Mar 252021
 
 March 25, 2021  Posted by at 8:44 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Mayfair Theater, Broadway, New York 1954

 

India Discovers First “Double-Mutant” COVID Strain (ZH)
“Follow The Science,” They Said… (Hanson)
Cuomo’s Relatives Prioritized For COVID Testing (TU)
Why Were More People Dying In The UK Even Before Covid-19? (NS)
Boris Johnson Green Lights Pubs to Mandate Vaccine Passports (SN)
British Gov’t Plans to Shape Public Opinion Fundamentally ‘Undemocratic’ (Sp.)
Guidance On Policing Protests May Breach Human Rights (G.)
Bernie Sanders Comes Out Against Trump Twitter Ban (Turley)
Bellingcaught (Maté)
Unnamed Western Officials Spread Dubious Claims About Iran (Antiwar)
Saudi-Led Coalition Intensifies Yemen Air Raids, Hits Grains Port (AlJ)
Trouble With The Ghislaine Maxwell Case? (TF)
Authorities ‘Working To Refloat’ Ever Given Blocking Suez Channel (Sky)

 

 

Today is the 200th anniversary of the start of the fight for Greek independence from the Ottoman empire.

 

 

Ron Paul on Lockdown

 

 

These will keep appearing. The virus is endemic.

India Discovers First “Double-Mutant” COVID Strain (ZH)

Following a series of reports warning about mutated COVID strains first identified in Brazil, the US and elsewhere spreading across Latin America, the US and Europe, scientists in India are one-upping them by identifying what they described as “a double-mutant” strain of the ubiquitous virus. The ‘double-mutant’ was identified, along with 770 other strains, gleaned from samples collected across 18 Indian states. Of the 10,787 samples collected, 736 tested positive for the UK variant, 34 for the South African variant and one for the Brazilian variant. The report comes as COVID cases in India are climbing once again after the nation managed to bring numbers close to zero. The country has reported a total of 11.7MM cases, and 160.4K deaths.


While the Indian government insists there’s no link between the variants and the surge in cases (India rolled back most of its virus-inspired restrictions on business and movement months ago). India became the fifth country in the world to sequence the COVID virus’s genome last January. Still, a consortium of 10 national laboratories working with India’s government said this week they would monitor the new double-variant, which was traced to Mahahrashtra state. Although scientists said none of the variants appeared to be circulating widely enough yet to be causing the surge in cases, they called on authorities to ramp up testing and ensure new cases caused by the variant are swiftly isolated. In response, the government is ramping up certain restrictions, along with its vaccination drive.

As far as the remaining COVID restrictions are concerned, hundreds of thousands of Indians ignored them last week when they came out to celebrate Holi, a week-long affair commemorating the advent of spring. But what, exactly, is a “double-mutant”? A scientist who spoke with the BBC explained why the double-mutation could make the strain more infectious, and more virulent. “A double mutation, virologist Shahid Jameel explains, is “two mutations coming together in the same virus” “A double mutation in the key areas of the virus’s spike protein may increase these risks and allow the virus to escape the immune system and make it more infectious,” he adds. Spike protein is the part of the virus that it uses to penetrate human cells.


The government said that an analysis of the samples collected from India’s western Maharashtra state shows “an increase in the fraction of samples with the E484Q and L452R mutations” compared with December last year. “Such [double] mutations confer immune escape and increased infectivity,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. Dr Jameel added that “there may be a separate lineage developing in India with the L452R and E484Q mutations coming together”. But the government denied that the rise in case numbers was linked to the mutations. “Though VOCs [variants of concern] and a new double mutant variant have been found in India, these have not been detected in numbers sufficient to either establish a direct relationship or explain the rapid increase in cases in some states.”

Read more …

“Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace.”

“Follow The Science,” They Said… (Hanson)

The medical pandemic godhead of the Left has been octogenarian Dr. Anthony Fauci. His twin chief public relations explainer has been liberal darling New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Both were always supposed to be on top of “the science.” Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID – in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied. That is, Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. For our own interests, he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion.

So, for example, he conceded that he had downplayed the value of masks (he now seems to approve of wearing one on top of another) in order to prevent too many wearing them, and thus the public shorting the supply available to more important health care workers. Fauci also proverbially moved the goal posts on herd immunity, from the high 60s to the low 90s as a percent of the population, either vaccinated or with antibodies, necessary to achieve a de facto end of the pandemic. Again, Fauci defied the science on the theory he knew better, in assuming that the childish public would become too lax when and if it believed herd immunity was on the horizon. Unspoken, is that Fauci usually errs on the side of what is deemed progressive orthodoxy. In contrast, Dr. Scott Atlas warned us that extended and complete lockdowns in any cost-benefit analyses might well inflict more human and economic damage than the virus.

And he added that an opened-up Florida and Texas might do no worse virally than a locked-down California or New York, while avoiding the severe recessionary collateral damage. Yet Atlas was damned for “not following the science” for the crime of working for Trump and for following the science: while targeted wearing of masks and social distancing and quarantining of vulnerable populations are necessary, complete quarantines of the entire population and extended closing schools are counterproductive. Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace. When the federal government delivered a tent-hospital and a huge hospital ship, they went unused. When it sent ventilators, Cuomo raged that they were too little, too late.

Read more …

Drip.

Cuomo’s Relatives Prioritized For COVID Testing (TU)

High-level members of the state Department of Health were directed last year by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker to conduct prioritized coronavirus testing on the governor’s relatives as well as influential people with ties to the administration, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter. Members of Cuomo’s family including his brother, his mother and at least one of his sisters were also tested by top health department officials — some several times, the sources said. The medical officials enlisted to do the testing, which often took place at private residences, included Dr. Eleanor Adams, an epidemiologist who graduated from Harvard Medical School and in August became a special adviser to Zucker.


Adams conducted testing on Cuomo’s brother Chris at his residence on Long Island, according to the two people. “If their job was to go test an old lady down in New Rochelle, that’s one thing — that’s actually good,” one of the people with knowledge of the matter said. “This was not that.” Others who were given priority testing include Rick Cotton, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and his wife, as well as Patrick J. Foye, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Members of the media, state legislators and their staff also were tested in similar fashion, although there is no indication those tests were done by high-level health department officials. Foye and Cotton both announced last March they had tested positive for coronavirus. Foye was tested after exhibiting symptoms, according to a spokesman for the MTA.

Read more …

Austerity killed the cat.

Why Were More People Dying In The UK Even Before Covid-19? (NS)

On 12 January, one of the grimmest findings of the Covid-19 pandemic was published: “excess deaths” in England and Wales were reported to have risen to their highest level since the Second World War. In 2020, 608,002 deaths were registered, the largest number since the 1918 Spanish flu and 75,925 more deaths than occurred on average over the preceding five years (the technical definition of excess deaths). But few noticed another disquieting trend on the viral graphs: even before the pandemic, excess deaths were rising – by 2,911 in 2012, 11,314 in 2013, 6,408 in 2014, 32,624 in 2015, 20,735 in 2016, 20,803 in 2017, 22,355 in 2018 and 4,647 in 2019. By contrast, over the preceding 20 years, excess deaths fell in all but two years (1993 and 1995).


The pandemic and the UK’s Covid death toll of 126,284 – one of the highest in the world – have raised the salience of mortality. Rarely have the political choices that influence who lives and who dies been clearer. The UK’s prodigious death toll was not inevitable or an act of God. But this thought prompts another: why were more people dying in the years before the pandemic, and how many lives could have been saved? In May 2010, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government embarked on a radical experiment that still reverberates today: austerity. Over the New Labour years spending on public services had risen, but it would now be cut in an attempt to reduce the budget deficit and to reshape the state.

After David Cameron assumed office, more than £20bn of welfare cuts were imposed, departmental budgets were reduced by an average of more than 20 per cent and local government funding was cut by 49 per cent (with baleful consequences for social care). When George Osborne delivered his first austerity budget in 2010, he declared: “When we say that we are all in this together, we mean it.” But the reality was otherwise. In February 2020, before Covid-19 monopolised attention, the landmark Marmot Review found that, for the first time in more than 100 years, life expectancy in England had stalled and even declined for women in the poorest 10 per cent of areas.

“England has lost a decade,” lamented Michael Marmot, the University College London professor who led the review. “If you ask me if [austerity] is the reason for the worsening health picture, I’d say it is highly likely.” Marmot was not alone in concluding that the UK government had presided over avoidable deaths or, more radically, what Friedrich Engels called “social murder”. In his book The Condition of the Working-Class in England (1845), Engels wrote of how “the class which at present holds social and political control” places “hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet”.

[..] During the Covid-19 pandemic, the UK has suffered one of the highest excess death rates in Europe. But at the close of our conversation, Dorling explained why the picture is even grimmer than it appears: “All these excess death calculations that are being made, we’re comparing ourselves in 2020 with five truly awful years, whereas other countries are comparing themselves with the best years they’ve ever had.” The social ills that Covid-19 has newly exposed – entrenched poverty, loneliness, dilapidated housing and inadequate welfare support – preceded the pandemic and will likely outlast it. As Richard Horton, the editor of the Lancet medical journal, has argued, the UK is enduring a “syndemic” – a synthesis of epidemics. Coronavirus interacted with pre-existing inequalities to lethal effect.

Read more …

“Pubs can’t open with any sort of normality until June. So on top of having to take on extra staff to serve people at tables, the idea pubs can take on staff to act as door staff for vaccine passports is absurd.”

Boris Johnson Green Lights Pubs to Mandate Vaccine Passports (SN)

Despite repeatedly assuring the public that domestic vaccine passports to enter pubs would be discouraged, Prime Minister Boris Johnson today signaled that landlords could mandate them when pubs begin to open next month. While speaking to MPs on the Commons’ liaison committee, Johnson indicated that the government wouldn’t stand in the way of pub owners demanding customers show proof they’ve taken the COVID-19 jab before entering the premises. Asked if such a certificate would be required, Johnson responded, “I think that that’s the kind of thing – it may be up to individual publicans, it may be up to the landlord.” “I do think that the basic concept of vaccine certification should not be totally alien to us,” he added.

Outdoor areas and beer gardens are set to re-open on April 17th, with indoor spaces to follow on May 17th. Johnson’s attitude to the issue represents a change from previous government rhetoric, which assured the public that there would be no domestic vaccine passport. Back in December, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi declared that any form of vaccine passport would be ‘discriminatory’. Although many pub owners won’t insist on proof of having had the vaccine, polls in the UK routinely show high support for lockdown measures and restrictions. Creating such a system, where people have to show digital proof of vaccination to engage in normal everyday activities, would also virtually guarantee they’ll be introduced at other venues.

Greg Mulholland, chairman of the British Pub Confederation, blasted the move, telling the Sun, “Pubs can’t open with any sort of normality until June. So on top of having to take on extra staff to serve people at tables, the idea pubs can take on staff to act as door staff for vaccine passports is absurd.”

Read more …

1984.

British Gov’t Plans to Shape Public Opinion Fundamentally ‘Undemocratic’ (Sp.)

The British state considers there to now be a “grey zone between peace and war” which justifies, they believe, engagement in covert manipulation of public opinion on matters both foreign and domestic, albeit in the name of combating “disinformation”. Dr Piers Robinson researches and writes about propaganda, conflict and war. He is co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies and convenor of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media. Robinson, who completed his PhD on the role of media and foreign policy — the so-called CNN effect — at the University of Bristol, examined revelations contained within the UK government’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, which appears to promote the idea of using propaganda to shape British public opinion.

Robinson warns that increasing hostility being directed towards countries like Russia and China threatens “super-power conflict” which would affect current and future generations profoundly. “Now is not the time for propaganda”, he insists, but rather, “it is time for greater transparency and scrutiny”.

Dr Piers Robinson: From what is being reported it appears that the British government is openly stating that it intends to employ propaganda within the UK public sphere. Reference to the use of ‘social science expertise, horizon-scanning and strategic communications’ are all euphemisms for propaganda. Propaganda is primarily about organising conduct and beliefs through means that are ‘non-consensual’. By non-consensual I mean influence techniques that might use a variety of strategies aimed at getting people to act and think in ways that are not freely chosen. For example, the technique of deception, where information is manipulated, can lead to people thinking something is true but that belief is not freely chosen precisely because deception has been involved.

Other propaganda techniques involve incentivisation and coercion: here it is more obvious that behaviour and beliefs are not freely chosen as people are being either tempted or forced. The bottom line is that all these propaganda techniques are undemocratic. They run roughshod over notions of freedom, free choice and freedom of speech. Ultimately, widespread uses of such techniques means that a democratic public sphere is increasingly replaced by a propagandised public sphere.

Dr Piers Robinson: The rational for the use of propaganda against the domestic population appears to be based on ideas that there are now grey areas between ‘foreign’ and ‘domestic’ and between ‘war’ and ‘peace’. Underlying these ideas is the claim that people’s opinions are now part of the ’21st century battlefield’. As such, the government appears to be claiming that the British public are now involved in a war and that the only way that war can be fought is through attempts to influence, even control, their thoughts and behaviour. The assumption underpinning this rational for domestic propaganda is that Britain faces significant military (and other) threats.

Read more …

All your base are belong to us.

Guidance On Policing Protests May Breach Human Rights (G.)

Guidance on policing protests circulated to all forces in England and Wales may breach human rights obligations, according to campaigners. The guidance, produced by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (the NPCC) and the College of Policing (COP), also appears to use a definition of unlawful protest activity that could include boycotting a shop or silently taking a knee. In a joint letter seen by the Guardian, the Good Law Project and Stop Funding Hate have urged the guidance to be made public amid “serious concerns” regarding the extent it considers and protects the human rights of protesters. According to a recent report from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) on how the police respond to protest, police chiefs have produced a “comprehensive and detailed document giving operational advice”.

It criticised some of the legal explanations in the document, which is used to train public order commanders and advisers, highlighting a “material risk of commanders failing to fulfil their obligations under human rights law”. The report noted that the NPCC and CoP were revising the document in response to these concerns. The report also revealed that police chiefs use a definition of “aggravated activism” as “activity that seeks to bring about political or social change but does so in a way that involves unlawful behaviour or criminality, has a negative impact upon community tensions, or causes an adverse economic impact to businesses”.

The letter by campaigners raises concerns that this definition could include a wide array of activity that is not criminal, such as campaigning for advertisers to withdraw their products from media outlets that have divisive content or calling for a boycott of a shop that sells products made from animal fur. “What’s really worrying here is the embedded value judgment that it’s wrong to target economic activity”, said Jolyon Maugham, director of the legal campaigning organisation, Good Law Project.

Read more …

“Tomorrow It Could Be Somebody Else”

Bernie Sanders Comes Out Against Trump Twitter Ban (Turley)

Sen Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) came out against the Twitter ban of former president Donald Trump yesterday. Sanders expressed his discomfort with the role of Big Tech in censorship viewpoints, a sharp departure from his Democratic colleagues who have demanded more such corporate censorship. In an interview on Tuesday with New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, Sanders stated that he didn’t feel “particularly comfortable” with the ban despite his view that Trump is “a racist, sexist, xenophobe, pathological liar, an authoritarian … a bad news guy.” He stated “if you’re asking me do I feel particularly comfortable that the then president of the United States could not express his views on Twitter? I don’t feel comfortable about that.”

I would hope that Sanders would take the same view of a non-sitting president or an average citizen. They should all be able to speak freely. Sanders does not go as far as that “Internet originalist” position, but he at least is recognizing the danger of such censorship. He noted that “we have got to be thinking about, because if anybody who thinks yesterday it was Donald Trump who was banned and tomorrow it could be somebody else who has a very different point of view.” He stated that it is a danger to have a “handful of high tech people” controlling speech in America. I have long praised Sanders for his principled take on many issues and this dissenting view is most welcomed by those in the free speech community. It is in sharp contrast to his Democratic colleagues who celebrated the ban and called for more censorship.

One of the leading voices of censorship in the Senate is Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) chastised Big Tech for waiting so long to issue such bans: “The question isn’t why Facebook & Twitter acted, it’s what took so long & why haven’t others?” As we have previously discussed, Democrats have abandoned long-held free speech values in favor of corporate censorship. They clearly has a different “comfort zone” than Sanders. What discomforts many Democratic members is the ability of people to speak freely on these platforms and spread what they view as “disinformation.” When Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey came before the Senate to apologize for blocking the Hunter Biden story before the election as a mistake, senators pressed him and other Big Tech executive for more censorship.

Read more …

Bellingcat is evil.

Bellingcaught (Maté)

The website Bellingcat promotes itself as a collective of digital sleuths who “pledge allegiance to truth and evidence and abide by the principles of transparency and accountability.” Its self-described “groundbreaking investigations,” especially those aimed at Russia and Syria, have led to fawning Western media endorsements of its claim to be an “intelligence agency for the people.” But Bellingcat’s carefully crafted public image as an “open source” outlet is belied by its extensive NATO government ties and a conspicuous pattern of conduct in line with its state sponsors’ interests. Bellingcat has hauled in grants from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US government-funded CIA cutout. Leaked documents reported by The Grayzone revealed that Bellingcat has collaborated with a UK Foreign Office operation that aims to “weaken Russia.”

Bellingcat has also been a regular source of interventionist material on Syria, the target of a decade-long, multi-billion dollar proxy war waged by the US, UK, and their allies. This includes participating in a nearly two-year campaign to whitewash a scandal at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) — one of the most shocking and well-documented pro-war deceptions since the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. A series of leaks has exposed how top OPCW officials censored findings which undermined US-led allegations of a Syrian government chemical weapons attack in the city of Douma in April 2018. Together with its NATO state sponsors, Bellingcat has worked to bury the cover-up and denigrate two OPCW whistleblowers who challenged it from the inside.

Bellingcat’s disinformation efforts resulted in an embarrassing debacle late last year, when the outlet was caught publishing fraudulent material about one of the dissenting OPCW scientists. Now, emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal that Bellingcat has engaged in more subterfuge than was previously known. Messages sent months before the “Bellingcat Investigation Team” released its bogus article show that Bellingcat was not the sole author of the now-discredited piece published in its name. It also was not the first one. The communications show that someone outside the Bellingcat organization composed portions of the fraudulent material that ultimately appeared on Bellingcat’s website. An external author even drafted questions that Bellingcat sent to multiple recipients.

Bellingcat’s duplicitous conduct took place in the midst of a poorly coordinated effort involving HuffPost UK and the BBC – two outlets that also enjoy close ties to the British state. The target of the Bellingcat-led smear campaign is Dr. Brendan Whelan, a 16-year OPCW veteran and member of the mission that deployed to Syria in April 2018 to investigate the alleged chemical attack in Douma.

Read more …

“I have a security clearance. And they have yet to show me any classified evidence.”

Unnamed Western Officials Spread Dubious Claims About Iran (Antiwar)

With a possible revival of the Iran nuclear deal on the table, there are many forces at work opposing a US return to the accord, known as the JCPOA. One form this opposition takes is through anonymous leaks to Western media outlets that are happy to publish whatever intelligence officials tell them to. This week, two dubiously-sourced reports came out that accused Iran of plotting an attack in Washington and operating a secret nuclear program. Missing from the stories was any evidence to back up the claims. On Sunday, The Associated Press published a story that cited “two senior US intelligence officials” who claimed that Iran made threats against Fort McNair, a waterfront Army base in Washington DC.

The officials said the NSA intercepted communications of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps discussing possible “USS Cole-style attacks” on Fort McNair, referring to the 2000 attack on a US Navy destroyer off Yemen that was launched using a small explosive-laden boat. The AP story offers no other evidence to back up the claim besides the word of the unnamed officials. Iran hawks benefit from such stories since it gives the US more reasons not to return to the JCPOA. But another reason to hype a threat to Fort McNair was explained in the AP story. The US Army wants to create a security buffer zone extending 250 to 500 feet into the water of the Washington Channel, the busy waterway that Fort McNair sits on.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s representative to Congress, has been fighting this buffer zone and said the military has shown her no evidence that constitutes a threat big enough to justify it. “I have asked the Department of Defense to withdraw the rule because I’ve seen no evidence of a credible threat that would support the proposed restriction,” Norton said. “I have a security clearance. And they have yet to show me any classified evidence.” The AP doesn’t explain these doubts until a few paragraphs into the story, so most readers with faith in the outlet that read the headline and skimmed a few paragraphs are left believing Iran is considering attacking Washington.

Read more …

Bombing grains facilities where millions are starving. This is our coalition.

Saudi-Led Coalition Intensifies Yemen Air Raids, Hits Grains Port (AlJ)

The Saudi-led military coalition has carried out dozens of air raids against what it said were Houthi military targets in Yemen’s north, including the capital Sanaa and the port of Salif on the Red Sea coast. The coalition, which intervened militarily in 2015 months after the Iran-aligned Houthi group captured large parts of northern Yemen including Sanaa, said it struck a missile and drone assembly plant in the Yemeni capital. The United Nations said air raids also hit the Houthi-controlled Salif grains port, north of Hodeidah, and two projectiles hit a warehouse and the living quarters of a food production company.


“Local authorities and company management stated that six injured workers were transferred to local medical facilities for treatment,” the UN mission in Hodeidah, UNMHA, said in a statement on Monday. The port of Salif is part of a UN-brokered neutral zone on the Red Sea, according to an agreement signed in 2018 in Stockholm between Yemen’s warring parties. Nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s nearly 30 million people depend on foreign aid as large parts of the country have been devastated by the six years of violence that have resulted in what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The Houthi-controlled ministry of commerce and industry said attacks on the port were part of the “economic warfare against the Yemeni people”.

Read more …

Whitney Webb: “The government case against Ghislaine was set up to fail from the beginning. I said that right after the arrest and got shit for it, but here we are. The government is trying to cover the Epstein scandal up, not investigate it.”

Trouble With The Ghislaine Maxwell Case? (TF)

Today a motion was unsealed in the Ghislaine Maxwell case that give us serious concerns about the government’s case against Maxwell. I’ll make this brief. The unsealed motion had to do with Maxwell’s recently rejected motion for release on bail. It had been sealed because it references documents that are still under seal. You can read the full motion for release on bail here. I won’t go through the whole motion – only the parts that stand out. First, Maxwell makes the accusation that “the government concedes it cannot establish that either Ms. Maxwell or Epstein ever caused, or sought to cause, Accuser-3 to travel while she was a minor or that she was underage when she allegedly engaged in sex acts with Epstein.”


In support of this claim, Maxwell’s lawyers cite to the still-sealed filing by the government. Maxwell’s attorneys explain that this matters because victim’s “allegations cannot support the conspiracies charged in the Indictment, leaving the government with only two witnesses to prove the charges against Ms. Maxwell.” Second, Maxwell alleges that the government “produced documents indicating that government prosecutors misled a federal judge to obtain evidence against Ms. Maxwell.” This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York get into trouble. Recently, they were found to have failed to disclose evidence against a criminal defendant and then lying about their failure to disclose the evidence.

Read more …

Perfect.

Authorities ‘Working To Refloat’ Ever Given Blocking Suez Channel (Sky)

Authorities are still “working to refloat” a container ship which ran aground in the Suez Canal, blocking the Egyptian waterway, officials have said. Ten tug boats have been helping with the operation to free one of the world’s largest container ships from the vital waterway. Photos showed a digger removing earth and rock from the bank of the canal around the ship’s bow, while satellite images showed its diagonal position across the channel. Professor Jasper Graham-Jones, a mechanical marine engineer from Plymouth University said: “They would try to be removing anything that is easy to remove, but the location where they are stuck is not near a port, it’s actually quite a distance away from anything.


the Ever Given stranded in the Suez Canal. Pic: Planet Labs Inc via Reuters

“This is where the clear option is lots and lots of tug boats and digging around the sides.” Reports earlier on Wednesday from marine agent GAC that the Ever Given had been partially refloated were inaccurate, Ahmed Mekawy, an assistant manager at GAC’s Egypt office, said. Mr Mekawy blamed it on “inaccurate information” that the Dubai-based agent had received. It could take up to two days to move it, an official reportedly told local news outlet Cairo24, but Suez Canal Authority (SCA) chairman Osama Rabie was more optimistic. He said: “Once we get this boat out, then that’s it, things will go back to normal. God willing, we’ll be done today.”


A southbound convoy was on the move, he told local media, adding that the authority was trying to keep traffic flowing between waiting areas as best it could, while salvage efforts continued. Dr Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University, said: “A prolonged closure would mean that there would be ships stacking up in both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, riding at anchor, waiting for the canal to open.” Dozens of ships carrying crude, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and retail goods were unable to sail through the canal on Wednesday. At least 30 ships were blocked to the north of the Ever Given, and three to the south, local sources said. Several dozen ships could also be seen grouped around the northern and southern entrances to the canal.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle March 25 2021

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 52 total)
  • Author
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  • #71731

    Mayfair Theater, Broadway, New York 1954   • India Discovers First “Double-Mutant” COVID Strain (ZH) • “Follow The Science,” They Said… (Hanson
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 25 2021]

    #71732
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Greetings,

    Life is like having to eat all your meals at a restaurant where the menu is written in an unknown language using glyphs you can’t decipher, with items added – and removed – everyday and the entries’ order changing on a daily basis; you like to think you can chose but you are only fooling yourself: we all know that you point at the menu and use intuition to haphazardly stop your finger over one out of all those cryptic options, hoping for the best.
    Now, let me ask you: do you know what intuition is? Is it akin to “free will”? An educated guess, perhaps? Or is it God’s will?

    (eschatology)

    @madamski

    Thank you for the kind words.

    Surely, some of us came around after a difficult delivery – maybe a sign those reincarnation types are into something: already knowing what’s in store we react, trying to avoid rebirth with all the might a baby can muster.

    #71733
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Mayfair Theater, Broadway, New York 1954 •

    Great shot; such a wonderful view of our past…
    The view of the present is blurred, and will remain so…excepting a few, not buying the present…
    …very shakey…we’ll see…

    #71734
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    From above:

    That graph of India’s cases can be misleading, since there is no comparison to other countries to give some perspective. The number of cases per million people is what’s relevant.

    The total cases per million in the US, and the total covid deaths per million in the US, are more than 10 times the numbers for India.

    India’s curve gets flattened when compared to the US curve in the same chart:
    Our World In Data – India vs US

    #71735
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “India Discovers First “Double-Mutant” COVID Strain (ZH)”

    Considering their science so far, I wouldn’t give a nickel this is true. But even if it is, why would I care? I’d need a death rate and we don’t have one. We DO have a money-transfer rate though, from the desperate poor TO Jeff Bezos.

    “Cuomo’s Relatives Prioritized for COVID Testing (TU)”

    They care about this but not being the greatest mass-murderer in the history of New York. Did someone get ahead of line? Oh noes. Did I club your grandma with a lead pipe, cast her in cement a throw her in the east river to hide her body and steal her stuff? Meh.

    What is it from the Joker?

    “You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go “according to plan.” Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all “part of the plan”. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!

    It’s democratic. It’s “misery spread widely.”

    Killing grandma was business as usual. That’s normal. That’s the Plan. That’s why nobody cares if it happen 15,000 times a year.

    He also said: “All you care about is money. This city deserves a better class of criminal. And I’m gonna give it to them!” Someone with zealotry, that will lose a trillion dollars if it can push their eWOK “scientifico”-religious agenda.

    ” Why Were More People Dying In The UK Even Before Covid-19? (NS)”

    Aaaaaaaaaaaand that’s why socialized medicine doesn’t work. Like every other socialism, it works at first – the hook, the bait that’s so tempting – then runs out of other people’s money and collapses. Without competition, leaving nothing, utter ruin in its wake. Were this garden-variety, non-government, non-monopoly failure, alternatives would already be popping up to fill the gap and meet the need, but under socialism, government, helping people is illegal. All matters must come from and go through the state. Government-as-God is their religion, so likewise, the government must be all, do all, and know all. There are limits to the universe, but there are no limits to Ego.

    “the idea pubs can take on staff to act as door staff for vaccine passports is absurd.”

    “I don’t expect you to talk, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.”

    Besides, don’t you know the ‘Rona can tell when it’s after 10pm and whether you’re seated at a table? That’s Science!

    British Gov’t Plans to Shape Public Opinion Fundamentally ‘Undemocratic’ (Sp.)”

    Yeah, but only because they’re against all human rights and always have been.

    “Guidance on Policing Protests May Breach Human Rights (G.)”
    Proof. Any questions? Or should we ask Assange?

    “Bellingcat”

    They still can’t admit the whole OPCW and the whole UN are a made-up sham of liars-for-profit. Ask Iraq how well the “Peacekeeping” voting UN has been doing their job. Bring a Geiger counter, because the whole nation has been soaked in depleted uranium, and all the U.S. soldiers too. Paging Mr. UN, UN on the phone…is using illegal war materials on civilians…illegal?

    Unnamed Western Officials Spread Dubious Claims About Iran (Antiwar)”

    Since we’ve failed to indict Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld and hang them publicly for the above, they keep going. They’re still around. There’s no statute of limitations. What’s the holdup, UN, Democratic Congress, Senate, and President?

    “Saudi-Led Coalition Intensifies Yemen Air Raids, Hits Grains Port (AlJ)”

    Since this is done with our weapons and intel, with our support, shouldn’t we impeach Biden?

    Nope! Too busy impeaching Assange for reporting it. NY Times is too busy tattling on chat rooms and cooing over Dictators-for-life, and the BBC and Reuters are too busy bidding on MI6 contracts supporting it.

    The government is trying to cover the Epstein scandal up, not investigate it.”

    Of course. Why else would I buy a Senator or Governor if they weren’t going to give me a free-rape pass in exchange for a 6-figure “donation”? Sorry this seems to be the first time you noticed government is built to screw you. But we have an answer: MORE GOVERNMENT! More laws. That’ll larn ‘em.

    Authorities are still “working to refloat” a container ship”

    Now I have Nooooooooo explanation, this is one of those things, but the call sign of the “Evergreen” ship is HRC, and HRC’s secret service name is “Evergreen.” Hooooooooooow?

    Oh and PS, every time oil falls to crack the USD and market, an “Accident” dutifully happens. Last week it was the attack on Saudi Refinery. People have been market-betting on this and making millions for years, so I guess it works.
    Intuition is that we are attached to, made of, and spring forth of the eternal source, consciousness. As we are connected, beneath our “conscious” minds, or those who have worked to unite the subconscious and conscious, then we have ‘signals’, perhaps in the body, perhaps in the mind or imagination, that we can interpret to be a radar-reality, the ‘seeing’ of “what is”, the “I am”, the universe that is out there past our knowledge and sight. As this trickle issues forth differently for each person there isn’t a single training course on it, but everyone worldwide knows intuition, clairvoyance, ghosts, etc.

    Marx: No that would be Trotsky and the eternal revolution. Followed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Crystal…as the joke of calling them “Neo CONs” is that they are Trotskyites from the far LEFT burrowing up like prairie dogs in the Right. …Joke and irony now long since lost.

    #71736
    zerosum
    Participant

    Confirmation bias, the tendency to process information by looking for, or interpreting, information that is consistent with one’s existing beliefs. This biased approach to decision making is largely unintentional and often results in ignoring inconsistent information.

    If you notice the following, the source may be biased:

    Heavily opinionated or one-sided
    Relies on unsupported or unsubstantiated claims
    Presents highly selected facts that lean to a certain outcome
    Pretends to present facts, but offers only opinion
    Uses extreme or inappropriate language
    Tries to persuade you to think a certain way with no regard for factual evidence
    The author is unidentifiable, lacks expertise, or writes on unrelated topics
    Is entertainment-based or a form of parody or satire
    Tries to sell you something in disguise

    ————–
    Here is my bias presentation style.
    1. If I use Italicsthen it means that I “clicked and pasted” and that the info is better presented than what I could present it or it is the bias opinion/fact of someone else.
    2. If I use bold then it means that I’m highlighting a specific point for your attention.
    3. If I give my opinion, then I don’t do anything to highlight those words.
    4. You are always free to continue with your own bias and find your own path to contentment.

    #71738

    I’d need a death rate and we don’t have one

    india

    #71739
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    The article about the UK shows us why it’s not a surprise that Covid hit so hard there. Covid seems to hit the hardest populous countries that have a large gap between the rich and the poor. Contrary to what Dr. D seems to think (and his comment makes me wonder if he even RTFA), if it weren’t for the NHS, the UK would probably have a per-million death-rate from Covid that would equal or surpass the USA.

    #71740
    Mister Roboto
    Participant

    WRT India daily death-rate Covid graph: One gets the impression that the medical establishment in India is actually serious about treating Covid. Kudos.

    #71741
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    The excess death data for Europe has been updated, and for Week 11, there are no excess deaths for any age group, and no excess deaths for any of the reporting countries, except for Israel (which is near the “substantial increase” level).

    This seems odd since Israel has probably vaccinated a higher percentage of its population than any other country. “Israel has administered two doses of COVID-19 vaccine to more than half its population, the health minister said on Thursday, a world-beating roll-out” (Yahoo news)

    https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps#excess-mortality
    (choose Weekly instead of Cumulated)

    #71742
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “Guinness World Records Carefully Monitoring Cuomo and Whitmer for Most Seniors Killed”

    https://babylonbee.com/news/guiness-book-of-world-records-carefully-monitoring-both-cuomo-and-whitmer-for-most-seniors-killed-record

    “the source may be biased if:”

    Sounds like me.

    Not necessarily, since I already don’t trust the test, don’t trust the science, and don’t trust the statistics (and we’ve all endlessly indicated why), AN article doesn’t move me. I’m considering death rate here, SEEMS to have had a minor rise, way back when, which could ALSO be pulling at-edge deaths forward. I’m referring to the Euro death rates, as per France, often posted here, where month after month, no all-in death rate. Are the French special or something? Aliens? Different genetics? No, they’re similar, but get more sun than the English and are hammering away stronger on HCQ.

    Same with Africa, Thailand, Vietnam, blah blah blah. China for God’s sake, if you want to believe them. So…it kills everybody EXCEPT whole continents that ignore them and have notoriously poor modern health care? Like India. Explain?

    My explanation, as I’m sure every one who’s ever heard me for more than two minutes is exhausted with, is that THEY’RE LYING. It’s clearly, easily, the simplest most direct explanation. There IS a Covid, but EXACTLY as the CDC-deniers refuse to credit, it’s 99.997% safe. Unless you’re over 70 with 3 co-morbidities and low Vitamin D, you’re going to live. We ALSO know, that CDC-deniers won’t admit, that the testing and classification is unlike anything in medical precedent. In Zika, for instance, it’s illegal to report that had Zika unless they had a strict, confirming test. That’s pretty normal. In Covid, you can have it WITHOUT a test, on symptoms alone, with a known-bad test, with no confirming test, and as widely reported, if you die of anything ever, after having been listed positive…like gunshots, car accidents, dementia…you are DEFINTELY and proudly listed as dying OF Covid.

    Add all these together and you get a wildly, stupidly, illogically, unscientifically death count. …Which is still INCREDIBLY LOW. Obama’s H1N1 or whatever was still as deadly, and nobody cared because 99.997%. And we didn’t need to hyperinflate while clamping down so that the inflation wouldn’t end the system instantly. Only slower, with rising lumber prices.

    But I’m sure you want to tell me how a 100nm mask stops (and also doesn’t stop) a 4nm virus, when you can see your breath in the air and fog your glasses, and can’t (but also can) cross the Channel and stops at the border between Denmark and Sweden. My explanation doesn’t require UFO-level scientific contortions. They publish their own lies every day. Wheel of Fauci says air speed is 7 masks today. Merkel says she’s “following the science” by locking down, then not an hour later, just like St. Fauci and the “I told them not to wear masks, oops I lied about herd immunity” about every hour. So we KNOW they’re lying. I’m not telling you anything new. We’re only disagree on just how OUTRAGEOUSLY and intentionally they’re lying.

    My assumption is that if they lie a little, they’ll lie a lot. If they’re in power, they always lie as a first recourse. If they’re protecting something, they’ll lie. “When it’s important, you have to lie.” and if they were wrong, they will also lie to cover it up and avoid mild personal embarrassment.

    All of those are true, all are proven. Each one is confirmed, every day, already. They’re lying.

    #71743
    John Day
    Participant

    Dr.D said:
    “Intuition is that we are attached to, made of, and spring forth of the eternal source, consciousness. As we are connected, beneath our “conscious” minds, or those who have worked to unite the subconscious and conscious, then we have ‘signals’, perhaps in the body, perhaps in the mind or imagination, that we can interpret to be a radar-reality, the ‘seeing’ of “what is”, the “I am”, the universe that is out there past our knowledge and sight. As this trickle issues forth differently for each person there isn’t a single training course on it, but everyone worldwide knows intuition, clairvoyance, ghosts, etc.”
    🙂 Nice to get to know you better, Mate!

    Also said:
    “Marx: No that would be Trotsky and the eternal revolution. Followed by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Crystal…as the joke of calling them “Neo CONs” is that they are Trotskyites from the far LEFT burrowing up like prairie dogs in the Right. …Joke and irony now long since lost.”

    Yep, Marx mainly just described the capitalism of his day excruciatingly well, and did NOT prescribe some future course to unseat it, believing that to already be underway, and probably seeing that it was too complicated to possibly prescribe a reparative mechanism to amend its flaws.

    #71745
    John Day
    Participant

    False Targets is the blog post today. I’ll pick some pieces to avoid failed posts.
    http://www.johndayblog.com/2021/03/false-targets.html

    #71746
    John Day
    Participant

    Bush: ‘You Are Either With Us, Or With the Terrorists’ – 2001-09-21
    http://www.voanews.com/archive/bush-you-are-either-us-or-terrorists-2001-09-21

    ​Thanks Eleni. A Wilderness Of Lies
    ​ ​Similarly, the militarization of Washington is becoming another topic for regime experts to analyze. The bizarre reaction of the inner party to the very peaceful demonstrations in January makes no sense at face value. There must be another reason for why they are telling the citizens that they will shoot the next demonstrators who come into the city to petition their rulers for redress. The question is, what are they plotting next?
    ​ ​That is the problem with black-box government. When Brezhnev was in control of the party, people did not need to know what was going inside the Kremlin, because the Kremlin was predictable. It is why Russians who remember those days look back fondly on those times. It was a time relatively free of politics. They woke up every day knowing the rules were going to be the same as they were yesterday. When the black box became unstable, no one could be sure of anything.
    ​ ​This is the state of the American regime. No one knows what is really going behind the razor wire and Army troops patrolling it. We are left to analyze video of Biden falling down the stairs of Air Force One and reading the body language of his handlers. Amateur linguists try to tease meaning out of his incoherent mutterings on Zoom sessions. The other geriatrics running the party are scrutinized by regime analysts, looking for clues to contextualize their behavior.
    ​ ​Like the Soviet empire, the American empire is now a confusing black box. It does things and makes noises, but none of it can be accepted on its face, so the world is left to guess. As citizens, we are forced to rely on private networks and create our own narratives to explain what we are seeing. There is the public truth and then millions of private truths. This is the result of black-box government. It is a wilderness of lies.
    http://www.takimag.com/article/a-wilderness-of-lies/

    #71747
    John Day
    Participant

    ​Up to half of us might be domestic-terrorists, or at least sympathetic to domestic-terrorists.​
    ​Glenn Greenwald: The U.S. Intelligence Community, Flouting Laws, is Increasingly Involving Itself in Domestic Politics
    Involvement of the intelligence community in the domestic activities of U.S. citizens is one of the most dangerous breaches of civil liberties and democratic order the U.S. Government can perpetrate. It was after World War II when the CIA, the NSA and other security state agencies that wield immense and unlimited powers in the dark were created in the name of fighting the Cold War. Legal and institutional prohibitions on wielding that massive machinery against the American public were central to the always-dubious claim that this security behemoth that operates completely in the dark was compatible with democracy. As the ACLU noted, “in its 1947 charter, the CIA was prohibited from spying against Americans, in part because President Truman was afraid that the agency would engage in political abuse.”
    Since then, Truman’s fear has been realized over and over. Some of the worst post-WW2 civil liberties abuses have been the result of breaches by the CIA and other agencies of this prohibition. As the ACLU documents, the CIA in the 1960s was caught infiltrating and manipulating numerous domestic political activist groups. Under the auspices of the War on Terror, entire new bureaucracies (such as the Department of Homeland Security) and new legal regimes (such as the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act) were designed to erode these long-standing limitations by dramatically increasing surveillance powers aimed at U.S. citizens. And by design, the infiltration of these security state agencies in U.S. domestic politics has dramatically escalated.
    ​ ​As the first War on Terror was escalating, The Washington Post — under the headline “CIA Is Expanding Domestic Operations” — reported in October, 2002, that “The Central Intelligence Agency is expanding its domestic presence, placing agents with nearly all of the FBI’s 56 terrorism task forces in U.S. cities.” ​…
    ​In the years following, two NSA whistleblowers — William Binney and Edward Snowden — both cited their horror over the turning of the surveillance machinery against American citizens as the reason for their decision to denounce their agency. One of the aspects that most disturbed me about the Russiagate conspiracy theory from the start was that it was created and disseminated by the CIA and related agencies with the intent, first, to alter the outcome of the 2016 election, and then to undermine the elected president with whom they were at war.​..
    ​ The head of the Church Committee, Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), made clear in his iconic quote on Meet the Press in 1975 that those reforms were primarily motivated by fears that the U.S. Government would one day turn its vast intelligence powers onto the American people, rendering core civil liberties an illusion.​..
    …the Biden administration, along with leading Democrats such as Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), have been stating explicitly that one of their top priorities is the adoption of new laws designed to import the Bush/Cheney/Obama War on Terror onto U.S. soil for domestic purposes.
    greenwald.substack.com/p/the-us-intelligence-community-flouting

    #71748
    John Day
    Participant

    Old & New media: the many roads to perdition​ , John Ward, The Slog​
    ​ ​Some examples from this weekend. The Telegraph runs a piece saying scientists are “excited” about a new type of test that can ‘help senior citizens get treatment more quickly’. It was so exciting, in fact, that the bedazzled journo forget to tell us what it is. Or how it works. Or why it might be better than simply giving the over 60s Ivermectin whether they have symptoms or not. It’s pure virtue signalling, designed to distract from the unsolved mystery of why experimental not-quite-vaccines that import mRNA (and kick other nasties down the road) have been preferred to HCQ/Zinc and Ivermectin….both of which were targeted by a concerted smear campaign from health bureaucrats, most notably the US and French.​..
    ​ Above all, the golden rule is no opeds or speculation about the bigger game in play.
    You can mention that Covid has made Rishi Sunak’s life difficult. You can express the view that Biden’s spending splurge and opened borders may have risks attached. You can suggest that the EU has some existential problems. But don’t mention what the IMF is up to, don’t ask why “temporary” Zirp is still with us nine years later, and under no circumstances suggest that the Gigarich have everything to gain from a virus that miraculously appeared within months of them all hinting at ‘the danger’.
    Because that sort of non-violent terrorism, of course, is also wild conspiracy theory.
    therealslog.com/2021/03/21/old-new-media-the-many-roads-to-perdition/?unapproved=967490&moderation-hash=790b6d00a0723a8ce57d3b3c6e09cefd#comment-967490

    ​So what is the use of lockdowns? Really? To what interests are lockdowns useful?
    They keep going on and on. They don’t reduce “excess deaths”. They must do something right.
    ​Lockdown One Year On – It doesn’t work, it never worked & it wasn’t supposed to work
    off-guardian.org/2021/03/23/lockdown-one-year-on-it-doesnt-work-it-never-worked-it-wasnt-supposed-to-work/

    #71749
    John Day
    Participant

    Consolidation of power at the top. Does that end up hurting anybody?
    What does “power” do? What is “power”?​ Do Google, the CIA and NSA have a “thing”?
    Leaked Docs Show Obama FTC Gave Google Its Monopoly After Google Execs Helped Obama Get Re-Elected
    Leaked documents from the FTC’s 2012 investigation of Google show exactly what is wrong with the state of American antitrust enforcement.
    ​ ​Records and reporting about the 2012 investigation suggest the FTC did so while bending to political pressure from the Obama White House — which was, in turn, bending to political pressure from Google. William Kovacic, a former FTC chair under President George W. Bush, reviewed the more than 300 pages of documents leaked to Politico and concluded the agency overlooked “what many experts and regulators would consider clear antitrust violations,” calling the specificity of issues outlined “breathtaking.”
    thefederalist.com/2021/03/22/leaked-docs-show-obama-ftc-gave-google-its-monopoly-after-google-execs-helped-obama-get-re-elected/

    #71750
    John Day
    Participant

    ​Is Pfizer more powerful than Argentina on the global chessboard?
    Where are the actually powerful humans, whose interests are served?
    The game is certainly not what we envision it to be when a vaccine maker can take military bases of “sovereign nations” as “collateral” against future-lawsuits from vaccine-injured citizens.​
    odysee.com/@januszkowalskii1979:e/The-Truth-about-Pfizer—Pfizer’s-Corporate-Takeover-of-the-World:9

    This was inevitable, and it looks bad, so don’t let people look at it. Oops.
    Now, what is Plan-B?
    Border Facility Photos Leak Revealing Hundreds Of Children Huddled In “Terrible Conditions”
    ​(​I​ humbly submit that giving these teenagers ivermectin prophylaxis from COVID, and flying them “home” with some money in their pockets, and some money for the home-government, is the cheapest and most expeditious option to the current American administration.)​
    http://www.zerohedge.com/political/border-facility-photos-leak-revealing-hundreds-children-huddled-terrible-conditions

    #71751
    John Day
    Participant

    False Spirituality Is The Friend Of Corrupt Power. True Spirituality Is Its Enemy. Caitlin Johnstone
    caitlinjohnstone.com/2021/03/25/false-spirituality-is-the-friend-of-corrupt-power-true-spirituality-is-its-enemy/#comment-59704

    #71752
    John Day
    Participant

    Top House Democrat Says Biden Plans to Stay in Afghanistan Beyond May 1st
    Rep. Adam Smith claimed May 1st is ‘too soon’ to pull out, but the Pentagon said it can meet the deadline if ordered to withdraw
    news.antiwar.com/2021/03/24/top-house-democrat-says-biden-plans-to-stay-in-afghanistan-beyond-may-1st/

    #71753
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Overall death rates are meaningless considering how radically we’ve altered the daily function environment. A thousand variables caused by public and goovernment response to covid. We can’t say clearly exactly what’s killing whom or if the death rate is higher or lower than the average BECAUSE THE AVERAGE HAS BEEN SUSPENDED AND IN FACT PERMANENTLY ALTERED. (ouch! those CAP keys are HOT!)

    Anyone saying the death rate proves covid is some kind of a sham is fooling themself: they don’t know.

    Anyone saying the death rate proves covid is a major danger is fooling themself: they don’t know.

    But there is a coronavirus called covid, it has killed people, not all of them ancient or morbidly obese or lifelong smokers. We know that much, or at least feel confident that this much is true. There is a spike-protein naughty genomically sequenced and called SARS this or covid that or kong flu.

    I’m amused by how so many professing lovers of liberty and self-responsibility spend so much energy turning covid into the latest anti-government propaganda device, focusing sometimes obsessively on the negative things others do, rather than spreading the good word that there are things like vitamin D and ivermectin, not to mention going outdoors, especially without a mask.

    It’s not like we can do a damn thing about the tide of history currently inundating our social shores. But we can take care of our individual health using the best knowledge we can find, and share this message with others. They don’t need to hear how this is all a gubmint plot. Such negative information tends to make people double down on the delusions they’ve bought into. (Someone quoted Twain the other day remarking how it’s easier to fool people than convince them they’re being fooled.) People are already fed up with the government. What they need to stand up to the oppression is not yet another Portrait of Evil sermon. What they need is to know that they really can take care of themselves against a virus by, you know, taking care of themselves. Positive energy and actions. That stuff whose absence we so bemoan while doing so little to at least take care of what we have, oppression or not.

    Preaching against the Evil Machinations of Empire is as hypnotically paralyzing to the average soul as the bullshit coming from mainstream media and authority. Pretty soon it’s all the same: self-reinforcing broadside negativity encouraging paranoiac fear and sense of powerlessness.

    Hushitude

    (the bots of course mistake some of the lyrics)
    There’s snaughty nosed people everywhere we’re at
    There ain’t nobodoy know where ever satisfy
    So they bitch bitch bitch every single day
    If they weren’t bitchin they’d have nothin to say

    All the bitching I hear beats all I’ve ever seen
    Everybody’s busy bitching about everything
    All day long seven days a week
    I bet your even in the bed bitchin in your sleep

    [Chorus:]
    Bitch bitch bitch what you bitchin about
    Bitch bitch bitch why don’t you shut your mouth
    Bitch bitch bitch so you might as well just,
    Quit your bitchin and go to hell
    Why don’t you eat shit and go fuck yourself

    There’s snaughty ass people everywhere I go
    There all bitchin about somebody they don’t even know
    Bitch bitch bitch that’s all you ever do
    I bet behind your back somebody’s bitchin bout you

    [Chorus:]

    All you do is bitch and you can’t seem to quit
    You know your not suppose to talk with a mouth full of shit
    Bitch bitch bitch we’ve all hear enough
    Why don’t you mind your own business and shut the fuck up

    [Chorus:]

    Why don’t you
    Quit your bitchin and go to hell
    Why don’t you eat shit and go fuck yourself
    <end>

    If I had a dollar for everytime someone told me this I could buy myself new jammies and bunny slips and a gallon of good double malt scotch. I personally feel no animosity toward anyone here, at least not that extends beyond a moment’s brow wrinkle, but take it from an old bitch: all this bitching and whining gets old.

    #71754
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    I noticed this a while back, but today seems like as good a time as any to express this opinion on the writings of Dr. D. The only other writer I’ve come across that can describe the current human condition, both individually and socially, better than he is a little-known Swedish esoterician by the pseudonym of Laurency.

    At least for me, a high level of wit and sarcasm (often appearing as exaggeration) are needed to convey ideas with any hope of penetrating our thick skulls and defensive egos; otherwise, they are easily shrugged off. If what he says “gets under your skin” I would say that his method is working. Whenever I read his comments, each idea rings like a find crystal wine glass.

    #71755
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    @ madamski

    I hope that I have not been bitchin

    You are right though. Go live your life instead of talking about it

    #71756
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Maxwell Quest

    Dr. D is hardlty the only one. I include myself although I’ve learned to mostly curb that dog. And there are a few here who almost always focus their remarks positively and get too little feedback for it, a poverty to which I contribute and hope to correct.

    High wit and sarcasm are useful tools for cracking hard nuts, and some days I am awed by Dr. D’s way with an irony pickaxe. But the point of cracking a nut is for the goodies inside not the breaking of the shell. Yes, one has to break eggs to make an omelot. Eggs broken, one then needs to cook up something good because the rupture of defensive cognitive dissonance is exhausting work that needs good strong positive nourishment.

    “You don’t have to know anything to be brilliantly negative. Do you understand that, sir? Anybody who can speak can be brilliantly negative. The only sign of intelligence is to be brilliantly positive. Anyone can say that there are no solutions; that’s being brilliantly negative. To assert that there are solutions, and demonstrate them, is being brilliantly positive.” R. Buckminster Fuller

    INcidentally, “Anyone can say that there are no solutions; that’s being brilliantly negative.” does not mean that there must always be a solution. It just means that bitching is bitching. A little is good for the soul, a lot is a drag all around. So I cite Fuller not to demand technical solutions from anyone: I don’t believe they exist exist per individually experienced ad hoc adapatations to evolving reality. I cite Fuller becaue he reminds us that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Fuller could be very caustic indeed… but always used the energy liberated thereby to promote positive results.

    Too many posters here, in my arrogant opinion, not only wallow in the gloom (great fun that I sometimes indulge) to the point where it defeats the positive purpose (know thine enemy) while frequently inflicting the wallower with attributes of the enemy they’ve identified. For example, virtually every day, someone in the comments spreads disinformation (lies) in the protest of, and under the shadowy cover of, the daily flood of lies from mainstream authorities.

    “It came from source x, therefore it’s bullshit. Let me prove it with this bullshit that is oh so true because it calls source x a liar, and anyone who calls source x a liar is telling the truth.” (I deliberately oversimplified this to hammer the point. In practice, it is more nuanced.)

    Adaptation and Tradition

    #71757
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    Re: India’s death rate. The graph that accompanies the article has been extremely condensed on a time scale (Doc Robinson can probably tell you what doing that is called). Condensing it sensationalizes it.

    If you check the Worldometers website the India graph accurately elongates the timeline for the entire year+ covid time frame.Their high point in deaths was around 1,100-1,200 per day in mid September 2020. They began distributing Ivermectin and the death rate dropped, reaching a low of around 100 per day by late Feb 2021. Their “big new wave” is 250 – 300 deaths per day. For a population of 1.4 billion. Well, ok then.

    I’ve been sort of watching India’s graph for months to see how much difference Ivermectin would make. The US can only wish it had pulled off that feat, especially considering the abject poverty and extreme density in areas of India.

    We have homeless people living in tents here in the US, of course, but the support system available to them keeps most of them … shall we say … plump? (not trying to justify leaving citizens homeless – just saying that you rarely see thin homeless people starving to death in the US).

    #71758
    Noirette
    Participant

    under: ..follow the science rubric :

    Re. comparisons between industry funded / vs not so medical research .. recommended:

    Epistemic Corruption, the Pharmaceutical Industry, and the Body of Medical Science by Sergio Sismondo, Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Front. Res. Metr. Anal., 08 March 2021 (link below)

    Paper is short, gives some review of previous attempts.

    quote: My focus here is on how the pharmaceutical industry corrupts medical science.

    Sergio rightly points out:

    -> that the ‘conflict of interest’ concerns / shows of clean hands are really facticious

    -> that much of the industry clinical research trials are ‘farmed out’ to contract research orgs – this part is the meat of the paper

    A point he might have made but did not (see e) .. in the paper) is that somehow it has become widley accepted and shrilly touted that there is a **gold standard** in med. res. i.e. the double-blind w. placebo trial. Some ‘methods’ are superior to others, are the tops!

    —BS. Different questions / problems / potential ‘scientific’ support for practices, call for different research approaches, methods, it all depends on many factors, and all have contstraints on them, e.g. ethical, theoretical, etc. etc. —

    This attitude serves to decry purely observational studies, which are just as good. (Other point which I may tackle later.)

    The nitty-gritty is that such trials are very expensive to run, and Big-Med-Pharma can afford it, while others either can’t or consider them not needed, useless, or a waste. (More pointless endavours, jobs, etc.) (Natch cheating even in such supposed ‘rigorous’ efforts is easily accomplished.)

    I think it was madamski who ironically wrote “Science following the Science” or something like that, it made me laugh, but it is so apt. Here we see that certain interests define what “The Science” should aspire to, or be, or display itself as, as engineered by powerful moneyed interests, Big Corps, and by extension, their paid-up politicians.

    #71759
    Noirette
    Participant
    #71760
    Noirette
    Participant

    other link maybe of interest:

    Scientific Analyses and Papers on Lockdown Effectiveness

    “Here collated are the papers of shame – the lockdown ideology is destroying our societal health, selling the lie of saving lives. Lockdowns cost net suffering and lives – by a huge margin. Here we gather together the evidence.”

    Exposition is one-sided, contra lock-downs.

    Personally, I don’t for now have an opinion about the effect of various ‘lock-down’ (restrictive, quarantining, stopping movement, travel, meetings, congregations, etc.) measures taken in various countries, locales, types of places, etc. There are just too many variables. Still, the aspect of never let a good crisis go to waste is terribly strong.

    #71762
    Bill7
    Participant

    Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 book ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ finally showed up in my mailbox today. Timely, because it *is* happening here- under the smokescreen of a grossly overblown “pandemic”.

    https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1296784-it-can-t-happen-here

    #newDarkAge

    #71763
    Bill7
    Participant

    ..indeed!

    C’mon, look on the Bright Side, you gloomy doomy-sayers: you’re using much less gas now in that car
    you no longer own- thanks to the “pandemic” and subsequent, likely never-ending lockdowns; and
    your kids are much less prone to sunburn w/ their permasks, and fear of going out in the super-scarey
    World..

    yeesh.

    #71764
    Bill7
    Participant

    ‘Merkel to Germans: Don’t be so negative! ‘ Can’t imagine *why* your citizenry is quite unhappy at having
    their civil liberties taken away. heh

    Almost like there a *script*, too, for all the discourse-policers you can find most everywhere, these days..
    Just for our Security and Protection, of course.. of course.

    politico.eu/article/angela-merkel-germany-dont-be-so-negative-coronavirus/

    #71765
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Womb With a View

    “…whole lotta frowns…”

    #71766
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    @ Bill7

    “ your kids are much less prone to sunburn w/ their permasks, and fear of going out in the super-scarey
    World..

    yeesh.”

    I concur. The last 50 years or so has seen such a convenient existence disconnected from life/nature that people are afraid to live in the real world

    #71767
    Maxwell Quest
    Participant

    @madamski

    Firstly, I enjoyed your response. I appreciate everyone on the TAE and try to read each comment with the anticipation of gaining new insight. As a loyal reader, I would like to comment more often, but there are many days when I either have nothing of substance to add, am too busy, or sidelined by health issues. And every now and then I feel motivated, only to get tied up in knots while trying to put my thoughts into words, and then reluctantly take it as a sign to STFU.

    That said, I do not find Dr D. to be negative or depressing at all, for I find buried within his rants the solutions, sometimes hinted at, other times explicit. I like that he stays away from the long-winded, detailed, one-size-fits-all solutions that we sometimes see from other authors, who are certain they know the correct path out of the maze and want us to follow. Instead, he tends to hammer away on fundamentals, which I greatly appreciate.

    #71768
    Michael Reid
    Participant

    https://www.rt.com/news/519177-nose-masks-restaurant-covid-protection-mexico/

    I am seriously worried for anyone who thinks this is good

    #71769
    Bill7
    Participant

    MR said: I concur. The last 50 years or so has seen such a convenient existence disconnected from life/nature that people are afraid to live in the real world <

    Yep.. video games in particular were a Masterstroke by Those Who Rule Us: “why go outside? Stay wombed
    into your l’il dreamworld, and learn to be helpless in the real one..”

    “you’re a cunspiracy theoriss!”

    ok

    #71770
    Glennda
    Participant

    @Madamski
    “I cite Fuller because he reminds us that it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. ”
    Thanks.
    What candles are each of us lighting for our communities?
    John Day does a good job.
    Ilargi does too.
    So do many others here. Thanks to all the candle lighters!

    #71771
    Bill7
    Participant

    On that note: Mahler Symphony Six- III. Andante Moderato. Günther Herbig / Saarbrücken RSO-

    Hope the link works.

    #71772
    Germ
    Participant

    Buy HCQ, IVM, AZITH, DOXY etc. here while you can.

    https://www.ziverdokit.store/

    You’ll need it for the oncoming variants. The shit “vaccine” won’t help.
    Good luck all.

    #71773
    zerosum
    Participant

    Update:
    After an hour of waiting I got the “PFzer vaccine”.
    Today it was for senior 75 to 80 yrs
    I was surprised that there were still so many still alive.
    75% of those in line appeared to be in worst health than me. Overweight, canes, wheelchairs, & in pain.
    YEP! I know that I’m fortunate.

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