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Sunday, May 1, 2022

2022-05-01

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

Economic and Market Fare:

Covid initially drove wages up, especially for working-class people. But that’s over—another illustration of capital’s dethronement of labor.

.... The bad news is that for all the talk you hear about a labor shortage, wage growth slowed to 1 percent in the last quarter of 2021, and though it picked up a bit in the first quarter of 2022, it may already be cooling.

.... The Covid trend is yet another illustration of capital’s dethronement of labor. If anything was going to boost labor’s share of corporate income, you’d think it would be a Covid-induced labor shortage. But it didn’t. From the start of the pandemic through 2021, labor’s share of corporate income actually fell. The same corporate executives complaining that you simply can’t get good help these days are paying that help a smaller share of company revenues.




The evolution and weaponization of the world dollar

The centerpiece of shock and awe of the West’s economic response to Russia’s invasion and bombardment of Ukraine was the freezing of Russia’s central bank assets. In the March 7 edition of his Global Money Dispatch newsletter, the Credit Suisse investment strategist Zoltan Pozsar writes that the G7 seizure of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves marks a regime change in the global monetary system. Pozsar pronounces this new regime Bretton Woods III. He anticipates that Asian sovereigns, fearing that their dollar- and euro-denominated foreign reserves are at risk of expropriation in the event of future foreign policy disputes, will park their surplus funds outside of the reach of Western financial authorities. For Pozsar, this heralds the rise of “commodity-backed currencies in the East” and spells the denouement of dollar hegemony.

... Pozsar’s analysis—as well as Adam Tooze’s response to it—appreciates the asymmetry in the world economy: between advanced economies that dominate global finance, and developing countries that produce the majority (about sixty percent) of world GDP. Asia may be the center of gravity of world manufacturing, but European and North American firms still command the bulk of the profits embedded in global supply chains. This tension in the global economy is unlikely to resolve anytime soon, but it has become increasingly fractious. The weaponization of trade policy by the previous Republican administration has only been reinforced by the current Democratic one.


Tweets and Quotes:

Pettis: 1/10: Beijing is very worried about the potential effects of sanctions on China's vast holding of foreign assets, but the fact that they weren't able to come up with any solution shows the extent to which China is locked into a structural problem.
2/10: As long as China runs large trade surpluses, it has no choice but to acquire foreign assets in exchange for the surpluses, and as long as it is incapable of rebalancing domestic demand, it has no choice but to run large trade surpluses.
...
6/10: It is mainly the US (and the anglophone economies) that are willing to run the huge deficits that allow other rich countries and/or commodity exporters to run surpluses. This means that the US provides the mechanism which allows other countries to repress domestic demand.
7/10: In order that they can continue doing so, the US must run permanent trade deficits and accept the unemployment or (more likely) soaring debt and asset bubbles that balance these deficits. Europe and Japan, rightly, refuse to play this role. The US, weirdly, embraces it.


Henrik Zeberg: We are late cycle! But we are not in a recession - YET! But, I think the World economy will be in a recession before the End of 2022. Model based on Leading, Coincident and Lagging indicators. Rates are to plunge to All-Time-Lows



Zoltan Pozsar: Dealing with those chokepoints is the responsibility of the sovereign… and the sovereign will need a lot of money to deal with them. Thus, while we think QT is certainly happening in the near-term, its days and scale will be
numbered straight from the get go. The Fed will do QE again by summer 2023.


Charts: 
1:



Bubble Fare:

Hussman: Repricing a Market Priced for Zero

Buckle up, buttercup.

The most challenging financial event for investors in the coming decade will be the repricing of securities to valuations that imply adequate long-term returns, following more than a decade of reckless and intentional Fed-induced yield-seeking speculation.

The chart below updates the status of our most reliable stock market valuation measures, based on their correlation with actual subsequent S&P 500 total returns in market cycles across history. Their historical profiles are largely indistinguishable. The arrow shows the current level of valuation, which remains above every valuation extreme observed prior to 2020. Indeed, our Margin-Adjusted P/E (MAPE), for which a century of data is available, remains beyond its 1929 peak.

... Indeed, measured from the recent market peak, I expect S&P 500 total returns to be negative, on average, for well over a decade – an outcome I also projected at the 2000 market peak. That said, if a steep market decline was to front-load those losses, investors could also enjoy prospects for satisfactory long-term returns even a year or two from now. It’s current valuation extremes, and the dismal long-term returns they imply, that long-term investors may want to think twice about locking in.

Meanwhile, be careful not to interpret valuations as near-term market forecasts. That’s not how valuations work. The main thing that determines whether an overvalued market continues to advance, or drops like a rock instead, is whether investor psychology is inclined toward speculation or risk-aversion. When investors are inclined to speculate, they tend to be indiscriminate about it. When investors become risk-averse, they tend to be skittish and selective.

... So yes, this time was different, but in a very dangerous way. Faced with a zero-interest rate world that combined “fear of missing out” with a belief that “there is no alternative” to yield-seeking speculation, investors unwittingly drove the most reliable stock market valuation measures to levels beyond the 1929 and 2000 extremes. Unfortunately, those valuations also imply dismal long-term returns in any world not permanently dominated by FOMO and TINA psychology. Measured from the recent bubble peak, the likely consequence will be a long, interesting, 10-20 year trip to nowhere for the S&P 500. There’s also a strong possibility of an interim loss in the S&P 500 in the range of 50-70% over the completion of this market cycle, or as we observed between 2000-2009, a sequence of cyclical lows punctuated by several extended recoveries.

... Our most reliable market valuation measures stood near 3.6 times their historical norms at the beginning of 2022. If the possibility of a 70% market loss seems preposterous, punch 1/3.6-1 into your calculator. From the highs of the recent Fed-induced bubble, a 70% market loss would not even take the most reliable stock market valuation measures below their run-of-the-mill historical norms.

Likewise, if the possibility of a 10- to 20-year trip to nowhere for the S&P 500 Index seems preposterous, a bit of arithmetic may be useful. Over the past 10, 20, and 30 years, S&P 500 revenue growth has averaged less than 4% annually, including the impact of stock buybacks. Combining those two pieces of information, if the S&P 500 was simply to touch its historical valuation norms 20-years from today, without even breaking below those norms, the resulting average annual percentage change in the S&P 500 Index, measured from the recent bubble peak would be:

(1.04)(1/3.6)^(1/20)-1 = -2.45%

Adding expected dividend income would push that total return to roughly zero, but even 6% annual revenue growth would still leave the S&P 500 Index itself underwater. That basic arithmetic is why speculative bubbles have invariably been followed by long trips to nowhere.

The very nature of a bubble is that there’s an inside and an outside, an expanding reality-distortion field that assures people inside the bubble that they’re doing things that are rational and normal. But when the bubble bursts (and speculative bubbles always do), be prepared for reality to disagree. – Seth Godin, March 18, 2022


(not just) for the ESG crowd:




Climate change brings with it the increasing risk of extinction across species and systems. Marine species face particular risks related to water warming and oxygen depletion. Penn and Deutsch looked at extinction risk for marine species across climate warming and as related to ecophysiological limits (see the Perspective by Pinsky and Fredston). They found that under business-as-usual global temperature increases, marine systems are likely to experience mass extinctions on par with past great extinctions based on ecophysiological limits alone. 



At least 10,000 virus species have the capacity to infect humans, but at present, the vast majority are circulating silently in wild mammals. However, climate and land use change will produce novel opportunities for viral sharing among previously geographically-isolated species of wildlife. In some cases, this will facilitate zoonotic spillover—a mechanistic link between global environmental change and disease emergence.


Planet-warming emissions from cow burps have been seen from space







At the COP26 conference last year, 40 nations agreed to phase coal out of their energy mixes.

However, as Visual Capitalist's Bruno Venditti details below, despite this, in 2021, coal-fired electricity generation reached all-time highs globally, showing that eliminating coal from the energy mix will not be a simple task.

This infographic shows the aggressive phase-out of coal power that would be required in order to reach net zero goals by 2050, based on an analysis by Ember that uses data provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA).


Low-Cost Comes at a High Environmental Cost
Coal-powered electricity generation rose by 9.0% in 2021 to 10,042 Terawatt-hours (TWh), marking the biggest percentage rise since 1985.

The main reason is cost. Coal is the world’s most affordable energy fuel. Unfortunately, low-cost energy comes at a high cost for the environment, with coal being the largest source of energy-related CO2 emissions.


COVID-19 notes:

South Africa is being hit hard by COVID again. Here is what that means for the US.


COVID is spreading in deer. What does that mean for the pandemic?



Other Fare:

Why does swearing make us stronger?




Contrarian Perspectives

Extra [i.e. Controversial] Fare:

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


Regular Fare:

Craig Murray: Donziger: A Tale For Our Times


el gato malo: talking past ANTIFA

there is an ominously longstanding tradition in american politics whereby the name of any given act of action is the precise inversion of its effect an intent.
  • the patriot act serves only to undermine the constitution.
  • the affordable care act jammed up health care costs.
  • the community re-investment act triggered the bubble that devastated minority home ownership when it burst.
i mean, let’s face it, if these people passed the “head protection for america” act, they would then run around bonking you on the head like their name was little bunny foo foo.



Unsustainability / Climate Fare:

A newsletter about food systems, climate change and everything connected to them
...... “Modern agriculture has altered the face of the planet more than any other human activity.  We need to urgently rethink our global food systems, which are responsible for 80% of deforestation, 70% of freshwater use, and the single greatest cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss.” Ibrahim Thiaw, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD

Related Tweets:

The current extreme #heatwave in #Pakistan and #India as seen today, on the fourth intense hot day, by #Copernicus #Sentinel3 LST (Land Surface Temperature, not Air!). LST collected on April 29 shows max value exceeding 62°C/143°F.


Tim Garrett: Because, as economists never fail to remind us, those who lack their training in the finer points of the scientific method, "correlation does not equal causation"


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

Analysis:

British children up to 52 times more likely to die following a COVID shot: gov’t report

“Data from Britain's Office for National Statistics show a stark increase in deaths among children both single- and double-jabbed compared to their un-jabbed counterparts.”


Did Pfizer Perform Adequate Safety Testing for its Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine in Preclinical Studies?

.. My goal is to illustrate the complete breakdown of the previously known to be rigorous ethical drug development process, as well as the shocking negligence on the part of the regulatory agencies that are supposed to keep the pharmaceutical manufacturers honest. It turns out that both were highly dishonest and pushed an entirely novel technology and product on millions of people without a single well designed safety assessment.

In summary, I have identified the following:
  • Finding 1: Pfizer’s program did not include a comprehensive end-to-end test of all components of the final approved product. The studies included in the approval package were for a variety of versions of the product with no comparability assessments, thus no comprehensive assessment of product safety can be made.
  • Finding 2: The toxicity of the Covid 19 vaccine’s mRNA active ingredient was never studied!
  • Finding 3: Pfizer claimed absence of potential for enhanced covid illness based on the animal study where no covid illness was observed.
  • Finding 4: CDC, FDA and Pfizer lied about “vaccine staying in the injection site”.
  • Finding 5: Pfizer skipped major categories of safety testing altogether.
  • Finding 6: Pfizer used dishonest and self-serving interpretation of regulatory guidelines to avoid routine safety testing.
  • Finding 7: Both FDA and Pfizer knew about major toxicities associated with gene therapy class of medicines, and therefore cannot claim lack of anticipatory knowledge of these risks. This points to intentional fraud and collusion between Pfizer and the regulators to push this untested dangerous product on the market.

Former Pfizer VP: 'Adverse impacts on conception and ability to sustain a pregnancy were foreseeable'

Dr. James Thorp is an extensively published 68-year-old physician MD board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology, as well as maternal-fetal medicine, who has practiced obstetrics for over 42 years.

Thorp told The Epoch Times that he sees 6,000–7,000 high-risk pregnant patients a year and has seen many complications among them due to the COVID vaccines.

“I’ve seen many, many, many complications in pregnant women, in moms and in fetuses, in children, offspring,” Thorp said, “fetal death, miscarriage, death of the fetus inside the mom.

“What I’ve seen in the last two years is unprecedented,” Thorp asserted.

Thorp explained that although he has seen an increase in fetal death and adverse pregnancy outcomes associated with the COVID-19 vaccination, attempts to quantify this effect are hampered by the imposition of gag orders on physicians and nurses that were imposed in September 2021, as reviewed in the publication “Patient Betrayal: The Corruption of Healthcare, Informed Consent and the Physician-Patient Relationship” (pdf).

....

Michael Yeadon is a big pharma veteran with 32 years in the industry. He retired from Pfizer whilst occupying the most senior research position in that field.

“On December 1, 2020, We detailed a series of mechanistic toxicology concerns which we believed were reasonable to hold, unless & until proven not to occur,” Yeadon said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

“Among those was that adverse impacts on conception and ability to sustain a pregnancy were foreseeable.”

..... “Based on this concern alone, all of these experimental products as a class should have been completely contraindicated in women younger than menopause.”


The Japanese govt (kinda) documents its crimes

A new report put together by Japan’s Coronavirus Response Expert’s Committee was recently published on the Japanese cabinet’s website that almost reads like a admittance of guilt. Luckily for this lazy old Guy, most of the juicy bits are already written in English.

......... A supporter of the Covid measures may say that the socioeconomic consequences were worth it to stop people dying from Covid, but there’s no evidence even the strongest measures stopped a runny nose.

To put it as nicely as possible, Japan’s Covid response probably wouldn’t pass a basic cost/benefit analysis since there’s been no actual benefit.


Commentary:

With mayors dropping dead, ambulance calls up 40% and insurance companies speaking out, like Humpty Dumpty, it would only be a matter of time until an honest judge somewhere ruled the vaccines are experimental. Is this why the ludicrous claims are dying a natural death?

.... and therefore forcing someone to be vaccinated is a Nuremberg violation and a violation of federal law.

........... On the other hand, I do believe the cabal has bet the farm on their Reset, they can’t go back, and they are simply moving on to another means of accomplishing it besides COVID. 

...... A better life? It just takes everybody waking up. Despite all the acrimony we have faced, the time is ripe to help our fellows see things clearly.


The shot made no difference against Covid but it does cause myocarditis and came with a 15% to 17% adverse event rate. Meanwhile the CDC admits that 74.2% of kids already have natural immunity.

... Moderna has at least two big problems in giving this shot to teenagers:

... 2.) Nordic countries are slightly less corrupt than the United States. Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have all suspended the use of the Moderna mRNA shot in teenagers because its leads to myocarditis. (Finland and Sweden even suspended its use in men under 30 years old.) Even the criminally corrupt European Medicines Agency acknowledged that both Pfizer and Moderna mRNA shots lead to myo- and pericarditis and added a warning to the product insert.

............. What!? “The trial was not big enough to measure vaccine effectiveness.” Isn’t that the whole point of a clinical trial!? So Moderna (and the NY Times) are saying that the clinical trial made ZERO difference on clinically significant outcomes Covid-related health outcomes including infection, hospitalization, ICU visits, or deaths, because the SARS-CoV-2 virus is not a threat to healthy children in this age group — which we have been pointing out for months.

So how does Moderna try to finesse it? They look at antibodies in the blood, not health outcomes in the real world. They call it “immunobridging”

...... Even the hand-picked yes-men and women on the CDC’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) acknowledged at their last meeting that they do NOT have “correlates of protection” that would enable them to estimate health outcomes from antibody measures. 

... So Moderna is asking the FDA to authorize its mRNA shot in kids under 6 based on antibodies alone even though every member of the FDA’s VRBPAC acknowledges that antibodies tell you absolutely nothing about likely health outcomes.

... Any shot with an adverse event rate over 1% should not be authorized. To authorize a shot with a 15 to 17% adverse event would be batsh*t insane. ...


For people who didn't get the memo.

1. Doctors should always follow the guidance of the CDC and NIH, even when it is wrong.
2. Any doctor who contradicts what the CDC or NIH say shall have their license to practice medicine revoked.
3. The CDC, FDA, and NIH are always right.
...
6. Early treatments for COVID using cheap repurposed drugs don’t work, no matter what the evidence says.
7. If you see something that contradicts the narrative, don’t say anything. This is known as “See something, say nothing.” This is particularly important for doctors who are seeing massive numbers of deaths from the vaccine.
9. Medical journals are prohibited from publishing papers that go against the narrative.
10. “Misinformation” is any information that contradicts the current mainstream narrative, even if it is true.
......
20. When the science and politics disagree, the politics always win.
..
22. Vaccines only need to be tested for a few months to be deemed safe.
....
30. Use the explanation “died unexpectedly” for any vaccine-related deaths.
....



Tweets & Quotes of the Week:

eugyppius: Science isn’t some objective reasonable force outside of politics. Scientists spend most of their careers chasing government grant funding, and fighting for appointments and promotions in government-funded university systems. Science follows politics, and nobody knows this as much as the disingenuous politicians who claim that their policies are subordinate to scientific findings.

Kirsch: Dr. Lee can’t evaluate the science and see any safety signals because she’s blind to any possibility that she’s being lied to and doesn’t ask any critical thinking questions. But at least she’s not actively making new misinformation herself. But Fisman is another story. He actually creates new misinformation and spreads it.

Blaylock: For the first time in American history a president, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and federal bureaucrats are determining medical treatments based not on accurate scientifically based or even experience based information, but rather to force the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines. For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.

Former Pfizer VP, Yeadon: Based on this concern alone, all of these experimental products as a class should have been completely contraindicated in women younger than menopause.

Anderberg: From a human perspective, it was easy to understand why so many were reluctant to face the numbers from Sweden. For the inevitable conclusion must be that millions of people had been denied their freedom, and millions of children had had their education disrupted,all for nothing. Who would want to be complicit in that?

Reimagining Politics: Shanghai health authorities say there are 16,000 sealed-off areas in Shanghai, 4 million people prevented from leaving their homes & another 5.4 million blocked from leaving their compounds. Factory production is nearly shutdown. Welcome to the future.



CO-VIDs of the Week:

Rodrigo Zeidan: Shanghai government is building the largest temporary quarantine facilities in the country (方舱中心). This is Jiangwan Stadium right now. Will dynamic covid zero be relaxed? Well, what do you think?


Italian court rules mandatory vaccination unconstitutional. A single vaccine death is enough to render the mandate unconstitutional. Who would determine the percentage of disposable citizens? It is indisputable


The two-year anniversary of my Substack plus philosophy (of course)

Two years ago today, I posted my first Substack. It was April 2020, I was feeling totally weirded out by the strangely coordinated “new normal” messaging with distinctly dystopian overtones—especially the statement by the WHO about taking people out of their homes—but I was very unsure about what would happen to my reputation and career if I opened my mouth about any of this. Remember that time?

Anyway, I opened my mouth because it felt like the only choice I had. The reason I opened my mouth was because I was afraid of being coward more than I was afraid of ruining my reputation.....

The funny thing, I had been making art and writing about Big Tech and transhumanism and the attempted digital overtake for a number of years preceding COVID. Transhumanist philosophy was “my” topic, I knew about it, I had thought a lot about it, I had written about it, I had an entire theatrical performance about robot-like human existence. But before 2020, very few people cared. And then 2020 came up, and I felt like my entire life had prepared me for seeing through the abusive sham.

Since then, a lot more people have caught up to transhumanism, the 4IR and the Great Reset.

A “meme” is a small unit of information that can easily move from one human mind to another. It is the virtual equivalent of a virus in the sense that it “infects” people and influences their behavior. To explain the concept, maybe the best way is with an example: how my grandmother was absolutely convinced that nobody ever should drink a glass of milk without having boiled it first. She was infected with a meme that we could describe as “boil the damn milk.” It was simple and direct, but, unfortunately, completely useless in the 1960s, when pasteurization had become common. My grandmother was not stupid: she was simply applying a tested method to deal with things she knew little about.

The problem is that memes can be (or become) wrong or obsolete, and yet they are very difficult to dislodge. In the photo, you see Colin Powell, in 2003, showing a vial of baby powder while claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed largely on the basis of a meme that turned out to be completely false. The Covid pandemic is another case of a complex story that most of us are unprepared to understand. We should be trained in microbiology, medicine, epidemiology, and more — no way! So, we rely on simplified snippets to guide their everyday activities. “Wear the damn mask,” “stay home,” “don’t kill granny,” “flatten the curve,” and the like. That includes our leaders.

All memes have a story: that’s true for the one that led my grandmother to always boil her milk, and also for the “lockdown” meme. But whereas the first (“boil the damn milk”) was harmless, the second (“lock everybody in their homes”) can do a lot of damage. It did, and it is still doing damage in China with the recent massive lockdowns of Shanghai and other cities. So, where does this meme come from? Its origin can be found in the evolution of the concept of “biological warfare.” But let’s go in order.

The Militarization of Genetics 

Biological weapons have been around for a long time in history. .....

... Up to 2020, all these ideas remained purely theoretical, just memes that floated in the memesphere. Things were soon to change. 

The Wuhan Lockdown meme

In early 2020, the Chinese government reported the discovery of a new virus, that they labeled SARS-Cov2, rapidly spreading in the city of Wuhan. The Chinese authorities reacted by enacting a strict lockdown of the city and a partial one in the province of Hubei. The lockdown lasted from Jan 23 to April 8, a total of about 2 months and a half. 

It was an extraordinary event that finds no equivalent in modern or ancient times. Of course, quarantines have been known for centuries, but the idea of a quarantine is to confine people who are infected or who have been in contact with infected people. A lockdown, instead, means locking down everybody in a large geographical region. It had been tried only once in modern history, when a three-day lockdown was implemented in Sierra Leone with the idea of containing an outbreak of Ebola, having no measurable effect on the epidemic. ....

... The apparent success of the Wuhan lockdown generated a new, powerful meme about the effectiveness of the drastic NPI measures based on lockdowns, distancing, cleaning, disinfecting, etcetera. They seemed effective not just in terms of "flattening the curve", but also as methods to control the epidemic and arrive at a condition of "zero covid." The meme "lockdowns work" spread to the Western governments, just as the SARS-Cov2 virus spread to Western countries. The memes of "flattening the curve" and of "zero covid" were remarkably successful, as you can see in these data from Google Trends: ...

... And you see that China went along the same path that several Western countries followed. After a lull in the spread of the virus, they concluded that the virus was eradicated. But then a new, stronger wave arrived. China didn't do so much better than the West, after all. 

The Memes that won

Up to March 2022, the China lockdown policy was seen as an exemplary case of successful containment of an epidemic. But the Shanghai lockdown changed everything. I argue that what we are seeing is a meme that got loose in the mind of politicians and led them to make several bad mistakes.  ...

....

Conclusion: a memetic cascade

Two years of the pandemic are summarized in a single graphic from "Worldometers." 

What you see is a series of seasonal peaks, one in the summer for the Southern Hemisphere, the other in winter for the Northern Hemisphere. There is no evidence that the various campaign of non-pharmaceutical interventions had a significant effect. Every day in the world, some 150,000 persons die for all reasons. The graph tells us that, on the average, only about 7-8 thousand people died of (or perhaps just with) Covid every day. Even assuming that all those who died with Covid can be classified as dead of Covid (not obvious at all), your probability to die with/of the virus during the past two years was less than 5%.

The question that we face, then, is how was it that the world reacted with such extreme measures to a threat that, seen today, was much exaggerated. It may be still too early to understand exactly what happened, but I think it is possible to propose that it was a typical "feedback cascade" in the world's memesphere. A convergence of parallel views from politicians, decision-makers, industrial lobbies, and even simple citizens, most of them truly convinced that they were doing the right thing.

I don't mean here that there were no conspiracies in this story, in the sense of groups of people acting to exploit the pandemic for their personal economic or political interests. Lobbies and individuals do ride memes for their own advantage. But, overall, memes can be a force that can move infected people even against their personal interests. My grandmother had no advantage, just a slightly higher cost, from her habit of boiling her milk before drinking it. It is the same for the Covid story. Daniel Dennett said that "a human being is an ape infested with memes." and that's probably what we are.



Back to Non-Pandemic Fare:

GeoPolitical Fare:

*** for historical context: Escobar: Clash of Christianities: Why Europe cannot understand Russia
Western Europeans see the Orthodox and eastern Christians as satraps and a bunch of smugglers, while the Orthodox regard the Crusaders as barbarian usurpers bent on world conquest.

Under an ubiquitous, toxic atmosphere of cognitive dissonance drenched in Russophobia, it’s absolutely impossible to have a meaningful discussion on finer points of Russian history and culture across the NATO space


and context on the political situation in Ukraine over the last 8 years:
Ishchenko: Toward the Abyss

Your research has focused on the transformations of the Ukrainian political field since the 2014 Maidan uprising. What type of rupture did this represent? What new forces entered the arena, and what happened to the old ones?

..................... Then what happened?
It very soon became clear that not only was Zelensky’s party not a real party, that this populist leader never had a populist movement behind him, but that he didn’t even have a real team that was capable of proceeding with any consistent policies.


Natylie Baldwin  interviews academic Olga Baysha about Ukraine’s president, a former TV actor who has become, since the start of the war, an A-list celebrity in the U.S.

... As a matter of fact, Ukraine’s independence of 1991 was to a big extent also a matter of economic concerns. Many Ukrainians supported the idea of political divorce from Russia because of an expectation that Ukraine would be better off economically — this is what propagandistic leaflets promised us.

This economic hope was not realized. In many ways, the collapse of the Soviet Union radically changed people’s lives for the worse because of Ukraine’s neoliberalization — the marketization of the social sphere and ruination of the Soviet welfare state.

What about neoliberal reforms initiated by Zelensky?  You can judge on their popularity by opinion polls – up to 72 percent of Ukrainians did not support his land reform, the flagship of Zelensky’s neoliberal program. After his party approved it despite people’s indignation, Zelensky’s rating fell from 73 percent in Spring 2019 to 23 percent in January 2022. The reason is simple: a deep sense of betrayal.

... Zelensky’s election promises, made on the fringes of the virtual and the real, were predominantly about Ukraine’s “progress,” understood as “modernization,” “Westernization,” “civilization” and “normalization.” 

It is this progressive modernizing discourse that allowed Zelensky to camouflage his plans for neoliberal reforms, launched just three days after the new government came to power. Throughout the campaign, the idea of “progress” highlighted by Zelensky was never linked to privatization, land sales, budget cuts, etc. 

Only after Zelensky had consolidated his presidential power by establishing full control over the legislative and executive branches of power did he make it clear that the “normalization” and “civilization” of Ukraine meant the privatization of land and state/public property, the deregulation of labor relations, a reduction of power for trade unions an increase in utility tariffs, and so on. ...


Russia pivots to the dynamic East and fast developing Global South


The U.S. has sent thousands more troops to Europe, and spent billions on weapons for Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s budget continues to grow. Americans are paying the price for it.

In Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, the dying monarch famously counsels Prince Hal “to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels,” a practice certain to “waste the memory of the former days.” For American politicians and pundits given to giddiness—and to distracting attention from recent failures—the proxy war in Ukraine is the perfect foreign quarrel. It is rejuvenating Cold War–style militarized globalism as the cornerstone of U.S. national security policy.



... The events in Donbass appear to have caught prominent western military analysts by surprise, who were otherwise quick to affirm an inevitable Russian failure. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) a known pessimist, was forced to concede on April 27th that Russia was making a “sounder pattern of operational movement” in Donbass and was even forced to admit that Ukrainian defenses in the north of the region were disorganized. Although the ISW continues to maintain that a broader Russian encirclement of the Ukrainian army won’t happen, it is difficult to see how Ukraine is going to turn the tide on this situation even with western support because they simply do not have the geographic advantage. Russia is gaining in the region every single day.

This speaks volumes about Russia’s strategy. When Moscow announced that it was withdrawing from the North and focusing on Donbass, this was marketed as a retreat and a failure, but on closer inspection it appears that the assault on this region was carefully planned in a logical sequence of preparatory steps. There is growing evidence that Russia used the previous stages of the war to prepare strategic ground for this one. ...



... It is not that Azov has de-radicalized over time. It has in fact grown more extreme.

Azov has infiltrated other organizations, especially some units of the Ukrainian regular military, the national guard, the police and the internal secret security organization SBU. Azov is by far not the only fascist (para-)military organization in Ukraine. There is the Aidar battalion, the Right Sector, the C-14 'youth' organization of the fascist Svoboda party as well as a dozen other such organization.

These groups are not only not prohibited as they should be but get encouraged and partially financed by the Ukrainian government.



Hello, great-grandfather Vasily!

We are again on the eve of the Victory Day. And I want to ask your forgiveness. Forgive us for failing, forgetting about your exploits and war heroes. In the eternal disputes we have lost the main thing – our history. After all, you defended Moscow, froze in the Belarusian swamps, liberated Prague. And now they say that it was in vain. That your victory was an occupation, that Leningrad could have been surrendered, that I should pity the Nazis, and that the Victory Parade is a victory psychosis.

Can I do that?

Of course not!

Hello, Grandpa Miron!

They told me how you were chasing the Banderovites through the forests of Ukraine without thinking about sleep or warmth. Liberating and slowly advancing. Seeing villages burned down by them and children killed. You got rid of these scum, not sparing your life. And now their descendants say they were heroes. And I am now supposed to say: “Glory to the heroes” and disown you, the Soviet soldier.

They say they won the war, but as before they are fighting children and old people, destroying towns and villages, leaving behind scorched earth and ash on their boots. Can it be so, if only 77 years have passed since the Victory? It can. I’m sorry we couldn’t destroy them all.

Hello, great-grandmother Elsa.

Sorry for the yellow star being in vogue again, only this time for the Russians. Now they say that a Russian is not a liberator, but a subhuman. How familiar. They used to say the same thing about you during the pogroms in Lviv and Kiev. Who gave them the right to decide who is worthy to be called a human and who is not? We did. By our indifference to our history.

Hello, Russian soldier!

Forgive us for not being able to keep our world from war. We calmed down and thought that a peaceful life was forever, and that freedom is granted without a fight. It turned out that it wasn’t. Fascism is all around us. It is once again marching across our land, flashing its flags and chevrons of Azov, Aydar and the Right Sector. It is all around us. It is already here. And that is why you are again back in line, as you were in that terrible year of 41. You are a Chechen, a Bashkir, an Ossetian, an Abkhaz, an Ukrainian, a Buryat or a Belarusian. You are a Russian soldier, whoever you are! You came to defend those who are weak and helpless. You have come to win. Again and again. As once in the trenches of Stalingrad, so now in the steppes of Donbass.

This war will be as hard as it was then. Not everyone will be able to live to this victory, but fascism will be destroyed and will never raise its head again. I believe that victory will come. The rebuilt cities of Ukraine and Donbass will celebrate May 9. Kyiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Odessa, Sloviansk, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk and other cities will have a parade, where, as many years ago, the Victory Banner will be carried. And the flags of that Nazi Ukraine will be thrown to the monuments of heroes. And we will wait for that victory.



Related Vids:


“Russia was extremely reluctant to get involved in combat in Syria. The war began in 2011 when US began coordinating with terrorist groups. Al Qaeda has always been our proxy force on the ground. They together with ISIS have carried out the mission of the US”

“Two Republican senators said we might have to use nuclear weapons against Russia. That is insane. Russia has hypersonic missiles that can absolutely evade detection. There would be no human life in Washington, DC.”



Anne-Laure Bonnel is a French free-lance journalist and documentary film-maker. She made “Donbass” during a 2015 trip to the area to report on the civil war there. Western mainstream media outlets have attempted to smear Bonnel and her work in Donbass.



Many politicians and pundits are in full panic over Elon Musk’s threat to restore free speech values to Twitter.  While Hillary Clinton has called upon Europeans to step in to maintain such censorship and Barack Obama has called for U.S. regulations, the Biden Administration has created a new Disinformation Governance Board in the Department of Homeland Security. It appointed an executive director, Nina Jankowicz, who is literally pitch perfect as an advocate for both corporate and state censorship.

It would have been hard to come up with a more Orwellian name short of the Ministry of Truth. 


Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter is the story of Gen-X rising

.... This is exactly what Elon has stated his policy to be: if it is not illegal then it should be allowed.

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

Some necessary background

A while back the left decided that hate speech is violence. The logical conclusion for them was that censorship was, therefore, necessary to ensure a “safe and inclusive” environment.

Then came the issue of disinformation/misinformation and it was determined that this was also a very dangerous thing because it is how Trump got elected. The logical conclusion was that this also needed to be censored.

Unfortunately, this is a slippery slope, and pretty soon hate speech/disinformation became anything that the left doesn’t agree with.

Hence Twitter became a place with no transparent rules about what was allowed and the Overton Window kept getting smaller and smaller and moving further and further left.

The inconvenient truth

The left has been trapped in a progressive echo chamber for so long that they have lost touch with average people.

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

A word about Gen-X

It shouldn’t be lost on you that Elon Musk is a prime example of Gen-X.

And it is Gen-X that is starting to stand up and say enough is enough.

It’s funny because this was the generation that mostly just wanted to be left alone, but at some point, it was too much to remain quiet.

For those of you who don’t know, Gen-X tends to be:
  • Independent and resourceful → many were latch key kids and learned to be independent as children
  • Cynical about politics → The Clintons and the Bushes will do that to you
  • Open-minded → First generation to grow up in a post civil-rights movement world - fairly liberal on social policy
  • Commonsensical → Don’t like fancy stuff, don’t bend to trends, work hard-play hard mentality
But probably most important is that Gen-X is the only generation that is tech-savvy, but not tech-dependent.

And reluctantly, Gen-X has started to stand up and speak out.



... The response of the US government to Twitter AE was extraordinary. In short order it set up its very own Ministry of Truth (the Disinformation Governance Board). Ostensibly set up to combat “misinformation” in all its various guises, it really is nothing to do with this at all.

... People often say they don’t trust politicians. I do. I have a great deal of trust that they are lying to me.

Do people really think a government agency or department is the best thing to tell us what’s true and what’s not true? The very idea is such an absurdity - and yet that’s what lots of people seem to have no problem with.



The first principle in battling against the Alinsky crew is to not to accept their terminology.  Controlling language is a specific tactic of the professional political left. 

... Wolf doesn’t waste time debating “misinformation”, “disinformation”, or “malinformation”, instead she accurately just says those things do not exist. Information stands undefined. From that position there are truth and lies.  Her approach is exactly correct.  Do not accept the insanity of the Alinsky language effort.  A refreshing and really good interview ...

There is no such thing as “disinformation” or “misinformation”.  There is only information you accept and information you do not accept.  You were not born with a requirement to believe everything you are told; rather, you were born with a brain that allows you to process the information you receive and make independent decisions


Kunstler: "This is This"

“This is this,” Di Niro’s character “Michael” famously told Cazale’s “Stan” in The Deer Hunter, explaining the metaphysics of the bullet in his hand, and pretty much everyone watching the movie got the drift of that cryptic utterance. Likewise, Elon Musk’s character “Elon Musk” explained to America’s Maoist managerial legions: “Free speech is free speech” — as if, a week after Twitter’s surrender to Elon, there was some part of the formulation that the Left didn’t understand. (Apparently, all of it.)

What a concept! Free speech is free speech. It has bowled over the — what? — maybe twenty-three percent of the country that considers free speech “a threat to democracy.” This is what comes of inverting and subverting language itself for the purpose of mind-raping the nation like Jeffrey Epstein on a 15-year-old.


Related Tweet

*** Wittgenstein: Russell Brand - worrisome... (2min audio clip)



CaitOz Fare:

Oh God It’s Going To Get SO Much Worse

..... We should probably talk more about how as soon as people accepted that it was fine for government, media and Silicon Valley institutions to work together to censor misinformation and rally public support around an Official Narrative about a virus, the ruling power establishment immediately took that as license to do that with a war and a foreign government as well.

Like, immediately immediately. We went from a massive narrative control campaign about a virus, which people accepted because they wanted to contain a deadly pandemic, straight into a massive narrative control campaign about Russia and Ukraine. Without skipping a beat. Like openly manipulating everyone’s understanding of world events is just what we do now.

..... The question of whether we should abandon all hope of ever becoming a truth-based society and committing instead to winning propaganda wars for a globe-spanning empire is perhaps the most consequential decision we’ve ever had to make as a species. Which is why we weren’t given a choice. It’s just been foisted upon us.

... Nothing about the state of the world tells us that the people who run things are doing a good job. Nothing about our current situation suggests they should be given more control, rather than having control taken away from them and given to the people. We are going in exactly the wrong direction.


Other Quotes of the Week:

Cockburn: I feel frustrated with those who condemn war atrocities in Ukraine, but then use them as a reason to go on fighting a war that will inevitably produce even more such atrocities

Marc Andreessen: Supporters of the current thing often believed the opposite thing in the not-too-distant past, but have made themselves forget, and get mad when that fact is pointed out. For example, free speech.

Rigger: The fluidity of their apparent principles is quite something to behold. I say apparent because it’s abundantly clear these people do not have any real principles at all - other than those of control and enforcement of their own ideology.

More than 30 years ago Fidel said: “The next war in Europe will be between Russia and fascism, except that fascism will be called democracy.”

Mick Wallace: EU began as a Peace Project but now looks more like a Military Project. How sad that voices for War are triumphing over those for Dialogue + Peace. Sadly the more Military hardware we pour into Ukraine, the more Ukrainians will die - Happy days for Military Industrial Complex....

Wallace2: Who would have thought that we would ever return to a situation where the #EU would be prepared to arm Nazi groups in Ukraine and promote Authoritarianism all across Europe..? All for what..? Just to facilitate #US Empire..? We are living in dangerous times..


Long Reads / Big Thoughts:

Hanson: The Meaning of Life

Humans act all the time, which implies that they have preferences, i.e. persistent internal structures which say which choices they make in which situations. But humans aren’t usually very good at explaining their preferences. They instead find it hard to give a consistent abstract account that explains their choices. They can act, but can’t say what they want.

One of the things people sometimes say is that they make their choices to gain “meaning”. But they say many different conflicting things about what things actually give “meaning”, different not only between people but even within the same person. That is, people seem quite confused about the “meaning of life”.

If humans are at root pretty similar, then having any one person learn the meaning of their life would seem to be quite informative to everyone else about the meaning of their lives. And a substantial fraction of the many billions of humans who have ever lived have in fact tried to learn about the meaning of their lives. Furthermore, some of these people have claimed to have succeed in discovering this meaning.

Yet no one seem to have persuaded a substantial fraction of humanity to their view on this. Presented solutions to this key questions seem either overly vague or insufficiently supported by evidence in human behavior or words. What can we conclude from this key fact? Let us consider some possible explanations.

One possibility is that there is just no such thing. Human actions are induced by a complex mess of structures that is not reasonably summarized by any abstract coherent shared concept of “meaning”. When people have a feeling of having found “meaning”, that isn’t the result of their matching their lives to such a coherent pre-existing concept, but instead due to yet another complex mess of social and mental processes. We feel “meaning” when that seems to be useful to our minds, but there is no there there. We haven’t found it because it doesn’t exist.

A second possibility is that people have in fact discovered simple abstract expressible truths about the meaning of our lives. But these truths are mostly ugly, and thus not one they are eager to own and tell to others. And when they do tell others, their audiences mostly do not want to hear, and instead prefer to embrace the mistaken claims of those who do not actually know, but instead wishfully offer more aspirational accounts.

And a third possibility, is, what? My mind goes blank here. How could there be simple abstract truth on what gives us meaning, to explain our preferences, and yet either no one among the billions who have looked has ever found it, or when they all do find it they somehow can’t communicate it to others, even though to others this discovery would be quite unobjectionable and pleasing?



... The headline, .. is fascinating.

People don’t agree with lockdown and try to undermine the scientists

In case Imperial College’s most famous buffoon didn’t get the memo :

IT IS THE WHOLE FUCKING JOB OF SCIENTISTS TO TRY TO UNDERMINE SCIENTISTS

... The scientific method, for me, stands as one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It’s a beautifully simple idea, and extraordinarily powerful. Ibn al-Haytham was known in Renaissance Europe as “the Father of Optics” because of the wonderful optical experiments he did and ideas he came up with, but he should really more properly be known as the Father of Science.

No “trusting the experts” for our Arabian genius - it’s something he would have been disgusted by. No crying about “undermining” scientists - because it’s what he was all about - attempting to undermine the prevailing wisdom.

Ibn al-Haytham well-understood that the only way to get to the truth was to allow rigorous questioning. The truth wasn’t dispensed from some official organization, nor did it drip from the rhetorical oozings of those considered reputable. The truth was a thing that could only be revealed by hacking away at the crap that wasn’t right ..

There is no “science” as such - there is only the scientific method. What we know as “science” is merely provisional - our current best approximation to the truth. If you don’t attack science you’re not doing science. Even when they work entirely within some prevailing paradigm a scientist is (or ought to be) questioning everything they are doing - and checking it against known results and understandings. Does what I’m doing fit? That’s the question we ask ourselves all the time. It’s a continuous process of challenge - if we’re not directly questioning the paradigm we’re working in, we’re questioning our own work within that paradigm.



[Not] Satirical Fare:

Psychopathic tendencies linked to reduced susceptibility to contagious yawning

People with psychopathic personality traits, such as remorselessness, are less likely to yawn after seeing another person yawn, according to new research published in Scientific Reports.

Contagious yawning is well-documented in humans, and previous research has provided evidence that there is a positive link between empathy and the susceptibility to contagious yawning. Psychopathy is characterized by callous and domineering behavior as well as deficits in empathy, which might cause those with psychopathic traits to be less susceptible to contagious yawning. ...



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