Huskynut

 
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  • in reply to: Debt Rattle November 15 2020 #65631
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Artuua @DBS
    Your points are both valid.

    It’s true that sanctions aren’t war. Trump has bombed less than Hillary would have, and almost certainly less than Biden will if he gets in. He may well have bombed even less, were he not under constant pressure to demonstrate that he wasn’t “soft” – on Russia, Iran or whatever. Credit where credit is due – for all the sh*t that’s hurled at Trump – some warranted, some not – his record on armed conflict, and his present increased actions to withdraw troops (though highly suspect in timing) deserve merit.

    AND – sanctions are a form of violent coercion targeting innocent citizens for political objectives. And Trump has used them extensively, eg preventing Iranian and Venezuelan citizens from accessing medicine causing certain deaths in the process.

    It’s kinda weird that Trump – for all his gauchness – has favoured less visible violent coercion, whereas Obama – for all his Nobel peace prizes – was content to bomb and invade.

    Is one better or worse than the other? I guess on balance I see sanctions as the lesser evil, in that if reversed, starving people can get better. Whereas exploded people are still dead. But it’s a pretty trivial distinction.

    It would’ve been very interesting to see what Trump would’ve done absent the constant media vitriol. But there was absolutely no doubt what Obama, and Hillary, and Biden’s instincts were, even absent the pressure.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 13 2020 #65552
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @VArnold
    The irony of Tedros bloviating about Thailand is soooo… exquisite. So, turns out it’s an excellent idea for your healthcare to be decentralised, widespread, well-funded and close to the consumer? Huh, who’d a thunk it? This from the head of a massively-centralised, inefficient idiocracy that bears much responsibility for the chaotic nature of the global covid response.

    Contrary to his statements and as multiple studies have shown, there is precisely zero correlation between lockdowns, mask-wearing etc and outcome. We’ve had the entire world as a real-timie laboratory for nine months now.. that’s a huge data set. If WHO’s measures worked, the trends would stick out like dog’s bollocks within the data. They don’t. Which means they’re either marginally effective, or ineffective.

    Thailand deserves to feel very good about their outcome. I’m not casting shade on that for a second. But as to what mixture (and type) of action and sheer dumb luck was responsible, we just don’t know. WHO doesn’t know. Or if they do know, they ain’t saying.

    The entire WHO leadership should be summarily dismissed and the organisation slashed and burned. All Tedros is trying to do with this slimey PR schtick is trying to associate the WHO name with Thailand’s successful outcome to avoid a justly deserved tarring and feathering.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 12 2020 #65502
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Finally! Concerte evidence that production of clickbait has been automated and handed to AI:
    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/biden-administration-expected-revamp-focus-white-collar-crime

    in reply to: Lockdowns Make Time Stand Still #65458
    Huskynut
    Participant

    A great couple of days posts from everyone – thank you.

    My own illustrations of “peak surreality”:
    1. One Covid case (nb: case, not death) identified in Auckland in last day or so. They can’t identify the source – no contact with borders or other known possibly sources. I just got a txt from work – ” all staff in the Auckland office, please follow Ministry of Health guidelines and stay away from the Auckland CBD until further notice. ‘Cos it’s sane in a city of nearly 2 million to behave like this..

    2. My own office in Wellington shares a building with some floors occupied by Defense staff. One Defense guy tests positive Covid. Their entire floor(s) closed for “deep cleaning”. Serious consideration given to doing the entire building.

    All as a logical – nay inevitable – consequence of buying into the “original sin”.. the premise that a highly contagious virus can “eliminated” with sufficient vigilence and effort. Complete logical and logistical insanity. The absence of logos as Dr D might say.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 1 2020 #65090
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Bill7
    It’s impossible to get a man (woman) to understand that which their paycheck is dependent on them not understanding..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 1 2020 #65077
    Huskynut
    Participant

    And on a different note – RIP Robert Fisk.
    Hot on the heels of Stephen Cohen recently, we seem to losing much the old guard that we can ill afford to lose right.
    Hopefully Taibbi, Greenwald et al are stepping up to fill the void.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle November 1 2020 #65076
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Bill7
    saying we need to “listen to our heart™”, WRT any
    actions one might take. Yeah, that’ll do it.
    Reminded me a bit of Ms. Johnstone, who often says what we need is “a revolution in consciousness™”, and Stuff Like That..

    I second (and third and fourth) that sentiment.
    I used to enjoy reading CJ. Then they turned Victoria where she lives into a police state and she kept writing about international politics..
    Yeah… followers are sure going to “rise like lions” to your prose when you raise nary a whimper about tyranny right on the back doorstep..! lol
    It was then I applied one of her favourite maxims “watch what they do, not what they say”. Not very flattering to say the least..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle Halloween 2020 #65046
    Huskynut
    Participant

    There’s a couple of wonderful passages today over at lockdown sceptics which deserve a repost:
    First Lord Sumption (condensed) on the UK:
    Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially when fear is created as people crave security so the state creates more fear and obtains greater control. Yet Parliament is not ready and willing to act and to stand for its high callings, rather it seems to have abrogated its responsibilities.

    Fear is a potent instrument of the state. It promotes intolerant conformism and abuse. Fear was deliberately stoked up by the state and by selective use of statistics and modellers: these were not accidental matters but part of a strategy whose errors and failures assisted in success. Boris is sustained in power by appealing to the irrational and emotional in collective wisdom.

    Boris is in power only with the consent of Parliament on behalf of the People, which he side-lines and avoids, thus diverging from our constitutional past, and acts unlawfully whilst instructing the police to do likewise and with political discrimination in their actions.

    Appropriate powers were available in the Civil Contingency Act 2004 and the Coronavirus Act 2020 but were ignored as Parliament had powers of oversight.

    Boris unlawfully used Part 2a of the Public Health and Disease Act 1984, as amended 2008. Such actions required Parliamentary scrutiny and approval which Boris wanted to avoid. Boris’s actions are totalitarian as they did not get Parliament’s approval. (See Lord Hoffman in House of Lords Ex Parte Simms 2000.)

    Government by decree is not just constitutionally objectionable but bad government creating a delusion that authoritarian government gets things done. There is no detailed knowledge, no strategy, no wider thought, no research, no understanding of the all-round implications for the economy or health of the nation. The ministers act on the hoof, promote loyalty against wisdom, flattery against objective advice. These absences promote unfounded self-confidence, banish moderation and restraint. All these are vices seen in this Government.

    The British Public must wake from its failures to understand how these matters are an assault on social interaction eroding the glue of social wellbeing of a once united country and engage actively in politics, join political parties, and connect with MPs.

    And secondly, what it looks like when communities mobilise against excessive measures:
    Stop Press: The residents of Waynesville in North Carolina have shown some gumption when threatened with a local mask mandate. From Health Impact News.

    Waynesville leaders backed down from a proposed local mask mandate Tuesday night after nearly 100 people packed town hall to voice their opposition.

    Tensions rose before the meeting ever began when the assembled crowd — who were being held in the lobby until the doors opened — learned there wasn’t going to be enough room for them all in the town board room.

    Those wishing to speak were told to fill out forms and wait until their name was called. This didn’t sit well with many in the crowd, who demanded the meeting be moved to the sidewalk outside so that everyone could see and hear it — touching off a loud chant of “Take it outside.”

    Town staff and police officers eventually quelled the crowd and convinced them that waiting for their turn to speak was the only option. Another uprising ensued after the waiting crowd was told they couldn’t come in without a mask when their turn rolled around.

    The vast majority weren’t wearing a mask, given the whole reason they were there in the first place was to speak against the proposed mask mandate.

    Some claimed exemptions for religious and health reasons, but others simply said they weren’t going to wear one and it would violate their rights to be denied entry to a public hearing on that grounds.

    In the end, masks were offered but not compulsory.

    Wishful thinking on my part perhaps, but small things like these, and black/latino voters deciding it’s their own business if they decide to vote Trump rather than being gaslit into having their vote dictated, Greenwald taking a stand and receiving such strong roots-led support, and Craig Murray in the UK standing for leadership of the SNP.. I smell a whiff of prole rebellion stewing.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 29 2020 #64983
    Huskynut
    Participant

    And Greenwald finally quits The intercept over their homogomush reportage..

    shit getting real..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 28 2020 #64952
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Vietnamvet
    As a NZ citizen I want to flatly challenge the idea NZ is “eliminating” anything. We’re hiding, that’s all. And being an isolated pimple on the butt of the world, we can hide hide better than most.
    The virus will ultimately have it’s way with us, as it will for all others. As I observed earlier in the year – we can;t even keep fire ants out of NZ, despite fumigating all containers and the fact those bastards are visible to the naked eye. Eliminating a virus? Hubris.. utter hubris.

    But on the lighter side, and in keeping with the more upbeat note in recent days, I loved this vid:
    https://youtu.be/SkJPDXrlP6w

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 28 2020 #64948
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ VietnamVet
    Even if it were true, would it mean we should automatically do everything possible to prevent it?
    This is the crux of the risk aversion strategy at the heart of Taleb’s model – rational enough.
    But history shows all species to be anything but rational. Society is built on emotions and conventions and superstitions and irrational attitudes at least as much as on rationality.
    And animal species will reflexively seek to preserve their own lives, but not to the detriment of the social group.
    This is where I believe we’ve been “blinded by science”. Rationality is wonderful at what it does well, but sterile in other domains ala Spock. therefore our response should be considered, but – weighing all dimensions – not necessarily preferencing science.
    I was struck by the Saker’s latest column in referencing the death of Soleimani here:
    http://thesaker.is/when-exactly-did-the-anglozionist-empire-collapse/
    He may be right or wrong in his characterisation of the man, but the outlook and heart he describes are a fundamental part of deeply founded human nature.
    We’ve lost touch with it in our technocracy, but it lives within us despite ourselves.

    in reply to: Try 2021 #64940
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Beautifully said Ilargi.

    I caught up for drinks with a small group of friends last night.. we haven’t all got together for quite a while. Amongst the various musings on the recent NZ election, the upcoming US one, it was laid out plain – a couple of the guys have swallowed the double-down wokeness pills whole and recite the MSM chapter and verse. Myself and another guy having polarised the other way, much as you describe above. And the other two who don’t follow politics left looking completely baffled by it all.

    But despite the differences of outlook, we can all agree that the Uniparty continues unmolested, and despite the polarisation of views male/female, woke/conservative, BLM-following/law-and-order etc, the discussion that is conspicuously absent is around class-based politics. Which is as relevant as it ever was, but the most threatening thing to the Uniparty, if the struggling underclass were to recognise they have far more in common than the differences they’re encouraged to perceive.

    And for the first time in a long while, what I felt within the group was the power in being able to disagree forthrightly on many things, and then to state and feel the unity and commonality of people who’ve known each other a long while, through good times and bad.

    I do wonder whether despite the appearance of complete polarisation and distrust between factions, there is a consensus of dissent slowly forming. 2021 is gonna be amazing – stock up on popcorn..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 27 2020 #64897
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ Boogaloo @ Bill7
    Agree, but I’ll go a step further.
    The difference between Trump and Biden is like the difference between a shit sandwich and a shit omelette. At least the sandwich purveyor won’t attempt to convince you that rancid taste is really truffle..

    Trump’s done a bunch of douchebag things (fill these in yourself, by personal preference). Yet he’s faced the constraining headwind of virtually every MSM channel, the Russiagate idiocy, the impeachment etc.

    So somehow it’d be better if we (well, you actually, since I don;t get to vote in US elections..) elect Biden, who’ll advance closely-related idiocy which still benefits the elite over Joe Sixpack, but without any of the media constraint. Y’know – like Obama in his “nearly run out of bombs to drop on brown foreigners”, er “peacemaking” days. That’s gonna be better? In what way, exactly?

    There is no getting around the original fact that excrement is not intended for human consumption (except by denizens of the 3rd world in the brilliant “Yes Men” mockumentary).

    in reply to: Debt Rattle October 20 2020 #64639
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ teri – “Uh-huh, except the laptop thing isn’t really about Biden so much as his son, right? His son, who is not (correct me if I am wrong here) running for president”

    Excuse my directness, but that is some BS sophistry:
    1. Claiming Hunter is an “adult” is a stretch – he’s a poorly-functioning overgrown adolescent, as are long-term drug addicts in general. Daddy Joe spends a bunch of time bailing him out of various scrapes.. that’s a relationship of dependency not unlike childhood.
    2. Hunter clearly trades on the Biden name, which is directly related to the roles Joe has had and continues to play. There’s no independence there.
    3. It’s been generally-accepted fact and practice that the independence of senior politicians can be compromised by their loyalty to family over office, and thus it is directly relevant whether Joe has the capacity to be leveraged, blackmailed or otherwise compromised as a result of his loyalty to his personal loved ones.
    Of course the same applies to Trump! Witness the idiocy around the ever-increasing obsequious handling of Israel, based on Jared’s malign influence.
    Please, please don’t patronise our intelligence with “it’s not about Hunter…”!
    Then there’s the fact the Joe directly intervened in the Ukraine (on video record) and the side that would assist the corrupt organisation (Burisma) that Hunter is grossly overpaid to be on the board of. Pretending Joe and Hunter’s lives and roles aren’t intricately and immediately interviewed is.. back to sophistry.

    in reply to: The Early Treatment of Trump #64165
    Huskynut
    Participant

    I just saw a lovely quote attributed to Churchill, but so apropos to this years events:

    “Nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get into the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man, who knows where it hurts, is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialist.”

    *Boom* Churchill was a major b*st*rd, but what a great source of quotes…

    in reply to: How Not To Do Corona #64081
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ilargi
    And now what you see is the politicians don’t know what to do anymore. They turn to “their scientists” again, but many have before given advice that is different from what they say now, that hasn’t worked, and that often contradicts what their colleagues in other countries say.

    And I keep reiterating – “we’re following the science” is a concise statement of the problem itself. Despite their white coats and authoritative demeanours, most scientists study an ever-narrowing portion of the world and become “specialists”. They may have a little knowledge to contribute, but narrow “scientific” thinking is precisely what got us into this mess. You need generalist, lateral and wholistic thinking to tackle a dilemma which spans multiple domains (health, social, international politics etc).
    This was clear from the start, and apart from a wider acknowledgement months later that, nope, what we’re doing hasn’t worked and isn’t working, we seem to be little closer to the kind of thinking that could find a way forward. Somehow the ever-changing “science” views are still dominating the conversation.

    Again, the West is mesmerised by technocracy. You see it in the share prices of Amazon, Google et al. Technocracy is very, very good at solving specifically technical issues whilst generating all sorts of perverse and undesirable outcomes in other domains. And preferencing itself in service of profit, whilst cloaking it’s intentions in wonderful humanistic terms. Witness social media.

    Science and technocracy will be the death of our society. It’s not a great society on many fronts, but no society is a recipe for a shite-load worse outcomes..

    in reply to: How Not To Do Corona #64080
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski
    But I can’t take him seriously. His work is all audiovideo. Inherently hypnotic medium. No text available even when I google. Not to mention his share of the $$ that a class action suit would bring without doing anything to end the evil he believes is involved. By the time such a lawsuit would be won, covid and government responses to it will be history.
    I share both your cynicism and your preference for text over video, but I think your judgement is a bit harsh.
    So, he’s an ambulance chaser – so what? Our politicians and academia are myopic and bowdlerised. They’re going to drive a stake through the heart of any political or scientific call for accountability. So why not let the ambulance chasers have a crack? Much as I find that level of adversarial melodrama in pursuit of profit distasteful, why not?
    VW et al arguably took a greater hit to their reputation from the flow-ons of class action suits than from regulators developing backbones purely of their own accords.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63875
    Huskynut
    Participant

    .. and to add (to the detriment of your laboratory floor).. there is no “science” as stand-alone being, to follow or to reject.
    Best exemplar is the Scientific American which has morphed beyond recognition from a science-focussed publication to a politically-active medium.
    In some ways that’s good, in that “scientific method” was always an affectation for many human beings involved in science. But regardless of any person’s ability to live it truly, it’s a loss when totems are torn down. They may be unachievable in practice, but their spirit animates. I do feel (at a gutteral level) that the tearing down of virtually all our totems is not an accident, but a deliberate (political) process of disorientation. But maybe it’s just coincidence that everything is coming to a head as it is..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63874
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski
    Now you’ve traipsed ideological mud all over my nice clean laboratory floor.
    Ha.. nice line, it cracked me up. 🙂

    Yes, in a world riven with politics (where politics I define as in the choices we make that affect the lives and outcomes of others, not whether a political party is implictly involved), I assert that political choice is implicit and inherent in almost all the choices we make, regardless of whether we see and own the political dimensions of those choices.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63865
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ Mr House
    Just my own observation, but people who lean left generally really want to fit in with their peers. I live in the city and they try to shame you for not voting in this wonderful election with two candidates that don’t represent any of the views or policies i would support. When you argue that, they have nothing to say.
    Yep, that fits what I observe as well. Thing is, roll back a few years and I saw eye to eye with the mainstream left.. consistently voted for left wing parties etc. I’ve changed a bit, for sure, but they’ve changed far more. Many of the journalists on the left who were staunchly against invading Iraq for instance are churning out columns of ever-decreasing merit or relevancy.
    When I think about the trajectory from then till now, there was a period in the middle when social media took over, and many of them began grooming their public profiles rather than thinking too much. They often stopped challenging public narratives, and began parroting minor variances of whatever was the official lefty cause de jour. The same people, with demonstrably capable minds, became.. well, dross.
    I’m sure commercial pressures were a significant part of it (Matt Taibbi’s recent article charts this well), but I’m not clear what pressure it takes to turn these people who had social consciences into mindless droids..
    Now it seems that despite the excessive and overt virtually signalling of the majority of the left, it’s people on the right like Tucker Carlson, or Toby over at lockdownskeptics.org who are penning consistently excellent content with a social awareness.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63860
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ Mr House
    When has authority been correct since the year 2000?
    That’s a fair point, but I think the issue is more around the degree to which a lot of the left have outsourced their critical faculties to various groups.. the government included.
    When I see polls on how many people still (often fervently) believe the Russiagate narrative, the consequences are clear. Those people stopped thinking and outsourced their belief system to the MSM (backed strongly by the Dems). That’s a political decision right there – to be become a passive proxy for whatever idiocy is regurgitated down the line.
    The right of course does some of the same, and has the same blind proxy armies, but the left is conspicuously worse, and I speculate it has to do with the philosophies of endless victimhood, which have got more and more amplification in recent years.
    The right might have it’s rednecks, but the heart of conservativism (small c) is personal responsibility, which includes the obligation to think. As the left has descended further into reflexive and extreme collectivism, large parts of it have simply stopped using their own brains.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63858
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski
    I take your point, but again I disagree. Both sides are equally political
    The Dems political response tends toward credulousness and naivete. That they have focussed more extensively on the scientific/medical aspects and averted their gaze from the political implications doesn’t make them less political
    It’s not necessary to get into “conspiracy theory” that a hidden actor desires the the change to observe that the inevitable consequences of the action will manifest anyway. The Dems stick their fingers in their ears and pretend that the predictable consequences simply don’t exist.

    Take BLM – destroying neighbourhoods will predictably wreak havoc on those that live there. The left will destroy it anyway, whilst avoiding any discussion of the consequences. Willful, active blindness is a political action, even as it pretends to be actively occupied with just “the science”

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 28 2020 #63854
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski
    “At least the latter camp bases their attitude on known simple patterns of epidemics. This camp also tends to have less political ideology in their rationale. It places more trust in government actions than I do, but at least it doesn’t automatically assume that conspiracy theory is the only model through which to view this thing.”
    I see things almost exactly the opposite. An intervention isn’t apolitical simply because it’s done in the name of “science”. The scientism is just rationale – the true measure is the social consequence.
    Our social and political status quo is habeus corpus and individual freedom from compulsion, except where agreed via the legislative process.
    Lockdowns, compulsory mask wearing etc are inherently political actions because they overturn the status quo. I’m not implying they can never be justified, but to declare those apolitical, yet resistance to those is political because it’s rooted in personal views.. well, that’s upside down.

    in reply to: Incompetence “R” Us #63729
    Huskynut
    Participant

    There’s no doubt your heart’s in the right place, as your support of the soup kitchen and efforts in Greece, and tireless work here testifies.
    But your brain isn’t in quite the right place on any of this – sorry.
    You assert “lockdowns work” because your crude mechanistic first-principles assumption of how they spread is an almost perfect example of an unfalsifiable assertion.
    Then you dismiss comprehensive studies correlating lockdown against outcome (and demonstrating the almost complete lack of correlation) without reason or evidence.
    A – B pair studies of two countries are by definition useless, since it’s impossible to control for differences/variables between them. The only rational way to assess the value of lockdown is via the kinds of studies you dismiss.
    It’s OK – you’re entitled to your opinions – irrational and unsubstantiated though they may be. The illustration of the power of denial is as valuable as anything you could write!

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 25 2020 #63690
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Or, more succinctly:
    “We’re following the science” isn’t a solution. It’s a concise and accurate statement of the problem.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 25 2020 #63689
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @madamski – “Y2K was fixed in time for it not to be catastrophic, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a potentially major catastrophe… if left untreated”

    Y2K is a very illustrative comparitor.. thank you for raising it. I worked on Y2K, and I agree.. the absence of problems when the date rolled over was due in large part to the extensive work to mitigate it.

    But Y2K was almost the perfect problem for the technosphere to address. The issue lay entirely within the technical domain – apart from tradeoffs in financing and resourcing the remediation (vs applying that money elsewhere) there were no externalities to consider.

    Applying the same narrow technocratic thinking to Covid is precisely the problem. The externalities of lockdowns on personal freedom, the loss of jobs, the financial and social impact on societies are profound externalities. Which is why deferring to epidemiologists (or professors of risk) – with their often narrow and mechanistic mindsets – is so catastrophically foolish.

    Addressing Covid response in a rational way requires a profoundly holistic mindset, involving philosophy and morality as much as science. “We follow the science” is an incredibly stupid and self-defeating response.

    Unlike Y2K, Covid is the kind of problem the technosphere is utterly unprepared and unable to even dissect and process, let alone formulate a holistic response.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 24 2020 #63659
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Correction: It’s genuine impossible to distinguish.. the symptoms of blanket incompetence..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 24 2020 #63658
    Huskynut
    Participant

    “Thoughts? I know you guys don’t like to get to cynical but the cynical approach makes more sense then what we’ve been told.”

    It’s genuine impossible to distinguish.. the symptoms and blanket incompetence and malign influence appear the same. Occam’s Razor cut can cut either way, depending on perception.

    If Taleb were to apply his precautionary principle equally (risk = totalitarian destruction of much of the world) then he’d adopt a correspondingly cautionary outlook, since intent can’t be distinguished. But curiously, excess of caution in prevention of elderly deaths is treated as a different precautionary threshold to societal destruction. Not sure why, guess that’s why he’s a professor and me a mere observer..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 24 2020 #63657
    Huskynut
    Participant

    “Stay free of all movements, no matter how appealing they seem to be at first blush…”

    Yep. Participate in actions, affiliate if you choose to, but never “belong” to anything.
    “Belonging” implies ownership, and sooner or later you fealty to the “one true cause” will be questioned and/or tested.
    Remain outside, and you retain your own sovereign identity. There is nothing in this world worth surrendering that for.

    in reply to: Why Trump Will Win #63495
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Ilargi – a link for tomorrow perhaps.. Matt Taibbi has a wonderful column just out deconstructing all the media incentives and changes that have led to the hyper-polarised situation we now see.

    It’s been discussed here plenty in terms of the quality (or lack thereof) in MSM analysis, but I dont think I’ve seen it analysed quite so eloquently before. Sorry I don;t seem to be able to post the link (and will avoid posting the full text here, but google: “Hate Inc: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another”

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 18 2020 #63401
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Ah, those pesky decimal points, and order-of-magnitude errors, eh?

    Well, thank G_d the experts have found their maths error is all I can say. Now we get back to credulously echoing and amplifying their solemn pronouncements, rather than engaging wholeheartedly the evidence of our senses and the logic of our own brains.

    How could anyone have guessed the projections were wrong? Oh wait – everyone who observed that reality wasn’t remotely tracking the modelling and didn’t ascribe that to the magical efficacy of lockdowns. Lockdowns which – as has been posted here before – do not remotely correlate to Covid outcomes when modelled by scientists who, y’know, post their maths workings for external critique.

    Still, no harm no foul, right? Oh, apart from the trillions of dollars and millions of jobs lost. And the deferred medical care, trashed civil liberties and fear-saturated populace…

    “Resistance is Futile” shouted the Vogon guard..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 11 2020 #63149
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @teri – so sorry to hear about your experience with your Dad. Of course you’re (very reasonably) angry. Without wanting to defend trump, I just want to observe that virtually the entire world has made a complete clusterf*ck of handling Covid. All the errors you point out were taken not by him solely or exclusively – he’s president, not God. But OTOH, I empathise with what you must be feeling – I’ve had nothing like that happen to me this year, yet I’ve felt massively angry and wanting to hold someone/anywhere to account for the train-wreck that has played out. Sadly, I think it’s highly unlikely that anyone will ever be held accountable, and that making peace with that is an important part of the process.


    @Ilargi
    – firstly a compliment.. i think you’re handling the Trump thing well. The deluge of stories in the MSM doesn’t need any more amplification, only the counterpoints highlighted. That doesn;t make you a Trump fan-boy.
    Re your comment above “There are 28 million cases and counting. That’s 280,000 punctured lungs.”
    Please go back and read the article more carefully – it says“As many as one in every hundred patients hospitalized with Covid-19 suffer ‘punctured lung’“. I don’t have a count of hospital admissions to hand, but impossible to believe there’s been 28 million admissions.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 10 2020 #63115
    Huskynut
    Participant

    Covid vs flu – this paper:
    https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/wp2003.pdf
    plots Covid deaths by country against the severity of the previous two flu seasons.
    A natural conclusion (given mean age of Covid death matches mean life expectancy) would be that at-risk elderly are “harvested” by Covid in the same manner as they are by influenza.


    @Ilargi
    – you asserted earlier “I forgot to mention that lockdowns and facemasks DO work”. And you stated why you think they SHOULD work. Can you reference any studies which have assessed the efficacy of lockdowns and which support your assertion? As the studies I have seen to date, eg this one:
    https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/22/there-is-no-empirical-evidence-for-these-lockdowns/
    have established weak or even negative correlation between lockdowns and outcome. And that’s without getting into establishing causality beyond correlation.

    Sorry to be a pain in the ass, but just asserting they work, and then stating “oh, but in observed reality they haven’t” is an appalling way to make an argument.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 8 2020 #63020
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Carol – though that seems obvious to you or me, I doubt both organised power and the general public see it that way. It’s been remarkably depressing how frequently “lefties” have bought and recycled the rapist trope without any qualms. The sheep are being “protected” from danger in both cases.

    @Know – I’ve been following the AE911 group for a while – their commitment is amazing, and the Uni of Alaska report is remarkably comprehensive. No wonder NIST are determined not to engage with it.

    Related – a friend has been recycling the “conspiracy theory” trope at me, got me thinking. I believe that just as a paranoid tends to project their chaotic internal world onto the public world, and to universalise it, the same process is at work amongst the complacent middle class. Unless they’ve encountered serious trauma in some form, most middle class people have led sheltered, relatively happy lives. They tend to project those limited experiences onto the world, believe it is generally “good”, and discount the worst of human nature as “conspiracy theory”. This defense avoids having to confront the extent and depth of pain and depravity in the world. It ultimately becomes a habit such that political events are interpreted with maximum charity, and without joining the dots to see why they’re occurring or where they lead.
    Which refers back to the conversation here a few weeks back – processing reality is a thoroughly depressing business..

    in reply to: Debt Rattle September 8 2020 #63011
    Huskynut
    Participant

    I have huge respect for the efforts and lengths that Craig Murray go to in living by his principles, ans in supporting Assange. And he has his own legal battle in progress for reporting honestly and courageously on the Alex Salmond fit-up.

    And yes – anyone who done a skerric of reading into the Assange/Wikileaks understands what a travesty the whole process is.

    But as I was recently arguing with Caitlin Johnstone, who has been outspoken on every egregious topic APART from the police-state lockdowns in her own city of Melbourne, how on earth do you expect to engage and activate people to protest the most outrageous things elsewhere when they’re remaining passive while their own personal civil liberties have been arbitrarily and forcibly removed?

    Hence my stance around Covid – even if masks, lockdowns, social distancing etc were proven efficacious, they have negative externalities that affect society. The idea that saving lives trumps anything and everything, and that extreme precaution is mandated always and everywhere is plain batshit insane.

    Many of you are probably old enough to have read Robert Persig’s “Lola”, with his proposed hierarchy of morality. The idea that in ascending layers there is morality within biological, social, intellectual domains, and that the moral imperative of a higher layer trumps that of a lower layer. So that contrary to the prevailing “lives at all costs” narrative, when the moral needs of saving some lives (biological) meets the needs of preserving a functioning society (social), genuine morality demands that biology is subordinate to society.
    That the same principle that underpins individuals sacrificing their own lives in wartime for the good of the society.
    Somehow in this egocentric era, a huge number of people have convinced themselves of the precise opposite – that losing some/any lives is the ultimate sin/crime. That’s completely the opposite of what almost all reflective myths and societies over time have concluded.

    in this Assange is a martyr, taking one for the global team. i’m sure he suspected it could come to this, but he went ahead anyway. That’s what courage looks like.. the opposite of our compliant cover-your-ass politicians and media.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle August 31 2020 #62774
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @JohnDay
    THANK YOU. That RFK Jr video is extraordinary.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle August 31 2020 #62773
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @sumac.carol – I agree the virus mutates, though haven’t seen any studies showing what extent antibodies from one strain protect against a different strain. Given studies showing some T-cell immunity to Covid having been produced from exposure to other coronoviruses, it’s likely there will be some cross-over immunity, but we just don’t know.
    But mutation is very likely to effect the efficacy of vaccines in a similar way to natural immunity. So comparing my proposed strategy to any “wait for the vaccine” strategy (which is what the NZ government has just publicly said is their official strategy) seems a “like for like” proposal in my view.
    With a couple of additional advantages:
    – it could be commenced immediately, as opposed to incurring lockdown costs + subsequent vaccination costs
    – seeing increasing numbers of people with “Covid recovered/immunity” badges would help counter the off-the-chart fear/aversion shown by multiple polls, where the majority of people have a completely distorted idea of the stats and risk because all the see/read/experience reinforces the negative side of the risk equation

    in reply to: Debt Rattle August 31 2020 #62769
    Huskynut
    Participant

    We’re looking at the vaccine thing exactly backwards. We already have a well-studied mechanism of producing effective antibodies with minimal risk to healthy individuals – its the virus.
    Sure, a well-tested, working vaccine could be useful for stimulating antibodies in higher-risk individuals.
    Meantime, take every healthy person who consents. Expose them to the virus (may as well use one of the weakest strains). Quarantine them for 10 days with regular medical monitoring by phone while their immune system does it’s business. Supply them with groceries etc so they don’t need to go out. Perhaps even give all prophylactic treatment with HCQ, Zinc etc. For the unlikely 0.04% who get quite ill, be ready to move them into hospital care. After 10 days, release them from quarantine with a badge allowing free movement, no mask etc etc. Which provides the incentive for healthy people to take a minor risk.
    The ethics of doing this would be no worse (I’d argue far better) than the ethics of deploying a vaccine that by definition has received vastly less testing/scrutiny than the virus itself.

    in reply to: A Society of Emasculated Liars #62528
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @ Ilargi “But one thing we still do know: there is not a government on the planet that has a mandate to kill off its own citizens.”
    This statement exposes two fallacies:
    1. That governments have a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) their citizens which supposedly trumps their requirement to uphold established democratic principles
    2. That government actions have the ability to meaningfully control the virus

    1. The status quo of democratic countries in consensus. It is habeus corpus. To overstep this threshold should be one of the gravest actions a government can possibly take. Protecting the lives of it’s citizens comes second to upholding this principle, else the fundamental fabric of the democracy is immediately shredded.
    A government should interfere in the freedom of its citizens only with the informed consent of its citizens. We’ve seen exactly the opposite – governments have been highly selective in releasing the advice they receive, have released it too late for any kind of discussion and consensus to be reached. Abetted by the media, they’ve fed their citizens a diet of fear-porn and carefully-groomed and highly-selective set of “facts”.
    Regardless of where we personally stand on the lethality of Covid and the appropriate responses, it is fundamentally and absolutely always wrong for governments to assert authority and coercion over their citizens when they could avoid doing so.
    Tyranny in modern times has always been underpinned by the hubristic notion on part of some person or group that they possessed some special relationship to the truth, and that their action (or lack of action) was essential for the overall good of the “herd”. It is the absolute basis of over-reach, which leads to tyranny.
    It’s no coincidence that R2P was the principle invoked in past years by the West to destroy Libya – the thinking and process is identical. As Bob Dylan pithily observed “sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace”.
    The wisdom of the many is always greater than the wisdom of individuals, especially those locked in echo-chambers. Hence the myths and fables in every country and tradition speaking to the dangers of hubris. And lo and behold – the emerging facts lead in every direction away from the initial assumptions about lethality, spread and immunity. But even if the initial beliefs had subsequently been validated, it would be by pure dumb luck only. The fact would remain that western governments have overturned their democratic mandates, and become extremely autocratic.
    2. Governments have no meaningful control over a viral pathogen, except by taking the most extreme measures.
    This was emphasised by the disingenuity and sleight-of-hand which accompanied the switch from “flatten the curve” to “eliminate the virus”. Governments can exert some meaningful control over the first of these using relatively moderate measures. But exerting meaningful control over the latter is an idiocy of “scientific” hubris – something that scientists and “risk professors” discuss in terms not remotely connected to the real world.
    Dmitri Orlov has characterised “the Technosphere” well in his writing, and that’s what’s at play here – the idea that humankind has developed the science and medicine and organisation and political structures to control and eliminate a virus. It hasn’t, and it never will, unless perhaps we decide to reduce the world to a homogenous sludge where citizens have the role of ants, but probably not even then. That’s just yet more hubris at play.
    A parallel might be the “war on drugs” versus harm minimisation strategies. After decades of the WoD, where are we? Absolutely nowhere useful, but with a bunch of coercive legislation and actions, and the likes of the CIA generating large sums of black funds to extend their coercive tentacles off-books.
    If someone truly believes that the government should protect it’s citizens at any cost, including at the expense of their own liberties or consensus, then the WoD is perfectly reasonable. I say it’s a failed abomination that on net clearly generates far more misery than it alleviates.
    What I remain boggled by is how remarkably few people – most who’ve generally enjoyed the benefits of it for their entire lives, mostly without lifting a finger in its defence – seem to believe that liberal democracy can be suspended and reinstated in the face of an external event without consequence.
    Back to the original premise:
    “there is not a government on the planet that has a mandate to kill off its own citizens.”
    Without standing firm on the principles of democracy, there is no legitimate government to do anything at all – there is only a tyranny, doing whatever it decides to.

    in reply to: Debt Rattle August 18 2020 #62300
    Huskynut
    Participant

    @Ilargi – is the google thing the fact that the occasional painting you’ve posted is topless/nude? Those have been around for centuries, but the moral puritanism (or at least the urge to censor) is strong these days..

    On an interesting Covid note, the NZ High Court has today issued judgement that the first few days of NZ lockdown were unlawful. Which won;t change anything (and I’m fine with that), but I did feel happy that despite all the pressure they inevitably felt, they were independent enough to issue that judgement.
    I only discovered on Monday quite how fragile individual rights are in NZ. We have no constiution and only one layer of parliament. Many of our rights stem from the 1990’s Bill of Rights Act (BORA) which is secondary to any subsequent act of parliament (so it conveys no inalienable rights). I’ve been banging my drum re the importance of standing up for habeus corpus etc without realising quiet how fragile it is here!

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