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The Five Deadly Lies of Jacinda Ardern and her Government

By Guy Hatchard | TCW Defending Freedom | January 14, 2022

The Government should be your single source of truth

SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in Parliament: ‘I want to send a clear message to the New Zealand public: we will share with you the most up-to-date information daily. You can trust us as a source of that information. You can also trust the Director-General of Health and the Ministry of Health . . . dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.’

This is one of the most oft-repeated and misleading lies of Jacinda Ardern. Whistleblowers from within government departments including nurses, doctors and officials have reported that they have been instructed to refrain from revealing to the public the true extent of adverse events and deaths following vaccination, thus hiding the real risks. The excuse presented to employees by the government was that ‘a medical emergency’ justifies the expedient of hiding the truth. Moreover the risks of Covid itself have been consistently overblown to stoke the fear narrative. Based on this lie, the government has refused to acknowledge the import of published research.

The virus spreads because of the unvaccinated

October 4, 2021 – Jacinda Ardern quoted in Stuff‘The vast majority of New Zealanders eligible now are being vaccinated, but the virus is finding our unvaccinated individuals. A boundary is not an ironclad way of protecting ourselves against Covid; a vaccine is.’

Even before the start of the NZ vaccination roll out in February 2021, the government was warned that the vaccine allowed transmission. Dozens of published papers since show that there is little or no correlation between transmission and vaccination. 

The government failed to call out false information in articles published by the media and sponsored by vaccine interests pretending that Covid spreads 20 times more easily among the unvaccinated. This created unnecessary fear of the unvaccinated and overconfidence among the vaccinated. It has divided our nation. It has led to an economic disaster for businesses who are required to discriminate against the unvaccinated. It has caused personal hardship for thousands of highly qualified and experienced NZ professionals and greatly reduced the pool of qualified individuals in NZ. This lie was the false basis for mandates.

The vaccine is entirely safe

22 October 2021 – Jacinda Ardern quoted in the NZ Doctor: ‘The vaccine we are using in New Zealand is safe and effective.’

This lie has been repeated again and again in the saturation government advertising which has cost millions. Individuals known to be vulnerable to vaccination adverse effects including people with a history of anaphylactic shock, past reactions to vaccination etc, have been denied information which might enable them to make informed choices. They have also been denied exemption to vaccination. Young people who have very little risk of serious Covid outcomes, yet a relatively high risk of vaccine injury, have been left completely uninformed.

There is no need to require reporting of vaccine adverse events

December 15 2021 – Astrid Koorneeff, Director, National Immunisation Programme: ‘An accurate measurement of all adverse events [subsequent to vaccination] is not required.’

This is among the most damaging of lies. Faced with a novel vaccine with a short period of testing developed by a company with a history of medical harm lawsuits against it, the government refused to institute mandatory procedures which would correctly evaluate the extent of any adverse effects. Instead they continued with a voluntary system. A Medsafe website records that only 5 per cent of adverse effects are reported. This has enabled Jacinda Ardern and the government to deny the extent of adverse events and death following vaccination by pleading insufficient information.

Heart disease affects only 3 out of 100,000 vaccinated individuals

15 December 2021 letter – Dr Ashley Bloomfield, Director General of Health: ‘In New Zealand, the true incidence of vaccine-associated myocarditis is unknown as the onset of symptoms occurs in the first few days after vaccination and is potentially under-reported. However, the overall rate of this event in New Zealand is reported to be around 3 per 100,000 vaccinations.’

How can any rational person say in the same paragraph that incidence of myocarditis and pericarditis is underreported in NZ, but also assert an absurdly low rate for incidence? In fact a new study puts the risk of myocarditis to be higher among vaccinated males under 40 than from Covid itself. The latest careful assessment of incidence of perimyocarditis in the published literature puts the incidence as high as 1 in 2,000, not 3 in 100,000.

Multiple reports from individuals reveal that it is common practice to turn away recently vaccinated individuals experiencing symptoms of myocarditis from NZ general practices and hospitals without treatment or a report of cardiac problems. This is mediated by another myth that myocarditis is a ‘mild’ disease that is short-lived. That’s a frightening lie. The damage to the heart from acute viral myocarditis is typically permanent, and the three- to five-year survival rate for myocarditis has historically ranged from 56 per cent to 83 per cent.

Whistleblowers from emergency rooms around NZ report that facilities are being overwhelmed with cardiac cases among vaccinated individuals.

Taken together, the misinformation effort by the NZ government led by Jacinda Ardern has irreparably changed the character of our society and caused needless suffering for thousands.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

Blinken’s blinkered vision of Russia

By Scott Ritter | RT | January 12, 2022

“One lesson of recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.”

The level of hubris-laced ignorance it would take an ostensibly intelligent, well-informed individual to make such a statement, in public, in an official capacity, goes beyond political parody.

And yet, there was the American Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, uttering those words at the tail end of a press statement where he questioned the legitimacy of Russia’s dispatch of military forces to Kazakhstan. The Russian actions took place in the wake of widespread violence that prompted the Kazakh President to request help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which Russia leads.

It should be noted that Russia was invited to send troops to Kazakhstan. Russia was also invited to send troops to Syria. As Blinken was speaking, the US had between 900 and 1,200 troops inside Syria, none of whom were there at the request of the Syrian government. Likewise, the US continues to maintain a force of some 2,500 troops in Iraq, even though the Iraqi parliament has called for their withdrawal for more than a year.

When it comes to understanding what an “unwanted houseguest” looks and acts like, Tony Blinken need only look in the mirror for the perfect illustration.

The US is scrambling to seize the moral high ground when it comes to the issue of military intervention, seeking to exploit the 2008 Russian-Georgian War, the 2014 reabsorption of Crimea, and the 2015 military intervention in Syria to illustrate its position.

While the issue of Russo-Georgian relations is a difficult one, dating to before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it is an undisputed fact – indeed, one backed up by the European Union’s inquiry into the incident – that the 2008 conflict was triggered by a Georgian military incursion into South Ossetia, including an unprovoked attack on Russian peacekeeping forces stationed there. Subsequent Russian actions are attributable to Georgian aggression.

Likewise, Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Crimea and the Donbass region, where Moscow supports ethnically Russian separatists, all derive from the so-called ‘Maidan Revolution’, a US and EU-backed insurrection that overthrew Viktor Yanukovich, the duly elected president of Ukraine, and replaced him with a more Washington-friendly government.

And, lastly, the Russian intervention in Syria came at the request of the legitimate government in Damascus, which was under siege from foreign-funded and trained terrorists and insurrectionists. Russia’s actions were decisive, helping shift the military balance in favor of the Syrian government, and leading to the defeat of most of the anti-government fighters. The irony behind the Russian intervention is that it exposed the hypocrisy of the US, in so far as several of the terrorist groups Russia helped defeat were not only affiliates of Al-Qaeda but were also being funded by the US and its allies.

The US presence in Iraq and Syria, however, is the direct consequence of the illegal US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Between the US and Russia, only one nation has violated international law when it comes to disregarding the sovereignty of others – and it is not Russia.

Tony Blinken did not limit his Russo-phobic commentary simply to the issue of unwanted houseguests. When asked during an interview on a Sunday morning talk show on January 9 whether he agreed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking to restore the Soviet Union, Blinken answered: “I think that’s right… I think that’s one of President Putin’s objectives, and it is to re-exert a sphere of influence over countries that previously were part of the Soviet Union,” something that, Blinken added, was “unacceptable.”

First and foremost, as Russia has been making clear during its ongoing European security framework discussions with the US, NATO, and the OSCE this week, the issue of what is or isn’t acceptable when it comes to defining the scope and scale of Russian national security and related spheres of interest, is not something Moscow is willing to subordinate to Washington or its allies. Rather, it is a matter for Russia alone to decide.

It is the US, not Russia, which is seeking to continuously breathe life into the Cold War relic that is the NATO alliance. The history of broken American promises when it comes to the issue of NATO expansion – “not one inch east” has a different meaning in Brussels than anywhere else, it seems.

The ostensibly “defensive” NATO alliance has been, since the end of the Cold War, used for almost exclusively offensive military action, much of which has taken place outside the geographic boundaries defined by the treaty. Whether it be intervention in the former Yugoslavia, the dismemberment of Serbia, intervention in Libya, supporting the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or sustaining the illegal presence of US forces in Syria, NATO has made itself an unwanted houseguest across the globe.

Truth be told, if it were not for NATO actively seeking to attract both Georgia and Ukraine to its roster, the events of 2008 and 2014 might have unfolded completely differently.

Tony Blinken’s comments about the suitability of Russia as a houseguest are as fact-free as any made by senior international statesmen in modern times. The reality is the US is the unwanted houseguest, habitually overstaying its welcome, sowing chaos, death, and destruction in its path.

Using this analogy, Russia could be seen as the emergency clean-up crew tasked with trying to clean up the mess that accrues in the wake of America’s foreign policy tornado. Tony Blinken and his boss, President Joe Biden, seem to have difficulty focusing on the real consequences of their words and deeds, as their gaze is constantly fixed on an artificial horizon that only they can see.

Unfortunately for Washington, the rest of the world knows the truth, and who is to blame for what. Blinken can continue uttering nonsense about Russia but, from such ignorance, does not sound policy come. This should be a lesson for any nation, especially those in Europe, who are looking to the US for sound guidance and leadership when it comes to solving the world’s problems.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Russophobia | , | 5 Comments

Biden calls for tighter censorship of Covid-19 content

RT | January 13, 2022

US President Joe Biden’s latest “surge response” to fight the spread of Covid-19 includes an appeal for Big Tech and media companies to block allegedly false pandemic-related claims.

“I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets,” Biden said on Thursday. “Please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

Biden made the comment as he announced a series of new measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, including plans for free masks, more free tests, and additional deployments of military medical teams to help hospitals cope with rising patient loads. He didn’t specify what constitutes misinformation or disinformation in the pandemic age.

Biden urged a crackdown immediately after chiding people who have chosen not to get vaccinated by saying they were “standing in the way” of the fight against the virus.

Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms already have strict policies on commentary about Covid-19 if it clashes with the currently mainstream approach to dealing with the virus. Social media giants have also employed teams of fact-checkers, vigorously working to enforce those policies. But Biden’s administration is scrambling to find more ways to fight Covid “misinformation” after the fast-spreading Omicron variant pushed new infections and hospitalizations to record highs.

Biden’s apparent censorship appeal quickly sparked backlash on social media. This included claims that the president is among those spreading misinformation. Biden falsely said last month that “almost all” Covid-19 deaths were among unvaccinated people, and he claimed last July that “you’re not going to get Covid if you have these vaccinations.”

Other critics blasted Biden’s statement on principle. “Imagine calling for censorship of your own nation as the POTUS when you’ve taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, and the FIRST Amendment is freedom of speech,” podcast host Barrington Martin II said on Twitter.

Many observers questioned the wisdom of letting gatekeepers decide which speech is misinformation, thereby blocking open discussion and independent truth-seeking. Still others suggested that Biden is trying to do damage-control after his failure to meet campaign promises on Covid-19 contributed to a downward spiral in his approval ratings.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | 1 Comment

Google demonetizes meteorologist and researcher Roy Spencer

By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 13, 2022

The website DrRoySpencer.com has been demonetized by Google, its owner, climatologist and former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, announced in a blog post.

According to Spencer – who is considered a climate change skeptic but has rejected the label of being a “climate denier” – Google has cut his website off from Adsense for allegedly spreading unreliable and harmful claims.

Spencer notes that revenue he is now losing was low, but other aspects of this decision concern him more, although the scientist doesn’t plan on appealing for the time being, believing that it would be an uphill struggle against what he calls “liberal arts educated fact checkers” – and Google’s announced policy to stomp out content it labels as skeptical of the climate change theory.

Spencer also revealed that warnings have been coming from Google his way for several months about his website engaging in Adsense policy violations, but as usual, the tech giant did not explain what the violations were and where on the site they could be found. During this time, he thought it had to do with the placement of ads rather than content that he produces.

Only once the demonetization occurred, Spencer received information about why his site was no longer eligible for making money from ads, along with links to offending pages.

Spencer says he believes his content to be “mainstream enough” since he thinks that the climate has warmed and that this is for the most part the consequence of the so-called greenhouse effect.

But apparently, his “faith” in these pillars of climate change isn’t exhibited strongly enough; in fact, Google not only demonetized, but also delegitimized his content by calling it misleading and harmful.

Spencer explains that while he supports most of the mainstream climate change science, he differs on issues of the amount of warming that has happened and the level that can be expected in the future – and also how to solve this problem, “from an energy policy perspective.”

He said that Google’s links to pages that violated its policies show those were mostly the monthly global temperature update pages.

“This is obviously because some activists employed by Google (who probably weren’t even born when John Christy and I received both NASA and American Meteorological Society awards for our work) don’t like the answer our 43-year long satellite dataset gives,” he writes.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

What Is The Great Reset?

By Michael Rectenwald | Principia Scientific International | January 13, 2022

The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on November 7, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “The Great Reset.”

Is the Great Reset a conspiracy theory imagining a vast left-wing plot to establish a totalitarian one-world government? No. Despite the fact that some people may have spun conspiracy theories based on it—with some reason, as we will see—the Great Reset is real.

Indeed, just last year, Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF)—a famous organization made up of the world’s political, economic, and cultural elites that meets annually in Davos, Switzerland—and Thierry Malleret, co-founder and main author of the Monthly Barometer, published a book called COVID-19: The Great Reset.

In the book, they define the Great Reset as a means of addressing the “weaknesses of capitalism” that were purportedly exposed by the COVID pandemic.

But the idea of the Great Reset goes back much further. It can be traced at least as far back as the inception of the WEF, originally founded as the European Management Forum, in 1971. In that same year, Schwab, an engineer and economist by training, published his first book, Modern Enterprise Management in Mechanical Engineering.

It was in this book that Schwab first introduced the concept he would later call “stakeholder capitalism,” arguing “that the management of a modern enterprise must serve not only shareholders but all stakeholders to achieve long-term growth and prosperity.” Schwab and the WEF have promoted the idea of stakeholder capitalism ever since. They can take credit for the stakeholder and public-private partnership rhetoric and policies embraced by governments, corporations, non-governmental organizations, and international governance bodies worldwide.

The specific phrase “Great Reset” came into general circulation over a decade ago, with the publication of a 2010 book, The Great Reset, by American urban studies scholar Richard Florida. Written in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Florida’s book argued that the 2008 economic crash was the latest in a series of Great Resets—including the Long Depression of the 1870s and the Great Depression of the 1930s—which he defined as periods of paradigm-shifting systemic innovation.

Four years after Florida’s book was published, at the 2014 annual meeting of the WEF, Schwab declared: “What we want to do in Davos this year . . . is to push the reset button”—and subsequently the image of a reset button would appear on the WEF’s website.

In 2018 and 2019, the WEF organized two events that became the primary inspiration for the current Great Reset project—and also, for obvious reasons, fresh fodder for conspiracy theorists. (Don’t blame me for the latter—all I’m doing is relating the historical facts.)

In May 2018, the WEF collaborated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security to conduct “CLADE X,” a simulation of a national pandemic response. Specifically, the exercise simulated the outbreak of a novel strain of a human parainfluenza virus, with genetic elements of the Nipah virus, called CLADE X.

The simulation ended with a news report stating that in the face of CLADE X, without effective vaccines, “experts tell us that we could eventually see 30 to 40 million deaths in the U.S. and more than 900 million around the world—twelve percent of the global population.” Clearly, preparation for a global pandemic was in order.

In October 2019, the WEF collaborated with Johns Hopkins and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on another pandemic exercise, “Event 201,” which simulated an international response to the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. This was two months before the COVID outbreak in China became news and five months before the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic, and it closely resembled the future COVID scenario, including incorporating the idea of asymptomatic spread.

The CLADE X and Event 201 simulations anticipated almost every eventuality of the actual COVID crisis, most notably the responses by governments, health agencies, the media, tech companies, and elements of the public. The responses and their effects included worldwide lockdowns, the collapse of businesses and industries, the adoption of biometric surveillance technologies, an emphasis on social media censorship to combat “misinformation,” the flooding of social and legacy media with “authoritative sources,” widespread riots, and mass unemployment.

In addition to being promoted as a response to COVID, the Great Reset is promoted as a response to climate change. In 2017, the WEF published a paper entitled, “We Need to Reset the Global Operating System to Achieve the [United Nations Sustainable Development Goals].” On June 13, 2019, the WEF signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the United Nations to form a partnership to advance the “UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Shortly after that, the WEF published the “United Nations-World Economic Forum Strategic Partnership Framework for the 2030 Agenda,” promising to help finance the UN’s climate change agenda and committing the WEF to help the UN “meet the needs of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” including providing assets and expertise for “digital governance.”

In June 2020, at its 50th annual meeting, the WEF announced the Great Reset’s official launch, and a month later Schwab and Malleret published their book on COVID and the Great Reset.

The book declared that COVID represents an “opportunity [that] can be seized”; that “we should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to reimagine our world”; that “the moment must be seized to take advantage of this unique window of opportunity”; and that “[f]or those fortunate enough to find themselves in industries ‘naturally’ resilient to the pandemic”—think here of Big Tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon—“the crisis was not only more bearable, but even a source of profitable opportunities at a time of distress for the majority.”

The Great Reset aims to usher in a bewildering economic amalgam—Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism—which I have called “corporate socialism” and Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called “communist capitalism.”

In brief, stakeholder capitalism involves the behavioral modification of corporations to benefit not shareholders, but stakeholders—individuals and groups that stand to benefit or lose from corporate behavior. Stakeholder capitalism requires not only corporate responses to pandemics and ecological issues such as climate change, “but also rethinking  [corporations’] commitments to already-vulnerable communities within their ecosystems.”

This is the “social justice” aspect of the Great Reset. To comply with that, governments, banks, and asset managers use the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) index to squeeze non-woke corporations and businesses out of the market. The ESG index is essentially a social credit score that is used to drive ownership and control of production away from the non-woke or non-compliant.

One of the WEF’s many powerful “strategic partners,” BlackRock, Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, is solidly behind the stakeholder model. In a 2021 letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared that “climate risk is investment risk,” and “the creation of sustainable index investments has enabled a massive acceleration of capital towards companies better prepared to address climate risk.” The COVID pandemic, Fink wrote, accelerated the flow of funds toward sustainable investments:

We have long believed that our clients, as shareholders in your company, will benefit if you can create enduring, sustainable value for all of your stakeholders. . . . As more and more investors choose to tilt their investments towards sustainability-focused companies, the tectonic shift we are seeing will accelerate further.

And because this will have such a dramatic impact on how capital is allocated, every management team and board will need to consider how this will impact their company’s stock.

Fink’s letter is more than a report to CEOs.

It is an implicit threat: be woke or else.

In their recent book on the Great Reset, Schwab and Malleret pit “stakeholder capitalism” against “neoliberalism,” defining the latter as “a corpus of ideas and policies . . . favouring competition over solidarity, creative destruction over government intervention, and economic growth over social welfare.” In other words, “neoliberalism” refers to the free enterprise system. In opposing that system, stakeholder capitalism entails corporate cooperation with the state and vastly increased government intervention in the economy.

Proponents of the Great Reset hold “neoliberalism” responsible for our economic woes. But in truth, the governmental favoring of industries and players within industries—what used to be known as corporatism or economic fascism—has been the real source of what Schwab and his allies at the WEF decry.

While approved corporations are not necessarily monopolies, the tendency of the Great Reset is toward monopolization—vesting as much control over production and distribution in as few favored corporations as possible, while eliminating industries and producers deemed non-essential or inimical. To bring this reset about, Schwab writes, “[e]very country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed.”

Another way of describing the goal of the Great Reset is “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”—a two-tiered economy, with profitable monopolies and the state on top and socialism for the majority below.

Several decades ago, as China’s growing reliance on the for-profit sectors of its economy could no longer be credibly denied by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its leadership approved the slogan “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to describe its economic system. Formulated by Deng Xiaoping, the phrase was meant to rationalize the CCP’s allowance of for-profit development under a socialist political system.

The CCP considered the privatization of the Chinese economy to be a temporary phase—lasting as long as 100 years if necessary—on the way to a communist society. Party leaders maintain that this approach has been necessary in China because socialism was introduced too early there, when China was a backward agrarian country. China needed a capitalist booster shot.

Stripped of its socialist ideological pretensions, the Chinese system amounts to a socialist or communist state increasingly funded by capitalist economic development. The difference between the former Soviet Union and contemporary China is that when it became obvious that a socialist economy had failed, the former gave up its socialist economic pretenses, while the latter has not.

The Great Reset represents the development of the Chinese system in the West, but in reverse. Whereas the Chinese political class began with a socialist political system and then introduced privately held for-profit production, the West began with capitalism and is now implementing a Chinese-style political system. This Chinese-style system includes vastly increased state intervention in the economy, on the one hand, and on the other, the kind of authoritarian measures that the Chinese government uses to control its population.

Schwab and Malleret write that if “the past five centuries in Europe and America” have taught us anything, it is that “acute crises contribute to boosting the power of the state. It’s always been the case and there is no reason it should be different with the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The draconian lockdown measures employed by Western governments managed to accomplish goals of which corporate socialists in the WEF could only dream—above all, the destruction of small businesses, eliminating competitors for corporate monopolists favored by the state. In the U.S. alone, according to the Foundation for Economic Education, millions of small businesses closed their doors due to the lockdowns.

Yelp data indicates that 60 percent of those closures are now permanent. Meanwhile companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google enjoyed record gains.

Other developments that advance the Great Reset agenda have included unfettered immigration, travel restrictions for otherwise legal border crossing, the Federal Reserve’s unrestrained printing of money and the subsequent inflation, increased taxation, increased dependence on the state, broken supply chains, the restrictions and job losses due to vaccine mandates, and the prospect of personal carbon allowances.

Such policies reflect the “fairness” aspect of the Great Reset—fairness requires lowering the economic status of people in wealthier nations like the U.S. relative to that of people in poorer regions of the world.

One of the functions of woke ideology is to make the majority in developed countries feel guilty about their wealth, which the elites aim to reset downwards—except, one notices, for the elites themselves, who need to be rich in order to fly in their private jets to Davos each year.

The Great Reset’s corporate stakeholder model overlaps with its governance and geopolitical model: states and favored corporations are combined in public-private partnerships and together have control of governance. This corporate-state hybrid is largely unaccountable to the constituents of national governments.

Governance is not only increasingly privatized, but also and more importantly, corporations are deputized as major additions to governments and intergovernmental bodies. The state is thereby extended, enhanced, and augmented by the addition of enormous corporate assets. As such, corporations become what I have called “governmentalities”—otherwise private organizations wielded as state apparatuses, with no obligation to answer to pesky voters.

Since these corporations are multinational, the state essentially becomes globalist, whether or not a one-world government is ever formalized.

As if the economic and governmental resets were not dramatic enough, the technological reset reads like a dystopian science fiction novel. It is based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution—or 4-IR for short. The first, second, and third industrial revolutions were the mechanical, electrical, and digital revolutions. The 4-IR marks the convergence of existing and emerging fields, including Big Data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, quantum computing, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics.

The foreseen result will be the merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds, which presents a challenge to the ontologies by which we understand ourselves and the world, including the definition of a human being.

There is nothing original about this. Transhumanists and Singularitarians (prophets of technological singularity) such as Ray Kurzweil forecasted these and other revolutionary developments long ago. What’s different about the globalists’ vision of 4-IR is the attempt to harness it to the ends of the Great Reset.

If already existing 4-IR developments are any indication of the future, then the claim that it will contribute to human happiness is false.

These developments include Internet algorithms that feed users prescribed news and advertisements and downrank or exclude banned content; algorithms that censor social media content and consign “dangerous” individuals and organizations to digital gulags; “keyword warrants” based on search engine inputs; apps that track and trace COVID violations and report offenders to the police; robot police with scanners to identify and round up the unvaccinated and other dissidents; and smart cities where residents are digital entities to be monitored, surveilled, and recorded, and where data on their every move is collected, collated, stored, and attached to a digital identity and a social credit score.

In short, 4-IR technologies subject human beings to a kind of technological management that makes surveillance by the NSA look like child’s play. Schwab goes so far as to cheer developments that aim to connect human brains directly to the cloud for the sake of “data mining” our thoughts and memories. If successful, this would constitute a technological mastery over decision-making that would threaten human autonomy and undermine free will.

The 4-IR seeks to accelerate the merging of humans and machines, resulting in a world in which all information, including genetic information, is shared, and every action, thought, and motivation is known, predicted, and possibly precluded. Unless taken out of the hands of corporate-socialist technocrats, the 4-IR will eventually lead to a virtual and inescapable prison of body and mind.

In terms of the social order, the Great Reset promises inclusion in a shared destiny. But the subordination of so-called “netizens” implies economic and political disenfranchisement, a hyper-vigilance over self and others, and social isolation—or what Hannah Arendt called “organized loneliness”—on a global scale.

This organized loneliness is already manifest in lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and the social exclusion of the unvaccinated. The title of the Ad Council’s March 2020 public service announcement—“Alone Together”—perfectly captures this sense of organized loneliness.

In my recent book, Google Archipelago, I argued that leftist authoritarianism is the political ideology and modus operandi of what I call Big Digital, which is on the leading edge of a nascent world system. Big Digital is the communications, ideological, and technological arm of an emerging corporate-socialist totalitarianism. The Great Reset is the name that has since been given to the project of establishing this world system.

Just as Schwab and the WEF predicted, the COVID crisis has accelerated the Great Reset. Monopolistic corporations have consolidated their grip on the economy from above, while socialism continues to advance for the rest of us below. In partnership with Big Digital, Big Pharma, the mainstream media, national and international health agencies, and compliant populations, hitherto democratic Western states—think especially of Australia, New Zealand, and Austria—are being transformed into totalitarian regimes modeled after China.

But let me end on a note of hope. Because the goals of the Great Reset depend on the obliteration not only of free markets, but of individual liberty and free will, it is, perhaps ironically, unsustainable. Like earlier attempts at totalitarianism, the Great Reset is doomed to ultimate failure. That doesn’t mean, however, that it won’t, again like those earlier attempts, leave a lot of destruction in its wake­—which is all the more reason to oppose it now and with all our might.

About the author: Michael Rectenwald is the chief academic officer for American Scholars. He has a B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A. from Case Western Reserve University, and a Ph.D. in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University. He has taught at New York University, Duke University, North Carolina Central University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Case Western Reserve University. He is the author of numerous books, including Nineteenth-Century British SecularismScience, Religion, and LiteratureGoogle ArchipelagoBeyond Woke; and Thought Criminal.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Economics, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Timeless or most popular | | 4 Comments

Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski speaks out against Canada’s “concerning” internet censorship bill

By Tom Parker | Reclaim The Net | January 13, 2022

Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of free speech video sharing platform Rumble, has warned that Canada’s controversial internet regulation proposal, Bill C-10, will give the government the power to “control what you see” and noted that this bill and other internet regulation proposals are making it tough for companies like Rumble to compete with the tech giants.

“The legislation that is gonna come that…I think is even more concerning is Bill C-10 in Canada where they wanna have the government actually regulate what kind of content you are displaying… through the CRTC [Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission] and think about that, they’re gonna control what you see now,” Pavlovski said during an appearance on the Timcast IRL podcast.

Bill C-10 failed to pass the Senate before the summer break last year and is currently awaiting Senate approval. Then-Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, who promoted the bill, said its purpose is to “regulate the internet and social media in the same way that it regulates national broadcasting.” Free speech advocates have warned that it’s a “censorship bill that would allow governments to control what you see and say online.”

While it’s unclear if Bill C-10 will pass, Pavlovski noted that Canada has proposed other internet regulations that could be introduced in the next year and that Rumble is preparing for potential new laws in the country by moving its headquarters to Florida this year.

Pavlovski also discussed how these types of regulations add complexity and create barriers to entry for smaller companies like Rumble who are attempting to compete with tech giants such as YouTube.

“We have to find a way to meet the laws of every country,” Pavlovski said. “This gets so complicated.”

Pavlovski said Rumble has to have lawyers help it in every jurisdiction and that this makes operating in multiple countries difficult.

“The barrier of entry just to enter this market is, is so difficult,” Pavlovski said. “To be like YouTube and to compete against YouTube, you need, like, significant financing, significant legal help… it is a lot to navigate, it’s so complicated.”

Although Bill C-10 is currently in limbo, Trudeau’s government is pushing another internet censorship law – Bill C-36.

“People think that C-10 was controversial,” Guilbeault said when promoting Bill C-36. “Wait until we table this legislation.”

Bill C-36 proposes holding social media companies liable for “hurtful content” and will allow Canadians to anonymously flag hurtful content to have it taken down. It also suggests fines of up to $50,000 for online “hate speech.”

Canada is one of many jurisdictions pushing national online speech laws that create the barriers to entry for smaller Big Tech competitors that Pavlovski described. The UK is pushing an “Online Safety Bill” that would block social media platforms that fail to remove “legal but harmful content,” Australia recently passed an “Online Safety Act” that fines platforms that fail to remove content when ordered, and Greece recently passed a law that criminalizes “fake news.”

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

FT Says “Anti-Vax Sentiment” in the West Being Fueled by Russia & China

Advocates governments using “psychological operations” against their own people

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | January 13, 2022

In a report that advocates governments using “psychological operations” against their own population, the Financial Times asserts, with no proof, that Russia and China are responsible for pushing “anti-vax sentiment” and criticism of lockdown measures in the west.

The article quotes Mikael Tofvesson, head of the Swedish Navy’s new Psyops division, who says “foreign aggressors” are trying to “sow division by targeting areas of public concern such as crime, Covid vaccinations, the government’s response to the pandemic, and immigration.”

“The most important task in psychological defence is to inoculate the population against believing false information,” states the article, which is written by Elisabeth Braw of the American Enterprise Institute, a neo-con think tank.

Such measures were deployed in the United Kingdom during the first lockdown, when scientists in the UK working as advisors for the government admitted using what they now admit to be “unethical” and “totalitarian” methods of instilling fear in the population in order to control behavior during the pandemic.

One scientist with the SPI-B admitted that, “In March [2020] the Government was very worried about compliance and they thought people wouldn’t want to be locked down. There were discussions about fear being needed to encourage compliance, and decisions were made about how to ramp up the fear.”

Of course, contrary to the claims in the article, the primary goal of psychological operations, whether directed against an enemy or a domestic population, is to instill fear and change behavior – telling the truth is hardly a priority.

Far from dispelling “false information,” psychological operations routinely rely on using false information to influence and manipulate “the enemy.”

“Psychological operations have long been a part of military operations, and are typically defined as the use of propaganda and other methods to influence the attitudes and behavior of foreign adversaries,” writes Allum Bokhari.

“What the FT is advocating — and what many have long suspected — is the use of these techniques by western military, security, and intelligence forces against their own citizens.”

“Hostile states including Russia, China and Iran have increased their use of disinformation and online propaganda to amplify anti-vax sentiment and foment political tensions in Europe and the US,” Braw claims.

However, the report contains no evidence whatsoever that Russia and China are responsible for any coordinated attempt to sow doubts about COVID-19 vaccines or lockdown measures.

Indeed, the mere fact that the newspaper complains about “disinformation” in the context of COVID-19 conspiracy theories is pretty rich given that the constantly invoked ‘Russian collusion’ charge is itself a baseless conspiracy theory.

In reality, concerns about vaccine side-effects, giving vaccines to children and mandating vaccines and COVID passports as part of the growing bio-security police state are perfectly valid concerns shared by millions of people across the west.

The FT is a staunchly globalist newspaper of record for the international elite and is routinely represented at the annual Bilderberg conference.

It can hardly be trusted to represent the interests of the common man.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , | 3 Comments

Biden admin flip-flops on tracking Covid jab refusers

RT | January 13, 2022

A US government agency in Washington, DC has said it will make a list of those who refuse to get vaccinated against Covid-19 for religious reasons. The move goes against earlier promises by the Biden administration.

The Pretrial Services Agency (PSA) for the District of Columbia announced its intention to create what it called the “Employee Religious Exception Request Information System” in a notice on Tuesday.

According to the agency, which assists officers in DC with formulating release recommendations and supervising defendants awaiting trial, the new system will store the names and “personal religious information” of employees who file “religious accommodation requests for religious exception from the federally mandated vaccination requirement.”

The PSA didn’t specify the reasons for compiling such a list, or how the personal data on it would be used.

It only said vaguely that the system would “assist the Agency in the collecting, storing, dissemination, and disposal of employee religious exemption request information collected and maintained by the Agency.”

The PSA is a small local agency, but conservative outlet the Daly Signal suggested that “likely, the Biden administration is using it to stealth test a policy it intends to roll out across the whole government.”

There is no proof to support this assumption. However, the White House had previously promised that would not store data on the vaccination status of Americans at a federal level.

In August, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients assured during a briefing that “there will be no federal vaccination database. As with all other vaccines, the information gets held at the state and local level.” Zients was replying to a question about ways to deal with the rise in counterfeited jab cards, after more businesses and education institutions across the US began demanding proof of vaccination.

On Monday, the Biden administration’s vaccine or test mandate for private employers entered into force despite still being contested in the US Supreme Court.

The White House, which had previously told millions of federal employees and contractors to be fully vaccinated, now demands that those working for companies with more than 100 employees receive two shots of a coronavirus vaccine or get tested at least once a week.

More than 60% of the population has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 in the US, which has become the world’s worst-hit country, with more than 63 million infections and over 843,000 deaths related to the virus.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , , | 1 Comment

The media’s Covid mouthpieces don’t know their SARS from their elbow

By Suzie Halewood | TCW Defending Freedom | January 13, 2022

LAST week Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff (A Hard Lesson For Djokovic: Patience with vaccine sceptics is wearing thin) took a gleeful swipe at tennis star Novak Djokovic, who was initially denied the right to remain in Australia to defend his Australian Open title.

This was despite the world number one receiving an exemption from a review panel appointed by the state of Victoria’s Department of Health, which took into consideration Novak having previously been tested positive for asymptomatic Covid.

‘Few tears will be shed for the man now inevitably known as “Novaxx” Djokovic,’ opined Gaby, who has clearly never organised a tennis tournament.

She attacks the Serbian star for his ‘wacky beliefs’ such as ‘natural’ healing, as though natural immunity is a conspiracy theory, before equating him with the one rule for them, one rule for us elites of Downing Street, merely because he’s earned millions from being focused and talented. (A parallel piece in The Telegraph suggests they’re all still singing from the same hymn sheet).

But Djokovic isn’t trying to slip under the radar because he’s a millionaire. He isn’t trying to slip under the radar at all. Prior to the 2021 Australian Open, he quarantined as per the requirements of the Australian department of health. This year, having had Covid and therefore natural immunity, he applied for an exemption, which was granted. Djokovic’s only mistake was to travel to Australia during election year.

However, Gaby’s attack isn’t really on Djokovic, it’s on the unvaccinated in general: ‘Just over a month ago, I wrote about how the mood might harden as intensive care beds filled with patients realising too late that they should have got the jab, while restrictions once again loomed over people who had done what was asked of them.’

Sorry Gaby, but intensive care beds aren’t filling up with the unvaccinated. According to the latest technical briefing from UKHSA, Britain’s health security agency, emergency admissions up to December 29 consisted of 206 unvaccinated, 591 vaccinated and 18 unlinked.

As for restrictions once again looming over people who had done what was asked of them, more fool you for believing the Government. Three weeks to flatten the curve, a firm pledge to loosen restrictions once the vulnerable were jabbed, double-jabbed means fully jabbed – until you need a booster. When exactly are you going to catch on?

Like every other sloppy columnist with a ‘vaccine refusenik’ in their sights, Gaby clearly feels that as she unquestioningly followed the rules, so should everybody else, never stopping to ask who made the rules, why and to what end? History should have taught us that blindly following rules does not end well.

Vince Cable is another one who believes the unvaccinated are responsible for restrictions affecting everyone, sidestepping the latest UKHSA technical briefing to declare that the Covid circus is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. ‘The harm caused to society by the unvaccinated is partly that there is increased transmissibility,’ says Vince.

The UKHSA says otherwise, showing vaccine effectiveness against contracting the disease in all 18+ cohorts as a negative (the most extreme figure being minus 151.2 per cent in the 40-49 year-old cohort) which means you are more likely to catch the disease if vaccinated. If more catch it, more can spread it.

And let’s not forget the overburdened NHS, struggling to cope with a reduction in perfectly healthy staff who were sent home after testing positive using a lateral flow test that can find Covid in an orange.

The UKHSA, usually so reliable with a positive (if favourably skewed) spin on its own data, could manage only a crestfallen ‘among those who had received two doses of AstraZeneca, there was no effect against Omicron from 20 weeks after the second dose’. Oh dear.

Having dug himself into one hole, Vince – who is about as adept at statistics as he is at dancing – decides to dig himself an even bigger one, saying: ‘The most difficult objection is that there are distinct groups who have refused injection not as a result of laziness or bloody-mindedness, but because of widespread suspicion, based on experience, that the authorities are not to be trusted.’

Ignoring that something learned from experience is more than a suspicion, Vince goes on digging. ‘In the US, some black Americans cite the history of being used for scientific experiments (as to why they won’t get vaccinated) … but these arguments are wearing a little thin.’

Or to look at it another way Vince, perhaps being viewed as little more than a Petri dish by pharmaceutical companies and US governments alike for the best part of the 20th century is wearing a little thin for African Americans, or Guatemalans, or Africans.

Vince’s three options to deal with the unvaccinated in the UK (thankfully he had zero policy influence even when in office) are ‘compulsion through employment conditions; changes to rights of treatment under the NHS and a more comprehensive vaccine passport system’.

He does stop short of ‘refuseniks dragged away, held down and forcefully injected’, primarily because it’s impractical. A true Liberal.

Another Liberal (whilst at Cambridge at least) happy to inhabit the scientific wasteland of journalism is Matthew ‘How to wrongfoot an anti-vaxxer’ Parris, who trips over himself trying to prove in his Spectator article that those who choose not to be vaccinated against a disease with a survival rate of 99.98 per cent must be paranoid.

‘Mass paranoia is plainly a strand in the anti-vax movement,’ proclaims Matthew, whose Imperial College-worthy research includes a tale about a ‘lonely Arab boy’ who mistook a porch light for a death ray and one about a woman in Glasgow he has never met, whose neighbour believed someone was trying to poison the residents.

I wonder how he’d label those getting boosted against an Omicrom variant a third of the strength of the Delta strain, which is itself a twentieth of the strength of Alpha?

The Parris article is one of pure projection. He ‘cannot condone frightening people with stories that are not true’. Really? Then how about an article on wealthy Marxist pandemic adviser Susan Michie, or one on the government’s Nudge Unit, or the taxpayer millions thrown at PR companies such as 23red and MullenLowe, who are paid to frighten people into believing Covid is the new plague?

Parris’s claims that ‘viral ideas and beliefs’ fuel the ‘anti-vax rumour machine’ remain unsubstantiated, as he offers zero proof. Conversely, the unvaccinated have a plethora of government data from around the world to study.

Early data from Italy for example showed the average age of death from Covid was 84.1. In the UK, ‘deaths for any reason within 28 days of a Covid positive test’ in the healthy under-65 cohort – for the whole of 2020 – were 1,549. And on March 19 2020, both the Four Nations Public Health Group and The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) were in agreement that Covid-19 need no longer be classified as an HCID – high consequence infectious disease.

But it isn’t just Cambridge graduates attacking the pro-choicers. Michael Deacon, in a particularly mean spirited piece in the Telegraph, singles out John O’Looney. He is he funeral director brave enough to speak out about the vaccine injuries he’s witnessed and the families who have opened up to him not only in regard to family members who died following the Covid jab, but also families of those who died with a Covid mention on the death certificate when their loved one clearly died of something else, like Alzheimer’s, cancer or a car crash.

Unlike O’Looney, Deacon does not attend autopsies of those who died with a suspected vaccine injury. Neither does Andrew Neil, who also claims those who choose not to get vaccinated do so through ‘fear, ignorance, irresponsibility or sheer stupidity’.

Or maybe they just studied government data or read autopsy report summaries of what the vaccines can do to the heart, lungs, liver and thyroid gland. ‘You can’t shout “fire!” in a crowded cinema if there is no fire,’ says Neil. But that is exactly what the Government did. And journalists either fell for it, or got paid to look the other way.

At least the ‘What Are We Going To Do With the Antivaxxers?’ pudding in Forbes magazine gets one thing right. ‘It is unacceptable,’ declares Enrique Dans ‘that millions of people, seemingly influenced by a small group of irresponsible idiots, have decided to endanger not only their own lives, but also the possibility of eradicating the pandemic’. Absolutely,  Enrique. Here in the UK we refer to those idiots as the Government.

Thankfully, such rhetoric is already beginning to feel outdated. There is light at the end of the tunnel.  ‘Mass population-based vaccination in the UK should now end,’ says Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK’s vaccine task force.

Meanwwhile, Professor Angus Dalgleish, writing in the Mail points out that ‘the policy of obsessive Covid screening of the population using lateral flow tests has lurched into mass hysteria. Worse, it is tantamount to national self-harm’.

As Dr Steve James, the hospital anaesthetist who took on Sajid Javid over forced vaccination pointed out, there is no sense in a sustained boosting campaign when efficacy wanes after eight weeks and most will have been exposed to Covid by now.

But hold the front page. Researchers at Imperial College have now discovered the ‘Holy Grail’ of Covid resistance. News from the  Telegraph heralds a ground-breaking study which found that – and I hope you’re sitting down – large numbers of Britons were already protected from coronavirus before the pandemic began because of previous exposure to common colds. Which is exactly what Mike Yeadon and every other sane scientist flagged up prior to the vaccine rollout, before being laughed out of town.

The net is tightening around the Johnson government. If Boris  chooses to push forward with his NHS mandatory vaccination drive, come April 1, he could end up with 100,000 agitated NHS whistleblowers on his hands who now have a lot less to lose.

If he pulls back from mandatory vaccination for all NHS staff, he risks facing the wrath of both the sacked non-vaccinated care workers and those care workers forced to take the jab in order to keep their jobs.

And he will still have to answer to the millions (estimated prior immunity 30-50 per cent) of vaccinated who will surely want to know why they were hoodwinked into taking an experimental treatment when all along they could have been offered a T-cell test option which would have told them if they were even likely to develop Covid. Especially in light of the fact that the Johnson government invested taxpayer money in the very T-cell research that could have prevented any need for a jab – long before the vaccine rollout.

Whether or not Djokovic gets to defend his title, his greatest service yet may be worldwide publicity for basic common sense.

For here is a healthy, fit, intelligent 34-year-old sportsman with prior immunity who, having weighed up the odds of vaccine risk versus Covid risk, has maybe decided that taking an experimental treatment with zero long-term safety data and extremely concerning short-term safety data (especially amongst young, fit sportsmen) to ward off a much-weakened Omicron variant, defies logic.

Hinsliff, Cable, Parris and Neil meanwhile will no doubt continue to be guided by the voices coming out of the telly.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

More humiliation for Anthony Fauci and MSM vaccine advocates

By Alex Berenson | Unreported Truths | January 12, 2022

They promised a booster would work – despite obvious evidence it wouldn’t. Not years ago. Months ago. Sometimes WEEKS ago. Don’t let them gaslight you. Don’t let them forget.

In August, when Israel became the first country to push Covid vaccine boosters, I warned that the evidence for them verged on nonexistent and they were unlikely to last more than a few months.

This was, to say the least, not the consensus view in the elite media or the public health establishment.

Lots of vaccines required boosters, they said! A third dose several months out simply fixed the rushed scheduling of the second dose, they said!

And no one pushed this view more aggressively than Dr. Anthony Fauci – who went so far as to promise that the third dose would do what the first two had not and confer long-lasting immunity:

….


Those stories are from early September.

And America’s Doctor (TM) got his way. Within weeks regulators had approved boosters – and as the fall went on they opened the spigots ever-wider.

Needless to say the media asked its usual critical questions. (Have a barf bag handy as you scroll.)

The NY Times :

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

“We Failed”: Danish newspaper apologizes for publishing official COVID narratives without questioning them

By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | January 12, 2022

In August, Germany’s top newspaper, Bild, apologized for the outlet’s fear-driven Covid coverage – with special message to children, who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”

Now, a newspaper in Denmark has publicly apologized for reporting government narratives surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic without questioning them.

“We failed,” reads the article’s headline from tabloid Ekstra Bladet, which goes on to admit that “For ALMOST two years, we – the press and the population – have been almost hypnotically preoccupied with the authorities’ daily coronavirus figures.” (translated).

Read the rest below:

WE HAVE STARED at the oscillations of the number pendulum when it came to infected, hospitalized and died with corona. And we have been given the significance of the pendulum’s smallest movements laid out by experts, politicians and authorities, who have constantly warned us about the dormant corona monster under our beds. A monster just waiting for us to fall asleep so it can strike in the gloom and darkness of the night.

THE CONSTANT mental alertness has worn tremendously on all of us. That is why we – the press – must also take stock of our own efforts. And we have failed.

WE HAVE NOT been vigilant enough at the garden gate when the authorities were required to answer what it actually meant that people are hospitalized with corona and not because of corona. Because it makes a difference. A big difference. Exactly, the official hospitalization numbers have been shown to be 27 percent higher than the actual figure for how many there are in the hospital, simply because they have corona. We only know that now.

OF COURSE, it is first and foremost the authorities who are responsible for informing the population correctly, accurately and honestly. The figures for how many are sick and died of corona should, for obvious reasons, have been published long ago, so we got the clearest picture of the monster under the bed.

IN ALL, the messages of the authorities and politicians to the people in this historic crisis leave much to be desired. And therefore they lie as they have ridden when parts of the population lose confidence in them.

ANOTHER example: The vaccines are consistently referred to as our ‘superweapon’. And our hospitals are called ‘superhospitals’. Nevertheless, these super-hospitals are apparently maximally pressured, even though almost the entire population is armed with a super-weapon. Even children have been vaccinated on a huge scale, which has not been done in our neighboring countries.

IN OTHER WORDS, there is something here that does not deserve the term ‘super’. Whether it’s the vaccines, the hospitals, or a mixture of it all, is every man’s bid. But at least the authorities’ communication to the population in no way deserves the term ‘super’. On the contrary.

*  *  *

Will other news outlets have the journalistic integrity to follow suit? Perhaps CNN’s ratings wouldn’t be down 90% from last year in the key 25-to-54 demographic if they simply owned up to their complicity in breathlessly spewing government propaganda.

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 4 Comments

The Mad Perceptions Driving our Covid Policies

BY WILLY FORSYTH | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | JANUARY 12, 2022

When I quit my job working for the National Science Foundation (NSF) under the United States Antarctic Program, I largely did so due to this premise espoused by McMurdo Station’s NSF representative:

“I appreciate that the impacts of COVID, and the mitigations being taken by the program, are challenging. I also appreciate that the risks are perceived differently by each of us depending on our backgrounds and our varying levels of ownership of that risk.”

We have allowed subjective “perceptions” rather than quantifiable risk analysis – one of the primary functions of public health – to control our lives. I hoped I had left the insanity of misguided Covid policies behind me in Antarctica, I was wrong.

I have been reflecting on how policies still abound in the United States that are solely driven by perceptions rather than empiricism and considering whether we are moving away from this erroneous way of thinking. There are some promising signs for such a return to reason, particularly when remembering early policies of the pandemic contrasted with today. But we are still moving at a snail’s pace.

Looking back on my final week living in New York City – the first week after lockdowns commenced – I remember bicycling and driving for the first (and I hope only) time through empty streets. Soon after, beaches began to close in my home state of California. These policies were based on nothing but the perception that moving about would kill people, when in reality, the outdoors is the best environment to avoid SARS-CoV-2 transmission. Like many of our Covid polices, these had quite the opposite of their intended effect, driving people to spend weeks indoors – an environment highly more amenable to transmission.

Thankfully almost no American would now accept the closure of outdoor environments as viable. Unfortunately, another unfounded closure is still being debated in the US – the closure of schools. Europe quickly did all they could to get and keep children back in school with only 14% not in-person opposed to 65% in the US. But panicked American parents, teachers, and news outlets have perpetuated a narrative that SARS-CoV-2 is harmful to children, when the data have always told a vastly different story. The New York Times finally published a penitent article recognizing the harms that we have caused our children, again, far too late.

Europe also followed comprehensive scientific reasoning to limit the masking of children. They recognize the minimal benefits and the immense harms of such policies. Yet, children continue to cover their faces on campuses across America.

The United States have vast global influence, and setting such terrible precedents based on perception alone gives license to others, like President Yoweri Musevini, of Uganda – a country with a much lower Covid risk profile than aging western populations – to justify horrific school closures and other infringements on human rights in the name of public health with little scrutiny or accountability. And that is only one of many detrimental burdens wealthy nations have exported to the global poor during the pandemic. Our current hoarding of vaccines for unnecessary boosters is another.

Fortunately, recognition of the lack of evidence for some policies, such as population wide protection from masks, is growing. This is particularly important when paired against the amazing protection from immunity. Unfortunately, while Covid vaccines provide excellent individual protection, there are overwhelming data at this point showing they do little to nothing to prevent transmission.

Yet, policy makers are still pushing for further vaccine and booster mandates flying against the face of the evidence. Boosters are being advocated for everyone 16 and older despite a greater risk of myocarditis in males under 40 following just a 2nd dose, than from SARS-CoV-2 infection itself. Evidence continues to be ignored and perceptions continue to drive the premises for closing schools, mandating masks, mandating vaccines, and even burdensome testing protocols for our school children and others.

Dr. Vinay Prasad has made a great case for the limited usefulness and immense uselessness of Covid tests. A primary concern in my mind here is that tests for keeping kids in schools will again result in the opposite outcome. They will mostly provide information of mild or asymptomatic infection that will inevitably keep them out of school in the name of protecting them from a disease that doesn’t harm them. We are conflating the noise of tests with their signal and hindering the healthy. This is harmful enough, but the bigger sin of such obsessive testing protocols is the misallocation of tests away from use cases for protecting the vulnerable.

For example, a friend tells me much of film industry – made up of largely young and heathy and vaccinated adults – is requiring tests every day, leading to frequent staffing shortages (much like those we are seeing amongst health care workers) and massive demand for tests. Repeat these test hoarding protocols across multiple industries of mostly healthy and vaccinated individuals and you are left with the widespread testing shortages we are seeing now.

Might these tests be better used for those who have frequent access to vulnerable individuals such as my 90-year-old grandmother who recently moved into an assisted living home? Last week my brother was not allowed to visit her because he is not vaccinated (even though he has had Covid and has immunity to the virus – something else Europe has recognized that we have not).

My grandmother is also vaccinated, but we know that this protection only goes so far for 90-year-olds, who, even vaccinated, still have extremely higher risks of severe Covid outcomes than the school aged children whose parents are hoarding tests. My brother and myself (I had Covid after 2 vaccine doses) would do much better to protect our grandmother and her cohabitants if we could access rapid Covid tests to ensure we are not carrying the virus into her communal home. But rapid tests across Southern California pharmacies are sold out.

Fortunately, discourse has improved surrounding our mistakes during the pandemic, the negative outcomes of our own policies, and even the psychological pitfalls that allow such errors to perpetuate.

Even Biden’s top advisers are now urging him to adopt the strategy of living with the virus. Whether or not there is enough consensus on this way of thinking (known as rationality) for us to move past the hysteria that has crippled our way of life while providing little to no protection from an inevitable pandemic is critical for our future.

Will we live with illogical fear and behaviors for years? Or will we use facts to take back the lives we value?

January 13, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | 1 Comment