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Sunday, April 17, 2022

2022-04-17

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

Economic and Market Fare:


Over the past weeks, gold prices showed a remarkable resilience to the relentless rise in both nominal and real-interest rates. For the first time since 2020, gold prices are now reflecting slightly higher long-term inflation expectations than what is embedded in TIPS (breakeven inflation). However, we think overall markets are still much too optimistic about the Fed’s (and other central banks) ability to choke off current high inflation rates with aggressive monetary policy.

We believe the Fed will stall economic activity before it can choke off inflation, which will force the central bank to reverse course long before it reaches its target interest rate. Current long term inflation expectations (2-10y) imply that investors are too complacent as they attribute near zero probability to such a scenario.

Once confidence in the Fed’s ability to rein in inflation erodes, real-interest rate expectations will move lower again. The result will be a sharp repricing of gold.



Escobar: Exclusive: Russia's Sergey Glazyev introduces the new global financial system
The world's new monetary system, underpinned by a digital currency, will be backed by a basket of new foreign currencies and natural resources. And it will liberate the Global South from both western debt and IMF-induced austerity.

... Glazyev’s recent intellectual production has been nothing short of transformative, epitomized by his essay Sanctions and Sovereignty and an extensive discussion of the new, emerging geo-economic paradigm in an interview to a Russian business magazine.

.... Currently, the US is fighting to maintain its dominance, but just as Britain previously, which provoked two world wars but was unable to keep its empire and its central position in the world due to the obsolescence of its colonial economic system, it is destined to fail. The British colonial economic system based on slave labor was overtaken by structurally more efficient economic systems of the US and the USSR. Both the US and the USSR were more efficient at managing human capital in vertically integrated systems, which split the world into their zones of influence. A transition to a new world economic order started after the disintegration of the USSR. This transition is now reaching its conclusion with the imminent disintegration of the dollar-based global economic system, which provided the foundation of the United States global dominance.

The new convergent economic system that emerged in the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and India is the next inevitable stage of development, combining the benefits of both centralized strategic planning and market economy, and of both state control of the monetary and physical infrastructure and entrepreneurship. The new economic system united various strata of their societies around the goal of increasing common wellbeing in a way that is substantially stronger than the Anglo-Saxon and European alternatives. This is the main reason why Washington will not be able to win the global hybrid war that it started. This is also the main reason why the current dollar-centric global financial system will be superseded by a new one, based on a consensus of the countries who join the new world economic order.

.... Transition to the new world economic order will likely be accompanied by systematic refusal to honor obligations in dollars, euro, pound, and yen. In this respect, it will be no different from the example set by the countries issuing these currencies who thought it appropriate to steal foreign exchange reserves of Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Russia to the tune of trillions of dollars. Since the US, Britain, EU, and Japan refused to honor their obligations and confiscated the wealth of other nations which was held in their currencies, why should other countries be obliged to pay them back and to service their loans?


Charts: 
1:


Something snapped. Ten-year Treasury yields jumped another 12 bps this week, with a two-week gain of 44 bps. At 2.83%, 10-year yields ended the week at the high since December 2018. Thirty-year Treasuries yields surged 20 bps this week (2-wk gain 48bps) to a three-year high 2.92%. Benchmark MBS yields rose another eight bps this week to 3.98%, with a stunning 191 bps y-t-d spike. Thirty-year mortgage borrowing rates jumped 28 bps this week to reach 5% for the first time since February 2011, having jumped 189 bps so far this year.

The Bloomberg Commodities Index jumped 4.8% this week, boosting y-t-d gains to 33.5%. Crude’s 8.8% weekly surge pushed 2022 gains to 42%. Gasoline rose 8.0% (up 52% y-t-d), and Natural Gas spiked 16% (up 96% y-t-d). Wheat and Corn gained 4.4% and 3.0%, with y-t-d gains of 43% and 32%. As for 2022 gains, Nickel is up 60%, Cotton 26%, soybeans 27%, rubber 28% and zinc 25%.

A month back, I titled a CBB, “Inklings of Secular Change.” It increasingly appears the world has reached a critical historic juncture – the transition away from an unparalleled market, financial and economic up-cycle. While such a momentous development is usually recognized only in hindsight, there is today overwhelming fundamental and market support for The New Cycle Thesis.

For much too long, global policymakers pushed stimulus measures to precarious extremes, monetary inflation that extended the cycle – but at great cost. Some of these costs are being revealed.  ...

..... We can’t overstate the significance and far-reaching ramifications of this secular shift away from the promise and assurances advanced over a multi-decade up-cycle - to today’s ominous down-cycle uncertainties.

..... The bond market’s relative disregard for inflation risk recalls the period heading into the 2008 crisis – a dynamic that worked to prolong excess and deepen the unavoidable crisis. Today’s relatively flat yield curve is indicative of dysfunctional markets, distorted by years of Fed intervention and monetary inflation – with the recent inversion not so much a predictor of recession, but more a reflection of bubble fragilities and the inevitability of additional crisis measures.

Low long-term yields and expectations of Fed intervention have provided critical support for the stock market bubble. Stock and bond markets have been unable to adequately adjust to the rapidly deteriorating fundamental backdrop, and I would contend that resulting wealth effects and loose financial conditions have worked to sustain problematic inflationary dynamics. And the longer bonds and stocks downplay ramifications for an aggressive tightening cycle, the greater the pressure on the Fed to talk hawkish rate hikes and balance sheet liquidation. It appears the bond market adjustment to the New Cycle has commenced. ...



(not just) for the ESG crowd:

Researchers find declining nitrogen availability in a nitrogen rich world



COVID-19 notes:

We Might Be Looking At COVID “Seasons” For Years To Come
“I know everybody wants great news, that we can be done with COVID and everything’s gonna be fine, but that’s not really true.”



Highlights
  • mRNA vaccines promote sustained synthesis of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
  • The spike protein is neurotoxic, and it impairs DNA repair mechanisms.
  • Suppression of type I interferon responses results in impaired innate immunity.
  • The mRNA vaccines potentially cause increased risk to infectious diseases and cancer.
  • Codon optimization results in G-rich mRNA that has unpredictable complex effects.





Surprise, surprise, there are now two more new subvariants of the BA.2 Omicron subvariant of the Covid-19 coronavirus. And they’ve got the super easy-to-remember names BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1. These two sub-lineages of the BA.2 already constitute an estimated 80.6% of all Covid-19 infections in the state of New York. The Covid-19 coronavirus has been like boy bands in the 1990s and 2000s with new variations emerging quite often. When a new edition of the virus, BA.2.12.1, appears to be 23% to 27% more transmissible than the original BA.2 Omicron subvariant, it can go from being a new kid on the block to being a big time rush of the virus fairly quickly.


Other Fare:

Bacterial cell wall molecules that travel to the brain could trigger a host of behaviors

With more microbes than cells in our body, it’s not surprising that bacteria and other invisible “guests” influence our metabolism, immune system, and even our behavior. Now, researchers studying mice have worked out how bacteria in the mammalian gut can ping the brain to regulate an animal’s appetite and body temperature—and it involves the same molecular pathway the immune system uses to detect bacterial pathogens.

... Over the past 20 years, researchers have uncovered connections between the human gut and the rest of the body. They have linked certain intestinal microbes to conditions such as depression, multiple sclerosis, and immune system disorders; they have also documented nervous system connections between the gut and the brain. But researchers have been hard pressed to understand exactly how gut microbes—or the molecules they make—influence the brain. ...



Robin Dunbar sets out to offer nothing less than “an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious”. Unlike most writers on such themes, he is largely uninterested in the truth or otherwise of religious claims and has little to say about the damage caused by religions, although he does touch on their “militant violence” and the predatory promiscuity we find among the charismatic leaders of small cults. But he is intrigued by the “seeming universality” of religions and their constant tendency to fragment. His stimulating and hugely ambitious book, therefore, uses a variety of different approaches to throw light on three really big questions: “the functions that religion has served”, “the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that make this possible” and “the timing of the origins of religion”



“Watching the mass exodus of our operational knowledge is one of the saddest evolutions I have witnessed.”


Fun Fare:

Taibbi: Happy Easter
Or whatever

.... For a long time, the only thing I really ever knew about Easter was it was the subject of my father’s best joke.
The Pope dies, so the Cardinals invite candidates to Rome for a religion test. They ask three priests — in my father’s telling I think each was from a different country, giving him a chance to pull out Irish, Italian, and Polish accents — to answer one question, “What’s Easter?”

Father Patrick the Irishman knows this one! He nods and says, “Easter, that’s the one where the family sits around a tree opening presents…” The Cardinals, furious, toss him out of Rome. Father Luigi describes a big cookout, fireworks, and everyone waving the Stars and Stripes. Gone! The Cardinals are down to their last candidate, Father Jakub the Pole.

“Easter,” Jakub begins. “That’s the day Christ dies on the cross, taking on all the sins of the world.” The Cardinals are thrilled. What next? “He loved all the world so much, he sacrificed his own life, so that we all may live forever…” Perfect! Then what? “They put him in a cave, where he stays for three days.” Yes, yes, then? “They roll away the stone…” And?

“And if he sees his shadow, he goes back inside, and it’s six more weeks of winter. If he doesn’t, winter ends early…”
I’m still no Catholic, but as my beautiful little children run around the house this morning, I don’t feel quite so sarcastic about it all. Family and love, at least, really are forever. Grandpa is coming in a few hours. Maybe he’ll tell the boys a joke.

Happy Easter, everyone. Or whatever. Thank you for everything, and may you all find something to smile about, today and every other day.


Pics of the Week:
1:




Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

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


Regular Fare:

Doctors knew in 1973 that the epilepsy drug sodium valproate posed a risk to unborn children — and ordered that warnings be removed from packets. Almost 50 years and 20,000 disabled babies later, it is still being prescribed to pregnant women




Unsustainability / Climate Fare:

"We are only just beginning to see what damage our dalliance with the Anthropocene has wrought."

...... Starved of investment (once bitten, twice shy), nuclear operators have been going back to formerly captive regulatory bodies to keep the old plants running on bubble gum and sealing wax until at least some of the enormous construction and yet unknown decommissioning costs can be recovered. But there is a new sheriff in town. The NRC Commissioners voted on February 24, 2022 to rescind the second round of 20-year license renewals for nearly a dozen U.S. reactors. NRC said if utilities want a 60-80 year operating life, they had better first provide an updated environmental analysis going out to the 2050s and beyond. Under Trump there was no requirement to consider worst case extreme weather events, sea level rise, dam failures, wildfires or other elements of the accelerating climate crisis.

Moreover, the new sheriff announced April 5 that he had uncovered “multiple violations of federal law committed by the agency and the industry in the Subsequent License Renewal review process,” and would need to address those before considering renewals in the future.


Related Tweets:

Cranfield: Most importantly, ending FF wouldn't make any difference to the climate, except to *accelerate* warming due to loss of aerosols.
Please don't shoot the messenger, I don't make the physics.


Cranfield3: The problem is this: We ARE doomed.
As in Titanic doomed. Humanity is on the sinking Titanic. The hole in the side is 1 trillion tonnes of CO₂ +other GHGs, 240 zetajoules of ocean heat, sea ice nearly gone. 
Doomers are ahead of the curve, that's all.


Hallam: “There is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation”: Professor Schellnhuber, former Director Emeritus, Potsdam Institute, world renowned scientist.


Just Collapse: Finger pointing will not save modern techno-industrial civilisation from collapse. After 50yrs of overshoot we are beyond solutions. What remains is the fight for justice - to nudge our descent away from a sheer cliff, towards a steep slide. A #PlannedCollapse is a #JustCollapse.


Eco Warriors: Could have been a different world if media had told truth 
"The media are complacent while the world burns 
This journalistic failure has given rise to a calamitous public ignorance, which in turn has enabled politicians and corporations to avoid action"


COVID Fare:

I've continued to come 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; plus Walter Chesnut on twitter; 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
yet another set of evidence that vaccines are not working to stop covid spread and that boosters wind up making you more likely to contract covid in the long run

it has been notably difficult to get covid data by vaxx status in the US. the epix records are a mess and deeply undercount the vaccinated and the health agencies have been playing all manner of games. however, it appears that private industry may be coming to the rescue here (and once more shedding doubt on why we need the CDC to aggregate anything). walgreens, who perform large amounts of both testing and vaccination are now publishing data conveniently assessable through a power BI interface. it’s got quite a lot of useful information. huzzah.

spoiler alert: it does not make the case for vaccines preventing infection.

it’s clearly associated with much higher infection rates and boosters are faring worst of all. .....

... clearly, there are lots of possible confounds and selection biases that are possible here on timing and underlying risk guiding booster election, but all in all, this data is pretty provocative and would seem to argue that more doses is just digging the hole deeper for you in the long run. that would seem to be the opposite of a vaccine and more akin to an immuno-suppressant.

... this is all looking pretty bleak, but the really nasty take away from this data is not just the negative VE, but it’s the fact that it looks cumulative.

when we compare the VE of boosters after 5 months to 2 doses after 5 months, it’s severely negative (the relative risk ratio is >1).

.... this raises some very pointy questions about long term immune system damage or deeper levels of antigenic fixation.



I’d like to nominate this paper for having The Most Misleading Conclusion of the Year:
Here’s a brief background:

The spike protein is a type of protein on the surface of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The COVID vaccines work by getting the body to produce this protein, with some modifications. 

Here’s what the study did, in a nutshell:

They exposed human prostate cancer cells to different concentrations of spike protein.

Here’s what the study showed, in one sentence:

Prostate cancer cells die when exposed to the spike protein.

Based on that, they say in their conclusion:
These results suggest a potential additional benefit of COVID-19 vaccination by providing a means of exposing prostate cancer cells to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
Based on that, we see headlines like this: ...

...... The article asks if individuals with prostate cancer could face potential harm from getting a COVID-19 vaccine. It then says that according to this recent study, the spike protein made by the vaccine “actually reduces the survival of the cancer cells.”

Great, right?

The problem is that spike protein kills other cells too.

It’s like if they had found out that lead killed prostate cancer cells and then concluded their paper with:
These results suggest a potential benefit of drinking water from Flint, Michigan by providing a means of exposing prostate cancer cells to lead.
The authors of the paper seemed to be completely unaware of the numerous studies out there that show that spike protein damages cells rather indiscriminately.

Spike protein is cytotoxic to other cells at concentrations similar to what was used in the prostate cancer paper

It would be one thing if this study had shown that spike preferentially kills cancer cells; after all, a lot of cancer treatments are toxic to cells in general, but are used on the rationale that they are more harmful to cancer cells than other cells.

So I could maybe see spike protein being helpful if cancerous cells were more susceptible to it compared to other cells. If that were the case, we’d want to see that a low concentration of spike protein killed cancer cells, but that same concentration did not affect other, vital cells.

That’s unfortunately not the case. ...

............... So what do the authors really think? Hell if I know. Their thinking appears quite muddled.

........... In fact, we should be looking for the opposite effect

It gets worse. There’s actually some evidence that the vaccines could exacerbate or lead to cancer: ....


Something is weird about the Stats Canada death data for 2022...

... I looked at weekly death rates for each province individually and found something really weird. I downloaded the data directly from the site and made a quick and dirty plot using the dreaded ‘excel’. Barf. If we were living in normal times (by any definition), what I found - if verifiable - would be headline news. At least I think it would be. People dying in extreme excess as compared with historical rates? Nothing to see here folks.

... I really need someone to help me out here. What the hell is up with 2022 death stats in New Brunswick? Is this some weird over-flow from 2021? Is it random bear attacks? Is it getting run over by cars when leaving injection sites? What? WHAT?



Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, humanity has been searching for effective treatments and preventatives for the virus. Responses have ranged from the wearing of facemasks and “social distancing” to the development of new vaccines and treatments. Researchers have also looked at existing medications to see if they can be helpful in combating the illness.

One existing medication has received considerable attention recently: ivermectin, an antiparasitic that is widely used in the developing world. Many commentators, including several health officials, have dismissed the drug’s usefulness against COVID. Yet, these dismissals seldom cite empirical evidence, or if they do, they don’t detail the findings.

Ivermectin, which is the generic name for the drug, was discovered in 1975 by William Campbell of the Merck Institute for Therapeutic Research and Satoshi Ōmura of Kitasato University, in work that would win them the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Merck first marketed the drug as a veterinary antiparasitic (today it is best known by the brand name Heartgard), with human applications (and the requisite government approvals, under the brand‐​names Stromectol and Mectizan) coming a few years later. In the developing world, the drug has proven so effective at combating parasitic illness that it is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. It has been dosed four billion times to patients in Africa and Central and South America.

Ivermectin works through a variety of mechanisms to kill the targeted parasites. Some of those mechanisms have also been found to attack single‐​strand RNA viruses like SARS‐​CoV‑2, which causes COVID. That led scientists to test the medication in vitro, finding that it does in fact kill the virus in cell cultures.

Because ivermectin has been around for decades, can be taken as an oral pill, is safe, and is now off‐​patent and therefore cheap, it would be an ideal drug to give to COVID patients — if it is, in fact, effective in the body and not just in the petri dish. Is it? ....


Commentary:


Eminent Sydney cardiologist Dr Ross Walker says in a bombshell interview that it was the wrong call to preference mRNA vaccines, citing a rise in heart-related complications and side effects



A board member of German insurer BKK ProVita recently had analyzed the data of millions of insured individuals of the BKK group. The results conclude that the number of COVID-19 “vaccine” side effects is much higher than is being reported by the German federal agency and medical regulatory body, the Paul Ehrlich Institute (PEI).

“According to BKK board member Andreas Schöfbeck, the new data is an “alarm signal.”


the gaslights have become the headlights

we’ve reached the point where ill outcome after ill outcome is being front run by bobble head talking points to attempt to ascribe them to some scapegoat. you could tell the inflation number was going to be a doozie by how hard the news agencies spun the “iT wUz THe RuSSians” narratives leading up to its release. “it’s normal for college athletes to drop from heart failure on the field” was the foreshadowing of the myo and pericarditis surges.

and now, we’re seeing a huge push in claims of “long covid is everywhere and almost everyone gets or will get it!” that sure looks to me like the setup to try to hide what is about to be a massive sandal in long term mRNA jab injuries.

and, astonishingly, it’s working, because clearly a much larger portion of humans than i ever would have believed can be induced not only to ignore any fact, no matter how glaring, but to be inculcated to outright thank those who just took their wallet at gunpoint for stopping them being robbed and them demanding that everyone else line up to get robbed too. for their own protection.

.. because it sure looks to me like you can not only mesmerize large swathes of the population into not only believing in the absurdity of the massive prevalence of a largely illusory condition like long covid, but to actually ascribe the long term side effects of a vaccine to it and to keep taking boosters because “it would have been worse!”

but what’s more interesting to me is that this intense push likely has strong predictive value.

this gang of talking point technocrats is getting data we are not. and they have been using it to front run emerging issues for ages. they think they are being clever, but they are, in fact, shining a spotlight on their own misdeeds once one learns to read them properly. these are novice criminals staring right at the floorboards beneath which they buried body after body. each new initiative of propagandistic spin is the roadmap to the last round of crimes.

their gaslights have become the headlights by which we may see what is coming.

...... i’m just seeing no real science here outside of political science.

it is not based in data.

i suspect it’s based in exigent needs for posterior covering.

call me mr cynical paws, but this sure does seem like an ideal talking point to hide vaccine injuries, vaccines induced immuno-damage, and vaccines driven antigenic fixation leading to chronic inability to generate immunity to covid.



There has been so much bad news about the vaccines in the last few months, it even leaked into the mainstream media.  I think the cabal's plan, at least in the US but probably everywhere, is to stop propping the ludicrous vaccine claims up and allow them to die a natural death.

... There was plenty of happy talk that the afflicted politicians in DC had only mild COVID cases. Good for them. But, if vaccinations caused them to become asymptomatic spreaders instead of spreaders with symptoms, who would know to stay home while sick, the vaccines could actually be doing more harm than good in terms of transmission. They could be causing more COVID cases, not less.

By now, it has to be apparent to everyone who walks by a newsstand or turns on the TV that the media are begging much too hard for more shots.

It must be obvious to all that the shots do not prevent spread and therefore there is no logical way you can mandate them.  Because if my shot does not protect you (and only with lots of fairy dust will it protect me) why would you have any interest in whether or not I am vaccinated?

Once you stop caring about my vaccination status, the cabal’s nexus of control starts to fall apart. That was their ace in the hole. Time for them to move on to something else.

.... It seems that because US law was not designed for situations in which the government is the criminal, it has been very difficult to use the judicial system to change what is happening. But surely if this persisted much longer an honest judge somewhere would finally rule that the vaccines are experimental and the COVID mandate house of cards would then collapse. Like Humpty Dumpty (it is Easter today after all):
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put COVID mandates together again
What else has been happening that undermines the vaccine story? Well, in addition to all the collapsing athletes, there is now a large collection of mayors suddenly dropping dead throughout Germany.

In Australia, Queensland's health minister just admitted that ambulances are being summoned for a lot more calls for cardiac events and sudden deaths: 40% more to be exact. Thanks to Igor Chudov for following this story, and including a video of the clueless minister admitting it, but having no idea why...

Then there were the 3 insurance companies, one each from the US, India and Germany, that admitted there were about 40% more deaths than expected in working-age people in the second half of 2021. ...

Three doctor whistleblowers released a large cache of data from the military's DMED database showing huge increases in service-member deaths.

...While no one in a federal health agency has admitted it, many people must be aware that myocarditis is only the tip of the COVID vaccine injury iceberg. Myocarditis got attention because it's life-threatening and almost always happens within 4 days of the second shot--it can't be written off as coincidence, the way heart attacks, strokes, pulmonary emboli, sudden deaths and perhaps many other diagnoses have been.

As if there wasn't enough bad vaccine news, there was information from the Medicare database that FDA posted last July, but it only recently got attention. FDA revealed that heart attacks, pulmonary emboli, disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC, a life-threatening, bleeding plus clotting disorder) and ITP (another bleeding disorder) were related to the Pfizer vaccination in Medicare beneficiaries. FDA promised to study this rigorously, but instead remained silent ...


Covid Myths - Evolution is the largest most successful Randomised Controlled Trial ever, why have biologists and public health experts ignored that compass completely?

Evolution, through trillions of trial and errors - over billions of years - has selected the best solutions to our world.
Whether it’s DNA, the immune system, neuronal networks, vision … all of these life wonders are the output of a formidable optimisation process we have benefitted from called Evolution. Understandably, some of you might believe it was sparked by God. Others will believe it’s a random process that emerged from chaos. Nonetheless, our world and humanity have emerged - and we have managed to free ourselves - from our organic origins through this amazing process.

And it is only natural that Evolution has been my compass and guided me through this Covid storm. Below I want to share with you a few hacks, inspired by Evolution, that could/should have guided our public health experts in some of the most contested assertions made and decisions taken.


In some circles an insane amount of attention was paid this week to the theories of a chiropractor previously celebrated for speaking out on the fraudulent Remdesivir saga in the US. Here is my take.

I want to start off by stating my embarrassment that I have devoted a couple of hours assessing the snake venom hypothesis, similar to many of my colleagues, here, here, here, and here (who I suspect spent less time than I did which is why I am embarrassed). But I might as well share the fruits? of my time spent assessing the Watch the Water “documentary” lest it go to waste.


Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

Dowd: Well, look, you know, I’m an investor. I have a thesis. I’m definitively saying it’s the vaccine. The question, the fact that this question isn’t even being asked by the mainstream media, by the, you know, department, the CDC, the FDA, or the NIH in the US, and whatever the equivalents are in Canada, suggest to me that they are hiding something and I think they’re hiding the fact that fraud occurred at the clinical trial data level. This thing was rushed through, pushed. The regulatory bodies have been captured, and they thought it’d be okay. I think they knew it was a garbage vaccine, but I don’t think they really thought it would kill this many this quickly. And now they’re like Ruh-roh, and then you know, what do you do when you’re caught? When You’re caught, you triple down

McCullough: Persistence of message ribonucleic acid fortified with synthetic 3' and 5' nucleoside analogue caps in the body for months resulting in excess and prolonged production of Spike protein is the explanation for cumulative toxicity and death after doubles, triples, and quadruples.

Leonardi: To normalize the level of death at this frequency you must normalize the pathogen. Sars cov 2 hyperstimulates and behaves like a SARS even on reinfection. It creates unprecedented levels of autoimmunity that persist. It is intrinsically virulent

Leonardi: We are in a worst-case scenario with Sars 2 now where the evolution is so diverse it threatens our infrastructure and way of life
People are becoming permanently disabled seeking "immunity" to the most rapidly transmitting and evolving pathogen in history

Kunstler: Medicine has succeeded completely in disgracing and destroying itself by lying about everything connected to Covid-19, from its origins, to the insanely outlawed treatments for it, to the harmful actions of the vaccines, to the hidden data that might tell us the results of all that lying. Twitter set the tone for that with its censorship policies. Anyone who suggested that lockdowns, masking, remdesivir protocols, and vaccine mandates violated common decency was tossed out of the arena, often with added punishment of losing a career, a professional license, a livelihood, and having to endure the betrayal of colleagues cowed into silence.


CO-VIDs of the Week:

Neil Oliver:

worth listening to, but here is partial transcript: 

Remember 2019. Cast your mind back to that year, that oh so recent time when everything was different. 2019 was not a perfect time or a perfect world but it was very different from this one of 2022. In 2019 the rights and freedoms we'd had for years and shamefully taken for granted were still broadly intact or so it seemed. The idea that we might not be free to be with loved ones, to hold the hand of a dying parent, to earn a living, to leave our homes for more than an hour a day, that taking a holiday abroad would be for a time illegal would surely have been unthinkable. As long as we could afford the necessary ticket we had been free to travel the world.

Surgical masks were a novelty then, worn in places of work by medical professionals and by occasional visitors from Asia, where altogether different cultural norms prevailed.

Across the pond Donald Trump was in the White House. The US were energy independent then and hadn't got involved in any new wars all the time he was in residence. European states even sneered when he warned against their reliance on Russian gas.

The list of things that were different about here and the US and the rest of the west in 2019 could be so much longer of course, almost endless in fact but I don't have enough time.

So where are we now, where to begin? For one thing, by now there is a whole new definition of haves and have-nots. Society is split across the divide of the vaccinated and unvaccinated. A large majority of the population of the UK and of the rest of the West have been vaccinated against a disease many now believed to have been made in a Chinese lab, that had been funded by the US. It leaked from there in 2019 to the wider world.

The have-nots, who chose not to take the vaccine, who are increasingly glad they turned down the multiple offers of multiple jabs but now metaphorically bruised and battered as a consequence of their resistance to the regime are still vilified and called anti-vaxxers. Anyone questioning the vaccines and or lockdown is still branded a conspiracy theorist. There are many other consequences of the advent of the disease and those vaccines but again I don't have the time now.

I will note that there are widespread reports that young athletes at the peak of their games and fitness have died of heart attacks and blood clots in the last two years and that youngsters from all walks of life have been diagnosed with myocarditis and other serious conditions during the same period but as I say, no time to get into that now.

Among the most eye-catching revelations has been the rabid enthusiasm displayed by governments from one side of the European continent to the other and in Canada Australia New Zealand and many more places besides, for high-handed curtailing of citizens rights. The pressure to submit to the experimental vaccines for example was almost unbearable to resist. In one country after another the lives of the unvaccinated were made more and more uncomfortable, impossible. Unvaccinated Canadians still cannot travel within their own country, far less leave their country. The Australian government has only just relented and allowed, I say allowed as though such control was ever right and proper, allowed Australians to flee the prison island.


Anecdotal Fare:

The autopsy left no doubt, but her daughter’s application for “survivor death benefits” joined a list of thousands who may be out of luck getting compensation from a Pharma-controlled government.

Sandra Jacobs died alone in her Michigan home last April. Found by a friend after frantic texts from co-workers and family went unanswered, the true cause of the sixty-year-old executive’s death would likely never have been made official if not for the tenacity of her daughter.

Jacobs’s only child, Tatum Strieter-Byron, knew right away her mother died due to the Johnson & Johnson covid shot she had received thirteen days before at a local CVS.

And she was right. ...




Researchers suspect an adenovirus may be involved, but are still searching for the cause of illness

Medical watchdog notified of cases of severe acute hepatitis after six children underwent liver transplants




Dystopian Fare:


The actions China has taken to implement this round of lockdowns have been dystopian and Orwellian, to say the least.

For example, according to the NY Times:
  • all international flights to and from Shanghai have been halted
  • many roads to the city’s two airports have also been closed
  • the government performed P.C.R. tests on 25.67 million people
  • the government has not allowed residents to go to grocery stores
  • the government has put together tens of thousands of cots in two convention centers as quarantine centers - but they don’t have showering facilities
China is also, once again, sealing people in their homes. Videos on social media “show trapped residents howling and screaming from inside high-rise buildings at night,” The Independent wrote this week.


COVID Corporatocracy / Idiocracy / Conspiracy Fare:


Advertising / propaganda played a massive part in keeping citizens compliant and afraid. Quite frankly, advertising companies should feel ashamed with the amount of societal manipulation they caused in exchange for government coin.


Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:


The world rotated one more time since the last report on China. So, what do we know? China is rock-solid behind Russia in all of Russia’s objectives, and in some instances, up ahead. It almost seems as if an agreement was, if not stated, then understood. Russia will do the shootin’ for now, and China will keep the economic boat afloat. We see consistent commenting such as China is a consistent stabilizing force in a changing world Overall NATO is feeling the pressure and ‘resetting’ and trying to clone itself as Aukus in the east while trying to strengthen itself in the west.

....... It is clear that Russia is decoupling from Europe, and this started before sanctions. But did you know that China is decoupling from Britain, Canada, and the US? This is a brand-new trend. 

...... While China is doing its best to create a level playing field and do real humanitarian work, they are not hiding the fact that they hold the US/NATO fully responsible for what they see as an action that was forced onto Russia.



Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. 

As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003. ...

...... Americans are rightfully horrified when they see civilians killed by Russian bombardment in Ukraine, but they are generally not quite so horrified, and more likely to accept official justifications, when they hear that civilians are killed by U.S. forces or American weapons in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. The Western corporate media play a key role in this, by showing us corpses in Ukraine and the wails of their loved ones, but shielding us from equally disturbing images of people killed by U.S. or allied forces.

While Western leaders are demanding that Russia be held accountable for war crimes, they have raised no such clamor to prosecute U.S. officials. ...


Greenwald: Western Dissent from US/NATO Policy on Ukraine is Small, Yet the Censorship Campaign is Extreme
Preventing populations from asking who benefits from a protracted proxy war, and who pays the price, is paramount. A closed propaganda system achieves that.

If one wishes to be exposed to news, information or perspective that contravenes the prevailing US/NATO view on the war in Ukraine, a rigorous search is required. And there is no guarantee that search will succeed. That is because the state/corporate censorship regime that has been imposed in the West with regard to this war is stunningly aggressive, rapid and comprehensive.

On a virtually daily basis, any off-key news agency, independent platform or individual citizen is liable to be banished from the internet.

.... What makes this outburst of Western censorship so notable — and what is at least partially driving it — is that there is a clear, demonstrable hunger in the West for news and information that is banished by Western news sources, ones which loyally and unquestioningly mimic claims from the U.S. government, NATO, and Ukrainian officials. ....

... Western news outlets and social media platforms have been flooded with pro-Ukrainian propaganda and outright lies from the start of the war. 

.... Yet there is little to no censorship — either by Western states or by Silicon Valley monopolies — of pro-Ukrainian disinformation, propaganda and lies. The censorship goes only in one direction: to silence any voices deemed “pro-Russian,” regardless of whether they spread disinformation. The "Russians With Attitude” Twitter account became popular in part because they sometimes criticized Russia, in part because they were more careful with facts and viral claims that most U.S. corporate media outlets, and in part because there is such a paucity of outlets that are willing to offer any information that undercuts what the U.S. Government and NATO want you to believe about the war.

Their crime, like the crime of so many other banished accounts, was not disinformation but skepticism about the US/NATO propaganda campaign. Put another way, it is not “disinformation" but rather viewpoint-error that is targeted for silencing. One can spread as many lies and as much disinformation as one wants provided that it is designed to advance the NATO agenda in Ukraine

... It is unsurprising that Silicon Valley monopolies exercise their censorship power in full alignment with the foreign policy interests of the U.S. Government. Many of the key tech monopolies — such as Google and Amazon — routinely seek and obtain highly lucrative contracts with the U.S. security state, including both the CIA and NSA. Their top executives enjoy very close relationships with top Democratic Party officials.



“On 16 April 2015, seven years ago, Oles Buzina, Ukrainian journalist and writer, was shot dead in Kiev, after his personal data, including address, were published on the Ukro-Nazis hit list site Myrotvorets

The Ukrainian regime failed to prosecute his killers. “And it became clear: the dividing line between good and evil has finally been crossed in Ukraine. Yes, before that, Donbass was shelled, people died there. But here in the center of Kiev, a writer was killed just because he had the courage to tell the truth as he understood it. And for having the courage to stay at home. ....

... And it is significant that in his last text he quoted Mikhail Bulgakov: “It’s easy and pleasant to tell the truth.” It’s nice, but not easy, because that’s why Buzina was killed.








... If government can generate a lot of fear, it can attain a lot of power. The two are directly proportional. The exploitation and exaggeration of SARS CoV-2 afforded government with more power than ever before. Never before in modern history has the world been as fearful as during the COVID orchestration. The successful operation provided governments with the ability to close national economies, impose deadly vaccine mandates, and completely change the global landscape for the worse. Now, government wants us to believe that Russia is resurrecting the Soviet Empire. The Russian-Ukraine conflict will be used, like COVID, to further the agenda of the elite. They want more monopolies, more power, more supremacy of the state. 

In an effort to demonize Russia, the West has condemned the Donbass intervention in every possible way and has adopted an explicit war stance including targeting information for Ukraine to attack Crimea. Western governments have killed millions in the Middle East and North Africa in the past 20 years. And many more prior to the 9/11 wars, especially in Asia. Not once were these actions widely condemned or sanctions imposed against the US and other players, but instead the media encouraged and facilitated the atrocities through propaganda. In 2013 in Radda, the capital of the Bayda province in Yemen, a US drone bombed several vehicles traveling to a wedding. More than a dozen people were murdered. In fact, the US has bombed a large number of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games during the 9/11 wars. On October 3, 2015, The US bombed a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing more than 30 doctors, staff members, and patients. The US-led invasion has conducted thousands of such atrocities during the past two decades. From official sources, we can learn that during 2016, the US dropped 26,171 bombs. The countries suffering US-inflicted atrocities include Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan. Approximately 70 bombs were dropped daily. If each bomb killed on average 50 people, the US murdered 1.3 million people violently in just one year – and that does not account for war-imposed deprivation. How many died because of destroyed infrastructure and lack of care due to bombed hospitals and sanctions against the provision of medicine as in Iraq. ....


The case of Bucha.

The Scrum concludes Ambassador Tony Kevin’s two-part series investigating the alleged atrocities in two Ukrainian cities and official accounts of who is responsible for them. We find these pieces of especial importance given the grave and consequential malpractice of Western media pretending to report on events in Ukraine and the brazenly false statements, filled with preposterous word inflation and irresponsibly drawn conclusions, of those purporting to lead the major Western powers.

Tony Kevin’s gathered facts and analysis leave little room for doubt in these matters.

We appear to have entered, if we have not already done so, a new wave of brute censorship, the apparent objective of which is to eliminate all dissenting views—and the facts that support these views—from our public discourse. It is in the face of this onslaught, which has already affected The Scrum’s editors, that we value Tony Kevin’s contributions to the utmost. Our shared project now, in which each of us has a part, is to bear witness. Tony Kevin has done so. We are confident future historians will recognize the worth of these two essays as much as we do.

Part 1 of this series can be found here.

The success of “disinformation warfare” often stems from an initial, massively coordinated presentation to world media of a simple but false story, which no amount of scientific and rational argument can later dislodge. Such a story is framed to appeal to emotional triggers that enrage and incense people before they have the chance to see if the story is true…

—   David MacIlwain, Wodonga, Australia.

When do corpses begin to smell?

—  Google, multiple references.

Tony Kevin:

15 APRIL—It is a daunting task now, 11 days after the news on 4 April of the alleged massacre by Russian soldiers of up to 200 Ukrainian civilians in Bucha—and hundreds more by the Kiev regime’s count—to challenge the Russian atrocity narrative, so firmly is it now lodged in the minds of Western readers. It seems to have already passed beyond fact into realms of legend, of folklore. But let me try and introduce the subject this way with some general propositions.

I assert that Ukraine’s present government, centred in Kiev and Lvov, is now so extreme-nationalist in its avowed ideology and style of governance that it can fairly be described as a kind of fascist or Nazi regime. Under its governance and under the pressures of an increasingly cruel and desperate war, Ukraine is reverting to savagery. Yes, I know President Zelensky is of Jewish ethnicity—but this is politically irrelevant. The important thing is that he is the puppet and mouthpiece of a thick layer of extreme nationalists—“Ukronazis” may be the justified term—who are now strategically embedded into Ukrainian government, the armed forces, and the police at all levels, such that they are in position to drive Ukrainian policy and governance. As a result, Ukraine is rapidly descending into cruel and hateful behaviour toward Russians and toward its own people. It is ceasing to be a civilized country.

....

Fascist-style regimes rely on two things: wall-to-wall propaganda narratives and citizens’ well-founded fear of instant death. History is quite clear on this point. In Ukraine this syndrome began its current, critical phase a few weeks ago, with sadistic public floggings in the streets of naked minors of all ages and both sexes and alleged to be criminals, these images salaciously spread around social media. Now it has quickly degenerated to the stage of real acts of torture and murder of captured Russian prisoners of war—these filmed and displayed on social media. 

And also now, we see repeated Ukrainian government disinformation narratives involving real, officially supported mass murders of Ukrainian civilians, murders immediately blamed on Russia in clumsy, lethally false scenarios that are now nevertheless accepted unquestioningly in the West. In recent days we have seen this weapon deployed in towns around Kiev, in Mariupol, and in Kramatorsk. In every case, the narratives are false and easily proven so.



.... Question: What is Russia doing to see that the United States provides clarification on its military biological cooperation with Ukraine?

Maria Zakharova: Russia has made public the facts that have come to light to date at the UN and other international organisations and called on the US authorities to provide detailed explanations, but, predictably, Washington does not appear to be ready to share with the public any meaningful information on its military biological programme in Ukraine.

.... The Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine in Kharkov has been the Institute of Microbiology of the German Armed Forces’ main Ukrainian counterparty since 2016, which we know from its own data. The two institutes cooperate under the Ukrainian-German project titled “Initiative on Biological Safety and Biological Defence in the Management of the Zoonotic Risks at the Outer Borders of the European Union.” The fact that its official goal is to “improve the biological defence and security situation” in Ukraine, “particularly in the east of the country” gives rise to the rhetorical question of which border the German military biologists consider an outer border for the purposes of their professional interests. Is it the Russian-Ukrainian border?



I was shellshocked by the war like everyone else. Now after my initial panic has subsided I wanted to say a few things.

Here in America, most of the “experts” interpret Putin’s enduring rule in general and this new war of his in particular as Soviet reboot. He’s supposed to be some sort of Stalin 2.0. But that view of things is wrong on just about every level. I believe it’s actually a much worse narrative than simply “Back to the USSR.”

Despite how bad the reality of the USSR could be and how cynical its nomenclature was, at its core the Soviet Union did pursue communism — a liberatory utopian ideology. It inspired people all over the world. So on paper at least, the country did stand for something good, something to aspire to. The USSR wasn’t just a continuation of Imperial Russia under a new name and flag but with the same exploitative ideology. That’s a very simplistic Cold War lens that shows a complete lack of understanding of Russian history and politics.

But Putin’s regime — one that is finally taking a much more definitive shape — is very different. It is not rooted in any utopia. It doesn’t offer any alternative or any new inspiring way to organize society. It was pragmatic from the start and what it aimed to do was to preserve a semblance of stability in post-criminal-privatization-Russia of the early 1990s. Now it’s taking a new turn and foregoing stability. But it’s not that surprising that many people in Russia are cheering for it.



War is too serious a matter to be approached with complacent illusions. Nevertheless, in Russia, it seems, many are still quite seriously convinced that the ongoing operation in Ukraine is just another local conflict that can be quickly ended in the style of the Five-Day War in Georgia, after which everything will be, if not like in 2013 exactly like in 2019.

Will not. The good old world will not be around for a long time.

Russia is at war, at war with a motivated, determined adversary; an adversary who does not have any moral restrictions and is not inclined to compromise. Ukraine has not been pumped up with propaganda, instructors, and now – also with weapons – for eight years, so that it can now easily seize and crumble. At first, the strength of the enemy’s resistance was underestimated, but it’s time to end with complacency. We will have to switch to a war footing now,


*********** Ilargi: War Is Over If You Want It

.... It should be obvious that 1/ There is no evidence of Russia committing anything close to a genocide, 2/ There is plenty evidence of the US, while Biden is/was Senator/VP/President, committing war crimes/genocide, and 3/ Very few people understand what the term genocide actually means, so Biden -and the media- can throw it around as a scary sounding word without risking being called on that.

..... My first reaction when I saw this 10 days ago was: this is infantile. But that is what our conversation has fallen/sunk/degraded into. That’s what the clown/actor president got to say at the UN, and nobody raised an objection; indeed, so-called serious politicians applauded him for it. But it is Hannibal / Napoleon / Hitler / Putin eat babies territory. It’s medieval, except that the Brothers Grimm had more nuance and credibility in their tales then our modern media.

If you saw that headline, and you still thought/think Zelensky is a credible source for anything at all, you yourself have a major credibility issue. Zelensky disqualified himself right then and there when he said that (and repeated similar claims on 100 other occasions). But, you know, he’s a clown and an actor ...

...... There is no sign anywhere that Putin wants to attack the Entire European Project. None. He wants No Nato, No Nukes, and No Nazis in Ukraine. Russia does not have the power to invade all of Europe, nor does it want to. It wants the threat that Ukraine poses on its doorstep to dissolve. No nuke warheads in Ukraine. Step 1.

And what do we see? Sweden and Finland may now join NATO, and they, and Poland, may station nuke warheads on their territory. For hypersonic missiles, that are minutes from Moscow. Given that NATO has no functioning hypersonic missiles today, what would you do if you were Moscow? Wait till they do have them?

I found a better, more elaborate, version of this:

Before the war started, Zelenskyy refused an offer for peace. Russia required 3 things;
1) Water in Crimea: no water was destroying the economy there.
2) Minsk 2 imposed: peace for the people of Donbas, within Ukraine, but greater autonomy.
3) Ukraine to remain neutral: no NATO.

Zelenskyy actually increased the provocation against Russia in January 2022 by;
1) Intensifying the bombardment of Donbas
2) Threatening to retake Crimea
3) A group of Republican congressmen intended to introduce a bill declaring Ukraine a NATO-plus country.

...... We are all smart enough to understand that the opposite is true: the more weapons US/NATO delivers inside Ukraine, the longer the bloodbath will be. AND the Ukraine troops are stuck in pockets (cauldrons), so what can possibly be delivered to them? AND Russia will not continue to sit idly by while such deliveries are attempted. Russia simply wants Ukraine and US/NATO to recognize the reality February 24 created.

And agree that Ukraine cannot enter NATO on Russia’s doorstep, cannot have nuclear weapons, and cannot have (neo-) nazi troops decide its politics. When Zelensky signs for that on the dotted line, the Russians could be gone within days. Provided sufficient guarantees are given, which will require a substantial commitment by NATO as well. But it can surely be done.



.... “Anyone who says anything against the military, protests against NATO, or really, opposes the government from any direction, is immediately labeled ‘pro-Russian,’” the 26-year-old told Toward Freedom. “Anyone is bound to rat you out as a Russian spy if they disagree with you: Nationalists or even other ‘leftists,’ like anarchists or progressives. Most of the country has joined forces with the nationalists. SBU [Ukrainian Secret Service] will catch wind of a protest, a meeting, or an article, and they’ll speak to their friends in the ‘civil society,’ who will send armed nationalists to ‘handle’ you.”

...........“I want to say that millions of people in Ukraine do not support the far-right authorities, but all of them are really frightened.” A similar sentiment was documented in Toward Freedom’s March 21 article. “They are afraid of arrests, tortures, kidnappings,” Albu added. “Many notable people in opposition have been kidnapped and disappeared since the beginning of the military operation.”


Related Tweets:

German journalist on how the Ukrainians bombed a hospital in Donbass but the German mainstream media blamed the Russians.

There are people out here justifying this by saying without a shred of evidence: "they're thieves!" And in the next sentence they say: we are protecting Ukraine's democracy and rule of law. [see the pics]


Orwellian Fare:

Zealous anti-Russia voices are actually demanding that anyone opposing their views be silenced, and even criminally prosecuted.

A troubling pattern has developed over the decades in which foreign policy hawks smear their opponents and thereby seek to foreclose discussion of questionable U.S. policy initiatives. 

..... The same pattern has emerged again with respect to U.S. policy toward Russia. Indeed, the smears were plentiful from a de facto alliance of neoconservatives and liberal hawks long before the Kremlin launched its current, brutal invasion of Ukraine. Experts who made the case that Washington’s meddling to help demonstrators unseat Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president in 2014 led to Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea found themselves targets of that alliance’s vitriol. 

Princeton University Professor Stephen F. Cohen, a longtime distinguished scholar of the Soviet Union and its successor states, was a prominent early target. Critics impugned Cohen’s motives and sullied his reputation. Epithets such as “Putin’s American apologist” and “Putin’s Pal” were among the routine labels they applied.

Those tactics became even more flagrant as the crisis between Russia and Ukraine (and between Russia and NATO) deepened in the years after 2014.

...... Yet an array of reputable scholars had warned since the 1990s that NATO’s expansion toward Russia would poison East-West relations and ultimately lead to a new cold war (if we were lucky), or a hot war (if we weren’t). Those scholars included George Kennan, the intellectual architect of Washington’s Cold War containment policy toward the Soviet Union, and John Mearsheimer, the dean of realist international relations scholars. The mob of character assassins rarely bothered even to acknowledge that such sober critiques existed, much less tried to address their substantive points.



Twitter has continued its ever-widening censorship of social media this week with the suspension of the popular site, The @LibsofTikTok. What is interesting about this latest move is that it lacks even the pretense of neutrality. The liberal group Media Matters had targeted the site due to its use by Fox News and conservatives to run embarrassing stories for the left.

So Twitter suspended a site that entirely features liberals talking about themselves.

...... Given such actions, it is understandable why Twitter employees are reportedly not just in a panic of Elon Musk buying the company (and reintroducing free speech principles) but even requiring emotional support to just “get through the week.”

That is the problem with free speech. Just when you think that you have moved beyond it, it just comes back. For corporate censors, it is a perfect nightmare.


Half the nation doesn’t believe anything it is told by those in authority and the other half revels in its reckless abuse of authority….

Isn’t it obvious by now that pervasive dishonesty is the foremost crisis of many crises in Western Civ generally and American life in particular? All our authorities have made themselves false, lying their way into the broad collapse of confidence that drives the nation toward some culminating horror show of strife and loss.

The go-to lever of concerted mind-fuckery has been the term-of-art misinformation, applied especially to things and propositions that are truthful — thereby confounding the public’s ability to discern truth in anything, or to discover how they are being misled in matters of life and death. We’ve allowed the worst in human nature to disgrace ourselves.

.... Twitter also enabled the suicide of higher education, which has succumbed to a plague of Jacobin craziness that would embarrass the inmates of an old-time locked ward. The failure of authority on campus is cosmic. Can you name a single college president who has raised a voice against such manifest idiocy as men competing in women’s sports, the invention of ersatz fields of study, the re-segregation of dormitories and graduation ceremonies, the shouting down of invited lecturers, the persecution of free-thinking faculty, the kangaroo courts for sex disputes, and a hundred other violations of intellect and decency?

All this coerced insanity has been nurtured by social media’s sly mechanisms for bending narrative into propaganda: their beloved algorithms, all fine-tuned to destroy anything that touches on truth. The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse. ...



CaitOz Fare:


YouTube has been deleting videos disputing the US government narrative about Russian war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, validating concerns we’ve discussed previously that Silicon Valley platforms would begin censoring anyone who challenges the authorized version of events in this war.

“By the way, my video ‘Bucha: More Lies’ has been deleted [by] YouTube’s censors,” reads a recent tweet by Gonzalo Lira.

“My stream last night on RBN was censored on Youtube after debunking the Bucha Massacre narrative,” Revolutionary Blackout Network reports.

It would seem that this clears up what YouTube meant when it said last month, “Our Community Guidelines prohibit content denying, minimizing or trivializing well-documented violent events. We are now removing content about Russia’s invasion in Ukraine that violates this policy.”

There has as yet been no investigation into what happened in Bucha by any international body and there are plenty of arguments to be made questioning aspects of the Official Story that westerners are being aggressively force fed by the narrative control machine of the US-centralized empire. Which would mean that YouTube is defining “well-documented” as “unproven assertions by the US government.”

..... It’s probably also worth noting at this point that YouTube is owned by Google, which is a US military contractor and which has been inseparably intertwined with US intelligence agencies from its very inception.

The radius of what these government-tied oligarchic Silicon Valley megacorporations deem worthy of censorship has been getting wider and wider with every major news story: from eliminating Russian trolls, to thwarting domestic extremists, to protecting election integrity, to stopping Covid misinformation. Now they’re just openly saying they’re censoring those who disagree with the world’s most powerful government about a war. The excuses change from day to day, but the only constant is that we’re always told the solution is more internet censorship.

.... It’s not healthy to seek control over what people say and think. Free speech is important not because it makes people sad when they don’t get to say what they want, but because the free exchange of ideas and information is how we collectively bring awareness to problems, change minds, stir the zeitgeist, and, if necessary, organize mass resistance.

And that’s exactly why the powerful work to prevent the free exchange of ideas and information....



..........  People should absolutely be allowed to say things which disagree with the most powerful empire in history about a war. They should even be allowed to say brazenly false things about that war, because otherwise only the powerful will be allowed to say brazenly false things about it.

Free speech is important not because it’s nice to be able to say what you want, but because the free flow of ideas and information creates a check on the powerful. It gives people the ability to hold the powerful to account. Which is exactly why the powerful work to eliminate it.


Can't overstate how completely blanketed by propaganda distortion the Ukraine war is. US spooks saying they're leaking disinfo to the press, Ukrainian war propaganda, the blackout on Ukrainian losses, the uncritical media acceptance of allegations against Russia. Truth is hidden.

There are only two possibilities: You either accept the fact that the information ecosystem around this war is too polluted to know very much of anything for certain and adjust your perceptions accordingly, OR you believe false things about this war. Those are the only two ways.

Propaganda only works on people who don't know they're being propagandized. If you're acutely aware that a historically unprecedented effort is going into manipulating your understanding of what's happening in a strategically crucial war in the digital age, you're more grounded.

This is one of those situations where your own best guess about what's happening is infinitely superior to what you're told by the news media, because you know your own best guess is assembled in good faith while you know news media narratives are rife with propaganda distortion.

If you're genuinely interested in understanding what's going on with this war, get as much information from as diverse an array of sources as possible, preferencing those who don't appear aligned with any power structure and aren't egoically or financially invested in any side.


Other Quotes of the Week:

Bates: The scene recalled for me how US armor had moved through the streets of Falujah under instructions to fire one depleted uranium round into every house, and that so much uranium dust accumulated in Falujah that the sunsets turned green. That horror show included many squid-like babies. Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, and other senior US officials were all found guilty for their actions in Iraq and Afghanistan by the War Crimes Commission in 2012.

Greenwald: Liberals don't believe they're authoritarians and in favor of censorship. Nobody wants to believe this about themselves. All authoritarians tell themselves: what we're fighting is so dangerous, all our tactics are inherently just. That's what liberals believe about themselves.
Canada's Trudeau *froze the bank accounts* of people  "associated with" a peaceful protest which the government disliked -- all with no due process!
This didn't bother Western liberals for the same reason: all tactics are justified against our enemies.

Kunstler: The result is a country so marinated in falsehood that it can’t construct a coherent consensus of reality, and can’t take coherent actions to avert its own collapse. 

Yarvin: Could Elon Musk buy Twitter? What would it mean? And what would he do with it? As I told a friend: “I rarely think anything is meaningful. But I think this is.”


Pics of the Week:




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