wow, something is going on this year. What is this picture about?”

This shocking number would, of course, alert an open minded reader that something really big and very bad is happening. But the vaccinators cleverly get help from so called “independent fact checkers”, who are ready to “debunk” just about anything that goes against vaccines. And naturally, here, or here, or in many other fact checks, the fact checkers are “debunking” this graph. What they say boils down to two arguments:
  • Anyone can enter any data into VAERS, so it should not be trusted.
  • VAERS adverse events do not establish causation, so if VAERS reports that a young person died of blood clots two days after vaccination, it may be just a “coincidence”. The fact checkers say “No evidence has established that a COVID-19 vaccine caused any deaths”
So, fact checkers tell us: “nothing to see here”…

I am setting out to “debunk the debunkers” and show that
  • The reports of deaths are overwhelmingly NOT fake
  • Most reports come from medical professionals
  • Most other reports come from frustrated relatives desperate to be heard
  • While any particular VAERS entry cannot establish causation, the causation is plainly obvious in the data
  • AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, you can easily check it all for yourself!




That said, just because any particular entry cannot establish causation, the totality of the data clearly does establish causation.

Why is that? For many reasons. …



James Lyons-Weiler: The Preliminary Injunction is Here. Here Are Some Critically Important Resources on PCR False Positives

I've Been Educating the Public Since April 2020 on this Issue. This Issue's Time has Finally Come.



No, Masks Do Not Work Against The Flu

Somehow the inaccurate narrative refuses to die

We know that masks have essentially no impact on the spread of COVID. Even though, bizarrely, many refuse to acknowledge that reality, a potentially more infuriating and confusing expert and media driven narrative is that masks are the main explanation for the disappearance of the flu.





Pretending that mask wearing had anything to do with the flu being eradicated is *literally* misinformation. Not figuratively, literally. It is a lie.

And the worst part is, it’s an easily disprovable lie. It takes a few minutes of research to create this chart.



The Upside of Delta

I’ve written at length about the dynamics of Covid-19 and why current measures make no sense



Covid-19 Risks, Vaccines & Children



*** Pfizer “vaccine”: kill 200 to ‘save’ one?


Analysis of official data shows the risks attached to Covid “vaccine” far outweighs any theoretical reward.

….

As always, the point of this analysis is to illustrate that even the establishment’s own data doesn’t support their conclusions



*** el gato malo: "close your eyes and open your mouth" is no basis for public health policy

demanding real transparency into the data on vaccines is critical. let the sunshine in.

“open your mouth and close you eyes and you will get a big surprise!”

we all remember this game from childhood.

we all also likely remember some kids you would never, ever want to play this game with.

what if the FDA has become that kid?

is it really so far fetched given their behavior in the last 2 years?



we’ve seen this time and time again all year. some data is sourced, manipulated, analyzed, and possibly outright made up in some quiet cloister somewhere. it gets called “peer reviewed” by 3 likeminded or outright conflicted friendlies, 2 schoolchildren, and their tame mouse “mr whiskers” and then gets passed off to a credulous public as if this is how science is done and as if “peer review” means “proven.”

it does not and never did.



the public health priesthood has not earned our trust.

if they have nothing to hide, they should prove it by hiding nothing.

endless repetition of “vaccines are safe and effective” from the same people that will not provide the data so we can see for ourselves is simply not convincing. it’s very much the opposite.



1% of that in one year, especially in young people, would have pulled any other vaccine in US history off the market.

this is WHY we trust vaccines to be safe.

because up until now, they were.

there was such trust in vaccines BECAUSE they were so thoroughly tested and held to such extraordinary standards. to give something to 100’s of millions of people, it needs to be.

that trust is being savagely abused though the slippery false equivalence of “past vaccines were safe. this is a vaccine. so this is safe.”



a program of this unprecedented size and speed using drug modalities new to humans and with a problematic history in animals should probably never happen at all, but at the very least it should have unprecedented transparency and absolute consumer choice.

it should be completely, totally on the level and out in the open.

it should also have full liability for the drug companies making billions off of it.



Italian Institute Of Health Drastically Reduces Its Official COVID Death Toll Number

The Italian Higher Institute of Health has drastically reduced the country’s official COVID death toll number by over 97 per cent after changing the definition of a fatality to someone who died from COVID rather than with COVID.

Italian newspaper Il Tempo reports that the Institute has revised downward the number of people who have died from COVID rather than with COVID from 130,000 to under 4,000.

“Yes, you read that right. Turns out 97.1% of deaths hitherto attributed to Covid were not due directly to Covid,” writes Toby Young.

Of the of the 130,468 deaths registered as official COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic, only 3,783 are directly attributable to the virus alone.

“All the other Italians who lost their lives had from between one and five pre-existing diseases. Of those aged over 67 who died, 7% had more than three co-morbidities, and 18% at least two,” writes Young.



COVID Research Reliable Sources:


*** Toby Rogers: We have entered the Substack era


So for the last two years the NY Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, the Atlantic, the Economist, New Yorker, etc. have lied to us every single day about the coronavirus pandemic. They committed mass murder by denigrating treatments that are safe, inexpensive, and effective. And they exaggerated the benefits and minimized the harms from coronavirus vaccines. The entire bourgeois news industry now works directly for the cartel.

For a while Twitter hosted a thriving conversation where a wide range of critical thinkers posted data and analysis that were better than anything in the mainstream press. But then Jack Dorsey went full Nazi and deplatformed anyone who questioned the Pharma narrative. And Zuckerberg gleefully implemented Stasi-like censorship on Facebook and Instagram because it fulfilled his totalitarian fantasies.

Now the conversation has moved over to Substack and it is extraordinary. The combination of no censorship plus a way for the best writers to monetize their work has led to a flourishing of original reporting and brilliant critique. I am grateful to everyone who has subscribed to my account since I launched a month ago and I am enjoying the intellectual freedom of writing on this site.

I subscribe to 25 accounts. Substack reader (still in beta) organizes posts chronologically in a newsfeed so that one can read them like a newspaper. I want to direct your attention to a handful of accounts that are better than anything in the mainstream press. One literally cannot understand the coronavirus pandemic unless one is reading their work right now:
  • Alex Berenson should win a Pulitzer Prize for his investigative reporting:…
  • Eugyppius is amazing:…
  • El Gato Malo was one of my favorite accounts on Twitter (he’s a genius and hilarious too)…
  • Aaron Siri just joined Substack. He’s one of the finest attorneys in the country….
  • Steve Kirsch just launched a week ago and he is doing brilliant work:..
  • I highly recommend these accounts as well: … incl Mathew Crawford


See also, older:

*** Now Curating the Curators

Some recent excellent summations of details regarding the current State of the Coof

Many smart people have been using the internets to catalogue their data analyses, philosophical insights and zeitgeist observations here in the Pandemic Decade. Oddly these volk seem to concur on an assortment of key science elements, the concurrence on which gets them often labeled as “dissident” or “extreemist” or even “Russian bot.”

An excellent review of Current Year Rona problematics, we have Scott Locklin's State of the Coof Address.

Referenced within the above link is John Tierney's Very Serious Look at Serious Coof which highlights similar societal, scientific, and governmental failings.

Anybody who is not threadreading Eugyppius1 on Tw*dder is making a giant error if they wish to understand the Rona infodeluge. He cuts through a lot of static while remaining steadfastly helpful. Perhaps the most straightforward walk through the bad assertions of the last 2 years and a devastating rebuttal to each may be found in Eugyppius' Corona Primer which I am not afraid to link again. Frens must know this information. See all of Eugyppius for an intellectual hayride.

…..

Lastly, I list this here to enhance the recency effect for choosing to read freedom enthusiast Gato Malo. I encourage all to review the Moderna story "yarn-on-corkboard" as given by him which explores whether Some People Were a Little Too Prepared for Rona. Also the Peter Daszak supervillain origin story in which, among other important things, the easy/early/sussy Sequence Access afforded Moderna is described.





Anecdotal Fare:


Doctors and COVID-19 Vaccine Injured Testify in Washington D.C. to Crimes Against Humanity – CDC, FDA, NIH, Fauci Are No Shows


U.S. Senator Ron Johnson has consistently been the only member of the federal government who has dared to expose the crimes being committed by Big Pharma through the government COVID response.

In 2020 Senator Johnson held meetings in Washington D.C. exposing the criminal activities of Big Pharma and federal health agencies in suppressing early treatment options for COVID-19 that thousands of doctors were using with a near 100% success rate.

Here in 2021 Senator Johnson has held meetings with testimony showing how dangerous the COVID-19 vaccines have been, giving a voice to those who have suffered injuries or lost loved ones who died after the shots.



Brianne Dressen was an Astra Zeneca clinical trial participant from Utah, and is co-founder of react19.org, a patient advocacy organization dedicated to increasing awareness of adverse events

… Dr. Linda Wastila is a professor and Parke-Davis Chair in Geriatric Pharmacotherapy in the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research and director of research for the Peter Lamy Center for Drug Therapy and Aging. For more than two decades, she has conducted research focusing on prescription drug policy, quality, and outcomes.

… Cody Flint is a commercial pilot from Cleveland, MS who accumulated 10,000 hours of flight time and was diagnosed with left and right perilymphatic fistula, Eustachian tube dysfunction, and elevated intracranial pressure following Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination.

Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long is a Brigade Surgeon

… Ernest Ramirez is a father from Austin, TX whose only son collapsed playing basketball and passed away from myocarditis following Pfizer vaccination.

… Kyle Warner is a 29-year-old professional mountain bike racer and a two-time national champion from Boise, ID who was diagnosed with pericarditis following vaccination.

… Doug Cameron is a farm operations manager from Idaho, who is permanently paralyzed following COVID-19 vaccination.

… Suzanna Newell is a triathlete from Saint Paul, MN diagnosed with an autoimmune disease and reliant on a walker or cane to walk following COVID-19 vaccination.

… Kellai Ann Rodriguez is a young mother from Tacoma, WA reliant on a walker and suffering seizures following COVID-19 vaccination.

Hear them speak.



From Ilargi: Google translate from German. Listing the rare events among professional sporters. Maybe a long list like this rings some bells.

Long List Of Athletes Who “Suddenly” Died Or Fell Seriously Ill

Here is the list of horrors, starting in June 2021 – when the vaccination campaigns were in full swing and everyone who blindly trusted the system had already had their second shot. We are not claiming that all of these people fell ill and died because of the vaccination, nor that there is a proven connection in the case of vaccination. The date indicated mostly corresponds to the day of the report and does not have to coincide with the date of the event. With the links we researched, it is noticeable that the majority of them lead to articles that are hidden behind a payment barrier and can therefore be read by relatively few people. Coincidence? Feel free to inform us about further cases or errors: Redaktion@report24.news

4.6.21, Italy, 29 years
Italy: 29-year-old ex-professional Giuseppe Perrino collapses during a charity game for his dead brother and dies.

7.6.21, Germany 38 years
The table tennis professional Michael Schneider dies suddenly and unexpectedly.

12.6.21, Denmark, 29 years
The footballer Christian Eriksen collapses lifeless during a European Championship game – he can be revived, but needs a pacemaker for the rest of his life.

22.6.21, Hungary, 18 years
Footballer Viktor Marcell Hegedes died warming up for training in Hungary.

14.07.21, the Netherlands, age 31
Speed skating Olympic champion Kjelt Nuis seriously ill after vaccination, with heart problems in hospital.

07/16/21, Egypt
Footballer Imad Bayumi died during a friendly match in Egypt.

July 22nd, 21, Germany, 36 years
On July 22nd, SV Olympia Schlanstedt and Germania from Kroppenstedt met. During the game Schlanstedts player Nicky Dalibor collapsed and had to be reanimated on the field.

23.07.21, Germany, 27 years
Tim B. from SV Hamberge (Schleswig-Holstein) collapses after returning from a soccer tournament and dies.

07/24/21, Germany
A player from TuS Hoberge-Uerentrup (Bielefeld) collapses on the pitch with cardiac arrest.

31.07.21, Netherlands, age 19
The 19-year-old handball player WhitnEe Abriska died of cardiac arrest just before a flight.

02.08.21, Belgium, 18 years
Rune Coghe (18) from Eendracht Hoglede (Belgium) suffers heart attack during game

August 2nd, 21, Austria, 18 years
Chronicle: 18-year-old unnamed player in Burgenland (Austria) collapses on the field and can be saved thanks to the use of a helicopter.

08/06/21, Germany
District league player of the SpVgg. Oelde II has to be revived by his opponent.

14.08.21, Belgium, 37 years
The only 37-year-old former French professional footballer Franck Berrier died of several heart attacks while playing tennis.

08/15/21 Germany
Goalkeeping coach of SV Niederpˆring suffers heart attack after training.

08/16/21 France 24 years
Bordeaux pro Samuel Kalu collapses with cardiac arrest during a Ligue 1 game

18.08.21, Belgium, 25 years
Belgian soccer player Jente Van Genechten (25) suffers cardiac arrest in the early stages of a cup game.

21.08.21, Turkey, 31 years
Fabrice Sakala (31) from Besiktas Istanbul collapses on the field without interference from the opponent and has to be taken to the hospital

22.08.21, Italy, 29 years
Pedro Obiang from Italian first division club Sassuolo Calcio after Covid vaccination with myocarditis in hospital.

22.08.21, Venezuela, age 30
Venezuelan national marathon champion Alexaida Guedez dies of a heart attack during a 5,000 meter run.

24.08.21, Luxembourg, age 29
JosE dos Reis, a Red Black Pfaffenthal (Luxembourg) player, collapses on the field and has to be resuscitated.

08/29/21, Germany
In the C-League Dillenburg (Central Hesse) a player from Hirzenhain collapses, the game is canceled.

05.09.21, France, 16 years
Diego Ferchaud (16 years old) from ASPTT Caen suffers cardiac arrest in a U-18 league match in Saint-LU.

09/06/21, Austria
ASV Baden player (Lower Austria) collapses on the field and has to be reanimated.

06.09.21, Italy, 16 years
16-year-old unnamed soccer player in Bergamo suffers cardiac arrest

06.09.21, Belgium, 27 years
Belgian amateur footballer Jens De Smet (27) from Maldegem suffers a heart attack during the game and dies in hospital.

06.09.21, Italy, 13 years
13-year-old soccer player from the Janus Nova club from Saccolongo (Italy) collapses on the field with cardiac arrest

07.09.21, Great Britain, age 17
17 year old soccer player Dylan Rich dies of a double heart attack during a game in England.

09.09.21, Germany
Player from the Birati Club M¸nster suffers in a regional league game against FC Nordkirchen II Eriksen fate: collapse with cardiac arrest. Game is canceled

09/10/21, Germany, 24 years
Lucas Surek (24) from BFC Chemie Leipzig has myocarditis.

11.09.21, France, 49 years
Ain / France: Frederic Lartillot succumbs to a heart attack after a friendly match in the locker room

09/11/21, Italy, 45 years
Andrea Astolfi, sports director of Calcio Orsago (Italy) suffers a fulminant heart attack after returning from training and dies at the age of 45 without any previous illness

11.09.21, Denmark, 22 years
Abou Ali (22) collapses with cardiac arrest during a two-tier game in Denmark

11.09.21, Netherlands, 19 years
The ice hockey player Sebastiaan Bos passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

09/13/21, Germany
Anil Usta from VfB Schwelm (Ennepetal) collapses on the field with heart problems

13.09.21, France 33 years
Dimitri Lienard from FC Strasbourg collapses in a Ligue 1 game with heart problems.

14.09.21, USA 37 years
Ex-NFL pro Parys Haralson dies suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 37.

09/18/21, Germany 25 years
Kingsley Coman (25) from FC Bayern Munich had an operation on the heart after an arrhythmia.

18.09.21, Canada 25 years
Canadian college football player Francis Perron passed away shortly after a match.

19.09.21, France 19 years
19-year-old soccer player from FC Nantes suffers cardiac arrest during training

09/19/21, Germany
Volleyball trainer Dirk Splisteser from SG Traktor Divitz collapses dead on the sidelines

09/21/21, Augsburg
Assistant referee of a Kreisliga Augsburg game in Emersacker, collapses with heart problems

09/21/21, Germany
At the World Cup qualifier for women between Germany and Serbia in Chemnitz, the English linesman Helen Byrne had to be carried off the pitch with heart problems

09/27/21, Germany
Game abandoned due to cardiac arrest of the referee in a game of Lauber SV (Donauworth district)

27.09.21, Italy, 20 years
Young rider suffers a heart attack at the end of a tournament.

09/28/21, Germany, 17 years
17-year-old soccer player of the JSG Hoher Hagen has to be reanimated in Hannoversch Munden during the game

28.09.21, Italy, 53 years
53-year-old football coach Antonello Campus collapses while training with his youth team in Sicily

28.09.21, USA, 16 years
Twice vaccinated teen collapses playing soccer and dies soon after.

09/29/21, Germany
Team leader Dietmar Gladow from Thalheim (Bitterfeld) suffers a fatal heart attack before the game

09/29/21, USA
A high school football player collapsed during practice and died in the hospital.

09/30/21, Germany
A player collapsed in the A 2 regional league game between SV Hoßkirch and TSV Sigmaringendorf. He suffered cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated.

1.10.21, Germany, 15 years
Young goalkeeper Bruno Stein from FC An der Fahner Hohe in Grafentonna, Thuringia, died at the age of 15.

October 3, 21, Austria, 64 years
Ex-goalkeeper coach and most recently talent scout Ernst Scherr suddenly and unexpectedly died.

4.10.21, Germany, 42 years
Alexander Siegfried from VfB Moschendorf suddenly and unexpectedly collapsed and died.

7.10.21, Italy, 17 years
A 17-year-old athlete from Colverde breaks down with cardiac arrest while training.

8.10.21, France, 49 years
SC Massay player suffers a fatal heart attack during the game.

9.10.21, Mexico
The caddy Alberto Olguin collapses dead on the golf course after a heart attack. It is said to be the second death of its kind within a short period of time.

9.10.21, England, age 29
Shrewsbury professional striker Ryan Bowman has to be treated with a defibrillator after half an hour of play with extreme heart problems.

10.10.21, Italy, 18 years
Football player suddenly faints on the pitch, is reanimated by fellow players.

10.10.21, France, 40 years
After warming up, a Saint-James player suffers a heart attack.

10.10.21, Italy, 59 years
A long-distance runner from Biella dies of heart failure during a race.

10/10/2021, Germany
In the game between Wacker Mecklenbeck and Fortuna Freudenberg in the women’s Westphalia league, a player collapsed shortly before the end without any opposing influence.

10/12/21 Germany, 25 years
HC TuRa Bergkamen goalkeeper Lukas Bommer dies suddenly and unexpectedly.

13.10.21, Mexico, 16 years
The student Hector Manuel Mendoza dies of a heart attack while training.

14.10.21, Brazil, 18 years
The young professional footballer Fellipe de Jesus Moreira suffered a double heart attack and is fighting for his life.

14.10.21, Italy, 27 years
The multiple cycling champion Gianni Moscon has to undergo surgery because of severe cardiac arrhythmias.

14.10.21, Italy, 53 years
An AH footballer suffers a heart attack while training.

15.10.21, USA, 14 years
The 14-year-old soccer player Ava Azzopardi collapsed on the pitch and is now fighting for her life in an artificial coma.

16.10.21, France, 54 years
AH player Christophe Ramassamy died of a heart attack during a match.

17.10.21, France, 41 years
A soccer player collapsed on the pitch and died, apparently of cardiac arrest.

27.10.21, Austria, 26 years
Ghanaian Raphael Dwamena collapsed with severe heart problems. He was wearing a defibrillator before the incident.

28.10.21, Germany, 48 years
Hertha BSC co-trainer Selim Levent dies suddenly and unexpectedly while on vacation.

28.10.21, USA, 12 years
12-year-old Jayson Kidd collapsed while training basketball and later died.

30.10.21, Spain, 33 years
FC Barcelona striker Kun Aguero had to be replaced in one game due to heart problems. He is now in the hospital for examinations.




And more:

WORLDWIDE SURGE OF SPORTS PEOPLE SUFFERING SUDDEN HEALTH ISSUES AND DEATH

… STOCKHOLM: Icelandic midfielder Emil Palsson collapsed during a football game in Norway's second division Monday evening after suffering a cardiac arrest,

… Longridge Town FC made the announcement this morning, Tweeting: "Everyone @LongridgeTownFC is devastated to hear this morning that our former player @jordantucker117 has passed away.

… Kyle Warner, a 29-year-old professional mountain bike racer, developed pericarditis, POTS and reactive arthritis following his second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 shot.

… Saurashtra batter Avi Barot, a former India Under-19 captain and a member of the Ranji Trophy-winning team in the 2019-20 season, has died after suffering a cardiac arrest

… ANTIGUA - Two West Indies Players – Chinelle Henry, Chedean Nation Collapse on Field:

… Florian Dagoury, currently the world’s top static breath-hold free diver, has been diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis 40 days following his second dose with the Pfizer vaccine.

… A healthy and active Gold Coast girl who suffered a heart attack during a soccer game has emerged from a coma, but is facing a long recovery.


… The list goes on....



athletes, covid vaccines, and life threatening injuries

this looks more than a little worrying

what’s odd is how many stories like this we keep seeing. (it’s also interesting that it’s almost all in overseas press and almost never in the US)




COVID Quotes of the Week:


Mark McGowan, the premier of Western Australia: “Our hospitals are under enormous pressure. This is the same in [the rest of Australia]. This has been something no one has ever seen before, the growth in demand in our hospitals, why it is is hard, hard to know… There is huge numbers of people coming through the door, so we’re doing everything we can to try to manage it.” [To be clear, Covid is not causing the hospital crisis in Western Australia.]


el gato malo, in response: “here’s a quick thought from captain obvious over at “analysis 101”: what other things have you done recently that you have never done before? often, new unexpected outcomes are caused by new behaviors. seen anything like that around lately, mate? because that’s probably where you want to start your investigation…”


Dr. Syed Haider: This fact needs to be shouted from the rooftops: Kids don’t spread COVID. They’re natural COVID sponges. They soak it up and stop the spread. Vaccinating kids has zero benefit to the kids and zero benefit for anyone else. The risk benefit ratio is close to infinity. The biggest risk in vaccinating kids is losing that segment of the population with the greatest resistance to the virus. Corrupting superior natural immunity with inferior vaccine immunity is a recipe for disaster. Do the responsible thing for humanity and don’t vaccinate.


Denninger: That is very bad. In fact, its catastrophically bad. …. So to “evade” the risk of Covid-19’s serious outcomes you deliberately damage the immune response for at least some period of time against all manner of other things, some of which are at least as dangerous as Covid-19 is.


el gato malo again: this winter is about to be a disaster. sorry, but it is. it’s going to be worse than last winter, and it’s not some exogenous “the variants” driving it. it’s vaccine driven superspread and viral evolutionary inversion because the vaccines leak. heavily vaxxed places from israel to colorado that go into season are seeing worse, not better results than last year. and it’s in the highest vaxxed groups.


Kunstler: The CDC and the FDA have unleashed a set of untested vaccines on the public that have been shown to produce alarmingly high rates of adverse reactions, both disabling and leading to death. The CDC’s VAERS system for reporting all that is so janky that doctors can barely use it and the CDC refuses to fix it; meanwhile doctors are being punished for even attempting to report adverse reactions. The whole of medical officialdom has militated aggressively against early treatments of Covid-19 with cheap and easily available drugs, even firing doctors who attempt to use the protocol


Ilargi: Name one other disease for which: governments & medical boards prohibit doctors from prescribing prophylactic & early treatment meds to patients & threaten them with jail sentences, fines, disciplinary proceedings & termination of their medical license.


Sen. Rand Paul: “It’s a great disservice to fire people—nurses, doctors, firemen, policemen—who put their life at risk when there was no vaccine at all”


Brandon Smith: I began reminiscing about the first time I read the book ‘Manufacturing Consent’. Though I have never agreed with Chomsky’s politics I have always appreciated his analysis on the methods the establishment uses to control mass psychology and silence popular discourse. I have long felt that this was an area where the political left and conservatives might intersect in our views and find common ground. This is why I felt an extra dose of disappointment when I witnessed Chomsky go off the deep end this week and suggest that people who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates need to be ostracized from society.


Aaron Rodgers: "I realize I'm in the crosshairs of the woke mob right now so before my final nail gets put in my cancel culture casket, I'd like to set the record straight on so many of the blatant lies out there," … "The problem with this is that it's so political," Rodgers continues. "Health should not be political." … "You have a moral obligation to object to unjust rule,"


Levi Quackenboss: Here’s the issue: a very large part of Braindead America thinks there is an endpoint in sight, and if everyone would just hurry up and give up their freedoms and bodily autonomy, the faster we’ll all get our rights back—as if that has ever happened anywhere on the globe, ever in history.


Julius Ruechel: Other than the few rare individuals who saw through the hysteria from day one, we have all rescued ourselves from the clutches of fear by following a cookie crumb trail of our own questions back to sanity. Covid hysteria is built on a foundation of sand. Once someone begins to have doubts, the official narrative practically unravels under its own weight.


Madonna said that there’s “no debate or discussion” over vaccines thanks to the fear permeated by “cancel culture”. … “The thing is, the quieter you get, the more fearful you get, the more dangerous anything is. We’re giving it power by shutting the fuck up completely.”


Berenson: Virus: gonna virus. Roll Tide.




CO-VIDs of the Week:



Critical Thinking 101(Expert of Expert Evaluation): This video needs to go viral.

Also here: Peter Doshi - Senior Editor of the British Medical Journal



Aaron Rogers Interview and How Athletes are Standing Up

This is one of those interviews that you may want to watch now before it gets banned from YouTube. The all seeing eye is ever vigilant, and jealous of your attention spectrum.



"I realize that I'm in the cross-hairs of the Woke mob…"

That's the first important moment in the interview.



From there, Rodgers drops bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb. Like it was casual. Exactly what you'd expect from the only quarterback to post six consecutive seasons with a 100+ QB passer rating (no, I don't know how that's defined, but it's a record). He calls out parts of the medical community for factually wrong statements, calls out the NFL's unscientific policies and health security theater (including social segregation and a yellow wristband), and then he reveals that he chose early outpatient medical treatment that sounds a whole lot like the protocol used by Dr. Brian Tyson, the honey badger of urgent care clinic physicians: monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, zinc, vitamins and HCQ. He said that after 48 hours he was "feeling incredible". He thanked his medical staff and Joe Rogan for their advice and friendship.



Scientific Journals Censor Science: Removal of Myocarditis report in VAERS

Dr Peter McCullough, MD, one of the most cited physicians in the world, an eminent practitioner of internal medicine, a cardiologist and epidemiologist, co-wrote a report with Dr Jessica Rose, Ph.D., a virologist and epidemiologist in Canada, called ‘A Report on Myocarditis Adverse Events in the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) in Association with COVID-19 Injectable Biological Products.’



This is the BEST takedown of the Pandemic...Jacinda gets Torched by Reporter who explodes and Drops some...Epic WAX Truth Bombs.

[As per Ilargi: "
The press asking questions disrupts the press conference."]





COVID Conspiracy Fare:


*** Toby Rogers: How the U.S. descended into Pharma fascism in 7 steps


The 1992 election started a chain reaction -- free trade, deindustrialization, the opioid and autism epidemics, Eds & Meds, Donald Trump, and Pharma fascism



i see we have now reached the "mandatory public signaling of outgroup exclusion" part of the pandemic

masks, perhaps the most useless yet degrading of the covid interventions, are now to be mandated by OSHA for ONLY the unvaxxed in workplaces.

the CDC has, of course, told us that vaccines do not stop the transmission of covid.

and the data clearly back them up.

they may even make people into MORE potent spreaders.

so treating the vaxxed as “safe” has no basis in science.

this is no longer about virus. this is about punishment and compliance.

it’s about politics.



*** Hidden Markov Respecter: Novavax Coming Soon to an Arm Near You?

There are a lot of reasons to do whatever you can to hold out for something that does not inject unknown particulates plus adenovirus vector (J&J), or long-lasting genetic material into your system (AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna).

….

But TPTB won’t let you get away with that for very much longer. See Lithuania for how deep the rabbit hole goes. American pols still think there is a squeeze-play to be had where they will emerge as heroes and protectors of the old and frail, of kids, of society itself, and keep their positions of authority, keep their heads, and get to collect the bucks and call the shots for everything from gun licensing, rent control, and authorization to attend concerts and restaurants for all future time….if they can just get the vaxx rates up before Christmas. And they will stop at basically nothing to make that happen. This Quarter is their final chance to look good before an American election year. Because after Christmas, the Rona seasonality roller coaster will have peaked and the ride down into Spring 2022 will make them look like absolute mental giants who saved us from ourselves. That is, as long as the virii play along and not too many people notice that vaccines actually cause variant illness. That is a big bet in the face of mounting data. Nevertheless, look for loud claims in January 2022, around State of the Union time, that “We did it folks, it looks like we got enough on the vaxx-train to run this thing out of town!” Ugh.



Soon your choices will be to go the way of Italy and France— and some cities in Germany —and passport yourselves all the way back to Bolshevism, OR succumb and get the jab. Until then, and they know this, the inexorable march to statist arm-jabs are the Order. They don’t care about your religious objections, they don’t care about your heart murmur, they don’t care about your Guillain–BarrĂ© syndrome. All they care about now is compliance. Why? Nobody really knows.

But it feels like the explanation that they like to boss other people around and feel absolutely morally superior to others is ringing just a little bit hollow



The strong leaning toward mRNA vaccine from a particular company is not lost on observant people. Why them? Their product could never pass muster with these data in former times, why do they get the multi-billion dollar payday? Are other factors at work? Is it just monied back-scratching? Or do they need a permanent change to the way our immunity operates, or expression of some as-yet-undetermined protein that we haven’t seen yet? Is it really just all about mail-in democracy? It all starts to sound conspiratorial really quickly, but 2 senses are tingling: 1) Money doesn’t explain it all, 2) the drive to achieve this one thing, universal vaxx, is unprecedented, very obvious, and inexplicable. People like Eugyppius call this an emergent phenomenon of incompetence crossed with an authoritarian instinct. Time may tell.



Sharon Lerner, Mara Hvistendahl: NIH OFFICIALS WORKED WITH ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE TO EVADE RESTRICTIONS ON CORONAVIRUS EXPERIMENTS

Emails show that NIH officials allowed EcoHealth Alliance to craft oversight language governing its own gain-of-function research.



Mercola: Injuries and Fatalities of Covid Jabs: OSHA Changes Rule to Cover Up Vaccine Injuries



Pfizer Vax Trial Being Probed After Whistleblower Exposes 'Falsified Data', According To Contractor



*** how to massively skew reporting of covid deaths and vaccine reactions




here’s the hospital meghan ranney claimed was overwhelmed.

patient counts were WAY down from 2019.

but revenues weren’t.



so much of this data is a mess because the choices made in public health made it a mess.

call it stupid or call it willful (the truth is likely some of both) this has been an unprecedented set of perverse incentives, subsidy tax, and bribery and threats.

it’s the inevitable consequence of letting bureaucrats run riot with nearly unlimited funding in short time frames, play fast and loose with rules, definitions, and standards, and not only bear zero responsibility for outcomes, but profit from perverse ones.



Sandpiper: In every major political event the winning team has is an inner conspiracy and an outer conspiracy. The outer conspiracy is the way the agenda is sold, and is really what the True Believers actually think they are doing.

In contrast the inner conspiracy is the small circle of people who are the key nodes / points in the conspiracy who created the vision for their own benefit, because they have political goals they want to achieve.

yes, sure, by standards that we think "experts" should adhere to - and the standards they pretend to adhere to - the vaccine is a failure. It flat out doesn't work; doesn't prevent infection, doesn't appear to reduce deaths, etc

the "experts" (e.g. fake "scientists" at the CDC and in academia) are just useful idiots here. The inner conspiracy - which I would suggest is the same circle who is behind the puppet president Joe Baidan - they have other objectives in mind.

I can only speculate as to their goals but I don't think this is too far off:

Fortify the New Regime, which is a single-party state in all but name, by providing multiple new avenues to control dissent

These avenues include religious rituals / doctrinal conformity to drive pro-regime fervor and make opposition bend the knee as well as practical / classic totalitarian control tactics ("papers please")

The fact that the vaccine doesn't work is actually perfect for this

It is dubious whether the inner conspiracy ever wants covid to "end" but I concede that they *might* or that some nodes within the inner conspiracy want it to end - for reasons which are probably related to their positions within the overall power structure.



*** eugyppius, in response: Stupid and Evil in Equal Measure

Mass containment as conspiracy and as emergent phenomenon.

A big problem, is how to understand this. As a rule, I am open to all plausible theories, and I find many conspiratorial approaches to the Corona phenomenon to be spiritually or metaphorically accurate, even if I disagree with their details. By and large, though, I’ve resisted interpretations that detect a specific, malevolent plan behind these events. I’ve preferred to see this cascade of unrelenting, self-imposed destruction as the fruit of bureaucratic incompetence and elite stupidity.



All containment policies, since March 2020, flow from two fundamental premises, that together form a Pandemic Doctrine: 1) All pandemic infections are regrettable and to be prevented. 2) It is possible to control pandemics via social or medical technology.

Before 2020, nobody anywhere believed either of these things—not despite, but because of long experience with semi-regular pandemic influenza outbreaks. Today, however, the Pandemic Doctrine has become one of the highest Western political orthodoxies. Asking whether the Corona response is at root a conspiracy or a failure is a less specific way of asking where the Pandemic Doctrine came from. This is a more crucial matter than even the laboratory origins of SARS-2, and so of course many details are hidden from us. We can only locate its approximate origins, somewhere in the unsettling three-act history of lockdowns and their origins:

Act I, The Mad Scientists: ….

Act II, Chinese Quarantine Theatre….

Act III, Lockdowns for the West: …



Everything since then, has been the autonomous force of the Pandemic Doctrine and its terrible demands. As containment policies have failed, one after the other, they have left a vortex of disconfirmed expectancy in their wake, turning early political and bureaucratic advocates of containment into truly deranged zealots. The policies themselves, though they are articles of faith, have little or no real-world effect, and this has had curious consequences. It became important for all countries to do as many useless things as possible, and more or less the same useless things as everyone else.



The vaccines are just a further stage in this inevitable process. Lockdowns and the rest of it did not work. But the Pandemic Doctrine that demands lockdowns cannot be abandoned; there can only be new methods. From the erratic zeal with which our governments embraced vaccinations, you can take the measure of how desperately they hoped to escape the destructive cycle of periodic mass closures. But now the vaccines are also failing, and vaccine policies have begun to experience the very same decay in conception and drift in purpose that transformed the non-pharmaceutical interventions. Every day, the vaccines become less about reducing transmission or reducing hospitalisations, and more about a whole array of other things:






Vax Mandate Pushback Fare:




US Appeals Court Blocks Biden’s Federal Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate


“Because the petitions give cause to believe there are grave statutory and constitutional issues with the Mandate, the Mandate is hereby STAYED pending further action by this court.”



kitten corner: NASA vaccine protests

jeez, who do these people think they are?

rocket scientists?


*** Igor Chudov: Time for our "Normandy Beach" moment

I hate begging but I will for the first time: please share and spread this post far and wide to grow our army.

The tide is turning


You might think that with approval of Pfizer vax for little children, all hope is lost. But the opposite is true: the vaccinators are now “jumping the shark” with kids, in order to keep the momentum, which they are losing. The tide IS turning.

The vaccinators are failing with Chicago police, failed with New York firefighters, Southwest Airlines, Delta airlines. This is becoming apparent. Just about any small business is loath to impose mandates due to worker shortage. No business supports mandates that are detrimental to their workforce.



Time to go on the offensive!

Time is ripe to use enemy confusion, rising anti-Covid-vax sentiment, and the rushed child vaccination to our advantage and give them a big blow now.

It is time to land on the Normandy Beach, upend the narrative, break the appearance of consensus, and use the same emotions that the vaccinators used to bamboozle the public, to our advantage!



Say anything you want, but stay polite, friendly and only speak the truth. This is our “landing”, us going into spaces where vaccinating crooks used to feel unchallenged.

The vaccinees are regular humans, confused by the herd effect (they think everyone agrees), fear (my kids will die of Covid), compliance (it is easier to agree with the pushy vaccinators than to disagree), reverence for fake authorities with many acronyms next to their names, etc.

If we simply show up commenting on tweets or facebook update posts like “Vaccine clinic tomorrow in XX middle school”, “I am getting my son vaccinated tomorrow”, “why vaccinating kids is important to end pandemic”, “all kids in our school are waiting to be vaxed” and so on, and just announce our opposition, make sincere and HONEST arguments, expose the lies, the hypnosis of vaccinators will evaporate.

The herd effect, compliance, reverence and so on disappear as soon as credible opposition arrives and refuses to get scared. It will be multiplied tenfold if other participants of the conversation join in.



*** Do Not Give Up Your Rights ~ Dr. Julie Ponesse’s Remarkable Speech


Dr. Julie Ponesse is a professor of ethics who has taught at Ontario’s Huron University College for 20 years. She was placed on leave and banned from accessing her campus due to the vaccine mandate.

… In the fall of 2019, I was a professor of ethics and ancient philosophy; I taught students critical thinking + the importance of self-reflection, how to ask good questions and evaluate evidence, how to learn from the past and why democracy requires civic virtue.

Fast forward to September 16, 2021 when I received a “termination with cause” letter after I questioned, and refused to comply, with my employer’s vaccine mandate. I was dismissed for doing exactly what I had been hired to do. I was a professor of ethics questioning what I take to be an unethical demand.



By definition, vaccine mandates are coercive immunization strategies: in the absence of coercion — the threat of a loss of employment, for example — people would voluntarily agree to do what the mandate is trying to achieve!

Employers are holding our careers hostage, and removing our participation in the economy and in public life. Their justification is that “we are in a pandemic,” and we must therefore relinquish autonomy over our bodies for the sake of the public good.

So, let’s talk about autonomy and the public good for a minute.



The current state of affairs in Canada meets neither of these criteria.

Consider these facts: …



By every measure and from every angle, this is a ‘house of cards’ about to crumble

But the question that interests me is why hasn’t it crumbled already? Why are these questions not the headlines of every major newspaper in Canada every day?



It’s my observation that we are facing a pandemic not just of a virus but a pandemic of compliance and complacency, in a culture of silence, censorship, and institutionalized bullying.



As a wise colleague recently said “This is a war about the role of government. It is about our freedom to think and ask questions, and about whether individual autonomy can be downgraded to a conditional privilege or whether it remains a right. It is a war about whether you are to remain a citizen or become a subject. It is about who owns you… you or the state.”



The dismissive, well-rehearsed messaging of our public health officials has created a highly efficient machine that does not publish its evidence or engage in debate, but only issues orders that we obligingly follow. With the help of the media, its mistakes are hidden, its policies unquestioned, its dissenters silenced.

How do we break this silence? How do we regain our sanity and rebuild our democracy? Perhaps it’s time to get a little bit noisy. Studies have proven that once an idea is adopted by just 10% of the population, this is the tipping point when ideas, opinions, & beliefs will be rapidly adopted by the rest. A vocal, a **NOISY** 10% is all it takes.



As Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”



"let's go brandon" is the king meme of our age

it began as the perfect meme. it's becoming the perfect storm.


“let’s go brandon” started as a joke.

but it was a good joke.

a poignant joke.

it is now a full blown movement and it’s only going to grow. it’s the theme for our times, the exemplar of an age beset by a pendulum that is past due to swing back.

it’s our protest song.

it started in the opposition to an unpopular president widely viewed as the unqualified and doddering puppet of a corrupt gerontocracy dominated by special interests and interested in domination all of our lives and livelihoods for fun and profit.

people are tired of unprecedented outrages to liberty and personal choice. they are reeling from job loss, business closure, and newfound intrusion into every aspect of their lives. and they are OVER IT.

they were chanting “f-ck joe biden” in public venues all over the nation.

this likely had little future.

but LGB! is something altogether more.

LGB! added a whole new dimension. it was a clueless or dishonest (depending on who you ask) media portrayal of the facts on the ground. (press play if you have not seen it)

this added a whole new fundamental aspect to the meme.

now it was not only PG rated and family friendly, it also carried not just protest of joey b, but of the media and their relentless spin and misreporting.

it became the criticism of not just a man, but the edifice that propped him up and kept him in place.




COVID Postscript:
late addition, slightly older fare, but just came across last night, had to add

*** Dr. Malcolm Kendrick: I have not been silenced.

My self-appointed role within the COVID19 mayhem, was to search for the truth – as far as it could be found – and to attempt to provide useful information for those who wish to read my blog.

The main reason for prolonged silence, and introspection, is that I am not sure I can find the truth. I do not know if it can be found anymore. Today I am unsure what represents a fact, and what has simply been made up. A sad and scary state of affairs.

This is not just true of the mainstream and the mainstream media, which has simply decided to parrot all Government and WHO statements without any critical engagement…or thought. For example, the BBC intones that ‘In the last day, fifty people died within twenty-eight days of a positive COVID19 test…’ Or a hundred, or six. What the hell is this supposed to mean? It means nothing, it is the very definition of scientific meaninglessness.

Especially when it seems that very nearly a half of those admitted to hospital with COVID19 were not admitted to hospital with COVID19. They were admitted with something else entirely, then had a positive test whilst in hospital. In short, they were not admitted to hospital with COVID19, and almost certainly did not die of COVID19. They died with a positive COVID19 test. With, not of.

But the misinformation is equally a problem for those on the other side. Claims are made for the benefits of Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine that simply do not stand up to scrutiny. Yes, I believe both drugs may provide some benefit, but not the claimed 90% reduction in deaths that I have seen trumpeted.

So, I have given up on COVID19. It is a complete mess, and I feel that, without being certain of the ground under my feet, I have nothing to contribute. I too am in danger of starting to make statements that are not true.

However, before leaving the area entirely, I would like to make clear some of the things I currently believe to be true, and what I do not believe to be true. If this is of any assistance to anyone. Very little is referenced, because I can very easily find a contradictory reference to any reference I provide. For each fact, there is an equal and opposite fact. 

.....

[I said HAD to post earlier b/c of above but also b/c of excerpts like this:]
 
This is a special case of a general rule that I modestly call the ‘Kendrick reverse meaning law.’ Which developed from P.G. Wodehouse’s observation that ‘When an Englishman says ‘trust me’ it is time to start counting the spoons.’

This reverse meaning was seen clearly when Matt Hancock (UK Health Secretary at the time) stated that ‘Right from the start we’ve tried to throw a ring of steel around our care homes.’ Which actually meant that ‘Right from the start we threw care homes under a bus.’ Unless, what he actually meant was that the ring of steel was put up to stop care home residents escaping. ‘Halt, who goes there….’ Sound of heavy machine gun fire, whistles screeching, attack dogs baying at the leash. ‘Go for the Zimmer frames, that should bring them down.’


[and this:]

Does it mean a positive test? Does it mean a positive test plus symptoms? [Which used to be called a ‘case’] Does it mean something else. What does infected actually mean…

Here, I defer to the Master – Lewis Carroll:

‘When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

....

....

Yes, Northern Ireland does not fit with the approved narrative, so it is ignored. Anything that does not fit with the mask wearing, social isolating, vaccination will save the world narrative is simply ignored.

Or it is shouted down or censored by the self-appointed Fact-checkers. Those mighty intellects who can determine what is true, and what is not. It was thoughtful of them to descend from Mount Olympus to mingle amongst feeble minded humanity and tell us what we should, and should not, be thinking. We must all be eternally grateful that the ‘Truth Gods’ now live amongst us, to firmly inform us all what, and how, we should be thinking. And shut us down if we veer from the official narrative.

Anyway, faced with a situation where there are almost no facts that can be relied upon, from anywhere, I have officially removed myself from all discussions on the matter of COVID19.

Instead, I shall return to other areas where, whilst the truth is constantly battered and bruised, and lying in a bruised heap the corner, it is still breathing … just about alive. Sometimes it is capable of weakly raising its head and whispering quietly into my ear. I shall let you know what it says.




GeoPolitical Fare:


Wolfgang Streeck: Rusty Charley


Weird things are going on in Brussels, and they are getting weirder by the day. The European Union, an international would-be superstate running an impressive democratic deficit, is gearing up to punish two of its democratic member states and their elected governments, together with the citizens that have elected them, for what it considers a democratic deficit. Governing the EU is an unelected technocracy, a constitution without a people, consisting of unintelligible international treaties and the accumulated rulings of an international court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) – treaties that cannot in practice be revised, and rulings that only the court itself can revise – with a parliament that is not allowed to legislate and knows no opposition.



In this context, note that there now seems to be a slow awakening in other member countries over the sheer presumptuousness of the EU’s increasingly explicit insistence on the general primacy of its law over that of its member states, including their constitutional law. The battle of Poland and Hungary may put an end to the era when ‘integration by law’ could, thanks to its incrementalism, be treated by increasingly short-termist national governments with benevolent neglect.



Noah Smith: What if Xi Jinping just isn't that competent?

In my experience, people tend to assume that Xi is hyper-competent because:

· There’s a general impression that the Chinese government is hyper-competent, and Xi has made himself synonymous with the Chinese government, and

· Under Xi’s watch, China has arguably become the world’s most powerful country.

But this doesn’t mean Xi actually deserves his reputation as a one-man engine of Chinese greatness. Much of his apparent success was actually inherited from his predecessors. He has taken absolute control of the apparatus built by people such as Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, but I think it’s hard to argue that he has added much to that apparatus.

In fact, I think there are multiple signs that Xi has actually weakened the capabilities of the Chinese juggernaut. So far, China’s power and general effectiveness are so great that these signs seem to have gone largely unnoticed, but I think they’re there. The three big ones are: Slowing growth, an international backlash against China, and missteps related to the Covid pandemic.




Orwellian Fare:


Chris Hedges: Why the Julian Assange case is the most important battle for press freedom of our time

If Assange goes to prison for exposing war crimes, it will mean the death of real national security reporting



*** Eisenstein: The America that Almost Was and Yet May Be


… For them to kill a President, a war hero, was unthinkable. It contradicted the entire story of America, land of the free, beacon of democracy, exemplar for the world.

That is why we the people swallowed the lie. What followed was inevitable, just as in any relationship where a lie festers. On the one hand, it sets a precedent for the acceptance of more lies; at the same, real trust is impossible so long as the lie remains in place.



The JFK assassination was by no means the first deception perpetrated by the American establishment upon its people, but nothing before it was as brazen or as total.2 It was in fact a coup, and we have been living under the regime it installed ever since.



The beneficiaries of the coup included not only the military-industrial complex, but every institution whose profits and power were held in check by democracy. The core of democracy was dead and soon its necrosis spread to outer organs such as regulatory agencies. To varying degrees, all became captives of industry over the ensuing decades.



*** Secret Military Experiments and Our Health

This story is about secret experiments on people. It is also about the reality of living inside a Machine that plays games with us. Sometimes the Machine selectively shows its face — and sometimes it selectively hides it — and based on that, it plays its favorite game called, "Confuse, Divide and Conquer."

….

The blood-chilling dehumanization is in vogue. It's 2021, and we are marching straight into the Great Reset. Everything is "fine."

And what about the Machine? The Machine is showing its face to most of us at last.



Tessa Lena: Under New Normal, Your Umbrella Won't Work Unless Everyone Has One

You better believe it, or you are a conspiracy theorist.




Tessa Lena: "Emotional Physics": A Poetic Analysis of the "System of Domination"


Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of a 24/7 onslaught of carefully manufactured propaganda. It’s depressing how well it works!

But as the pressure is mounting, and the insanity is thickening), it is good to remember that we are just one of many generations living inside a Machine. The task handed to us is ours.



Human existence, and the difference between domination and not domination


Every human being is born with an in-built desire to express what’s inside and to imprint on the world one’s unique energy (“an electrical charge”).

In those terms, it is easy to describe the difference between freedom and domination (self-evident but I like the metaphor).

NOT domination = a situation in which one is generally free to imprint one’s own authentic message onto the world.

Domination = a situation in which one is forced to suppress one’s own message and imprint somebody else’s.

And then we have the difference between crude domination and refined domination. In the crude version, the bullying is obvious. It’s physical slavery, imprisonment, and direct violence. In the refined version, it’s more like debt, mortgage, keeping up with the Jones etc. There is some wiggling room for the people in a system known as “Western democracy.” It is still domination but the leash is long and velvety—and it can often feel great.

Back to 2021.

In that context, what’s been happening in the past eighteen months is a mode shift from refined domination to crude domination—and a shortening of the leash.


The bad thing about it is that it is very oppressive and horrible. The good thing about it is that we now see the leash very well—and I posit that as time passes, more and more people will see the leash and object. I think it’s inevitable.

On my end, I am not going to be burned again. One time is enough. I am not going to forget who I am again. There is no use in that. I feel in my place because love is not a victim of this world, it is the fabric of life. No more bending over to bulllies. Enough.



*** The Singularity Is Here

Artificially intelligent advertising technology is poisoning our societies. Something unnatural is afoot. Our affinities are increasingly no longer our own, but rather are selected for us for the purpose of automated economic gain. The automation of our cognition and the predictive power of technology to monetize our behavior, indeed our very thinking, is transforming not only our societies and discourse with one another, but also our very neurochemistry. It is a late chapter of a larger story, about the deepening incursion of mercantile thinking into the groundwater of our philosophical ideals. This technology is no longer just shaping the world around us, but actively remaking us from within.

That we are subject to the dominion of endless digital surveillance is not news. And yet, the sheer scale of the domination continues to defy our imaginative embrace. Virtually everything we do, everything we are, is transmuted now into digital information.



….

Embedded in this scheme of endless distraction is a deeper logic. The system has come to understand the fundamental value of always reaffirming our points of view back to us, delivering to us a world in our image, confirmation bias as the default setting. This is the real meaning of contemporary virtuality.

… In its basest form—and make no mistake, the baser the form, the stickier the engagement—what we’re describing here is a profound technological support for primary narcissism. We don’t need to know our Ovid in order to understand the perils of all this self-gazing, and yet, we may nevertheless fail to appreciate just how pervasive the social attitudes engendered by this orientation have become.



All of this points to a new social ontology, an evolving set of behaviors guided by the shift in incentives that the technology has created. It’s the advertising model of thought; the entertainment model of consciousness. Self-promotion, self-commodification, self-marketing—all are now taken for forms of legitimate commentary and critique; ceaseless affirmation of our biases emboldens the strident certainty of our moral positions. This is the complexion of public exchange in the newly shaped public sphere, where ideas are little more than bait for the hours a day of human attention at stake, yet another demonstration of just how much the technology is reshaping our relations with one another.



"Courage beyond doubt."

Pilger on Assange..






CaitOz Fare:


Mass Media Hasten To Help Pentagon Exonerate Itself In Afghan Airstrike




The world is dominated by opaque and unaccountable government agencies who are legitimized and normalized by the mass media. The Pentagon killed ten people, none of whom were combatants and seven of whom were children, lied about it, got exposed, investigated itself and found that those who perpetrated the attack were not even guilty of so much as negligence, then classified the report and called it a day. And then the mass media legitimized this by calling it an “independent” investigation conducted by a “watchdog”.

As we discussed previously, this is just one of thousands of airstrikes the Pentagon has launched since its “war on terror” began, a huge percentage of which have included civilian casualties and virtually none of which have ever been subject to this much critical analysis. The only reason this one is gaining special attention is because of the highly politicized nature of President Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal which the mass media aggressively criticized the entire time.




It’s hilarious that people still think the Democratic Party cares about winning elections. That’s not its job, children. That’s not why the Democratic Party exists. The Democratic Party exists to kill leftward progress in the world’s most powerful nation. That’s all it cares about doing.

….

Few people understand how fucked things really are. It’s not just that we’re facing global disaster on multiple fronts and our electoral systems are rigged to prevent us from doing anything about it, it’s that the public is being propagandized away from even wanting to do anything about it.

Our abusive systems are so deeply locked in on so many levels that even people who see things kind of clearly can’t really grasp how bad it is. They’re still like oh okay then we need a new political party or a new voting strategy or whatever, and it just misses the reality of our situation. We’re so very, very sick and so very, very, very far from any kind of shift toward health, and you look at what even the most awake people are talking about and it’s often vapid sectarian bickering about nonsense that’s light years from having any relevance to our current plight.

That’s why I use the word “miracle” sometimes. Because if you really grasp how fucked things are and still hold out hope that we can change things in time to save the world, you’re basically holding out hope for a miracle. You might not use that word, but you’re hoping for something to happen that on paper is impossible.

So what do we do? The only thing we can do in such a situation: work tirelessly to spread awareness. To spread awareness to other people, and to spread awareness within ourselves. To facilitate awakening, collectively and as an individual. It’s the only thing that ever leads to healthy change.

Do that with everything we’ve got, and do it for its own sake with the full allowance that it could easily not be enough, and who knows. We just might get our miracle.



*** It’s Really Weird How Little We Talk About Humanity’s Imminent Doom




Other Quotes of the Week:


W.J. Astore: Were you against the Afghan War? The Iraq War? Events proved you right, of course, but for the wrong reasons. And if you were pro-war in both cases, you were of course wrong but for the right reasons. Therefore you will still be celebrated and featured on mainstream media outlets, whereas those “right” people will still be ignored because, again, they may have been right about those disastrous wars, but their reasons were all wrong.



Mark Ames: So the Steele Dossier that kicked off 4 years of Russiagate hysteria among the US ruling class was cooked up by two Russian alcoholics from Perm. “Gogolesque” does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites.



Kevin Gosztola:

Jul: Build Back Better™

Aug: Build Back Somewhat Better™

Sept: Build Back Better But Hey Let’s Not Get Carried Away™

Oct: Build Back Better, So Long As We Check With Corporate America First™

Nov: Build Back The 1%, Then They Can Decide Who Gets To Live Better Or Die™



Briahna Joy Gray: I will not perpetuate the fiction that there's a "progressive caucus." There are, at best, 6 progressives in the House.



Astore again: It’s all a smokescreen, it’s all BS. The Democratic Party, like the Republican, answers to the owners and donors. It is doing exactly what it’s been told to do, abandoning all its progressive promises (it never had any principles) in the false name of compromise and bipartisanship. And this is exactly why Donald Trump will be reelected in 2024.



Lambert Strether: My ranking for competence has always been Putin > Xi > Biden. If in fact the ranking should be Putin > Biden > Xi, we’re in terrible trouble.





Big Thoughts:



Barry Brownstein: Resisting Tyranny Depends on the Courage to Not Conform

Without obedience, tyranny fails


Social psychologist Roy Baumeister begins his book Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, with a proposition that will be counterintuitive to many: “Evil usually enters the world unrecognized by the people who open the door and let it in. Most people who perpetrate evil do not see what they are doing as evil.”





Browning wonders if there is “a ’deeply ingrained behavior tendency’ to comply with the directives of those positioned hierarchically above, even to the point of performing repugnant actions in violation of ‘universally accepted’ moral norms.” Browning explains, …

… The Covidocracy demands we all conform and shames those who make different choices. Browning explains the dangers of a culture of shame: …

… Today, politicians work overtime demonizing, mocking, and punishing “out-group members” who won’t obey their dictates.



Conforming, lacking courage, will not spare you from choices that life will demand of you. Eisenstein challenges us: “As the authorities’ narratives devolve into absurdity and their rules devolve into oppression, more and more of us face this choice: … To do what you know is right, or to cave in to the pressure, consoling yourself with words you don’t believe. ‘I had no choice.’”

We all have a personal responsibility for preserving freedom. The price of abdicating our responsibility is high. As Browning puts it, Germans paid a high price for “placing uncritical trust in the ‘firm leadership’ of seemingly well-intentioned political authority between 1933 and 1945.”



The Radical Promise of Human History

A sweeping new history of humanity upends the story of civilization, inviting us to imagine how our own societies could be radically different.




And another review of same:

Early Civilizations Had It All Figured Out

A contrarian account of our prehistory argues that cities once flourished without rulers and rules—and still could.




Freddie DeBoer: I'm Still Here

the same old materialist civil libertarian Marxist I've always been


Nothing the internet has done, I think, has been more powerful or consequential than the vast increase in social conformity it’s brought about. Every incentive in 2021, every last one, pushes us to submit to the will of the crowd. Under those conditions it’s more important than ever that we remember who we are and where we came from.

New York Magazine asks, “What Happened to Matt Taibbi?” This is a recurring question among the kind of elite college graduates who discovered politics in 2016 and now speak with total confidence about all political questions - what happened to those of us who have remained committed to our core values? Taibbi’s defense, reasonably, is that it’s his critics who have changed and not him; the piece treats this with equivocation, regarding the issue as a rhetorical question rather than a question of fact. But the broader issue is a question of fact, and there’s no factual dispute to be had: today’s “left,” in media and academia and elsewhere, has abandoned absolutely core commitments related to goals, policy, and process, and slandered anyone who hasn’t. The avatars of this tendency mostly know nothing but operate in a social culture in which one must project an aura of knowing everything, and so we have never had substantive debates about any of this stuff, nor do we have communal history enough to know who’s changed and who hasn’t. Let’s run the big changes down.



….

There have been many more changes but I’ll spare you. How did we get here? To a depressing degree, it’s because a lot of people feel insecure about their lack of knowledge and experience in left politics (which is fine) and deal with that insecurity by acting like they know everything (which is not).

I never know what to call this leftist turn from the past decade or so. It’s hard to name because it’s had several distinct starts and phases, from the Great Recession and Occupy to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign to DSA to BlackLivesMatter and the general embrace of what was once far-left rhetoric by the kinds of people who own a Subaru. It’s also hard to discuss intelligently because for all of the heated rhetoric and fundamental change in how left-of-center people talk there’s been precious little in the way of tangible results. Occupy never coalesced into anything meaningful; Bernie lost, and numerous predictions that his organization would transform into a muscular grassroots socialist organization didn’t really come to pass; DSA does some good work but their membership growth stalled out and many local chapters have been gripped by typical leftist infighting; BLM captured righteous anger and inspired the most positive press for a radical street protest movement I can imagine but in concrete terms mostly became a make-work program for the young Black educated class.

There has been something very weird, and quietly destructive, about this whole period: many people began to be radicals, but we had no beginners. Many thousands of people were awakened to a new political consciousness, but none of them were willing to admit that they were once asleep.



On a personal level I find this all exhausting and dispiriting. The popularization of socialism has come packaged with a suffocating culture of jokes and irony, which are good for appearing clever but bad for winning the future. There are many leftists who would like to achieve more tangible progress but who seem entirely unwilling to let go of their juvenile commitment to “dunking,” using social ostracism as their only political tool.




Other Fare:


In India and Canada’s international student recruiting machine, opportunity turns into grief and exploitation

From rural Punjab to suburban Brampton, Ont., a booming industry brings in thousands of Indians each year – but while recruiters and schools profit, many students flounder due to lack of supports





Pics of the Week:








 




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