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Thursday, February 17, 2022

2022-02-17

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

Regular Fare:

How Much Will The Fed Hike? 40 Years Of History Shows The Brick Walls




Employers take note: Most remote workers don't want to go back to the office



Carlos Mucha: The brawl this weekend over MMT was ridiculous. What’s going on here is Larry Summers & other Obama Admin alum want everyone to forget they screwed the pooch in 2009. There’s no question we’d all be better if WH & Congress had listened to Stephanie Kelton & Warren Mosler instead.


Other Charts: (source links: one & two, three, four, five & six, seven, eight, )



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Bubble Fare:


Yves here. The headline overstates the conclusions from new research on the stock markets. However, the study serves to confirm that economists’ need to depict consumers and investors as cool and rational is all wet. But the assumption of strong-form rationality was essential to toy models that showed markets as producing virtuous outcomes. And do not forget, the need to shore up the pretense that market-based activity is at least efficient and better yet optimal (in terms of resource allocation) has become fundamental to the defense of capitalism. In other words, consumer/investor rationality is central to the economic dogma that defends capitalism.

We’ll get to the argument in the new INET paper soon, but basically, its authors are chuffed to establish that stock market activity is driven by stories. That is old hat to anyone on Wall Street. It is also old hat that decision-making revolves around stories;



On the subject of timing, we have now entered the ninth consecutive week of short-term treasury bond yield rise. The last time we saw that was back in February of 2000. Which made me realize that the set-up now is eerily reminiscent to that one. Back then, the Fed kept the spigots open through the Y2K date change because they were worried the world was going to end, computers offline, planes falling out of the sky etc. When all of that turned out to be a non-event, the stock market bolted higher. At that point, the Fed realized they were way behind the curve on tightening policy. So what did they do, they started hiking rates as fast as possible. And then by March 2000 the Tech bubble exploded. Which when you think about it is very similar to the current scenario. The Fed has been preoccupied with the pandemic and the various mutations. Which left them way behind the curve as supply bottlenecks grew and pent-up demand exploded. So now, in this new year they're making up for lost time.

The main difference is of course that now yields are far lower than in 2000 because that was the strongest economy in decades. Whereas this is the weakest economy in U.S. history. In Y2K, GDP growth was at 7% and the U.S. budget was in surplus. Now, GDP growth is at 2% and the deficit is 6%. In any other era that would have been considered a 4% recession. 

Putting it altogether and we now have end of cycle inflation hysteria worse than 2000 and 2008, attending a 100 year asset bubble. Which means double policy error.



In addition to undergoing wild price swings on a regular basis, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are also consuming massive amounts of energy, enabling criminal activity, and creating new financial risks. Their booming yet unfathomable popularity demands an urgent regulatory response.


The stress and anxiety that goes with funneling your life savings into a volatile market is no joke.



COVID-19 notes:

Mass youth hospitalizations, COVID-induced diabetes, and other myths from the brave new world of science as political propaganda

The main federal agency guiding America’s pandemic policy is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which sets widely adopted policies on masking, vaccination, distancing, and other mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID and ensure the virus is less morbid when it leads to infection. The CDC is, in part, a scientific agency—they use facts and principles of science to guide policy—but they are also fundamentally a political agency: The director is appointed by the president of the United States, and the CDC’s guidance often balances public health and welfare with other priorities of the executive branch.

Throughout this pandemic, the CDC has been a poor steward of that balance, pushing a series of scientific results that are severely deficient. This research is plagued with classic errors and biases, and does not support the press-released conclusions that often follow. In all cases, the papers are uniquely timed to further political goals and objectives; as such, these papers appear more as propaganda than as science. .....







Soon after the emergence and global spread of a new severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Omicron lineage, BA.1 (ref1,2 87 ), another Omicron lineage, BA.2, has initiated outcompeting BA.1. Statistical analysis shows that the effective reproduction number of BA.2 is 1.4-fold higher than that of BA.1. Neutralisation experiments show that the vaccine-induced humoral immunity fails to function against BA.2 like BA.1, and notably, the antigenicity of BA.2 is different from BA.1. Cell culture experiments show that BA.2 is more replicative in human nasal epithelial cells and more fusogenic than BA.1. Furthermore, infection experiments using hamsters show that BA.2 is more pathogenic than BA.1. Our multiscale investigations suggest that the risk of BA.2 for global health is potentially higher than that of BA.1.


We need to be clearer about the risk associated with any infection.


Influenza, polio and more have shown that infections can change lives even decades later. Why the complacency over possible long-term effects of COVID-19?





(not just) for the ESG crowd:

As global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise.



Ocean Heat Killing Spree

The oceans of the world are undergoing a dangerous and damaging upheaval that manifests throughout scientific studies of late. Whether it’s the world’s fisheries of the Bering Strait or coral reefs of the Mediterranean Sea or emaciated Gray Whales along the Pacific coastline, study after study after study describes sudden, sharp downturns in all categories of marine life. ...


The release of novel entities – artificial chemicals and other human-made pollutants – has accelerated to a point that we have crossed a planetary boundary.


Alarming new research suggests warm seawater is rushing under the ice, perhaps doubling the rate of melting.




The chairman and CEO of the world's largest asset manager has once again made waves by exhorting his fellow corporate leaders to embrace "stakeholder capitalism." Unfortunately, their understanding of that concept is far too limited and stops well short of the radical reforms needed to transform capitalism in the interests of people and the planet.


Climate change: Top companies exaggerating their progress - study



Other / Fun Fare:

Belgium Adopts 4-Day Work Week To Try And Boost Employment


Pics of the Week:

Weisenthal: Instagram is putting a context warning label on memes that connect inflation to corporate greed




Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

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


Regular Fare:

Chris Hedges: Democrats, the More Effective Evil


Glyphosate’s Dirty Secrets — Are We About to Learn More?

Truth will out. Eventually, given enough time, the good, the bad and the ugly will be revealed. Such is the case with Monsanto‘s dubious herbicide glyphosate. The long-winding story on how Monsanto and its governmental enablers at the Environmental Protection Agency first registered the weedkiller Roundup under at best dubious circumstances is sickening.

... In March 2015 U.S District Judge for the Northern District of California allowed public release of internal Monsanto documents showing how Monsanto influenced EPA to reclassify glyphosate from a Class C carcinogen to a Class E category which paved the way for glyphosate Roundup production. It was nothing short of a cover-up that put greed ahead of public safety.

... Now Bayer investors are saying the German agri-giant played fast and loose with the facts, misleading them on 1) the safety of glyphosate and Roundup; 2) Bayer’s efforts at due diligence; and 3) the legal risks in the acquisition of Monsanto.



Am I predicting the end of the world? No. I am predicting the end of a failed way of life that has become toxic and lethal to those who embrace it. This is the side of the story that market pundits don't want to tell. That the modern lifestyle is lethal both physically, mentally, and financially to those who embrace it. And of course to the planet itself. Somehow we are dealing with an obesity crisis, a mental health crisis, and a retirement crisis yet no one makes any connection back to the corporate system that makes record profit from Frankenfood, Narcopharma, and rampant financial fraud. 

Very few people we know question the system. In their minds, it's always been this way. ...

"I wonder about the silent screams
Those who while awake have terrible dreams
I wonder why I can’t bring myself to speak
When I open my mouth no one hears a creak

It seems that this world has gone mad
Chain reactions all around us, yet caring is a mere fad
As time went on we lost our villages
Seeking solitary confinement while we allow them to pillage us

We see the division as red versus blue
But in reality we know that isn’t true
Fear has run amuck and we have become hasty
Sliding down a slippery slope guised as safety

Looking to the people you see a mass of the feeble
I am no different, in actions I am equal
We must not despair at the beliefs of our neighbor
All of us want the same just wishing for the stable

The path ahead appears to many as dim
And I assure you this is not on a whim
But a deliberate act of the few against the many
They’ve succeeded in making us believe our neighbor is the enemy

The path ahead with danger is fraught
A path few of us would have actively sought
While the time will surely come for action
All I want to do now is inspire passion

Led astray bruised and battered
Our communities have become tattered
But if we can see past our illusory divisions
We can forge a bright future ending this cultural fission"


Unsustainability Fare:

***** Murphy: Human Exceptionalism

For almost two decades now, I have been on a journey to understand what comes next in the grand human enterprise. I started out in a mindset superficially similar to that of most people I encounter—assuming that we would innovate our way into a future that became ever better: less poverty and hunger; greater conveniences; a probable space future—fingers crossed.

But the more I dug into the details, the more concerned I became that such a grand vision is an illusion built on top of a highly anomalous period in human history when we over-exploited finite resources on Earth in a one-time bonanza—using those resources to access remaining resources ever faster in an accelerating cycle. I constantly sought reassurance as to what I had wrong about this picture, but found little solace. Those who tried to ease my mind spoke in vague praise of human capabilities and pointed to the arc of history as a reliable pattern by which to understand the future. I did not get the impression that they had confronted my specific concerns and had a blueprint for how to navigate past the pile-up of global-scale problems and irreversible consumption of our inheritance.

Lately, as I meet other academics (via PLAN) who have come to similar conclusions (sober, deep, and careful thinkers, I find), a frequent question that arises is: how can something that seems so obvious to us be dismissed by so many others? What are we missing? Or what are they missing? Why is it so hard to reach common ground? Where is the disconnect?

..................

Faith in the future has been a fundamental requirement for the modern age to function. Investment, fractional reserve banking, and pension plans—among many other things—are predicated on the notion that tomorrow will be bigger than today. It is hard to shake off a central tenet that has proven itself to be true for many consecutive generations—especially when so much rides on it.

Taking the overshoot message seriously is much more likely if a person:
  • is non-religious: therefore free of the impression that Earth is here
  • for our benefit;
  • is not a humanist: not elevating humans to some privileged status;
  • is not under the illusion that we have a destiny to succeed;
  • does not attribute our recent amazing ride mostly to human ingenuity while
  • downplaying the crucial role of spent finite resources like fossil fuels;
  • does not assume that science and technology can conjure a rabbit out of
  • the hat for any situation;
  • is not prone to denial when confronted with a dismal outlook.
This is a tall order, in today’s world. The overshoot message creates instant dissonance and reflexive rejection






The nuclear age is here. This time it’s here to stay for a very, very long time. In all corners of this planet, over the course of next 40 years, nuclear energy will most likely power all major megacities, all the factories that produce batteries, and most of the economic activity on this planet.

It will provide a dangerous but stable source of energy, with very low CO2 footprint. Investments and development of renewable sources of energy will continue for some time, but in a less hectic pace.

State subventions to develop nuclear energy will increase over the next 40 years and that will attract, as expected, a lot of private capital. The historical quest to decouple our unsustainable energy supply from our current economic model will now most likely see us betting on an energy source that today only stands for 10% of the total energy supply in the world. It looks like our last resort.

The current efforts to decrease emissions and decouple the economic model from destroying our planet have so far had marginal effects. Yes, we have quite dramatically increased the volumes of energy produced by renewable sources such as wind and solar, but it’s still not even close enough to what we need. The economic model we continue to subscribe to and operate each and every day remains the same. Growth, expansion, exploration, consumption. No compromises. We take what we can, what we feel like. We want things that we don’t need. That is the way of the world we live in.  ...

.... Toxic radioactive waste for the next 4,000 generations


Greer: The Revolt of the Imagination, Part Two: No More Secondhand Futures

In a post here two weeks ago I discussed the disastrous failure of imagination on the part of the industrial world’s governing classes. Since then—well, let’s just say that for connoisseurs of elite cluelessness, it’s a target-rich environment out there.

We’ll choose one such target more or less at random.  Last week’s news was briefly illuminated, if that’s the word, by yet another claim that fusion power is racing to the rescue of the industrial world, bearing “near-limitless clean power” to  solve the climate crisis and bail out the otherwise unsustainable lifestyles of our society’s privileged classes. The handwaving this time emanated from the Joint European Torus (JET) in Culham, England, where scientists managed to sustain a fusion reaction for a little more than twice as long as any previous fusion device. Sounds impressive, doesn’t it?  The excitement may flag a bit if you read the fine print and discover that the new record was around five seconds.

........ One conclusion that might be drawn from all this is that the managerial aristocracy is far less concerned about climate change than it likes to pretend. ....  I’m not sure how many of my readers are aware, for example, that the EU has quietly exempted private jets and luxury yachts from the carbon restrictions it’s planning to impose on the modes of transport that the rest of us use...

This sort of mismatch between words and deeds—yes, that’s spelled “hypocrisy” in plain English—has convinced a great many people these days that the climate change narrative is hokum deployed by a kleptocratic ruling class to justify the ongoing consolidation of power and wealth in its own grubby hands. Reasonable as that theory seems at first glance, I can’t agree with it. It’s a mistake to think we can dump billions of tons of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere without causing changes in climate, not least because the evidence from the past is clear:  greenhouse events driven by CO2 releases in the prehistoric past are well documented in the geological record, and the mere fact that the CO2 in question came from volcanoes rather than smokestacks and tailpipes doesn’t change the impact of the gas in question once it gets up into the atmosphere and starts soaking up infrared rays.



COVID Fare:

I am increasingly coming across too much excellent COVID-related content (with contrarian evidence-based points-of-view!!) to link to it all
Read everything by eugyppius; el gato malo; Mathew Crawford; Steve Kirsch; Jessica Rose!
Paul Alexander, Berenson, Chudov, Lyons-Weiler, Toby Rogers are also go-to mainstays; a list to which I have added Andreas Oehler, Joey Smalley (aka Metatron) and, Julius Ruechel; Denninger worth staying on top of too for his insights, and especially his colorful language; and Norman Fenton; new addition: Marc Girardot; I will of course continue to post links to key Peter McCullough material, and Geert Vanden Bossche, and Robert Malone, and Martin Kulldorff, and Jay Bhattacharya, and Sucharit Bhakdi, and Pierre Kory, and Harvey Risch, and Michael Yeadon, and John Ioannidis, and Paul Marik, and Tess Lawrie, and Zelenko, and Dolores Cahill, and [local prof] Byram Bridle, and Ryan Cole, and…
but going forward, my linking to material by those mainstays mentioned above will be reduced to key excerpts and/or essential posts

Analysis:

why so many scientific studies refute their own conclusions


***** Lyons-Weiler: Pfizer Moving Goalposts on COVID-19 Vaccination Endpoints for Toddlers Tanked Their EUA Big, But it's Par for the Course. How it Relates to Pfizer Vaccine Immune Suppression. Plan B.

Remember back in the beginning when COVID-19 vaccine “efficacy” was defined as “ability to prevent transmission”? And then it became “ability to reduce death and serious illness”? And then it became “ability to produce neutralizing antibodies”? And then it became “ability to produce antibodies”?

The data leak Pfizer did to the New York Times backfired, revealing the weakness of the data to be reviewed by FDA. As Toby Rogers put it, “We Did It!” - but in reality, Pfizer and the other vaccine manufacturers - and their friends in the FDA - did it to themselves by changing the goal-post of success mid-study, after data peeking - which has been par for the course in post-marketing vaccine studies. Now we see it in pre-approval vaccine studies, and it’s never going to fly in that regulatory context.

Vinay Prasad, a pro-vaccine MD, MPH, published a YouTube video entitled “FDA flip flops on Kids Vax 6 mo to 4 years old | Worst day for the agency in 20 years | Reputation” in which he decries the same issues I published in my article calling Pfizer and FDA to task for the clear flaws in Pfizer’s pending data.

I strongly disagree with Prasad on his concern over anything that would cause people to bring all of childhood vaccinations into question. His position is based on the false premises that safety is assured and that efficacy has not waned in those vaccines*, his clear frustration at the process used by the Pfizer/NYTimes/FDA team that effected the fiasco is worth watching and hearing. (*Fudged retrospective studies cannot assure safety, and evidence of childhood vaccine failure abounds, all reviewed at jameslyonsweiler.com and elsewhere). Formal skepticism is a fundamental part of objective science, and all things must be questioned for Science to even exist.

Prasad and I also differ in that I understand that the implosion of the current regulatory fiasco is actually long overdue, whereas he (ostensibly anyway) would like to see it continue as-is. The FDA’s (and CDC’s) reputation has been propped up by fudged and manipulated retrospective studies that are incapable of determining the causality of adverse events. Also, remember, from Study 1 from Moderna, efficacy was never 95%; it was 75% due, and inflated due to their dropping patients who got COVID-19 before the second dose.

Now we have evidence that COVID-19 vaccine can lead to immune suppression via lymphocytic reduction (see Dr. Mobeen’s lecture on this, below) - meaning those who got COVID-19 after the first dose may well have been temporarily immunocompromised. That would change everything.

I cannot tell if Prasad is as upset with those involved for data results peeking and moving the endpoint goal post as he is that they did it in full view of the public. I’d like to talk with him on my podcast, but it’s not clear he’ll be responsive to invites: long ago, he blocked me on Twitter. So he’s not ready for the message that objective science comes first in all matters related to science, medicine, and public health.

Nevertheless, Prasad’s video is filled with very important points. ....



The top line evaluation looks something like this:
  • The COVID-19 jabs have comprehensively failed to do deliver “broad immunity.” They deliver narrow and short-lived, non-durable immunity that is inferior to the more robust, durable and broader-based immunity acquired following infection by SARS-CoV-2. Please read on.
  • The illusory claim of “safe and effective” COVID “vaccines” still perpetuated by health authorities, vaccine manufacturers and the mainstream media is now severely battered. There is now overwhelming evidence of the failure of the jabs to prevent transmission (the primary purpose of conventional vaccines), most notably the omicron variant, the highest infection rates are consistently found in the countries with the greatest jab coverage, rapidly waning effectiveness in reducing risk of hospitalization and death, and an emerging picture of significantly under-reported and widespread vaccine injuries and disruption of the immune response (here, here and here).
  • While there’s no doubt “they” achieved “mass and rapid deployment” at least in some parts of the world, there are other parts, such as the vast continent of Africa, where presently only 11% of the population are “fully vaccinated against COVID-19” (i.e., two doses).
More than this, there was no scientific basis to indiscriminately expose such vast numbers of people to the experimental jabs, regardless of their infection status, health status, susceptibility or prior immunity from previous infection. ..........

6. Might COVID-19 jabs awaken the sleeping dragon of autoimmunity?

I’ll keep this short as we devoted a whole campaign to it last year and collated much of the research in this troubling area. As is the way with the rapidly emerging science, it’s moved on rapidly — becoming an ever-greater concern. .....

... For any population group that isn’t vulnerable to severe COVID-19 disease and COVID-19 death – which represents almost everyone since omicron has become dominant – the risk of serious adverse events almost certainly outweighs any benefits.



China’s CoronaVac shot caused people to make far more T-cells targeting the coronavirus than those who received Pfizer’s mRNA shot, scientists in Hong Kong have found.

Though it is only one datapoint, the study hints the Chinese shot - which is based on older, well understood principles of vaccinology - may ultimately provide longer-lasting protection than the hastily developed mRNA jabs from Pfizer and Moderna. ...

The CoronaVac shot is a traditional “inactivated virus” vaccine. It contains whole Sars-Cov-2 particles grown in kidney cells and chemically treated so they cannot reproduce. They are then injected alongside an “adujvant” meant to boost the immune response.


Deaths are still rising in South Africa after cases peaked Dec 18

.... This pandemic is NOT over, the vaccinated will never acquire natural immunity, and Covid-19 is just getting started. We are not in the final chapter of the Covid story, we only went through three chapters so far. The chapters are:
  • Invention of Covid (complete though missing details)
  • Spread of it worldwide (complete)
  • Covid Vax “success” (definitely complete, haha)
  • Covid Vax FAIL and BACKLASH (being written now)
The rest of the book will be written in front of us, at least in front of the ones who stay alive. I love chaos and history unfolding.

Just to make something clear: I am against useless masks, oppressive lockdowns, and deadly Covid Vax. Despite that, I am certain that Covid is not “ending”, it is only “beginning”.


Dedicated to all the courageous Canadian and American truckers and to the doctors who support them in their vitally important fight against vaccine mandates and immunologic discrimination.

... While the vast majority of healthy unvaccinated individuals continue to resist Omicron’s high infectious pressure by virtue of the ongoing training of their innate immune effector cells (4, 5), a steadily increasing number of vaccinees are now becoming more susceptible to vaccine breakthrough infection and contracting C-19 disease

..... Consequently, it becomes obvious that the continuation of mass vaccination campaigns now increasingly targeting children and focusing on booster shots (or Omicron-specific vaccinations) will result in a significant fraction of the vaccinated population compromising their innate B1a-derived Abs (IgMs).  There can be no doubt that accelerated mass vaccination campaigns followed by booster shots at intervals as short as 4-5 months and complemented by C-19 vaccination of children will lead to a higher incidence of disease in the vaccinated population.

.... The overall effect would manifest as an increase in pathogenicity/ virulence of the virus. Such antibody-dependent enhancement or exacerbation of C-19 disease (ADE) in vaccinees could have disastrous consequences, not only in vaccinated children but also in older age groups that are highly vaccinated. It is even uncertain whether early multidrug treatment could mitigate such ADE. Unless the above postulate is scientifically proven wrong or at least improbable, halting mass vaccination and instead implementing large scale antiviral chemoprophylaxis campaigns and raising global awareness about the vital importance of healthy food and a healthy lifestyle in order to dramatically reduce viral infection rates and strengthen people’s innate immunity, respectively, should be declared a health emergency of international concern. On the other hand, no vaccine can contribute to controlling a pandemic of an acute self-limiting viral infection, and for that matter of SC-2, unless it induces sterilizing immunity.

.... It goes without saying that large scale booster campaigns and vaccination programs using updated (i.e., anti-Omicron) vaccines are only going to inflate surges in infection and morbidity rates in vaccinees and are, therefore, at risk of dramatically expediting selection and adaptation of new SC-2 immune escape variants that could enable a much more pathogenic course of C-19 disease in people whose protective innate immune capacity cannot adequately be trained as a result of vaccine-mediated immune priming. 

... Lessons (to be) learned

During a CoV pandemic only innate immunity can reliably protect you from clinically relevant disease and generate herd immunity. This is because innate immunity can be trained, is able to recognize all SC-2 variants (and all CoVs) and capable of abrogating viral replication and transmission at an early stage of infection, and because innate Ab secreted by Ag-experienced/ trained B1 effector cells have increased affinity and are, therefore, not suppressed by naturally acquired Abs. However, even a properly trained innate immune system can only function sufficiently so long that it’s not compromised by interfering Ag-specific Abs within a healthy individual. Nutritious food and a healthy lifestyle (no overweight + exercise!) are, therefore, paramount to bring to bear the full capacity of a trained innate immune system such as to ascertain protection from repetitive exposure to SC-2 during a pandemic. Nasal and oral-pharyngeal washes with diluted povidone-iodine or hydrogen peroxide together with supplements such as zinc, vitamin C and D (the latter in winter!) can be game changers when applied at the earliest manifestation of discomfort or even as prophylaxis after high-risk exposure. For as long a no herd immunity is achieved, vulnerable people (i.e., those with underlying diseases or other immune suppressive or immune degenerative conditions) should be protected by adequate infection prevention measures and be granted access to early multidrug therapy. 

None of the current C-19 vaccines can block SC-2 transmission and will, therefore, inevitably subvert acquired and undermine innate host immune responses that are directed at SC-2. 

...... In conclusion, there is no place in this pandemic for any of the current C-19 vaccines. Even the most passionate vaccinologist can only conclude that the current C-19 vaccines are harmful, both from an individual and public health viewpoint, and that their use in mass vaccination campaigns is violating all rules of vaccinology. Instead of cutting the chain of viral transmission, these vaccines are now increasing the rate of infectious cases in the vaccinated as compared to the non-vaccinated population across all age groups. Furthermore, there is no single scientific rational, let alone scientific data, to believe that their use in mass vaccination campaigns across all age groups (including children and pregnant women!) will not entail detrimental consequences for both individual and public health. Those would come on top of the alarming rate of adverse events that are regularly reported shortly after the injection of the genetic C-19 vaccines. Their administration (without informed consent!) should be halted immediately and replaced by large-scale antiviral chemoprophylaxis at a population level (to control the pandemic in countries with high vaccine coverage rates) and early multidrug treatment at an individual level (to control the disease in vulnerable individuals). The ongoing mass vaccination campaigns are a threat to our human species. Vaccine mandates and immunologic discrimination are, therefore, a crime against humanity and will undoubtedly be referred to as such in the history of mankind.  


It's in plain sight in this paper in JAMA about myocarditis rates by CDC authors.

..... we get an actual rate in practice of more than 1 in 100.

That’s pretty high. It’s unacceptably high. That’s why they never apply the URF. Because it would disqualify the vaccine.

Does a 1 in 100 rate of myocarditis match the real world? Yes!
Our calculation matches up to what we see in the real world.

The real world data is kept hidden from view of everyone. I have yet to see a single school that publishes their myocarditis cases. The only way you find these out is when parents talk to parents. The government doesn’t want anyone to know the real numbers for obvious reasons: it would kill the vaccine program if people knew the truth. So everyone keeps quiet and you have to get really lucky to get any data at all.



This is a pretty shocking finding. Others have covered this paper here and here.

It’s especially shocking to find out that the vaccine mRNA could last so long in the body. Normally mRNA lasts on the order of minutes or hours. I’ve heard some say it could last for a few days, although I haven’t found any references for that. But even if that were true, it’s unheard of for mRNA to last for two months or more.

This is because the mRNA in the Covid vaccines is not like “normal” mRNA; ...
 
... “Our cells break down mRNA and get rid of it within a few days after vaccination.”

They had no way of knowing that.

There is a lot we don’t know about the spike protein post-vaccination. We don’t know how much gets produced in the body, or for how long, or how much it varies across individuals, or where exactly it goes in the body, etc.

All of this would have been important information to have to understand the potential adverse effects someone could undergo post-vaccination. ...



A few days ago Steve Sailer posted some recent graphs of US COVID cases (and deaths) in unvaxxed vs. vaxxed vs. boosted individuals that I found first surprising, then completely implausible. ..... But my bullshit detector goes off whenever I see anything from the CDC at this point, so I decided to look a little closer — it’s easy to mislead with graphs. 

.......

What we are dealing with here is an issue of Bayesian inference. In simple terms (and I don’t want to suggest I could explain it in more complicated ones), Bayes’ theorem describes the conditions which should cause a reasonable person to change their mind about something. Briefly, the more confident you are of a pre-existing (or prior) belief, and the less confident you are in the trustworthiness of a new piece of evidence, the more hesitant you should be to update your original belief. When you hear somebody say something about “updating their priors”, that’s what they’re talking about. It’s also how two people can look at the same exact evidence, and one of them be convinced while the other remains skeptical — it’s about the strength of their priors and their evaluation of the evidence’s plausibility.



I’ve been trying to come up with simple ways of demonstrating my concern over what I can only view as a mis-categorization, or mis-classification, of deaths after being Goo’ed. My view is that this is a potentially very serious problem indeed. In order to show this I’m going to have to dip a little toe into the potentially problematic pool of probability.



... I would posit, from the looks of it, that fewer and fewer jabs in subsequent jab campaigns are causing increasingly more deaths per shot, as it were. Would they dare with the 5th jab, given this dynamics?


"It's looking more and more like this product is deadly."

“If the FDA and Pfizer don’t release the data on the clinical trials, I’m assuming fraud. What we’re seeing from the incidences of deaths and disabilities from these vaccines…fraud eviscerates all contracts.”

”They’ve been caught.”


Commentary:



Jayant Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff: Does Fauci Bear Any Responsibility? He Says No

With millions of Americans getting infected and over 800,000 reported COVID-19 deaths, most people now realize that Washington’s pandemic policies failed.

Lockdowns just postponed the inevitable while causing enormous collateral damage on cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, tuberculosis, mental health, education and much else. ...



A group of UK doctors, scientists, economists, psychologists, and other academic experts have called for an immediate investigation into the increasing death rate amongst 15- to 19-year-old males.

The organisation HART, set up to share concerns about policy and guidance recommendations relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, has written to the British government over a rise in deaths in young males.


After receiving full approval, vaccines continue to be carefully monitored for adverse events in case some vaccinal flaw may have escaped detection during the multi-year trial phase. There have been a number of vaccines that were pulled from the market after they received full approval due to unexpected safety issues. Some of these include vaccines for Rotavirus, Lyme Disease, and Whole-Cell Pertussis among others. Therefore, for a vaccine to be justifiably declared “completely safe,” it must undergo at least five years of intensive testing in clinical trials and then several years of monitoring as it is administered in populations at large. The Covid vaccines, however,  ...

Under the normal schedule, the Covid vaccines Phase III trials would be completed in April of 2024. If this phase went without a hitch, April of 2024 would be the earliest that anyone could justifiably start saying that the Covid vaccines are “safe and effective".



... So, we all — on all sides — want Covid to be “behind us”.

Except that Covid is only getting started.

... Mild Covid every 60 days is NOT Mild

.... Thus, repeated COVID infections are bad, just as repeated useless mRNA spike-generating injections are bad, and the damage from repeated injections and repeated Covid infections on top of that, will likely have cumulative effect. The harm will encompass many organs, such as broad immunity and T-cells, lungs, brain, and the cardiovascular system just to name a few.

Likely, the “Covid Vax” injections were like a battering ram that destroyed immune systems of vaccinated persons, and that is what is allowing them to catch one Covid after another.



As I’ve mentioned before, I am ambivalent toward vaccine mandates. Like most other aspects of our disastrous response to COVID, mandates could, in theory, serve to stop the spread of the disease and save lives. But in practice, like every other aspect of our response, they are all but guaranteed to be enforced in a selective and half-assed manner that will have little to no positive public health outcomes but will instead further empower some of the worst human beings on earth while further ensuring that the masses continue to understand the world and themselves primarily according to how they despise the other side.

But even if I was firmly in favor of mandates, I like to think I could recognize that some people would have trepidations, and that having these trepidations did not necessarily make these people hateful idiots who deserve to be punished. One need not believe that Bill Gates is injecting us with microchips in order to have misgivings toward Pfizer, after all. A healthy skepticism of the for-profit medical industry was practically a bedrock of American leftism until, like, 10 months ago. Surely this means we should be uniquely capable of understanding the reservations of others, that we could attempt to persuade them over without resorting to mockery, recrimination, or outright hatred…

... If we’ve learned nothing else from this pandemic–and we haven’t–it’s that Americans are incapable of understanding any issue outside the lens of partisan politics.



One of the most alarming developments of the past few years has been pandemic groupthink and the ferocity with which it has stifled dissenting views and debate. Anyone who questioned the efficacy of lockdowns was accused of deliberately endangering the lives of others. Those who sought out alternative COVID-19 treatments rejected by mainstream experts, such as hydroxychloroquine, were shamed and even deplatformed by social media companies. The message was simple: Question the COVID narrative, and there will be consequences.

But there were still many brave enough to buck the mob mentality. And as time has gone on and scientific data on COVID and pandemic restrictions have become more accurate, it has become clear that the dissenters were right. 


el gato malo: your mask ennobles me
public health as pretext for hierarchical validation

of all the utterly discredited non-pharmaceutical interventions around covid, perhaps none stands as pervasive in its application and as universal in its failure as masks.

it was a flat out cargo cult belief set from the beginning and the inefficacy of this purported intervention was known and knowable beforehand and was confirmed, again and again, by all the emerging data.

the studies undertaken to “prove” efficacy were shams, lacked control groups, used cherry picked data, fraud, and methodologies so hilariously bad as to call into question the basic competence and honesty of those pushing them. the CDC has been a disgrace.

and yet the intensity of the push for this meaningless mitigation ratcheted ever upward. ...


Another example of the bizarre phenomenon where “scientifically proven” policies no longer work

Many governments, especially in the United States, appeared to believe that the early “success” of countries on the Asian continent was due to a widespread cultural acceptance of masking.

That misguided assumption helped direct public health agencies, politicians, school boards and media outlets to shred dozens of high quality pre-Covid studies on masking and forcefully enact and enforce measures that were guaranteed to fail.

Once committed, they had no choice but to ignore the obvious global failure of masks and mask mandates and continue their disproven assertions that masks could end the pandemic in a matter of weeks or reduce infections dramatically.

We’ve since witnessed the anti-science crowd endlessly promoting masking and interventions, with the predictably disastrous results in the Western countries being waved off as a function of poor compliance.

........
.....

Cases have risen 2,800% since the article was published, despite South Korea’s dedication to testing, surveillance, isolation, mask mandates and vaccine passports.

How are we still pretending we can control Covid with layered interventions, with “Swiss Cheese Models of Pandemic Defense,” with following the example of Asian countries?

The collapse of Japan and South Korea’s pandemic response is yet another nail in the Covid mitigation coffin for those trying to credit masking and interventions with slowing or stopping the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus.

For nearly two years now, we’ve seen media outlets attempt to allocate credit to interventions by ignoring the seasons. They purposefully wait until the curve goes down to report that masking in addition to their favored intervention of the week is responsible for controlling the surge — ignoring that the same interventions existed before the surge started.



... Scores of countries are now falling over themselves to lift Covid restrictions and measures. But there is one thing they will not do: lift these for unvaccinated people. Because that would make them lose face, despite the obvious fact that the vaccines either don’t work, or work for just a few months, and then require boosters that ever more people will refuse to get. The large amounts of people who did get tricked into being vaccinated will support the banning and cancelling of the “unpure”.

... “The Science”, the real one, not the fake Fauci kind, has been thrown back many years. When you realize how many people have died or got maimed from a vaccine that your government forced upon you, and your doctor was only too happy too inject into you, what do you think the next time you need medical help? Or when your government wants you to do anything at all?


Berenson: Trust the science.

Step 1: Even though the world has not had a major respiratory disease epidemic in almost a century, insist one is coming SOON and we have to swab every bat in China to figure what virus will cause it.

Step 2: When you can’t find viruses capable of causing it, start making them more dangerous in a lab.

Step 3: When an epidemic finally breaks out IN THE CITY WHERE THE LAB IS, shout down anyone who mentions the connection. Instead spend two years instituting control measures that prove completely ineffective at stopping it - though very effective at ruining kids’ mental health.

Step 4: Invent “vaccines” that work against the virus in a completely novel way, test them for months, and give them to more than a billion people.

Step 5: Be surprised when the vaccines turn out to be far more effective than the virus itself at causing immune imprinting and original antigenic sin.

Step 6: Wonder why the outbreak has lasted far longer than previous outbreaks, when neither control measures nor vaccines were used.



Scotland is one of the most transparent countries about Covid vaccines.

Whoops!

I mean Scotland WAS one of the most transparent.

The country just said mRNA shots work so well that the raw data showing how well they work will no longer be released.

Because they work so well.

.....

The novel Covid vaccine experiment is over. It’s ending. It’s failed.

The authorities know the truth as well as anyone else.

They are taking their only possible course of action: end the mandates, hide the raw numbers, and hope there are no long-term problems and everyone forgets.

Oh yeah, and try to censor anyone who won’t.


A spokesperson complains that "anti-vaxxers" are misrepresenting the numbers, so they have to go.


The data looks bad... So hide the data!




Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Renz: corrupt bureaucrats in Washington have knowingly poisoned our troops and deceived the American people about the safety and efficacy of the COVID injections

Crawford: Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a need to analyze the data. If the CDC has done that without sharing the results, that's pretty awful no matter how it turns out. If they haven't, that's pretty awful no matter how it turns out.

Ethical Skeptic: Two Medical Ethics to be tried:
  •   First, 'Do no harm' (Delayed-treatment murders)
  •   Second, 'Informed Consent' (Denial of human rights)
How does one give informed consent, if one is not informed? Propaganda is not information, no matter its awesome insistence.

Rogers: Noam Chomsky, Paul Krugman, all of the Obama alumni, everyone at The Atlantic, everyone at The New Yorker (especially James Surowiecki), and now Naomi Klein all jumped into a volcano because Pharma told them to. None of these people has ever read a vaccine safety study, interviewed someone who thinks differently than they do, or ever bothered to do even the most basic due diligence in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of Covid (or any other) vaccines. They took it ON FAITH that the Pharma felons were telling the truth, and they are catastrophically wrong.

Denninger: Pick one. Masks, social distancing, kids in schools/not in schools, swabs-up-nose, etc. It’s all bull****, and you saw it on display last night. A packed-full stadium with exactly nobody distancing anything and zero mask enforcement of any sort. They didn’t even try to fake it. If you send your kid to school and let him or her put up with this crap today for one more minute you’re a monster.

Tucker: I'm old enough to remember when the left defended: civil liberties, freedom of speech, the working classes, schooling, small business, the poor, public accommodations for everyone, & democracy. It opposed: witch hunts, segregation, class privilege, big business, and dictatorship.

Crispin-Miller: If there weren’t way more important things to do, now that we’re all “facing the challenge of fascism,” I’d find myself a copy of Giroux’s Pedagogy of Resistance: Against Manufactured Ignorance, published just this year, and see if I can figure out how this professor manages to hold forth urgently—and, no doubt, learnedly—on “manufactured ignorance” while being himself an excellent example of it.

Furey: There is no downplaying the magnitude of the decision made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act. It’s a move that’s never been done before, and it’s not a decision to be made lightly. And yet a growing chorus of legal analysis suggests that the PM did in fact make the decision lightly — that the situation just didn’t warrant it.

Levant: Trudeau wears blackface but he calls you a racist.
Trudeau sexually assaulted Rose Knight but he calls you misogynist.
Trudeau demonizes unvaccinated people but he calls you hateful.
Trudeau suspends civil liberties but he calls you a Nazi.
He's a sociopath. He's a manipulator.

Enjeti: "This is CCP-level madness"... "this is totally nuts"... If this is happening in your country, “you [clearly] don’t live in a free country,”



CO-VIDs of the Week:

(even just watch the first 20 min)
It's a LONG interview (2 hours and 20 minutes), but it's a very important interview. If Canada falls, they will set the model for how to crush dissent.

... Byram is a fantastic person and a stellar scientist. Right after he got the data, he wrote up a long report as to what it meant (with tons of scientific references) and started getting the word out. He was quickly attacked by other faculty members at University of Guelph who signed a joint letter condemning his beliefs. None of the signatories read his report. They even admitted it. He was wrong because his views didn’t comport with what people were told to do.



My name is Francis Christian. I am a physician and a surgeon and I stand with our magnificent Truckers for Freedom.

Today is the 10th of February 2022.

I would like to tell my long-suffering fellow Canadians and the world that MEDICAL SCIENCE IS ON THE SIDE OF THE TRUCKERS.

Science is on the side of the Truckers to end all mandates immediately and bring an immediate end to the oppression of our people.

This includes all declarations of emergency federal and provincial – there is no medical science that supports any federal or provincial government usurping the peoples’ power by declaring fake emergencies.

This includes the abuse of our children with masks and m-RNA injections they don’t need and which are not safe and not effective. The medical science does not support masks for kids or covid vaccines for kids.

...

Mr. Jagmeet Singh – I spent 9 days in Ottawa with the Truckers.

I did not meet or see a single racist, white supremacist or misogynist Trucker or protester.

You should be ashamed of yourself Mr. Singh – and you may have committed a hate crime by using racial slurs against Truckers and protesters, including myself.

I saw several Sikh Truckers and protesters too – you should come to Ottawa and meet your own community, that has chosen to stand on the side of the people, on the side of freedom, of liberty. Your own community will be ashamed of you.

Mr. Trudeau – don’t project your own racist views and blackface appearances on to other people. It is pathetic and abominable and criminal.

... Mr. Trudeau – do I look like a white supremacist to you?

... Mr. Trudeau – stop the hate speech now. .....


It would be funny if the millions on "the left" were not hallucinating, too


Fringe Minority, Eh? TK Partners News2Share take a balanced look at the Canadian protests

TK Partners News2Share do a fantastic job of doing what the conventional press mostly hasn’t done with the “Freedom Convoy” story, asking the right questions about who’s participating, what their concerns are, and how the event is being received on the ground.

As Ford Fischer demonstrates in his narration, the protesters are a mix of people who see themselves as politically liberal, and politically conservative. There are some whose objections seem to be purely about mandates. “I’m double-vaccinated,” says one speaker. “To think… I will show my papers to buy a sandwich? Hell, no!”

For others, the issue is the vaccine itself:

“They said, ‘Get your booster…’ If it doesn’t work once, it doesn’t work twice, maybe it’ll work the third time. You know who does that? Gamblers. People who play blackjack!”

... Stories like the Freedom Convoy are exactly why we like the idea of having Ford and his shooters just let the cameras run for a while at heavily covered events. The idea is to let audiences watch longer pieces of footage with minimal contextualization, so they may draw their own conclusions. Hopefully, News2Share’s pictures from Ottawa and L.A. shed some light.


Trudeau DECLARES Emergency: THREATENS Bank Accounts | Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar


The Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford has just blown up Justin Trudeau’s house of cards. In fact he’s just blown up the entire argument for mandates, vaccine passports and restrictions.


Leigh: Why are some insurance companies banking on more deaths?
Hear from former Blackrock Portfolio Manager @DowdEdward and see the whole report

Summation of Major Insurance company corporate group policy Loss Ratios (Death Claims) Q4 rate vs 2019 rate:
Unum $UNM +36%
Lincoln $LNC +57%
Pru $PRU +41%
$RGA +21%
Hartford $HIG +32%
MetLife $MET +24%



Anecdotal Fare:

See how many "sudden deaths" have made some news—while "our free press" continues to DENY this Holocaust, and thereby keeps it going

Before we note all those whose “sudden deaths” made news just this past week—“unexpected deaths” with no reported cause, or due to heart attacks, strokes, blood clots, cardiac arrest or swift, aggressive cancers (all known to be “adverse events” post-“vaccination”)—let’s review how this unprecedented global spike in sudden death has been deliberately obscured by “our free press.”



My recent articles published in the Desert Review have dealt not only with brain cancer but with the mounting increases in collapses and sudden deaths in young athletes.




A healthy 6 year old gets the vax and still can't leave the hospital 2 months later. Apparently, the physicians oath to "do no harm" has been rescinded.


Farrow: Complicity
and its sister, complacency

They had names, did Boy A and Boy B, though I do not know their names. They had faces, though I fancy their faces were masked much of the time. They will certainly be masked now, for they are dead. And they were manipulated into taking the injections that killed them.

Manipulated by whom? By us! Covid would not have killed them, would not even have troubled them. We killed them — by our cowardice, by our complicity in a "vaccination" campaign that was as cleverly and callously devised as it was medically and morally ill-advised.

.... Authorities everywhere are complicit, where they have coerced or even cajoled. And so are we, when we are obedient to authorities in things that call rather for disobedience.


Pushback Fare:

News from the Bouncy Castle Revolution

Why is it so important that we believe that the Freedom Convoy is characterized by white supremacists and louts, intent on violence and social unrest? Why, similarly, was it so important that we believe that the #BlackLivesMatter protests of 2020 were characterized by peace-loving people who were finally standing up for their rights? When, on the first weekend of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, a statue of Terry Fox had a sign hung around his neck—a sign that read “Mandate Freedom”—the screaming commenced immediately: how dare they denigrate our history, how disrespectful, how outrageous! But when, across North America in 2020, and into 2021, statues ranging from Thomas Jefferson to Queen Victoria were destroyed—including one in Montreal of John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister, which was toppled and decapitated, after which a carnal act was theatrically enacted on his now detached head—we were assured that the protests were mostly peaceful, and that if you care about statues, you are revealing that you don’t care about people. Not to mention, of course, the fire-setting, the widespread property destruction, the assaults and batterings, and even killings, that occurred during the peaceful protests of the Summer of 2020.

Why, indeed, has the legacy media coverage of both sets of events been exactly the opposite of what is true?


The Truckers Convoy has no looting. It has no rioting. It is full of joy and love, hugs and play, tenacity and integrity and honor. It is truly grassroots, a truly working-class movement that is protesting anti-democratic measures which, even if some of them could have been justified at the beginning, have gone on far too long. The state and its sanctions are destroying lives and livelihoods. Many children will never be the same. Many humans of all ages will never be the same. And these truckers, and their supporters and associates—they are protesting for freedom for all of us. They are heroes.

Here are a few first-hand observations from people in Canada. I am, again and always, grateful to them for sharing. .....


Taibbi: The Great International Convoy Fiasco
As America puts the Canadian Prime Minister's unmentionables in a vise over a truck protest, it's clearer than ever: the world's leaders have forgotten how to govern

... Translation: Biden told Trudeau his testicles will be crushed under a Bradley Fighting Vehicle if this trucker thing is allowed to screw up the Super Bowl, or Biden’s State of the Union address. Trudeau’s own statement that day came off like the recorded video message of a downed pilot:

.... All of these leaders seem equally to be laboring under the delusion that a decisive enough ass-kicking in the Great White North will make this all go away. Until then, there seems to be no plan in any country that doesn’t involve tear gas, truncheons, or getting Facebook to blame troll farms in Bangladesh for stirring up the “discord”:

... As for talking to protesters, that’s out of the question. As Politico recently put it, the “conspiratorial mindset” of the demonstrators means “sitting down with them could legitimize their concerns.” Since we can’t under any circumstances have that, the only option left is the military “eventuality.”


The political paralysis in Ottawa is mind-boggling. Protesting truckers deserve a hearing, not pompous stonewalling by timid politicians

... The ability to choose whether or whether not to be vaccinated is a fundamental civil liberty and that is what the Canadian truckers’ “Freedom Convoy,” now being emulated in the U.S. and Europe, is about. The convoy has been infiltrated by a few disreputable elements and has been disruptive in such cities as Ottawa, but the movement has been largely law-abiding, even cheerful. As a Wall Street Journal editorial commented: “When you’ve lost even Canadians, arguably the most law-abiding people on the planet, you’ve lost the political plot.” The concerns protesters are expressing deserve respect from the government and not the prime minister’s dismissive comparison with demonstrations he has supported, such as those of Black Lives Matter.

BLM protests in America erupted into violent criminal behaviour, arson and extensive damage to public and private property in many cities. Having stunted Parliament for two years, the government seems afraid to face real opposition. The prime minister’s claim that the truckers are expressing “unacceptable views” has an authoritarian ring. “Unacceptable” by what definition and in violation of what law? Ottawa’s mayor declared a state of emergency, which he has limited power to enforce. His eminently sensible suggestion that an honest broker be appointed to mediate was ignored by the government. Astonishingly, former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney described the protest as “sedition,” whereas NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh uttered a peculiar dog whistle about white supremacy.

In an emotional, unsubstantiated rant, Ottawa’s police chief said the protest represented an “insurrection” (prompting the thuggish arrest of a great-grandfather for honking his horn). Comments like these debase legitimate public protests that have featured neither violence nor vandalism. When law-abiding citizens are provoked by indefensible government edicts and denied any hearing by those in power what are they supposed to do?




Doomberg: Just Watch Me

.... To wit, four observations:

First, as a society, we are incapable of making reasonable tradeoffs when it comes to risk, especially when such risks are front-page news. ...

Second, fear is a powerful tool of propaganda. A surprisingly high number of people are willing to forgo even basic rights in exchange for perceived protection from the state, no matter how small the increment of protection is on offer. The US Patriot Act is an Orwellian nightmare of government-approved intrusion, bureaucracy, and infringement on basic rights. ...

Third, like the arrow of time itself, encroachments on our freedom are unidirectional – they only ever get worse. ...

Fourth, the effort to demonize those raising a skeptical eyebrow to such measures is a startlingly easy lift. ...

At a time when the severity of the virus is waning and many countries are finally pulling back from what history will undoubtedly judge to be ineffective, unscientific, and likely scandalous countermeasures, Trudeau doubled down, knowingly picking a fight with Canadian truckers over vaccine mandates. We won’t rehash the arguments and facts here as the details are widely known. Instead, we focus on the complete collapse of Trudeau’s leadership tactics





COVID Idiocracy Fare:


Arguably the most alarming part of Canada’s 1988 Emergencies Act, set into operation by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are its provisions exhorting financial services industry members to seize the assets of suspected malefactors and their associates, with protection from liability.

..... First consider a big fly in the ointment: this sweeping measure could be moot in a week. From the BBC:

The Emergencies Act, passed in 1988, requires a high legal bar to be invoked. It may only be used in an “urgent and critical situation” that “seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians”. Lawful protests do not qualify….

The powers announced by Mr Trudeau go into effect immediately – but his government has to present it to the House of Commons and the Senate within a week and needs a green-light or the proclamation would be revoked.



Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:

short 1 min vid: Told ya.. Putin.


Tariq Ali: News from Natoland

Since 3 December 2021, when the Washington Post ‘broke’ the story – based on some aerial photos of tents in a field and other helpfully selected nuggets of US intelligence – the Anglophone world has been subjected to a highly orchestrated media campaign, trumpeting at top volume the ‘massive’ and ‘imminent’ Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the absence of any actual news to report, unnamed US security officials are wheeled out like clockwork to issue pronouncements...... What tropes do the warmongers offer? ....

.... The Western media attack-dogs have been congratulating themselves that, whatever else, their propaganda onslaught has united NATO. Not quite. The relentless spotlight of the past twelve weeks has also shown up its fissures. ...





For the first twenty years of the new millennium, it was obvious that Vladimir Putin and his team in the Kremlin were reactive, rather than proactive in nearly all dealings with the Collective West.  Of course, I mean to say that was obvious to the substantial minority of professionals who trade in facts and follow causality, action and reaction, from start to finish, rather than just trade in ideologically driven propaganda.  As for U.S. government press releases and the mainstream media, what was fed to the general public in the USA, in Europe all these years, always systematically reversed cause and effect. Off camera, the U.S. poked the Russians in the eye; on camera, we were shown only the Russians’ aggressive reaction. 

We, professional Russia watchers knew Vladimir Putin to be very cautious.  His most commonly used word relating to conduct of any policy has been “аккуратно”, meaning “careful.”

In 2021, a new Putin came before us, one who looks assertive if not aggressive and who seems to be ready to take enormous risks without much hesitation while moving two or more steps ahead of his Western talking partners, not two steps behind as had been the case till now.

 I intend in this essay to explain in what way Russia is proactive today. ...







Orwellian Fare:

  • "It isn't hate to speak the truth." — J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, Twitter, June 6, 2020.
  • "An entire generation are puzzled by the idea that anyone has the right to say things they don't agree with...for most people, true free speech has ceased to exist.... On some issues, such as the transgender controversy, it is virtually impossible to say anything without attracting the attention of the Thought Police." — Peter Hitchens, author and journalist, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.
  • "Among millions, the idea that you can defend someone's right to say something you disagree with is now puzzling. They have no idea why anyone would do that. For them, the debate is over, they have won, and those who oppose them are stupid and wrong." — Peter Hitchens, Daily Mail, December 11, 2021.
....

The poll also showed that self-censorship is thriving: 57% of those polled said they have "found themselves stopping themselves from expressing their political or social views for fear of judgement or negative responses from others."


If anything people have become better informed

People are often misinformed about things. Sometimes they obtain that bad information from false or misleading media coverage; sometimes that media coverage is deliberately false. And there’s a fine line between media coverage that seeks to frame issues appropriately and coverage that’s propagandistic.



..... Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in his introduction to the abridged edition of the Gulag Archipelago cautions, “There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the same here; Here such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.” 



CaitOz Fare:

The Official Story

The official story is that we live in a free democracy where our teachers tell us the truth about our nation, our government and our world when we are children, and then the free press continue telling us the truth about our nation, government and world when we are grown, and then every few years we have free and fair elections in which we use this truthful information to make decisions about which politicians and policies to vote for, and it is only by pure coincidence that what we vote for just so happens to benefit the most wealthy and powerful people on the planet.

........

The official story protects the official story. Anyone who disputes any part of the official story is peddling misinformation, or is a Russian propagandist, or is an anti-semite, or is a dangerous extremist, or is mentally ill, or is whatever they need to be in order to ensure that they are never taken seriously by anyone and are silenced on social media and are never given a mainstream audience. Any dissent from the official story is evidence that you must be prevented from interfering in the official story, according to the official story.



If you “vote out fascism” and then the president you voted for turns out to have the same effective policies as the previous administration, it’s time to start asking who the fascists actually are.
...
A liberal is someone who yells all day about far right truckers and far right Joe Rogan and then applauds when their president gives weapons to literal Nazis.
...
The burden of proof is always on the party making the claim. It’s so weird how everyone will apply this standard to things like internet forum arguments and high school debates but not to immensely consequential claims by the most powerful institutions on the planet who have a well-documented history of lying.
Make a claim that could result in winning a Twitter argument and you’ll immediately be asked for proof. Make a claim that could result in thousands of deaths and it will be reported as fact by The New York Times.
...
The status quo is held in place by psychological compartmentalization. It’s held in place by propaganda and brute force, naturally, but it’s also equally propped up by the basic human tendency to avoid sincerely engaging with information that threatens to destroy our worldview.


Other Quotes of the Week:

Turley: The latest disclosures by Durham are difficult for many in the media to cover because they directly refute years of prior coverage....  to this day, many refuse to cover extensive evidence of how the Clinton campaign manufactured this story that largely occupied the entire term of President Donald Trump.

Aaron Maté: This is such a transparent scam. The warmongers crafting new US sanctions on Russia have repeatedly said that Russian cyberattacks could trigger them. With no invasion happening, this is Plan B:

Toby: How is it possible that a parody of the left becomes the actual script of the left? And I think there are two answers. There actually is no left, there are people following a heavily-promoted script. And the left script is actually written by large corporations.
... 1960s idealism was co-opted and turned into a Trojan Horse for a corporate takeover of society. I, of course, like many of these ideals and think it’s tragic to see them used for these ends. And now it has just become self parody.

Kunstler: Events also conspire to put the schnitz on the alleged Globalists dream of digital tyranny — if there even is such a cabal of Globalists, which I’m not sure about, or just a coterie of feckless hacks swept along by a malefic zeitgeist, Canada’s Justin Trudeau being the poster-boy for that breed. 

Toby again: Manuel Zelaya was a populist President of Honduras who wanted to usher in sweeping land reforms to make life better for the peasants. In 2009 he was overthrown in a coup d’état that was supported by the Obama Administration and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The coup created a power vacuum that was eventually filled by Juan Orlando Hernández who was President of Honduras from 2014 to 2022. But it turns out that Hernández was a narco-trafficker. Oops! Now the feds wants him extradited to the U.S.



Long Reads / Big Thoughts:

Welsh: The Decline and Fall of Post-war Liberalism and the Rise of Neoliberalism

But why did the liberal state fail? Why did this come about? Let’s highlight three reasons: (1) the rise of the disconnected technocrat; (2) the failure to handle the oil crisis, and; (3) the aging of the liberal generations.

................. Liberalism died and is dying because liberals aren’t really liberal, and when they are, they can’t do anything about it.



There are broadly three groups of enforcers: police, secret police (spies) and military. All three have a tendency to attract people who are reactionary, and who enjoy having authority and causing fear. The great attraction of being an enforcer for many people is that you get to make other people do things, and hurt them, and they can’t fight back.














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