Jan 122021
 
 January 12, 2021  Posted by at 10:28 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,


Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956

 

New Covid “Super Strain” is a Game-Changer for Schools and More (Parramore)
WHO Warns Of ‘Highly Problematic’ New Covid-19 Variants (F.)
An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests (John Hunt)
Lockdown ‘Ineffective’ Against Spread Of Covid-19, May Even Increase Risk (RT)
French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump (SN)
Twitter Has Suspended More Than 70,000 Accounts Since Friday (ZH)
The Big Tech Backfire (Miller)
We Need a New Media System (Taibbi)
Insurrection Versus Insurrection (Kunstler)
The Rise and Fall of the ‘Steele Dossier’ (Maté)
Assange Is Still In Prison. And America’s Principles Are Still At Stake. (NBC)
50 Countries Commit To Protection Of 30% of Earth’s Land and Oceans (G.)
Economic Failures of the IPCC Process (Steve Keen)
Dutch Officials Seize Ham Sandwiches From British Drivers (G.)
‘Let’s All Remain Peaceful,’ Says Trump In Clear Incitement To Violence (BBee)

 

 

The B.1.1.7 COVID variant is starting to look as scary as the social media giant censorship.

 

 

A call on the US to close its borders to the UK. At present, dozens of flights arrive from London every day.

“I’ve never seen an epi curve like this. The B.1.1.7 variant is spreading like wildfire in the UK and Ireland. If it spreads here, it will make an already-bad situation even worse.”

 

 

Lynn Parramore taks to Phillip Alvelda, a former NASA & DARPA technologist.

New Covid “Super Strain” is a Game-Changer for Schools and More (Parramore)

LP: New, fast-spreading “super strains” are raising a lot of concerns, such as more infection among young people. You’ve been studying the U.K. variant, which has shown up in the United States. What do we need to know?

PA: We saw the U.K. strain coming for some time. All of a sudden there began to be dramatic upticks in infection rates, even without material changes in individual behavior en masse or the abatement measures enacted and observed. England has not been the most Johnny-on-the-spot responder to the coronavirus, and there has been a lot of confusion about what abatement measures should be observed, in which areas, etc. Of the developed nations, the U.S. and the U.K. have struggled the most as societies to communicate, plan and observe reasonable measures that other countries have more successfully applied. The U.K. variant, which has now spread across Europe and into several U.S. states, has what appear to be a couple of important mutations in the spike protein, which allows the virus to attach to the receptors in the lungs. Apparently, the new variant is stickier – better at binding to the receptors. That means that it takes less of the virus to get you sick, or the same viral load gets you sicker.

A big change is that the U.K. variant appears be somewhere between 40 and 70% more infectious. For a person who has this variant, they’re likely to infect 40% to 70% more people. If you think about what we have done to reduce the effectiveness of transmission, getting people to wear masks has been a successful campaign. But some masks are better at protecting people than others. A well-fitted N95 and KN95 masks will filter 95% of the virus particles from coming into your lungs, but there are also terrible masks that don’t protect people much at all. If you average mask-wearing over the population, it seems that the mask mandates reduce the infectiousness of the virus by about 40 to 50%. To put the U.K. variant in perspective, with its faster spread, we are effectively put back to where we once were without masks — even when we’re now wearing masks!

LP: The idea of young people under 20 getting infected at high rates is alarming, though there have been conflicting reports as to why those numbers are higher, such as behavior patterns. What’s your take?

PA: There is no doubt that the U.K. strain is infecting more young people than any prior variants. I think the conflicting reports may have more to do with where that variant is prevalent and where it is not. It would not be true to say that all of the hospitals in the U.K. are being overrun by younger patients. But in those regions where the new variant is prevalent, the hospitalization and case data now show that more than ever before, young people are having almost as many cases and hospitalizations as the older people. That is a substantial change. With older variants, symptoms were usually not bad enough to even bring the kids in to test — and we know there were a lot of asymptomatic carriers that were never tested or acknowledged.

With the new variant, symptoms are bad enough that kids need the testing and they’re being hospitalized. It’s probably premature to speculate on the lethality. There is some hope, for example, that the U.K. variant could be more infectious but less lethal. But we just don’t know. It’s likely going to be weeks before the case trend that is now beginning to translate into the hospitalization trend will translate into the mortality trend. Unfortunately, given what we’ve seen in the past from the virus, it’s our expectation that if the case data is showing more young people infected, and the hospitalization data is showing more of them hospitalized, in a matter of weeks we will see more deaths.

Read more …

They’re talking again about “immunity” provided by vaccines. But have we seen any proof of that?

WHO Warns Of ‘Highly Problematic’ New Covid-19 Variants (F.)

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday issued a dire warning about the new variants of Covid-19 that are emerging across the globe, noting that because those variants can be more contagious, the surge in cases they’re likely to cause could further stress hospitals and health workers already stretched to the brink. During a press briefing Monday, Ghebreyesus said that more contagious variants of the coronavirus “can drive a surge of cases and hospitalizations, which is highly problematic for health workers and hospitals already close to the breaking point.” The added strain on hospitals puts other essential health services at risk, he added, meaning that critical surgeries or procedures may become more difficult because hospital resources are more limited.

While these variants have been found to be more contagious, experts say they don’t appear to cause more severe sickness or increase the risk of death. Dr. Tom Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned last week that the U.S. is “close to a worst-case scenario” because of the rapid spread of a new, highly contagious strain of Covid-19. New variants of Covid-19 have been found in the United Kingdom, the United States (where 63 cases have been detected), Canada, South Africa, and Nigeria, among other countries, the CDC says. Japan’s health authorities announced over the weekend that they had detected a new variant of the virus in four travelers from Brazil, Reuters reported.

Scientists are keeping track of new mutations as they emerge and studying how they will impact the effectiveness of vaccines. “I’m quite optimistic that even with these mutations, immunity is not going to suddenly fail on us,” Jesse Bloom, an evolutionary virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told the healthcare publication STAT. “It might be gradually eroded, but it’s not going to fail on us, at least in the short term.” A recent study from the University of Texas and pharma giant Pfizer found that Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is still effective in protecting against new variants of the virus.

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Excellent analysis: “The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues.”

An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests (John Hunt)

How does this same 95% sensitive/95% specific test work in this screening setting? The good news is that this test will likely identify the 5 people out of every 1000 with Relevant Infectious COVID! Yay! The bad news is that, out of every 1000 people, it will also falsely label 50 people as COVID-positive who don’t have Relevant Infectious COVID. Out of 55 people with positive tests in each group of 1000 people, 5 actually have the disease. 50 of the tests are false positives. With a Positive Predictive Value of only 9%, one could say that’s a pretty lousy test. It’s far lousier if you test only people with no symptoms (such as screening a school, jobsite, or college), in whom the up-front likelihood of having Relevant Infectious COVID Disease is substantially lower.

The very same test that is pretty good when testing people who are actually ill or at risk is lousy when screening people who aren’t. In the first scenario (with symptoms), the test is being used correctly for diagnosis. In the second scenario (no symptoms), the test is being used wrongly for screening. A diagnostic test is used to diagnose a patient the doctor thinks has a reasonable chance of having the disease (having symptoms like fever, cough, a snotty nose, and shortness of breath during a viral season). A screening test is used to check for the presence of a disease in a person without symptoms and no heightened risk of having the disease.

A screening test may be appropriate to use when it has very high specificity (99% or more), when the prevalence of the disease in the population is pretty high, and when there is something we can do about the disease if we identify it. However, if the prevalence of a disease is low (as is the case for Relevant Infectious COVID) and the test isn’t adequately specific (as is the case with PCR and rapid antigen tests for the COVID virus), then using such a test as a screening measure in healthy people is forcing the test to be lousy. The more it is used wrongly, the more misinformation ensues. Our health authorities are recommending more testing of asymptomatic people. In other words, they are encouraging the wrong and lousy application of these tests.

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“The proportion of COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes was often higher” under tough restrictions “rather than under less restrictive measures.”

Lockdown ‘Ineffective’ Against Spread Of Covid-19, May Even Increase Risk (RT)

A Stanford University study claims mandatory stay-at-home orders and business closures have “no clear, significant beneficial effect” on Covid-19 case growth and may even lead to more frequent infections in nursing homes. Researchers at Stanford University in California aimed to assess how tough lockdowns influence the growth in infections as compared to less restrictive measures. They used data from England, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, South Korea, Sweden, and the US, collected during the initial stages of the pandemic in the spring 2020. They compared the data from Sweden and South Korea, two countries that did not introduce tough lockdowns at that time, with that from the other eight countries.

They found that introducing any restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions’ (NPIs) such as reduced working hours, working from home and social distancing helped curb the rise of infections in nine out of 10 study countries, except for Spain, where the effect was “non-significant.” However, when they compared epidemic spreads in places that implemented less restrictive measures with those opting for a full-blown lockdown they found “no clear, significant beneficial effect” of the latter on the number of cases in any country. The research goes on to suggest that empirical data from the later wave of infections shows that restrictive measures fail to protect vulnerable populations. “The proportion of COVID-19 deaths that occurred in nursing homes was often higher” under tough restrictions “rather than under less restrictive measures.”

It also says that there’s evidence suggesting that “sometimes under more restrictive measures, infections may be more frequent in settings where vulnerable populations reside relative to the general population.” The research admits that lockdowns in early 2020 were justified because the disease was spreading rapidly and overwhelming health systems, and scientists or medics did not know what the mortality data of the virus was. However, it points at the potential harmful health effects of tough restrictions, such as hunger, health services becoming unavailable for non-Covid diseases, domestic abuse and mental health issues, and the effects of these on the economy mean that the benefits of the tough restrictions might be overrated and need to be studied carefully.

Read more …

“..social media giants shouldn’t have the power to decide who has the right to free speech…”

French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump (SN)

The French government has echoed Angela Merkel’s sentiment in saying it is “shocked” at Twitter’s banning of President Trump, asserting that Big Tech is a threat to democracy. Junior Minister for European Union Affairs Clement Beaune said the decision to silence Trump proved the need for Big Tech platforms to be tightly regulated. “This should be decided by citizens, not by a CEO,” he told Bloomberg TV on Monday. “There needs to be public regulation of big online platforms.” Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire also said that “the digital oligarchy” was “one of the threats” to democracy and should be reigned in by the state. As we highlighted earlier, the German government also warned that Big Tech’s deplatforming of Trump set a very dangerous precedent.

Communicating via a spokesman, Chancellor Angela Merkel called the move “problematic,” adding that social media giants shouldn’t have the power to decide who has the right to free speech.

“This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,” said the statement. While Republicans were completely toothless in their efforts to control Big Tech during Trump’s administration, Poland could be set to pass a law that would fine social media companies $2.2 million a pop for censoring lawful free speech. “In the event of removal or blockage, a complaint can be sent to the platform, which will have 24 hours to consider it. Within 48 hours of the decision, the user will be able to file a petition to the court for the return of access. The court will consider complaints within seven days of receipt and the entire process is to be electronic,” reported Poland In.

Read more …

Anyone setting up a better alternative will be crushed.

Twitter Has Suspended More Than 70,000 Accounts Since Friday (ZH)

In a Monday night blog post, Twitter lays out all the latest details of a historic purge that started with the suspension of president Trump and has escalated into the ban of tens of thousands of conservative voices, or as Twitter puts it, “steps taken to protect the conversation on our service from attempts to incite violence, organize attacks, and share deliberately misleading information about the election outcome.” Odd how none of those considerations emerged during the summer when US cities were literally burning as a result of countless violent protests and frequent riots, but we digress. In any case, In twitter’s own delightfully ironic words, “It’s important to be transparent about all of this work as the US Presidential Inauguration on January 20, 2021, approaches.” Which is a probably a good idea in the aftermath of the biggest censorship purge in twitter history, one which sent Twitter stock tumbling. So this is what how twitter justifies “the purge”:


We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. Given the violent events in Washington, DC, and increased risk of harm, we began permanently suspending thousands of accounts that were primarily dedicated to sharing QAnon content on Friday afternoon. And with tens of thousands of accounts suspended (most of them permanently), banned, or merely disappeared, it will hardly be a surprise that according to Tiwtter, “more than 70,000 accounts have been suspended”. What is the justification? “These accounts were engaged in sharing harmful QAnon-associated content at scale and were primarily dedicated to the propagation of this conspiracy theory across the service.”

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“Sunlight has always been the best disinfectant as a way of fighting radicalization.”

The Big Tech Backfire (Miller)

Some are excusing Big Tech’s foray into massive censorship by arguing that these are private companies and can choose who they provide service to. Anyone who has a problem with their behavior, they reason, should just create their own platforms. But that is exactly what Parler did, and it was subsequently crushed. Unfortunately, because Big Tech companies have grown so large and monopolistic, the only real way to have a viable competitor is to create an entirely new internet. Amazon’s hypocritical justification for banning Parler shows that these companies will do basically anything in order to destroy the competition. Amazon claimed that Parler is responsible for the content that it allowed users to publish, which is the exact same argument made by people who wish to remove Section 230 protections for social media companies.

Amazon thus introduced a moral and legal standard for a potential competitor that it would resist tooth and nail if applied to itself. The company notably used Section 230 as a defense in a recent court case to try to avoid liability for selling defective products. It’s worth noting that many conservatives do not believe that social-media companies should do away with all content moderation. The problem is that platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and now Amazon, do not enforce their policies equally. After suspending Trump, Twitter was still hosting virulent anti-Semites, Chinese Communist party propaganda, vaccine conspiracists and antifa glorification accounts like the New York Times. If these companies only enforce policies against accounts with certain political leanings, it will radicalize a base of the population even more.

The people who are targeted online by Twitter and Facebook’s increasingly wide nets will simply find deeper and darker holes to communicate. Sunlight has always been the best disinfectant as a way of fighting radicalization. Deleting the account of someone with a radical opinion does not stop that person from holding that opinion; in fact, it may cause them to dig in even deeper in retaliation. Meanwhile, people who are unfairly targeted by social media platforms may start to sympathize with the radicals.

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“Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.”

We Need a New Media System (Taibbi)

The moment a group of people stormed the Capitol building last Wednesday, news companies began the process of sorting and commoditizing information that long ago became standard in American media. Media firms work backward. They first ask, “How does our target demographic want to understand what’s just unfolded?” Then they pick both the words and the facts they want to emphasize. It’s why Fox News uses the term, “Pro-Trump protesters,” while New York and The Atlantic use “Insurrectionists.” It’s why conservative media today is stressing how Apple, Google, and Amazon shut down the “Free Speech” platform Parler over the weekend, while mainstream outlets are emphasizing a new round of potentially armed protests reportedly planned for January 19th or 20th.

What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out. News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick.

The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections. Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country: “Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.”

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Jim holds on to the last straws.

Insurrection Versus Insurrection (Kunstler)

Mr. Trump is still president, and you’ve probably noticed he has been president for four years to date, which ought to suggest that he holds a great deal of accumulated information about the seditionists who have been playing games with him through all those years. So, two questions might be: how much of that information describes criminal acts by his adversaries — most recently, a deeply suspicious national election based on hackable vote-tabulation computers — and what’s within the president’s power to do something about it? I guess we’ll find out. Or, to state it a little differently, it is impossible that the president does not have barge-loads of information about the people who strove mightily to take him down for four years.

At least two pillars of the Intel Community — the CIA and the FBI — have been actively and visibly working to undermine and gaslight him, but you can be sure that the president knows where the gas has been coming from, and these agencies are not the only sources of dark information in this world. Also consider that not all the employees at these agencies are on the side of sedition. By its work this weekend, starring Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Zuck (Facebook), Tim Cook (Apple), and Jeff Bezos (Amazon and The WashPo), you know exactly what you would be getting with The Resistance taking power in the White House and Congress: unvarnished tyranny. No free speech for you!

They will not permit opposing voices to be heard, especially about the janky election that elevated America’s booby-prize, Joe Biden, to the highest office in the land. Now there’s a charismatic, charming, dynamic, in-charge guy! He’s already doing such a swell job “healing America.” For instance, his declaration Tuesday to give $30-billion to businesses run by “black, brown, and Native American entrepreneurs” (WashPo). Uh, white folks need not apply? Since when are federal disbursements explicitly race-based? What and who, exactly, comprise the committee set up to operate Joe Biden, the hypothetical, holographic President?

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If anything calls for a Special Counsel, it’s Russiagate. But with the Dems back in power, the chances are zero.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘Steele Dossier’ (Maté)

On January 10, 2017, BuzzFeed News published the “Steele dossier,” the collection of DNC-funded reports alleging a high-level conspiracy between Trump and Moscow. The catalyst had come four days earlier, when then–FBI Director Jim Comey personally briefed Trump on the dossier’s existence. Their meeting was then promptly leaked to the media, giving BuzzFeed the news hook to publish the Steele material in full. Despite its outlandish assertions and partisan provenance, Steele’s work product somehow became a road map for Democratic leaders, media outlets, and, most egregiously, intelligence officials carrying out the Russia investigation.

According to Steele, Trump and the Kremlin engaged in a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation.” Russia had, Steele alleged, been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years,” dating back to the time when Trump was merely the host of The Apprentice. Russia, Steele claimed, handed Trump “a regular flow of intelligence,” including on “political rivals.” The conspiracy supposedly escalated during the 2016 campaign, when then–Trump lawyer Michael Cohen slipped into Prague for “secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers.”

This purported plot was not just based on mutual nefarious interests but, worse, outright coercion. To keep their asset in line, Steele alleged, the Russians had videotaped Trump hiring and watching prostitutes “perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show,” in a Moscow Ritz-Carlton hotel room. This “kompromat” meant that the leader of the free world was not only a traitor but also a blackmail victim of his Kremlin handlers. If the Steele dossier’s far-fetched claims were not enough reason to dismiss it with ridicule, another obvious marker should have set off alarms. Reading the Steele dossier chronologically, a glaring pattern emerges: Steele has no advance knowledge of anything that later proved to be true, and, just as tellingly, many of his most explosive claims appear only after some approximate prediction has come out in public form.

Despite his supposed high-level sources inside the Kremlin, it was only after Wikileaks published the DNC e-mails in July 2016 that Steele first mentioned them. When Steele made the headline-consuming claim that “the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” in exchange for Russian help, he did so only after a meaningless Ukraine-related platform change at the RNC was reported (and mischaracterized) in The Washington Post. When Steele claimed that former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was offered up to a 19 percent stake in the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft if he could get Trump to lift Western sanctions, it was only after the media had reported Page’s visit to Moscow.

In short, far from having access to high-level intelligence, Steele and his “sources” only had access to news outlets and their own imaginations.

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Support that comes way too late.

Assange Is Still In Prison. And America’s Principles Are Still At Stake. (NBC)

The Justice Department’s case against Assange raised serious press freedom concerns from the outset. This is partly because so much of the indictment is devoted to describing activity that journalists engage in routinely — like cultivating government sources, communicating with them confidentially, protecting their identities and publishing classified secrets. In defending the indictment, Justice Department spokespeople have insisted that the case does not implicate press freedom because Assange himself is not a journalist and because WikiLeaks, which Assange founded, is not a media organization. But this defense misses the point. The point is that Assange is being prosecuted for activities that national security journalists engage in every day — and that they need to engage in if they are to serve as a meaningful check on government power.

Of particular concern are three counts in the indictment that charge Assange with having violated the Espionage Act merely by publishing classified information. As the Justice Department knows, publishing government secrets is an important part of what American news organizations do. The Washington Post disclosed classified information when it revealed the CIA’s network of black sites. The New York Times disclosed classified information when it exposed the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. The truth is that there is no way that American news organizations could report responsibly about war, foreign relations or national security without sometimes disclosing classified information. Max Frankel of The New York Times famously made this point in an affidavit filed 50 years ago in the Pentagon Papers case, and the point is even more true today.

The ruling issued in London on Monday by Judge Vanessa Baraitser will forestall the Justice Department, at least for now, from pursuing Assange’s prosecution in U.S. courts. This is a significant thing. While the indictment certainly has a chilling effect on national security journalism, a successful prosecution of Assange under the Espionage Act would be even more oppressive — indeed, it would likely compel U.S. news organizations to radically curtail some of the most important work they do. The problem with Baraitser’s ruling, from the perspective of press freedom, is that it rejected the extradition request only because of concerns relating to Assange’s mental health and the conditions in which he would be imprisoned were he handed over to the United States. This aspect of Baraitser’s ruling appears to be well supported by the evidence, but, significantly, its protection does not extend beyond Assange.

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Really? The UK goverment will protect the planet? And Prince Charles makes a cameo? Fool me once, shame on you.

50 Countries Commit To Protection Of 30% of Earth’s Land and Oceans (G.)

A coalition of 50 countries has committed to protect almost a third of the planet by 2030 to halt the destruction of the natural world and slow extinctions of wildlife. The High Ambition Coalition (HAC) for Nature and People, which includes the UK and countries from six continents, made the pledge to protect at least 30% of the planet’s land and oceans before the One Planet summit in Paris on Monday, hosted by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Scientists have said human activities are driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, and agricultural production, mining and pollution are threatening the healthy functioning of life-sustaining ecosystems crucial to human civilisation.

In the announcement, the HAC said protecting at least 30% of the planet for nature by the end of the decade was crucial to preventing mass extinctions of plants and animals, and ensuring the natural production of clean air and water. The commitment is likely to be the headline target of the “Paris agreement for nature” that will be negotiated at Cop15 in Kunming, China later this year. The HAC said it hoped early commitments from countries such as Colombia, Costa Rica, Nigeria, Pakistan and Canada would ensure it formed the basis of the UN agreement. The UK environment minister Zac Goldsmith said: “We know there is no pathway to tackling climate change that does not involve a massive increase in our efforts to protect and restore nature.

“So as co-host of the next Climate Cop, the UK is absolutely committed to leading the global fight against biodiversity loss and we are proud to act as co-chair of the High Ambition Coalition. “We have an enormous opportunity at this year’s biodiversity conference in China to forge an agreement to protect at least 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030. I am hopeful our joint ambition will curb the global decline of the natural environment, so vital to the survival of our planet.”

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A feature not a bug?!

Economic Failures of the IPCC Process (Steve Keen)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the premier international body collating the scientific assessment of climate change, and proposals for mitigation. A joint creation of the United Nations agencies the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it brings together scientists from myriad disciplines to assess and summarize the current research on climate change, collating knowledge that is then used to inform governments and politicians. The scientists work on a volunteer basis. The IPCC relies upon its member governments and “Observers Organizations” to nominate its volunteer authors. This means that, subject to their willingness to volunteer, the most prestigious individuals specialising in climate change in each discipline become the authors of the relevant IPCC chapter for their discipline.


They then undertake a review of the peer-reviewed literature in their field (and some non-peer-reviewed work, such as government reports) to distil the current state of knowledge about climate change in their discipline. A laborious review process is also followed, so the draft reports of the volunteer experts is reviewed by other experts in each field, to ensure conformity of the report with the discipline’s current perception of climate change. The emphasis upon producing reports which reflect the consensus within a discipline has resulted in numerous charges that the IPCC’s warnings are inherently too conservative. But the main weaknesses with the IPCC’s methodology are firstly that, in economics, it exclusively selects Neoclassical economists, and secondly, because there is no built-in review of one discipline’s findings by another, the conclusions of these Neoclassical economists about the dangers of climate change are reviewed only by other Neoclassical economists. The economic sections of IPCC reports are therefore unchallenged by other disciplines who also contribute to the IPCC’s reports.

Given the extent to which economists dominate the formation of most government policies in almost all fields, and not just strictly economic policy, the otherwise acceptable process by which the IPCC collates human knowledge on climate change has critically weakened, rather than strengthened, human society’s response to climate change. This is because, commencing with “Nobel Laureate” William Nordhaus, the economists who specialise on climate change have falsely trivialized the dangers that climate change poses to human civilization. In his 2018 Nobel Prize lecture, William Nordhaus described a trajectory that would lead to global temperatures peaking at 4°C above pre-industrial levels in 2145 as “optimal” because, according to his calculations, the damages from climate change over time, plus the abatement costs over time, are minimised on this trajectory.


He estimated the discounted cost of the economic damages from unabated climate change — which would see temperatures approach 6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2150 — at $24 trillion, whereas the 4°C trajectory had damages of about $15 trillion and abatement costs of about $3 trillion. Trajectories with lower peak temperatures had higher abatement costs that overwhelmed the benefits. In a subsequent paper, Nordhaus claimed that even a 6°C increase would only reduce global income by only 7.9%, compared to what it would be in the complete absence of global warming.

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“Welcome to Brexit, sir, I’m sorry.”

Dutch Officials Seize Ham Sandwiches From British Drivers (G.)

Dutch TV news has aired footage of customs officers confiscating ham sandwiches from drivers arriving by ferry from the UK under post-Brexit rules banning personal imports of meat and dairy products into the EU. Officials wearing high-visibility jackets are shown explaining to startled car and lorry drivers at the Hook of Holland ferry terminal that since Brexit, “you are no longer allowed to bring certain foods to Europe, like meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, that kind of stuff.” To a bemused driver with several sandwiches wrapped in tin foil who asked if he could maybe surrender the meat and keep just the bread, one customs officer replied: “No, everything will be confiscated. Welcome to Brexit, sir, I’m sorry.”

The ban came into force on New Year’s Day as the Brexit transition period came to an end, with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) saying travellers should “use, consume, or dispose of” prohibited items at or before the border. “From 1 January 2021 you will not be able to bring POAO (products of an animal origin) such as those containing meat or dairy (eg a ham and cheese sandwich) into the EU,” the Defra guidance for commercial drivers states. The European commission says the ban is necessary because meat and dairy products can contain pathogens causing animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth or swine fever and “continue to present a real threat to animal health throughout the union”.

Dutch customs also posted a photograph of foodstuffs ranging from breakfast cereals to oranges that officials had confiscated in the ferry terminal, adding: “Since 1 January, you can’t just bring more food from the UK.” The customs service added: “So prepare yourself if you travel to the Netherlands from the UK and spread the word. This is how we prevent food waste and together ensure that the controls are speeded up.”

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“Let’s all remain peaceful,” he said, which clearly meant, “Go burn down the Capitol Building.”

‘Let’s All Remain Peaceful,’ Says Trump In Clear Incitement To Violence (BBee)

A review of Trump’s statements last week made it clear that he was inciting violence, as he very clearly told people to “remain peaceful” and not carry out any violence. The dangerous cult leader encouraged his followers to protest at the Capitol, but to remain peaceful, which is an obvious instance of inciting violence, according to leading language experts and journalists. “Let’s all remain peaceful,” he said, which clearly meant, “Go burn down the Capitol Building.” “No violence!” added the deranged lunatic, which, according to the New York Times, was a dog whistle for “Minions, attack!” “Go home,” he added, which meant, “Keep pressing the attack! We will not be defeated! Blow stuff up!” At publishing time, Trump had said, “I’ve always encouraged peaceful protesting,” which meant he wanted his followers to go ransack an Arby’s.

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Home Forums Debt Rattle January 12 2021

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 44 total)
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  • #68180

    Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956   • New Covid “Super Strain” is a Game-Changer for Schools and More (Parramore) • WHO Warns Of ‘Highly Problematic’
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 12 2021]

    #68182
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Alfred Wertheimer Elvis 1956

    That photo is just so excellent; composition and the precise depth of field; masterful, IMO…

    #68183
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    The spike in cases in Ireland is frightening. The US federal government never grasped the dire consequences of asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus even if the virus is relatively less lethal to the middle aged and younger population. Temperature screening was and is pointless. They never considered the need to quickly develop accurate cheap tests to self-determine if one is infectious and self-quarantine. No scheme was ever prepared for reporting or forming bubbles or getting free medical care. Simply the hierarchy is more interested in giving billions of dollars to corporations to increase their profits than American lives. The number of deaths of Americans is now reaching in one year the casualty level of the four-year World War II. Plus, enough time has elapsed with enough people infected for a mutant to develop that defeats the lockdowns and wearing ineffective face masks and maybe PPE if healthcare workers are getting infected with the new British variant. The whole western political and executive hierarchy is corrupt and incompetent.

    This is obvious but not acknowledged in corporate propaganda. On January 6 2021 the professional leadership class felt fear for the first time. The USA is now without a government. The tragedy is that they’ll blame the Air Force Veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for getting herself killed. They will never admit that it is their fault. But the truth is that the 10% aristocracy cannot rule over the 90% working classes if the sole purpose is to exploit the healthy and let the sick, addicted and old die off, so the Brahmin top caste of global billionaires can get richer. The current American system is simply incapable of controlling the pandemic depression. The insurrection will continue and spread. Only restoration of government by and for the people can fix this.

    Censorship of the US internet is coming, but it won’t make a difference if cassette tapes brought down the Soviet Union by telling the truth. People must and will find ways to communicate. But it will make my cabin fever intolerable.

    #68184
    Mr. House
    Participant

    The shamen looking protester is complaining he can’t get organic food while arrested. Yeah that’s def a trump supporter

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9136479/QAnon-Shamen-Jacob-Chansley-makes-tele-court-appearance-today-Phoenix.html

    #68185
    Mr. House
    Participant

    all that organic food

    #68186
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    To put the U.K. variant in perspective, with its faster spread, we are effectively put back to where we once were without masks — even when we’re now wearing masks!

    Masks have always been pointless in fighting coronavirus. In fact, trying to stop the spread of an airborne virus at all is totally insane and leads to absurdities like quarantining perfectly healthy people (while you wreck their economic well-being).

    All we can do for the most part is treat people who are sick and try to help those who are weak become stronger (exercise, vitamins, etc.) so that they can fight the virus themselves when exposed. Basic medicine, in there words.

    #68187
    AlanBurgesstL3Z
    Participant

    Beautiful photo, the angle is great, it looks very aesthetically pleasing

    #68188
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Until 2020, I had no idea just what a racket “public health” was, and what a bunch of control freaks and incompetents — a terrifying combination — were in charge of it.

    Here’s a small example, from yesterday:

    The Centers for Disease Control published a Tweet that included this line, along with a link to an article about Delaware: “In Delaware, universal mask use helped reduce #COVID19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths.”

    Before I even show you Delaware’s chart, think about what it should look like if what this January 5 Tweet said weren’t misleading.

    Ready?

    Here it is:

    (Thanks to Ian Miller — @ianmSC — for the chart.)

    So we have two things of note here.

    Number one: looking at these hospitalization numbers on January 5, 2020, would your conclusion be: masks sure lowered the number of hospitalizations?

    Number two: the mask mandates in Pennsylvania and Delaware went into effect nine days apart, and yet their curves both came down at exactly the same time. So as Ian wonders, are we supposed to believe that mandates at different times had exactly the same result at exactly the same time, or might it make more sense to conclude that the spread of the virus is regional and seasonal?

    This kind of reminds me of CNN and Canada. They published an article called “Why Canada Flattened the Curve — and the US Didn’t.” The usual nonsense, as you might imagine.

    Days later, well, you can see what happened:

    Do you suppose they wrote a follow-up article acknowledging this? (And yes, deaths also increased, not just “cases.”)

    In a previous email I pointed out all the European countries where back in May we got told-you-so articles about how they wisely flattened the curve because they listened to their public-health officials, blah blah blah. And then, starting in September, their numbers went way up and we never heard from the media again.

    As Michael Malice says, this isn’t bias, as some people describe it. It’s an agenda.”

    #68189
    Mr. House
    Participant

    chart

    #68190
    Mr. House
    Participant

    Something different

    #68191
    Dr. D
    Participant

    It’s spreading? But like all the others, it doesn’t kill anyone?

    I HAVE a pinky finger. If you test, most people do. But if it doesn’t cause health issues, it doesn’t matter how many “have” it.

    Here’s one for you, since that depends on the 90-wrong PCR test:

    PCR [test] Inventor Kary Mullis Talks About Anthony Fauci — “He doesn’t know anything really about anything” DB

    He has specifically said you cannot amplify his test +30x or you’ll get only false positives. He’s even said you cannot use his test for diagnosis at all. …Specifically, by the time his test is accurate, you already have body symptoms you can see and hear with a stethoscope.

    Election day +1, as predicted:
    “Cuomo Reverses: Demands “Reopen the Economy” Amid Dismal NYC Vaccine Rollout
    Stringer’s complaints follow reports of hospitals in the city being forced to throw away doses of the vaccine.

    Because, Science!™ We follow the Science! Only the Science! Which is why Cuomo said it was a ridiculous non-starter to shut New York for a 99.97% safe virus, when a 1% increase in unemployment kills 40,000 people. …Until suddenly that wasn’t true, an election started, and he did.

    …Now it’s suddenly not true, and he doesn’t. And he’s opening because he CAN’T get the vaccine – Connecticut has deployed more, a state 1/10th the size – not because they HAVE the vaccine.

    ScienceScienceScience! FailFailFailFail.

    Speaking of New York:

    “A Nursing Home Had Zero COVID Deaths. Then, It Vaccinates Residents and The Deaths Begin
    Things seem to be working backwards at The Commons on St. Anthony nursing home in Auburn, New York…

    And Science! Herd immunity – caused by vaccines, or caused naturally, doesn’t mean we are somehow immune and it’s over.

    ….Except that’s EXACTLY what that word means, by the very definition. …Unless you’re the WHO.

    “WHO Warns Herd Immunity Won’t Bring World “Back to Normal” Quickly”
    In the US, Texas, California, Florida and New York have received the largest number of vaccines, while seeing the slowest turnaround.

    This could in fact be true since it’s not a “vaccine” in any sense of the word. It is not the debilitated virus, and it does NOT prevent you from getting it…it only reduces the severity. Maybe. With side effects. Like “Death”.

    “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
    “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
    “The question is: which is to be master—that’s all.”

    TAE
    https://theautomaticearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/B117-2.jpg

    Again, Science!™ We never knew ya! Ever. Science-free zone.

    NO IT CANNOT. THIS CHART IS FALSE.

    A virus must rise, THEN RUNS OUT OF HOSTS. And dies. Duh. It starts, rises vertically, then plateaus. If you’ve looked at any other R0 chart at any time once in the whole last year. So if this is not a completely different virus, then it will NOT rise. We are at herd immunity already.

    If it’s a different virus, it is not COVID. Duh. A = A A ≠ B

    What is even the point when no logic is engaged?

    “An Epidemic of COVID Positive Tests (John Hunt)”

    At least this is true, but they’re going to get away with their Trillion$$$ total lack of $$cience$$. As they reduce the PCR test, they will “prove” their unworking vaccine “works”. As predicted. And get all the money and applause. By the people they terrorized. All medical officials show total lack of medicine, total lack of science, and don’t notice, approve, let them do it again. Doctors applaud, and want my honor and support. Trolls like me are not supposed to be better at medicine, better at medical predictions than they are.

    Coach
    https://i.redd.it/ypyt38j01ee21.jpg

    “French Government “Shocked” at Twitter Banning of Trump (SN)”

    I am SHOCKED there is gambling going on this is casino. If anybody’s going to censor you, it should be EU/France.

    “Twitter Has Suspended More Than 70,000 Accounts Since Friday (ZH)

    Anyone setting up a better alternative will be crushed.

    Only by closing the internet. Good luck. You’ve only alarmed the herd. The herd has circled and moved to safety, horns down. No more cattle-chute for harvest. No propaganda, no fake news, no “framing”, no credit cards, no sales, no money.

    “The Big Tech Backfire (Miller)”

    Exactly. We won. They lost. They lost hearts, minds, and eyeballs. Oh and money, if that has any meaning anymore.

    “We Need a New Media System (Taibbi)”

    Taibbi rediscovers journalism. Genius. And why we aren’t biased. Or said correctly, why journalists shouldn’t LIE LIE LIE.

    Of course no one gets to objectivity, but if you TRY, rather than trying the opposite, you might get closer. When he says “reader-based journalism” he means LYING. You tell the users what is TRUE, not what they want to hear. Of course. This is too complicated for Yale, sipping lattes in Brooklyn.

    “50 Countries Commit to Protection Of 30% of Earth’s Land and Oceans (G.)”

    The countries that have paved, pesticided, and harvest everything are going to NOT pave, pesticide, and harvest everything. While they’re leveling mountains and whole nations for their super-green rare earth lithiums. They’re going to have 0% GDP instead. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

    “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Elon Musk

    But logic is dead. People eat it up.

    “Economic Failures of the IPCC Process (Steve Keen)”

    Ya don’t say. It was only and always a money transfer. TO the rich. FROM the poor. But also from the “rich” countries like the U.S. (ha ha, not really) TO the new pirate ship we’re hijacking, Chinese/Indian banks and oligarchs. TO the replacement monetary system written by Technocrats since the 30’s: BTU/CarbonCredits, with all the back-room printing and hypothecation by mega-banks therein. So that those countries will lose all human rights and incidentally all environmentalism and protection, and be brought to heel under neofeudalism.

    So easy a cave man can do it. Because even accused, even said, even admitted, even proven by their own actions, no one will believe it. They LIKE anti-environmentalism, they LIKE poverty, they LIKE death, they LIKE the end of all human rights. If they don’t love it, why is it so hard to say no? Call a spade. Name a rose.

    “They never considered the need to quickly develop accurate cheap tests to self-determine if one is infectious”

    Huh. Why not? Any cave man saw that the first day. They didn’t. You’re fired. Or did you not do it because you made a few billion dollars and advanced all your medical/personal/political agendas-on-tap? In which case: you’re fired.

    But again, why would you test? California is locked down and has the same rate as Texas which is open. New York is 3x worse than Florida, which is doing nothing. If anything, “Science!™” is saying lockdowns CAUSE Covid. A new study appears each day saying masks don’t work. In fact, the Nov 11 NEJM study showed the Army forcing cadets to follow all rules with absolute strictness, and it didn’t work.

    …Like I said in February. “It’s de-facto aerosol, x hour life on touched objects? Yeah, you’re not going to stop it. That requires space suits forever and it isn’t going to happen.” CDC says >1% in the population, cannot be stopped. Guess what?

    But no scientist, NO doctor, is following any of the Science. So why bother? Their only goal is neofeudalism and the end to all human rights, which they’re succeeding at handily. Good show old chap!

    “Only restoration of government by and for the people can fix this.”

    This is why they just lost. The insurrection was a sham, the opposition is peaceful, their shrill panic over the public placidly touring the rotunda is embarrassing: they have lost all credibility and moral standing. They are a joke to us. The more they scream the funnier it is. They have been trying to get the armed, violent, ignorant hillbillies to shoot back since the 90s: they won’t. They’ve done everything, droned, tanked, lit children on fire, shot a mother with her infant in arms. They are the church people, not the violent ones. Without that, their plan, their response won’t work. Ooops.

    So look for more of embarrassing, made-up panic next week at new protests most won’t go to as the USSR continues their totally predicted, totally foreseeable collapse.

    You see, this is why it doesn’t matter and would even be hilarious for Joe to take the Presidency. So he sits down, the economy crashes, 75 million people ignore him and refuse to take orders, 10 million more urban liberals, gay, trans, brown, hairdressers are all furious over being de-platformed, and Jimmy Dore is chewed their leg up to the knee with a new “People’s Party” having been completely outed as AGAINST $2,000, AGAINST Medicare-for-All, FOR every war and Corporation, and AGAINST every Progressive in the Party. Remember, Brexit won when their party was only 6 weeks old.

    I’ll watch. It’ll be amazing. Entertaining. A show for the ages. There are no winning moves from here. They lost.

    #68192
    zerosum
    Participant

    Echo from all the bloggers

    “I’ll watch. It’ll be amazing. Entertaining. A show for the ages. There are no winning moves from here.”

    #68193
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    • Lockdown ‘Ineffective’ Against Spread Of Covid-19, May Even Increase Risk

    This study should be a game-changer, no?
    It came from Stanford U, and has already undergone full peer review.

    Author affiliations
    1 Department of Medicine, Stanford University Stanford, CA, USA.
    2 Center for Health Policy and the Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
    3 Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
    4 Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
    5 Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.
    6 Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS), Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA.

    “This article has been accepted for publication and undergone full peer review”


    Assessing Mandatory Stay-at-Home and Business Closure Effects on the Spread of COVID-19

    Results
    …we find no clear, significant beneficial effect of mrNPIs [more restrictive non-pharmaceutical interventions] on case growth in any country.

    Conclusions
    …we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.

    Discussion
    …We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures. The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures.

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/eci.13484

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484

    #68194
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
    K. Vonnegutt

    Originally spoken, I believe shortly after 911.

    What’s logical to me is that the powers behind Jolted Joe aka Frankenstein on Ice will start sending serious stimulus checks to the people. Grudgingly, insufficiently, but enough to keep the pumps of popular hope running awhile yet, and keep some kind of money velocity in motion.

    Russia has made it very clear with this latest hack The Russians Did It! that we need to stop pretending to ourselves that we have any leverage on them but rather, entirely vice-versa, so American foreign policy will continue withering into hollow words. We can pretend to others all we want. They know we’re mentally destabilized. But we should stop kidding ourselves or else we’ll get hurt. I tend to think that they’re finally getting the message. Note the timing: Jan 5th, one day before the electoral college quibble was set to be determined. Message: whoever wins, but especially the DNC, Don’t Do Anything Stupid.

    Some virus will continue doing what viruses do. The War on Covid will likewise run amok through the governments and people of the world most of the year, spreading and attenuating like a fulfilled fad fading away. The covid hysteria-by-bureaucratic-dysfunction will become something like Prohibition was during the early worst days of the 1930s Great Depression: something to be repealed not medically dealt with. 2022 will not be another Year of Covid, although covid will almost certainly not be absent.

    The gun-wielding factions will grow, with those we call right-wing being much more dominant overall because it’s part of their culture and they have an actual sense of cultural identity involving place, tradition, group morals and ethics, while the gun-toting left will tend to shoot each other in the foot because they don’t have a culture of identity but one of opposition to specific norms.

    The concept of robocops will soon be entered into the mainstream narrative of What Is Acceptable and Mandatory, and if that trend is allowed to develp far enough (which I doubt, the technostructure needed to make it real being insufficient), the next anti-cop protest movement will hold signs saying HUMAN LIVES MATTER.

    2021 will have some semblance to business as usual, hopefully enough to maintain some orderly flow of social activity, but I think 2022 will look very different from the past continuum of TWAWKI.

    Meanwhile, this video has 9,627,994 views since premiering on Aug 21, 2020: Sex Education, Delaware is proud to announce its first transgender state senator, and I wonder how long it would have taken, if this cultural continuum were allowed by fate to continue, before people on hookups sites would be required to show verification of their Gender of Origin when a man presents himself as a hotly remodeled phony female?

    Tv announcement from 2024 on an alternate timeline where this nonsense got to continue:

    Woman of the Ersatz, a docu-expose, reveals when genetically female women confess to only pretending to be transgender in order to be mail-order brides and online sex workers for America’s growing transdrogynous fetishists.

    Remember: if it doesn’t smell like tuna fish, it’s probably inverted hot dog.

    People die of covid. Despite taking good care of myself and taking ample vitamin D along with taking in the sun, I could die of this trans-reality virus that strikes me as the first physical manifestation of this “terror” (“Look! Tiny bits of terror! Wear a mask so they won’t see us!”) that we fought so diligently and weirdly in the Oughts. The ex Mrs. Sherburn would be devastated and I would not entirely rejoice.

    But I try to offer a daily prayer to covid and Valdimir Putin, two entities that have been kind enough to put an end to this walking nightmare born of what’s left of the American Dream. It sucks to be awakened at midnight but that’s what happens when you sleep through the day.

    #68195

    Great headline at USA Today:

    Like Jack The Ripper, Trump Can’t Be Deterred. We Must Impeach Him

    How did we get from Hitler to Jack the Ripper? Creative journalism?

    #68196
    kultsommer
    Participant

    “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Elon Musk
    How is that different from “Rearden alloy maker” numerous quotes? Oh, Elon is “impure” maybe, since he’s got bit of
    “government assistance” big no-no from the factious giant of industry. That alone pushes away all the children in rags, toiling in the factories and mines, man and women with 12 hour work days and numerous charts to document it and places HIM (and his ilk) right in the center of Marx’s writing. Elon & Co – socialists/commies!
    Saker on unz:
    https://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-mob-did-not-win/
    But, of course, what does he know having lived in socialist country.

    Girl dissolving in his presence, nothing short of that..

    #68197
    Mr. House
    Participant

    I posted this to facebook today, which then prompted them to tell me about fact checking and vaccines……. not sure what this has to do with that. I did turn down the vaccine at work today and texted friends about it. Is facebook spying on me via my internet connection?

    #68198
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    For those lucky enough to be more off-the-grid than not:

    Elastic Power Generator

    #68199
    Mr. House
    Participant

    I haven’t had the facebook app on my phone for at least two years, but when i went and checked in settings it listed install app, but still had the account listed. Just deleted that…………

    #68200
    Huskynut
    Participant

    “The B.1.1.7 COVID variant is starting to look as scary as the social media giant censorship.”

    Nope. Social media censorship is a commercial/political phenomena that can absolutely be controlled by legislation. The fact that is isn’t/hasn’t/wont be is indicative of the complete and total corruption of the political system. That is hellishly scary.

    The B.1.1.7 variant is apparently more easily transmitted but no more lethal than any other variant, ie 99.9% of people will not die from it. That not scary at all.. that’s the price of living, analagous to driving which I personally find quite enjoyable.

    Fear in the face of very modest threats is entirely optional and more aptly termed hysteria.

    And as Dr D points out, some of us here have been predicting accurately since the start of the year that due to the basic limitations of human behaviour, science and the interconnected nature of the modern world, humans lack the agency to control a highly contagious virus. Which is anathema to a population who’ve become drunk on the illusion of control over every aspect of planetary life.

    Cliche’d though it’s become, that reliable ole Serenity Prayer sums it up quickly. And we have never, ever had the collective ability to control Covid, let alone trying to do so without undertaking any const/benefit analysis before embarking on interventions.

    As I said somewhere else, what the world has done since Feb was embark on the most epic Evel Knieval canyon jump in history, only we’ve done it without surveying the width of the gap or the landing site. We’re suspended in mid-air, with the costs and outcomes not yet upon us, but with little ability to change direction. And sooner or later the ground is coming up at us………

    #68201
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “The gun-wielding factions will grow…Right and Left” That is a pretty smart statement. No telling which is better or worse either. I guess I’d prefer people who have experience with both firearms and violence. Like the old Bouncers it makes you reserved and restrained. Counterintuitive, which is what we see with hillbillies right now.

    I don’t know the Reardon reference. He is the revolutionary industrialist in “Atlas Shrugged”.

    Yes, you can’t delete Facebook. The internet is forever. Welcome to the Hotel California. That always says “we’re good people and never up to something” when they refuse all honest appeals from their customers and vendors. But Facebook is dead anyway, only used by grandmas arranging church dinners now. Twitter is following them now.

    #68202
    Bill7
    Participant

    “Spreading like wildfire™!”

    yadda-yadda… only those whose conformity is variously compelled buy this sh!t.

    > The logic of the Democrat/MSM hysteria is that there must be an ever-greater number of kulak-style enemies to be demonized and deplatformed. However, if you do that to enough people, deplatforming loses its sting..

    Thank you, Mr. Kirkpatrick! (“Rayciss! Sexiss! Trans™phobe! Otherwise-Bad Person!), yadda-yadda..

    https://www.unz.com/article/us-capitol-protest-ruling-class-tantrum-shows-americans-we-must-all-hang-together/

    Divide ‘n’ Rule- a very old tactic!- is working superbly well for the Few.

    -Bill7

    #68203
    Bill7
    Participant

    The Ruling Class is culturally impoverished; hence their lame-ass battle cries. They’ll “win” for a little while longer then… not.

    😉

    -Bill7

    #68204
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Cliche’d though it’s become, that reliable ole Serenity Prayer sums it up quickly.

    Connecting with the Creative, Healing & Loving Power of the Universe is the last resort for those trapped in foxholes: Very, VERY few are the awake children that chose wisely before the shelling…

    And we have never, ever had the collective ability to control Covid, let alone trying to do so without undertaking any const/benefit analysis before embarking on interventions.

    The CCP had full control of Covid, but no one thus far has admitted to playing footsie with infected monsters…

    TechTyranny

    #68205
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Armed factions are a major defining aspect of the future immediately before us.

    We’ll be an open carry society before long. Guns, bats, knives, swords, a vast spectrum of old, new, known, unknown, manufactured, and improvised side arms will be a major part of a world where keeping the lights on at night wastes necessary energy needed more critically elsewhere.

    The political leaders of the next decade are already creating the basic power structures that will make them leaders: of a city block, a small township, a neighborhood, a city quadrant, country quadrant, a stretch of river…

    The mindset associated with conservatism has been forming alliances and survival bonds for some time while being demonized as lunatic militia et cetera. They have their share and then some of lunatics but the hierarchies they’re forming will not follow the lunatics. They’ll follow the persons tough, smart, wise, and strong enough to earn confidence and form a protective cadre around their leadership core.

    Plenty of liberals have guns, at least the older ones. But their mindset worships the legends of Gandhi and MLK, and their ideologies are inherently divisive while preaching greater inclusion. Diversity is not inclusive by definition, and whenever there’s fearful tension, people flock to form identity groups. Liberals will, in this decade, at first dissolve group loyalties before forming new ones.

    Ideologies. Yikes. “There is nothing the matter with Americans except their ideals. The real American is all right: It is the ideal American who is all wrong.” G.K. Chesterton

    Conservatives have fewer ideals but more traditions, more dogma. It makes it easier for them to band together. Conservatives are more traditionally religious. They gather in groups once a week to sing/listen to mostly lousy music and hear sermons that are well-meaning but usually sophomoric at best… although that doesn’t prevent a sincere Xtian preacher from saying profoundly helpful things. They feel morally superior to atheists and agnostics even as they say ‘hate the sin not the sinner’. Loking down on those poor unfortunate sinners is part of the nature of forming a positive identity group. (A negative identity group would be, for example, a child soldier army where the kids, even grown to be adults, feel they can have no other place to belong but with abused and abusive creatures like themselves.)

    If politics worked, we’d all be liberals: they have the greatest ideals. But politics don’t work and those ideals are always used as excuses to betray the basis of those ideals (a reasonably stable society that might achieve them through incremental change).

    Politics don’t work: they’re merely inevitable.

    #68206
    Bill7
    Participant

    One method I find useful is to check the fit on old internet™ posts, like this one from CJ Hopkins:

    > One of the hallmarks of totalitarianism is mass conformity to a psychotic official narrative. Not a regular official narrative, like the “Cold War” or the “War on Terror” narratives. A totally delusional official narrative that has little or no connection to reality and that is contradicted by a preponderance of facts.

    consentfactory.org/2020/10/13/the-covidian-cult/?replytocom=9214#respond

    The Covidian Cult

    Hopkins is right. Propaganda- made pervasive and persistent enough, as with Our corporate, and otherwise
    co-opted media- works very, very well.

    That “smart™/surveillance-phone in your hands? It’s the [blank, unyielding] face of evil.

    Saw that at the time. Beware of strangers bearing gifts™..

    #68207
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Mr. House

    “Nope. Social media censorship is a commercial/political phenomena that can absolutely be controlled by legislation. ”

    Et vice-versa. In a free speech society, such networks are entitled to express opinions and shape opinions thereby. This can lead to them exerting enough influence to get legislators elected who will not regulate the media. If legislators try to control the media before this happens, free screech advocates, real or astroturfed, will throw up their hands and holler.

    Media has power. Power corrupts. The more power attained, especially by corrupt means, the more corrupt that power becomes and the more that power corrupts other entities of power.

    #68208
    Mr. House
    Participant

    This was excellent and i hope everyone gives it a listen:

    #68209
    Bill7
    Participant

    > Et vice-versa. In a free speech society, such networks are entitled to express opinions and shape opinions thereby.

    Let’s hear more about that..

    It’s a darksider. 😉

    #68210
    Bill7
    Participant

    It’s a hard woker though Ill give it that.

    darkside?

    #68211
    kultsommer
    Participant

    I don’t know the Reardon reference. He is the revolutionary industrialist in “Atlas Shrugged”.
    By the author whose work, I gather, you admire.
    Industrialist as character who puts comic book hero to shame – for over seven decades was, and still is, an “inspiration” for generations of brainwashed who have no no (proverbial) pot to piss in and not seeing that THEY are those unwashed slobs so frequently referred as in the book with gusto.
    And Elon? Same drive and attitude. What gives? He’s not good for us as society. Isn’t that exactly what the “book” preach? Yes, but he’s not a “real” capitalist, but since being bad we have a convenient label for somebody like that….
    I could go on but getting tired, and long writing is no my forte.

    #68212
    Bill7
    Participant

    Mr House (and others, as the case may be): FaceBorg and the other FAANGS *have you*, regardless of
    whether you’re “signed up™” for them, or not; my guess is that one is in fact surveilled even harder
    if not signed up with the EvilTech monoliths (I’m not, FWTW). Have a look around.. whether you use
    Fb or the other EvilTech-entities or not, they *are* using you.

    Get *off the screens*- that’s the only hope, and I do try.

    Online = gotten-to

    #68214
    Big Dick Kennedy
    Participant

    I’m torn as to if this site is
    Mr Robot rants
    or
    Black Dynamite

    Boondocks comic strip keeps repeating since before Bush the lesser. Today’s repeat is Avian Flu based. My how far we have come.
    Boondocks

    It is worthwhile to re-watch Mr. Robot. Strikes me it sets the tone for AFTER the reset.Follow Boondocks daily because History actually does repeat itself.
    As a parting gift read some Cody Goodfellow. Sleazeland captures the modern mindset fairly well. Unamerica may be a nifty History lesson if fear and loathing in Las Vegas chronicles the end of an era.
    I know not as highbrow as Sometimes a great notion.Then again I’ve always been a Hank Stamper kind of guy. I mean Fountainhead is far better than Atlas Shrugged.
    Rand hated Libertarians by the way. Called them hippies of the right.

    #68215
    Big Dick Kennedy
    Participant

    And Elvis was a Blonde. Yep died his hair black to be more striking, stole his moves from Black folk too.
    I think Kissing cousins is the one where he plays his Blonde cousin. Now y’all can compare his looks see if the Clairol was worth it.

    #68216
    Big Dick Kennedy
    Participant

    Oopsie linked to a shorter version of Black Dynamite. This one carries much more, uuuuhhhh, impact.

    Black Dynamite long

    #68218
    WES
    Participant

    Well up here in the not so great white north, Ontario has joined Quebec in imposing an 8 PM curfew!

    We are already in lockdown but that hasn’t stop covid cases from more than doubling!

    What we are seeing is the traditional winter rise in cases.

    Only when we can go outside in the late spring will cases start dropping.

    #68219
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski
    Et vice-versa. In a free speech society, such networks are entitled to express opinions and shape opinions thereby. This can lead to them exerting enough influence to get legislators elected who will not regulate the media. If legislators try to control the media before this happens, free screech advocates, real or astroturfed, will throw up their hands and holler.

    Media has power. Power corrupts. The more power attained, especially by corrupt means, the more corrupt that power becomes and the more that power corrupts other entities of power.

    I agree, but it doesn’t change my point. That it won’t happen because facts-on-the-ground in no way changes that it is *possible* to control media via legislation. Witness China re media or the US breaking up Ma Bell.

    Whereas control of Covid via legislative mandate was, is, and will never be possible. Lockdowns, masks etc are flailing theatre achieving nothing useful.

    @VP
    The CCP had full control of Covid
    I can’t tell from your remark if it’s sarc, but one of the fundamental rational failures I think is that China controlled Covid via lockdowns. Doc R’s post above (and many others) point out there is no general correlation between lockdown and positive outcome. Therefore it seems very unlikely to me there is a causation between lockdown and outcome in the specific case of China.
    OTOH, I observe that Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam also have very good outcomes, despite different approaches. Is there a genetic correlation? Or a climatic correlation? Or a pre-exposure correlation? I have no idea.
    But if you mentally/intellectually question the key supposition the Chinese have a superb outcome AND it was caused by their fierce lockdown then we start to get back to the realm of logic.

    #68220
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Huskynut,

    I was talking about absolute control of the virus while it was still confined within the Wuhan L4 lab.

    The biothreat was released, whether intentional or not, and no one seems to care?

    To me, that’s a VERY important matter, much like the apparent insurrection that has seized control of the U$ .gov…

    Surrender monkeys.

    #68221
    Veracious Poet
    Participant

    Stalin

    #68222
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    Lots of crazy statements on the TAE board today.

    Sorry, Basseterre Kitona, but masks do work, which is why Asia is kicking America’s and Europe’s asses.

    Sorry, Dr. D, but people are dying. Except in India, where they use Ivermectin, and where the death rate has been gradually declining. Another example of a country kicking America’s and Europe’s asses.

    Sorry Huskynut, there is a positive correlation between lockdown and positive outcome, but only if you are quick and draconian with your lockdown. If you wait too long to start, and if you have halfass execution, then I agree with you that it does not work. Which is why China kicked America’s and Europe’s asses.

    Sorry WES, but cases can drop off even in winter. Although cases started rising in Korea in December, where it has been damn cold this year, the trend has now reversed and cases are dropping. You guessed it: Another example of a country kicking America’s and Europe’s asses. But Korea does not get a pass because the officials are drinking the koolaid on vaccines but dissing Ivermectin as “the drug for head lice” that some desperate countries have been resorting too.

    Sorry for being so antisocial today everyone.

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