PP NewsBrief: 2021-04-26
We need to begin to reclaim control over the institutions which have such oversized roles in our lives. As you read this people work tirelessly to see to it that you are dumb and docile. Let's stop them.
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Ireland: Study of COVID-19 Deaths
"The goal of this study is not to impress academics with complex statistics or seek favourable peer reviews, but to demonstrate to the ordinary decent citizen of Ireland, in the simplest possible terms, how the 2020 COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET every night on RTE1 and published on the data.gov.ie website cannot possibly be true. To that end I will present basic arithmetic and graphs as it is my belief that every Irish citizen should be fully informed of the fraud which has been carried out by the Irish Government, its agents and the media for the benefit of vested interests to terrorise the population into submitting to their draconian COVID measures by grossly overstating the deaths due to COVID-19 in 2020.
This study will conclude that Ireland had the lowest death rate in 2020 since 2012
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...Records of deaths in Ireland are held in the General Register Office (GRO), which is the central civil repository for records relating to Births, Marriages and Deaths in Ireland. Deaths must be registered as soon as possible after the death and no later than 3 months.
The GRO estimate that approximately 80% of deaths are registered in this timeframe, however many deaths take longer than 3 months especially if a death is referred to the Coroner’s Service, such deaths include suicides, violent deaths and more recently all COVID-19 deaths, these deaths may not be registered for months or years after the occurrence. The GRO provide regular updates on the total deaths registered by the month they occurred in, but because of the lag in registrations they do not come close to being accurate until approximately six months after the month of occurrence. Generally, this lag would not cause a major problem as the death data is mainly used for medical research, however in natural disasters and health emergency situations such as the ongoing alleged COVID-19 pandemic, accurate and up-to-date death data is critical for planning and implementing measured responses to emerging situations. Without this current data on deaths, vested interests can use misinformation to understate or exaggerate deaths to pacify or terrorise the general population into certain actions or inactions, i.e., mass manipulation or hysteria.
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During the early stages of the alleged COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 a number of publicly funded Irish academics began fearmongering through the media, including state sponsored media, that they estimated thousands of additional deaths would occur due to COVID-19. These deaths are called “excess” as they are above the normally expected deaths based on the previous 5-year average. These academics were estimating deaths compared to deaths notices published on the RIP.ie website.
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...I developed an automated system to obtain the data required from the death notices published on the RIP.ie website, plus, a method to remove or “clean” notices for deaths which occurred outside of Ireland and duplicate notices....
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As can be seen from the Table 3, the excess deaths based on RIP.ie data for a full year from Jan to Dec 2020 (in red) total up to -103 whereas the total deaths claimed by NPHET / data.gov.ie from Mar to Dec 2020 (in blue) total up to 2,167, an alarming difference of 2,270 deaths. It must be noted that NPHET / data.gov.ie do not provide data on COVID-19 deaths in Jan and Feb 2020 and therefore assumed to be zero. If COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie were caused by a novel virus, and there were no other factors causing excess deaths (such as another novel disease, war, famine, natural disaster, etc.), then the NPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths (solid red line) should closely match the RIP.ie excess deaths (dashed green line) in Graph 1.
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the total deaths in the data in Table 3 and the spike in Graph 1 in Jan 2021 is –
3,722 deaths RIP.ie (dashed yellow line), also higher than the April 2020 spike indicating that a serious unexplained event took place and increased the excess deaths by –
487 deaths RIP.ie (dashed green line) in Jan 2021, which is the same month that the COVID-19 vaccination was rolled out in the Irish nursing homes. Death data from RIP.ie also indicates the deaths which occurred in nursing homes directly after the rollout of vaccinations are approximately 500 higher than normal for this time.
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I obtained 50 records for deaths which occurred in the nursing homes after the scheduled date of COVID-19 vaccinations and when I examined them, I found that the majority of the deaths were recorded as COVID-19 even though they occurred very shortly after the scheduled vaccination dates. If those patients who died were ill with COVID-19 then they should not have been vaccinated, otherwise if they did not have a positive COVID-19 PCR test then it is very likely that they died from an adverse reaction to the experimental COVID-19 vaccination and not COVID-19 disease.
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The claimed COVID-19 deaths NPHET/data.gov.ie (solid red line) also look suspiciously higher compared to the excess deaths indicated in Graph 1 by RIP.ie (dashed green line) and GRO/CSO (solid black line) between June and Dec 2020. For this reason, I produced a more detailed Graph 2 for Dec 2020 to Mar 2021 using the same RIP.ie data, but plotted the figures weekly to analysis this more closely.
If the large number of COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie were caused by a novel virus, and there were no other factors causing excess deaths (such as another novel disease, war, famine, natural disaster, etc.), then the COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie deaths (solid red line) should closely match the RIP.ie excess deaths (solid green line) in Graph 2, however as can be seen the COVID-19 deaths are consistently higher than the RIP.ie excess deaths. It can also be seen at this level of detail that the peak of the claimed COVID-19 deaths in mid Apr 2020 were approximately 200 deaths higher and 2 weeks later that the actual peak excess deaths indicated by the RIP.ie death notices.
The NPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths (solid red line) in Graph 2 is also a very smooth line compares to the fluctuating RIP.ie excess deaths (dashed green line) which would be expected for weekly data, this makes the red line appear to be unnatural and false or fabricated.
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By now the, mis-match that I have outlined between the NEPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths and the official GRO registered deaths up to Jun 2020 together with the RIP.ie cleaned death notices from then up to Mar 2021 can only bring you to the same conclusion that I have arrived at. That is, that the NEPHET/data.gov.ie claimed COVID-19 deaths are deaths of older people and people with underlying conditions who died as per normal but were fraudulently classified as COVID-19 by vested interests using PCR tests which have found to produce a high percentage of false positive results.
Furthermore, I conclude that the approximately 500 excess deaths in Jan-Feb 2021 must be related to the rollout of the vaccinations in those nursing homes during that period, and that the excessively high COVID-19 deaths claimed by NPHET/data.gov.ie in Jan-Feb 2021 are contrived for the sole purpose of allowing those deaths to be explained as COVID-19 as per the death records rather than adverse reactions to the vaccines."
Lots of charts in this one for you stats nerds to look over.
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Here Are 4 Main Takeaways from Senate Dems’ ‘Jim Crow 2021’Hearing
"Rep. Burgess Owens, a black republican, discussed living during the Jim Crow era, at which point state and local laws shut blacks out of elections entirely, along with employment, housing and education opportunities.
Comparing the law to such measures is “absolutely outrageous,” he said.
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Lee noted that during post-Civil War Reconstruction, many republican black members of Congress were elected in the South. But, after federal troops withdrew from the South, democrat-controlled state governments established Jim Crow laws to prevent blacks from voting.
“This was a system of laws designed to hold black Americans back, hold them back in part because white democrats in the South didn’t want them to vote and didn’t like the fact that they were voting as and being elected as republicans,” Lee said. “Let’s not compare a voter registration law – one that makes sure dead people can’t vote – to that.”
Durbin fired back.
“I will concede the era of Jim Crow in the South was propagated primarily by democrats – southern democrats and segregationists,” he said. “Political alignment changed in America starting in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and republicans became more dominant in those states for the most part. What we have today is the party of Lincoln is refusing to join us in expanding the Voting Rights Act.”
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Warnock expressed strong discontent with the new law.
“This is a full fledged assault on voting rights, unlike anything we’ve seen since the era of Jim Crow,” he said. “The truth is, politicians – in their craving and lust for power – are willing to sacrifice our democracy by using the ‘big lie’ as a pretext for their true aim: some people don’t want some people to vote,” he added.
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Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham cited a 2005 report, which determined that voter fraud wasn’t widespread, but did exist and could affect the outcome of close elections."
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The CDC’s VAERS and Vaccine Complications: The System is Broken
"I am the son of a public health officer. As a young child, I saw my father struggle through the swine flu of 1976 and the vaccine debacle that accompanied that era.
As I grew older, and especially once I entered medicine, he had several heart-to-heart talks with me about a career in medicine and by extension public health. I can summarize what he told me in two large thrusts.
- Integrity, truth, and honesty is EVERYTHING in public health. Once squandered, it will never return.
- Public health is 10% science and 90% psychology. Do not ever forget that. You will get nowhere by screaming SCIENCE SCIENCE SCIENCE and you will certainly get nowhere by flashing credentials. And you must have an acute awareness of panic, fear and anxiety. They change everything and your response must always take that into account.
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This complete and total messaging disaster is the doing of our federal public health officials and our media. The narrative has completely fallen apart in almost every aspect of this pandemic and its management. The credibility deficit keeps getting worse by the week.
For whatever reason, we in medicine and public health have allowed a bunch of corrupt, lying, discredited charlatans to be our spokespeople – often employing the age-old tactics of SCIENCE, SCIENCE, SCIENCE or worse yet – BECAUSE I SAY SO – all the while flashing their fancy credentials while being questioned on TV by smiling sycophants who seem completely incapable of asking tough questions.
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Dr. Leana S. Wen, a physician so skilled in communication and leadership that she was fired within a year as CEO of Planned Parenthood, has been a mainstay of the official medical response. Her biggest misfire was about 2 weeks ago, when she suggested on CNN that citizens should have their freedoms removed in order to be convinced to take the vaccine.
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So, imagine my surprise that she was chosen to write the soothing Washington Post op ed to calm the populace after the J&J debacle. You can tell by the title how deluded she is – “Why the J&J pause should bolster confidence in vaccines”. It only gets worse when you read the piece. You literally just cannot make this stuff up. I just want to scream to the newspaper – THIS IS NOT SHAMPOO YOU MORONS – THIS IS PEOPLE’S LIVES.
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And not to be shown up, there was Dr. Fauci making the Sunday rounds. Again, these people seem to have no clue about issues such as public confidence. And their current stands are burning their credibility to the ground even faster. He has spent much of the past two weeks messaging that even though people are fully vaccinated, they must continue right on with the stringent masking and social distancing as if nothing is changed. For those who have been paying close attention, that’s not a surprise, but to the public at large, it comes off as a 180 degree change from exhortation by officials and pundits that getting vaccinated was the ticket to the old normal.
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And as if right on cue, the CEOs of both Moderna and Pfizer made statements this week that further vaccinations will be required. I am not certain that anyone on the anti-vaxxer side is making more effective arguments in people’s mind than all of these official medical people.
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In early January of this year, in my own patients, I began to notice in COVID vaccinated patients a small number who were having significant complications from various blood clotting issues. These were very strange things that do not happen in the normal practice of medicine....
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As has been my usual practice when there is a problem like this, I began following the VAERS system very carefully. And to my great concern, I saw a very large number of cases of death and complications similar to what I was seeing. The ratio of complications was quite startling – 100-200 times or so more than the control group of 2020 flu vaccines. The VAERS system is currently reporting over 3000 deaths related to the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines. The numbers in the European registries are almost exactly in line with this as well. I would guess from a simple perusal that about half these reports – both death and morbidity – are directly related to blood clotting issues.
VAERS was never a system meant to be perfectly accurate – but having a 100-200X difference in mortality rates should be attention-getting to everyone in medicine. And yet instead of addressing this issue head-on, our medical leaders continued right on with the party line that EVERYTHING IS SAFE and GOING SWIMMINGLY – nothing to see here. There were days that I felt like I was living in The Twilight Zone.
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My grim job this week was to report a vaccine related death to the authorities. I have had to do this type of reporting on other occasions in my career, with other drugs, both approved and research trials, with both deaths and morbid complications. In every single instance in the past, without exception, I have been contacted within 1-2 hours by either the FDA or the CDC. They questioned me, discussed the particulars with me, and a collaboration was begun.
This death was much different.
A little about the patient situation. She had her vaccine about 8 AM on a weekday. It was the 2nd shot. Very soon thereafter, she felt electric shocks over her entire body. Later, she was having trouble speaking and could not stand up. She began having severe problems swallowing. I advised to go immediately to the ER. I will not go into details here but suffice it to say, she was having a profound neurologic problem. It was not a simple stroke nor was it a blood clotting issue. Because of the timing of symptom initiation, it was clear to me that the vaccine was likely involved. She was diagnosed with a condition that is very very unusual and is often associated with vaccine administration. She had 5 weeks of very severe pain and did not recover. She was eventually placed on hospice and passed away. Before she died, she told me to make sure that everyone knows that these vaccines are not as safe as advertised. Believe you me, her family is doing everything they can to make sure that this story is known all over the community. The patient herself was a very well-loved individual here – and this has been a blow to the entire area.
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...I made every effort to immediately report this death to the federal officials. I called the FDA and ended up in voicemail hell. I called the CDC and was literally hung up on twice. Again, please contrast that reception to what I describe above in previous “non-crisis” years.
After multiple attempts, I finally decided to report to VAERS. This was almost a week ago. To date, the VAERS has no record of my patient. All that I have received is an email to confirm my submission. No one from any agency has made any effort to contact me in any way. It was of little comfort to note in in the New York Times, that the physicians trying to report one of the sentinel J&J stroke cases got a similar “hang up in your face” response from the FDA/CDC.
I want to reiterate – a patient has died. A board-certified internist feels this is likely vaccine-related. And no one has made any effort to contact me. None. A complete departure from the past. And this is a stringent safety-reporting system?"
Naked Capitalism has been all-in on the virus fear propaganda, so them posting this is a pleasant surprise.
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Ark. woman fired for refusing COVID vaccine
"An Arkansas mother of five was fired for not getting the COVID-19 vaccine. Samantha Wise was let go from her job at a marijuana dispensary in Conway, Arkansas after the business required all employees to be vaccinated.
Wise chose not to get the vaccine....
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According to reports, the medical marijuana dispensary defended their actions and said employees who choose not to get a vaccine actually pose a threat to the people they are supposed to be helping."
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Even after popular guilty verdict, judge seals names of Derek Chauvin jurors to protect them from ‘harassment’
"The judge in the trial of ex-police officer Derek Chauvin has ordered that jurors' names remain sealed for at least six months for their protection...
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Lisa Christensen, an alternate juror in the case, reportedly said in an interview that she feared "rioting and destruction" if Chauvin weren't convicted. "I don't want to go through rioting and destruction again, and I was concerned about people coming to my house if they were not happy with the verdict," she said.
The judge allowed Christensen and other jurors to speak publicly about the case and reveal their identities if they choose to do so themselves."
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The Silencing of the Lambs
"Many of us want to be led. As children we look to our parents to protect us, to soothe our fears, to relieve us of responsibility. As adults we seek the same protection – we want powerful leaders, leaders who appear fearless and resilient.
Our narcissistic culture also demands that our leaders are charismatic, self-assured, and eloquent – we want leaders who can perform on the world stage.
And so trustingly, time after time, we relinquish our power to those grandiose individuals who covet high office, unaware that their determination – their sheer, dogged, winner-takes-all ambition, their superficial charm and seductiveness – may suggest that many are psychologically unsuited to these roles.
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We don’t imagine that psychopaths might be politicians.
So, we blind ourselves, as many abused children do, to the reality of what our leaders are asking of us. When they separate us from our loved ones, suffocate us with masks, inject us with experimental vaccines, remove our civil liberties, crash our economy, close our schools, harm our children and lock us up ‘for our own good’, we justify their behaviour; we accept their lies and their attempts to control us. We reassure ourselves that they are keeping us safe.
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We don’t imagine that psychopaths might be journalists.
So, we heed their warnings about the virus, which accord with those of our leaders. Though they might confuse us with their reporting of ‘cases’ and ‘positive tests’ and ‘hospitalisations’ – with their graphs and statistics and relative risks – we are reassured that the message is a simple one: that the jab will be our route to freedom; that our vaccine rollout is the fastest; that our NHS is the finest in the world: clap clap clap clap clap!
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We don’t imagine that psychopaths produce vaccines.
For we dare not imagine that we have been entrapped by an unaccountable psychopathic elite who have subverted our democracies; have captured and undermined our institutions; have caused economic devastation the world over; have spawned a global mental health crisis which will reverberate for generations.
We dare not imagine. And so terrorised by fear and shame and relentless propaganda, we fall back on the protection of our psychopathic programmers: far easier to accept their virus narrative, to play the game, to submit, than to acknowledge our protectors’ abuse.
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And although others warn us that the testing regime is flawed; that the deaths are misreported; that the vaccine is unsafe; they cannot penetrate our defences. How they enrage us when they disturb our illusions! When they try to force open our blinded eyes! ‘Wake up’ they plead, but we are not sleeping; ‘think!’ they cry, as if we cannot hear.
They don’t know – nor yet do we – that we are shielding ourselves from an existential threat more overwhelming to us than any virus, using the only weapon we have in our wretched armoury: denial."
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Defund the Managerial Regime
"Objects thrown by a mob smashed into Jonathan Pentland’s home last Wednesday, shattering a window and breaking a light fixture. As things turned violent, Pentland’s family evacuated to a secure location, but nowhere is truly safe in the age of high-tech lynching.
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Pentland is being investigated over a video showing him confronting a black man in the Columbia neighborhood where Pentland lives. According to Heavy, “the video was posted on Facebook by a Columbia woman, Shirell Johnson, who said she was walking in the neighborhood with a friend, Vinnetta Yvonne Knight Osborne, on Monday night, April 12, 2021, when she saw the incident unfolding.” Johnson said that the video was recorded by a woman named Shadae McCallum and given to her to post online.
In the video, Pentland repeatedly demands that the man, who has only been identified as Deandre, leave the area. Deandre refuses, and at one point, begins to approach Pentland’s wife—so the drill sergeant shoves him away from her. Deandre continues to refuse to leave and insists that he lives in the same neighborhood as Pentland but won’t say where. “We are a tight-knit community—we take care of each other,” Pentland says, adding, “I have never seen you before in my life.”
In a longer version of the video posted by Johnson, Pentland’s wife, Cassie, can be heard saying to Deandre: “Sir, you’re acting like a child. Move on. You picked a fight with some random young lady that’s one of our neighbors.” The Pentlands notify Deandre that the police are on their way.
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Pentland initially received a citation for malicious injury to property for allegedly slapping Deandre’s phone from his hand and causing it to break. But then pressure from the mob began to mount against RCSD.
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Mob pressure works. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department announced over Twitter on April 14 that Sheriff Leon Lott would meet with elected officials and various organizations to discuss the incident. Protesters swarmed Pentland’s neighborhood ahead of a scheduled 5 p.m. press conference, Heavy reported. Democratic State Senator Mia McLeod would add to the flames on Wednesday as well.
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The community board of directors released a statement “strongly” condemning Pentland. “He does not represent this multi-cultural and multi-racial community,” it reads. “There is racism in every community in every city, state, county, and country.”
Fort Jackson Commanding General Milford Beagle Jr. tweeted about Pentland: “This is by no means condoned by any service member. We will get to the bottom of this ASAP.” The 10th Mountain Division posted this virtue signal on a 2017 photo of Pentland in uniform: “There is no place in the Army for extremist ideologies. We support the decision of the Fort Jackson Commanding General to look into this matter. This image will remain viewable to foster dialogue.”
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Come nightfall on Wednesday, Pentland’s home was surrounded and under siege by agitators hurling objects through the windows of his home. “The protests at the Pentland home have become violent,” tweeted RCSD. “The family was removed after it was vandalized. They were moved to another location and the neighborhood is being closed off except to residents. Please stay out of the area.”
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During the Wednesday press conference, Sheriff Lott said that his officers did not have evidence to charge Pentland with more than the initial property damage crime. Lott said that the video was the evidence needed to charge Pentland. “He put his hands on somebody, that’s assault and battery when you place your hands on someone.” But the incident report states that the officers who reviewed the cellphone footage saw “Jonathan pushing [redacted] because [he] was walking towards Jonathan’s wife, that was on her property.”
Did Lott lie? That’s what it looks like. Either that, or he doesn’t read his officer’s incident reports. “This shows what our community can do when we work together,” he said—which is another way of exalting mob justice.
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As it turns out, Deandre’s crime was not, as Johnson claimed, merely “walking while black.”
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According to the Post, on April 8, one incident report says, Deandre “allegedly put his arm around a woman’s waist, put his hand down the right side of her shorts and then put his arm back around her waist as her pants were partly down.” And on April 10, another report alleges Deandre “repeatedly picked up a baby without permission and tried to walk away.” A second video shows a witness who says a woman claimed Deandre “sexually assaulted her daughter” and “tugged” on her shirt, and that she ran to Pentland for help. Another witness talking to the hosts of “The Real” panel show said that a woman in the neighborhood recognized Deandre and warned her “daughter-in-law to get back in the house” upon seeing him.
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It’s hard to avoid coming away with the impression that the Army, the Richland County Sheriff’s Department, and the mob have destroyed Jonathan Pentland’s life, put his family in danger, and destroyed his name. For protecting his community when called upon, the 10th Mountain Division with whom Pentland served called him an “extremist.” Who would die for this?
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Big-city police departments, and even sheriff’s departments where the county’s top lawmen are elected—Leon Lott won Richland County’s Democratic primary for sheriff in 2020—are still policing, but they mostly exist to repress everyday Americans, upholding a system of anarcho-tyranny. The Right must therefore think about law enforcement and the military differently because blindly standing with the enforcers of the managerial regime is tantamount to a long, agonizing suicide. Along with slashing a hostile Department of Defense budget, the Right should seriously consider defunding some of the police as an act of self-defense, and learn to fight fire with fire."
An interesting "Defund the Police" case from "the right."
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Google Drive blocks access to document that compiled news coverage of COVID vaccine side effects
"Google is blocking access to a PDF document that has compiled 106 pages of screenshots of mainstream media reports about people who have allegedly experienced negative side effects or died after taking a COVID-19 vaccine and social media testimony from those who have alleged adverse vaccine reactions.
The document is titled “Informed Consent Matters” and states that “it is everyone’s right to review the first-hand testimonies of the COVID vaccine adverse reactions without censorship.” It adds that by giving people access to this data, they can perform their own risk benefit analysis.
It was saved to and being shared from Google’s cloud storage service Google Drive.
Despite containing screenshots of stories from numerous mainstream media outlets that Google-owned YouTube regularly brands “authoritative” and gives preferential treatment to in search and recommendations, journalist Anna Brees reported that Google is now blocking the document for violating its terms of service.
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Similar censorship features are also making their way into other Google storage services such as its cloud-based photo storage and sharing service Google Photos. Like Google Drive, Google Photos is one of the most popular services in its category with over one billion users. And Google is working feature that lets users flag “misleading” shared albums to the tech giant."
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CDC, FDA give green light to J&J jab rollout after pause while investigating death from ‘rare blood clot’ after vaccination
"Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine rollout should resume in the US, the CDC and FDA said, but the shot will come with a warning about rare side-effects after blood clotting in recipients prompted a pause on vaccinations.
The agencies stated that the risk of thrombosis occurring in patients is “very low,” finding the vaccine safe enough to continue immunizations, while at the same time vowing to “remain vigilant in continuing to investigate this risk.”
“We have concluded that the known and potential benefits of the Janssen Covid-19 vaccine outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older. We are confident that this vaccine continues to meet our standards for safety, effectiveness and quality,” Acting Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Janet Woodcock said on Friday, after the CDC advisory panel argued for the resumption of the rollout.
Earlier in the day, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 10 to 4 to recommend lifting the 11-day hiatus on Friday, with one member abstaining over a potential conflict of interest...."
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White Liberals More Likely to Have Mental Health Problems, Study Shows
""I didn't write this thread to mock white liberals or their apparently disproportionate rates of mental illness (and you shouldn't either)," said Zach Goldberg, the doctoral candidate who consolidated the study’s information in a series of visuals and posted them to Twitter. "Rather, this is a question that's underexplored and which may shed light on attitudinal differences towards various social policies."
In examining Goldberg’s thread, Evie Magazine's Elizabeth Condra argued that "building resiliency against hardship is the best weapon against depression and anxiety, yet progressive ideology forces its followers to wallow in feelings of helplessness and victimhood. Instead of empowering women and minorities with self-knowledge, strength of character, and resilience to hardship, progressivism encourages victims to stay in a place of fear and helplessness."
Condra stressed that "white individuals are usually at the forefront of these movements, whether or not they're the group being adversely affected," but observed that "white guilt and savior narratives are pretty much as bad as any genuinely racist agenda because it robs the very group they’re trying to help of their own voice.""
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Modern Agriculture Is Militarized
"If there were a prime example of all that is wrong with modern-day agriculture, Iowa would be a strong frontrunner. In 2019, the state had 3,963 large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) — which refers to those with 1,000 animals or more — up from 789 in 1990. The average large hog CAFO in Iowa has at least 2,500 pigs, while some house 24,000.
As the leader among hog-producing states, Iowa had more than 22.7 million hogs in 2017, which produce 68 billion pounds of manure annually — at least 68 times the amount of fecal waste produced by Iowa’s 3.15 million residents, the Environmental Working Group reported.
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...In the U.S., agriculture poses the greatest threat to water quality and is single-handedly impairing drinking water supplies across the country. The key culprits are nitrogen, phosphates and other toxins that run off from industrial cropland (i.e., genetically engineered corn and soy) and CAFOs.
In the Midwest, Iowa is at the heart of the storm, as the leader in U.S. corn and soy production and a major producer of CAFO hogs, eggs, cattle and chickens. In fact, more than 85% of Iowa’s land is used for agriculture, much of it bordering key waterways.
More than half (58%) of the rivers and streams in the state fall short of federal water quality standards, making them unsuitable for swimming and fishing, while another 23 percent are “potentially impaired.”"
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The resulting damage includes an excess of nutrients that lead to algae overgrowth, depleting the water of oxygen and killing fish and other marine life in expansive dead zones.
This, combined with the excess fertilizers applied to monocrops like corn and soy, sends a steady stream of nitrogen and phosphorus to both surface and groundwater, spreading potentially disease-causing organisms and unsustainable amounts of nutrients along the way....
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In December 2020, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement and Food & Water Watch sued the state for not protecting residents’ right to clean water and argued that the increasing number of hog farms, with few pollution restrictions, were contaminating the river with manure and fertilizer runoff. The North Raccoon watershed had 261 CAFOs in 2006, which increased to 619 in 2021.
While new CAFOs are required to have a manure management plan on file with the county, farmers are legally allowed to spread up to 240 pounds of nitrogen per acre, which is 70% more nitrogen than most corn corps need. According to Cullen, “The agricultural industrial complex, tightly intertwined by chemistry to the military one … leaves farmer, laborer, land and community as assets to be exploited. That is what has happened in Iowa.”
In 1949, Iowan Aldo Leopold published an essay titled, “The Land Ethic,” which calls on people to be morally responsible for the natural world.
“Everything he suggested came true: The rivers have lost their former lives, the soil is washing down them and in dominating the landscape we diminish ourselves. He suggested that we live as citizens of the land rather than over it,” Cullen said.15 But while efforts to support regenerative agriculture are growing, there are still many hurdles standing in the way.
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While pretending to save the world through philanthropy, Bill Gates is entering every field that has to do with sustaining life but, for over a decade, has undermined vitality in all its forms, in an effort to seize control over and profit from it. In my interview with Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., she spoke about Gates Ag One, which is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri, where Monsanto is also headquartered.
“Gates Ag One is one [type of] agriculture for the whole world, organized top down. He’s written about it. We have a whole section on it in our new report, ‘Gates to a Global Empire,'” she said. This includes digital farming, in which farmers are surveilled and mined for their agricultural data, which is then repackaged and sold back to them.
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Gates is also tied to the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit, which hundreds of farmers and human rights groups are boycotting due to its domination by corporate interests. The Summit claims it is convening to “launch bold new actions to transform the way the world produces and consumes food,” but critics say it favors agribusiness interests, elite foundations and the exploitation of African food systems.
Agnes Kalibata, the former Rwandan agriculture minister who is now the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), an organization funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,20 was appointed as the event’s head.
AGRA is essentially a Gates Foundation subsidiary, and while some of its projects appear to be beneficial, most of its goals are centered on promoting biotechnology and chemical fertilizers. AGRA was launched in 2006 with funding from the Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
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Regenerative agriculture and animal husbandry are the next and higher stages of organic food and farming — free from toxic pesticides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers and CAFOs, and regenerative in terms of the health of the soil, the environment, the animals and rural farmers.
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On a small scale, you can help by supporting your local organic and regenerative farmers by purchasing their goods at local farmers markets or purchasing your meat and dairy products directly from your local farm. A growing number of homeowners are also converting their yards into edible landscaping using organic and regenerative methods.
By acting on an individual level to be agents of change, we can all make waves that push agriculture away from industrial militarization and toward regenerative practices that have true potential to feed the world and heal the planet."
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Oklahoma governor signs bill into law protecting motorists who unintentionally run over rioters from being prosecuted or sued
"Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has signed into law legislation that protects drivers from being prosecuted or sued if they injure or kill demonstrators while fleeing what they reasonably perceive to be threat of harm in a riot.
Stitt signed the bill, which also stiffens penalties for protesters who block public roadways, on Wednesday. But the most controversial provision was one that gives motorists immunity from prosecution for unintentionally striking and killing or injuring rioters who block roads and threaten them.
"We are sending a message today in Oklahoma that rioters who threaten law-abiding citizens will not be tolerated," Stitt said. "I remain unequivocally committed to protecting every Oklahoman's First Amendment right to peacefully protest, as well as their right to feel safe in their community."
...
Tennessee and Florida lawmakers considered legislation with protections for drivers similar to those enacted in Oklahoma, but the bill signed into law on Monday by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis stopped short of giving motorists immunity from prosecution in such cases.
The Florida law did make it a felony for protesters to block a highway, and it gave drivers who are stopped and threatened some protection from civil lawsuits. The bill also protects monuments and requires cities to get state approval before cutting police budgets.
A bill in Indiana would prohibit anyone who is convicted of unlawful assembly from getting a government job. Minnesota's GOP-led Senate has a bill that calls for those convicted of rioting being barred from getting state-backed financial aid, including unemployment benefits and student loans.
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During the 1992 Rodney King riot in Los Angeles that marked the most damaging US civil unrest of the 20th century, protesters pulled motorists from their cars and beat them. In one of the most infamous incidents, four men pulled truck driver Reginald Denny from his vehicle in south-central Los Angeles and beat him nearly to death in the middle of the street. One of the men threw a cinder block at Denny's head. More than 60 people were killed during the LA riot.
"This law makes sense," one observer said. "If protesters leave people in cars alone, there's no risk to them.""
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‘Ridiculous and dangerous!’: Americans express alarm over social media snooping reportedly carried out by US Postal Service
"Known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP), the program tracks social media platforms for “inflammatory” content and shares that information with government agencies, according to Yahoo News, citing internal documents. The initiative is run by the law enforcement arm of the USPS, the US Postal Inspection Service.
A March 16 government bulletin obtained by the news outlet details how iCOP monitored “significant activity” regarding anti-lockdown protests that were planned in cities around the country and internationally on March 20. The document, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed by the Department of Homeland Security, said that information about the demonstrations was being shared on multiple social media platforms, including “right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”
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The US Postal Inspection Service declined to answer questions about the program submitted by Yahoo News, but explained that iCOP “[assesses] threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information.” It said that it works with law enforcement agencies to “proactively identify” such threats, but does not discuss its “protocols, investigative methods, or tools,” in order to maintain “operational effectiveness.”"
They also take pictures of the outside of all your mail.
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YouTube blocks videos & hands strikes to RT’s English & German channels over alleged Covid-19 disinformation
"RT’s English YouTube channel was issued a strike by the service over alleged Covid-19 disinformation, temporarily restricting its ability to launch live broadcasts. RT in Germany faced similar sanctions.
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One of them was an interview with renowned Russian virologist and World Health Organization expert on influenza Dmitry Lvov, who made a name for himself by researching the most dangerous viruses in the former Soviet Union and abroad. In the clip from early March, Lvov spoke to RT’s journalist, Anton Krasovsky, about the dangers and possible origins of the current coronavirus pandemic.
Another blocked video was an episode of the Wayne Dupree Show, hosted by the black American journalist of the same name. It was dedicated to January’s inauguration of US President Joe Biden, in which Biden called on supporters to skip the event due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
The other two clips were news broadcasts from rallies against coronavirus restrictions in London and Birmingham without commentary.
Meanwhile, the head of RT in Germany, Dinara Toktosunova, confirmed that RT DE also got a strike on YouTube. The video in question, a livestream from October 2020, showed an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne, Australia. There was no explanation from YouTube as to which specific moment of the footage triggered the sanctions. As the second strike for the page, it carries a harsher penalty. The German channel won’t be able to upload videos and stage live broadcasts for two weeks now, according to Toktosunova."
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Transhumanism, Meritocracy, and National Survival
"...In 1988, the theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson published Infinite in All Directions, a wide-ranging discourse on humanity’s role in the universe. In his book, Dyson predicts that genetic engineering will enable manufactured organic minds that are merged with electronic components including AI, but inside their biological mental core, they will be alive and self-aware.
According to futurists ranging from Dyson and Ray Kurzweil to Elon Musk, a millennium from now, if not much, much sooner, only a small fraction of the conscious intelligent beings once known as humans will exist as humanoids we would recognize as ourselves. Others, to present a vivid example, could exist as the conscious brain of a starship, with nerves extending into every system of the craft, interfacing with the minds of similarly cybernetic passengers and crew.
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Credible speculation is limited only by one’s imagination, and it’s happening fast. But what does it mean for society in the short run?
In America, the reality of AI running systems as mundane as a thermostat and as complex as an airliner or a power grid leads to something Victor Davis Hanson alluded to in a recent article in American Greatness, where he wrote, “In today’s age of computer-driven avionics, the prerequisite ability to do math, to know something about navigation, to understand computers, or to have the proper temperament to fly a plane doesn’t really matter.”
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Coming soon, instead of education, people will have access to implants or neural links that target and enhance specific skills—memory, language, math. Equally likely, and also coming soon, people will be able to edit the genes of their offspring before they are born, choosing their attributes—height, appearance, intellect.
This transhuman future, enabled by technology, is inevitable. But every sovereign nation on earth will handle the rollout differently. In the United States, current trends suggest the big tech oligarchy will view individual “enhancements” as a logical extension of the manipulative power they’ve already achieved with the internet. People will think they’re thinking with more intelligence, but every shred of enhancement they’re accessing will be controlled and managed. They’ll think they’re smart. They’ll think they’re free. And they’ll be nothing of the sort. They’ll be Borg.
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Americans today need to reflect carefully on the opportunities for physical and mental enhancement that are just around the corner. Because as these new devices worm into our minds in ways more profound and more permanent than smartphones and social networks already have, they will not be merely Pavlovian manipulators, they will be programmed orchestrators. The machines will pick the options, within our own minds, and we will comply.
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Try to imagine human civilization as it expands into the solar system and eventually to the stars. Shall it be a vibrant society of free individuals or a drab collective? Shall it consist of a federation of diverse, independent nations, with their cultures and traditions grounding them as they reach into the beyond, or an undifferentiated mass of humans controlled by machine implants, ruled by a single politburo?"
I'm slightly less certain than the author that it's all inevitable.
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Nurse launches petition to opt out of mandatory Covid-19 vaccination at Texas hospital as it vows to FIRE those who refuse the jab
"A hospital system in Houston, Texas has required all staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus by summertime, prompting protests from employees, who’ve launched a petition against the mandate as the deadline draws near.
The Houston Methodist hospital system said its employees must take the shot by June 7, making it the first healthcare provider to issue a mandate, stiffening its rules after previously offering $500 to any worker who received the inoculation voluntarily. Those who decline may be fired.
“Mandating the vaccine was not a decision we made lightly, but science has proven that the Covid-19 vaccines are very safe and very effective,” said Houston Methodist CEO Marc Boom in a message to staff reported by CBS News on Friday.
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A majority of workers at Houston Methodist have already been vaccinated, or around 89% as of Friday. Of the hospital network’s 1,200 managers, who were given an earlier deadline of April 15, two decided to leave their positions – later criticized by Boom for “putting themselves before the safety of our patients.”
The rule-change has prompted some pushback, however, with Houston Methodist nurse Jennifer Bridges launching an online petition against it last week, garnering more than 3,100 signatures by Friday evening.
...
Bridges later told the Houston Chronicle that she would only take the immunization once it received full FDA approval, potentially a years-long process.
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However, as Houston Methodist moves ahead with the requirement, some question remains as to the legality of vaccine mandates. While the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determined last December that workplace vaccine requirements would not violate the American Disabilities Act, there is less clarity about whether they would conflict with other guidelines from health agencies, namely the FDA’s rules for drugs approved on an emergency basis.
Under the EUA provision passed by Congress in 2004, vaccine recipients must be given the “option to accept or refuse administration” of the drug or product in question, and be informed of the “consequences, if any, of refusing.” Though that would appear to rule out mandates altogether, no court has interpreted the measure, and there is ambiguity around the use of the term “consequences.” The language could be read to refer to ‘consequences’ directly related to an employee’s health, or, more broadly, to include any adverse actions that could be taken by an employer if a worker refused to take the shot, such as being fired."
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In Our Hurry to Conquer Nature and Death, We Have Made a New Religion of Science
"Back in the 1880s, the mathematician and theologian Edwin Abbott tried to help us better understand our world by describing a very different one he called Flatland.
Imagine a world that is not a sphere moving through space like our own planet, but more like a vast sheet of paper inhabited by conscious, flat geometric shapes. These shape-people can move forwards and backwards, and they can turn left and right. But they have no sense of up or down. The very idea of a tree, or a well, or a mountain makes no sense to them because they lack the concepts and experiences of height and depth. They cannot imagine, let alone describe, objects familiar to us.
In this two-dimensional world, the closest scientists can come to comprehending a third dimension are the baffling gaps in measurements that register on their most sophisticated equipment. They sense the shadows cast by a larger universe outside Flatland. The best brains infer that there must be more to the universe than can be observed but they have no way of knowing what it is they don’t know.
...
Science has sought to shrink the realm of the inexplicable. We now understand – at least approximately – the laws of nature that govern the weather and catastrophic events like an earthquake. Telescopes and rocket-ships have also allowed us to probe deeper into the heavens to make a little more sense of the universe outside our tiny corner of it.
But the more we investigate the universe the more rigid appear the limits to our knowledge. Like the shape-people of Flatland, our ability to understand is constrained by the dimensions we can observe and experience: in our case, the three dimensions of space and the additional one of time. Influential “string theory” posits another six dimensions, though we would be unlikely to ever sense them in any more detail than the shadows almost-detected by the scientists of Flatland.
...
Despite our science-venerating culture, we have arrived at a similar moment to our forebears, who gazed at the night sky in awe. We have been forced to acknowledge the boundaries of knowledge.
There is a difference, however. Our ancestors feared the unknowable, and therefore preferred to show caution and humility in the face of what could not be understood. They treated the ineffable with respect and reverence. Our culture encourages precisely the opposite approach. We show only conceit and arrogance. We seek to defeat, ignore or trivialise that which we cannot explain or understand.
The greatest scientists do not make this mistake. As an avid viewer of science programmes like the BBC’s Horizon, I am always struck by the number of cosmologists who openly speak of their religious belief. Carl Sagan, the most famous cosmologist, never lost his sense of awestruck wonder as he examined the universe. Outside the lab, his was not the language of hard, cold, calculating science. He described the universe in the language of poetry. He understood the necessary limits of science. Rather than being threatened by the universe’s mysteries and paradoxes, he celebrated them.
...
Sadly, Sagan’s approach is not the one that dominates the western tradition. All too often, we behave as if we are gods. Foolishly, we have made a religion of science. We have forgotten that in a world of unknowables, the application of science is necessarily tentative and ideological. It is a tool, one of many that we can use to understand our place in the universe, and one that is easily appropriated by the corrupt, by the vain, by those who seek power over others, by those who worship money.
...
Weak and self-serving as many of his arguments sound today, Descartes’ lasting ideological influence on western science was profound. Not least so-called Cartesian dualism – the treatment of mind and matter as separate realms – has encouraged and perpetuated a mechanistic view of the world around us.
We can briefly grasp how strong the continuing grip of his thinking is on us when we are confronted with more ancient cultures that have resisted the west’s extreme rationalist discourse – in part, we should note, because they were exposed to it in hostile, oppressive ways that served only to alienate them from the western canon.
Hearing a Native American or an Australian Aboriginal speak of the sacred significance of a river or a rock – or about their ancestors – is to become suddenly aware of how alien their thinking sounds to our “modern” ears. It is the moment when we are likely to respond in one of two ways: either to smirk internally at their childish ignorance, or to gulp at a wisdom that seems to fill a yawning emptiness in our own lives.
...
...the abusive, mechanistic relationship we have with our planet is mirrored by the one we have with our bodies and our health. Dualism has encouraged us to think of our bodies as fleshy vehicles, which like the metal ones need regular outside intervention, from a service to a respray or an upgrade. The pandemic has only served to underscore these unwholesome tendencies.
In part, the medical establishment, like all establishments, has been corrupted by the desire for power and enrichment. Science is not some pristine discipline, free from real-world pressures. Scientists need funding for research, they have mortgages to pay, and they crave status and career advancement like everyone else.
...
...Scientists haven’t only corrupted science by prioritising their personal, political and commercial interests. Science itself is shaped and swayed by the ideological assumptions of scientists and the wider societies to which they belong. For centuries, Descartes’ dualism has provided the lens through which scientists have often developed and justified medical treatments and procedures. Medicine has its fashions too, even if they tend to be longer-lived – and more dangerous – than the ones of the clothing industry.
In fact, there were self-interested reasons why Descartes’s dualism was so appealing to the scientific and medical community four centuries ago. His mind-matter division carved out a space for science free from clerical interference. Doctors could now claim an authority over our bodies separate from that claimed by the Church over our souls.
...
But there are others ways to view health than as an expensive, resource-depleting technological battle against virus-warriors. Where is the focus on improving the ever-more nutrient-deficient, processed, pesticide-laden, and sugar and chemical-rich diets most of us consume? How do we address the plague of stress and anxiety we all endure in a competitive, digitally connected, no-rest world stripped of all spiritual meaning? What do we do about the cosseted lifestyles we prefer, where exertion is a lifestyle choice renamed as exercise rather than integral to our working day, and where regular exposure to sunshine, outside of a beach vacation, is all but impossible in our office-bound schedules?
...
For much of human history, our chief concern was the fight for survival – against animals and other humans, against the elements, against natural disasters. Technological developments proved invaluable in making our lives safer and easier, whether it was flint axes and domesticated animals, wheels and combustion engines, medicines and mass communications. Our brains now seem hardwired to look to technological innovation to address even the smallest inconvenience, to allay even our wildest fears.
So, of course, we have invested our hopes, and sacrificed our economies, in finding a technological fix to the pandemic. But does this exclusive fixation on technology to solve the current health crisis not have a parallel with the similar, quick-fix technological remedies we keep seeking for the many ecological crises we have created?
...
Science and technology can be wonderful things. They can advance our knowledge of ourselves and the world we inhabit. But they need to be conducted with a sense of humility we increasingly seem incapable of. We are not conquerors of our bodies, or the planet, or the universe – and if we imagine we are, we will soon find out that the battle we are waging is one we can never hope to win."
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When Mass Vaccination Programs Are Mounted in a Hurry, Bad Outcomes and Liability Are Invariably Big Issues
"1976 Swine Flu vaccine program
...
The specter of the 1918 swine flu pandemic was invoked, and the public health machinery went into overdrive to create a national vaccine program. Several Pharma companies were enlisted to produce vaccines.
As several months wore on, there were no more swine flu cases. The risk of another 1918 flu had vanished. But the vaccination program had taken on a life of its own.
The vaccine companies demanded relief from liability. After all, it is hard to get everything right the first time. They declined to continue the vaccine program, complaining that their insurers refused to take on the liability burden. This became the first time the federal government agreed to serve as Pharma’s insurer. This event became the model for the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act.
You know the rest of the story. One quarter of the US got vaccinated, before it was acknowledged that the vaccine caused paralysis. Guillain-Barre syndrome, at a rate 6 times normal, was occurring in vaccinees. There were about 400 cases and 40 deaths. Vaccinations ended. The virus was gone long before the vaccinations had even started, and has never returned. The federal government paid damages. Pharma and their insurers had been a lot more savvy than the U.S. public health enterprise.
...
2003 Smallpox vaccination program
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Smallpox vaccine had been stockpiled by the Clinton administration, and more had been purchased by the Bush administration. Smallpox vaccinations had been halted in the US decades earlier, and the disease smallpox had been wiped out in 1977. Smallpox vaccine was known to be highly reactogenic, and the old medical literature claimed it killed one in a million babies who received it.
Smallpox vaccine was also known to cause myocarditis, with EKG changes occurring in 3% of Finnish soldiers who had received the vaccine, in a 1978 publication. In the US, 1 in 13,000 smallpox vaccine-naive airmen developed a clinical case of myopericarditis after receiving their first dose.
When the vaccine was given to healthcare workers and first responders in 2003, episodes of heart failure, heart attacks, myocarditis and death quickly mounted. Doctors and nurses noticed that they could not sue for damages if injured, and at first there was no federal compensation either. They began refusing to be vaccinated. Congress quickly allotted money for a compensation program, but the maximum award was only $250,000 for a permanent disability or death.
Well-paid professionals were not impressed. After about 50,000 inoculations, and a series of 6 negative “Letter Reports” by the Institute of Medicine, the program quickly petered out, at least for civilians. The military continued vaccinating soldiers. Yet no smallpox cases have occurred since 1977.
...
The 2009 “swine flu” pandemic was a dud in terms of virulence–it turned out to be considerably less deadly than a normal flu season virus. It did, however, serve to expose the fact that pre-existing pandemic flu vaccine deals had already been negotiated and signed by the World Health Organization, Big Pharma, and individual countries.
Here is how the deals worked: once a pandemic was declared by the WHO Director-General, the contracts were activated, and countries were committed to buying large stocks of pandemic vaccine, sight unseen. Other agreements and memoranda of understanding guaranteed that the flu vaccines (the original concern was a deadly bird flu or swine flu pandemic) would be grandfathered in, dodging the unpredictable testing and licensure process in which many more vaccine candidates fail than finally cross the finish line.
Also exposed by the 2009 pandemic was the fact that the WHO had, only a month earlier, changed its official description-definition of a pandemic’s “Phase 6”.
The phrase “enormous numbers of deaths and illness” had been removed from the W.H.O. webpage listing the phases of a pandemic, and the revised web page simply read as follows: “An influenza pandemic may occur when a new influenza virus appears against which the human population has no immunity.” Surprisingly, a novel virus that only caused a cold would have met the definition.
A declaration of pandemic Phase 6 was the requirement that would trigger the pre-existing vaccine contracts, committing many nations to spend billions of dollars on vaccines yet to be designed.
...
The 2009 pandemic revealed something else. The vaccine contracts that had been mediated by the WHO between the vaccine manufacturers and individual nations contained a clause absolving the manufacturers of all liability for injuries. In order to access vaccines, countries had to agree that their citizens could not sue the manufacturers for damages if deaths or injuries occurred....
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Those are the prior examples of “warp speed” vaccine development for perceived pandemics. In no case were the vaccine manufacturers willing to take on liability for their products. In each case, governments took on the liability, but grudgingly. Any benefits awarded were considerably less than would be expected from successful litigation with pharmaceutical companies.
Why won’t the manufacturers stand by their products? Because there is no possible way to determine the products’ safety or effectiveness in the short time allotted. The two swine flu programs went from conception to vaccinating citizens in approximately six months, similar to what was achieved with the Covid-19 vaccines. (Claims that the warp speed vaccines were the fastest ever developed is simply wrong.) The smallpox program was a little different, as vaccine had been stockpiled, but not clinically tested, over several years.
...
When you hand billions of dollars to inveterate government bureaucrats with MDs after their names, tragedies are certain to follow. They always have."
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Can You Teach Children to be Anti-Racist?
"White privilege is a controversial concept for a number of reasons. Firstly, it reframes discrimination faced by non-white people, such as being harassed while shopping, by flipping it and making the absence of this discrimination a privilege. Secondly, it seemingly ignores what could be argued as the far more significant effect of social class on individual outcomes. Thirdly, it risks labelling young white people and driving them towards more of a white identity. And an increased sense of white identity is not necessarily a good thing in a society such as Australia.
There are many ways around the first two issues that involve quite subtle logic. For instance, the concept of intersectionality can be used to explain that we potentially possess a number of different privileges and white privilege is just one of these. However, it won’t escape a student who has been successfully taught how to think critically that white privilege seems to be the privilege we are focusing on. Where are the activities aimed at making children more conscious of the privileges of social class?
A second question a switched-on teenager may raise is that of the disparities between different non-white groups in Australia. Australian students with East Asian heritage, for instance, tend to do rather well in the Australian education system. Do they have a form of privilege too?
The standard response of activists on Twitter when faced with such questions is that: 1) the questions themselves are an expression of, and evidence for, white fragility, an “outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation”; and 2) the idea of an Asian Australian “model minority” is a trope wheeled-out by those who are opposed to tackling racism. Of course, neither response actually answers the question. And so, we are left hanging.
Unfortunately, teachers do not tend to have the luxury of avoiding or shouting-down their students’ questions and so class discussion of white privilege is likely to visit these points, with teachers addressing them idiosyncratically and with varying degrees of skill.
The basic problem is a broad assumption on the part of the public in general, and activists in particular, that pretty much everything is teachable. Just as we can teach children multiplication facts, we assume we can teach them the attitudes to the world that we want them to have. In reality, it is far more complicated than that. Few children come to math class laden with ideas about the way to solve mathematical problems that are at odds with that of the teacher. But attitudes to social issues are different. Teachers can model open-mindedness and tolerance, and they can promote and enforce socially sanctioned behavior codes, but it is not our job to indoctrinate children into a belief system—quite the reverse."
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YouTube censors Michelle Malkin interview with women who oppose COVID vaccine tracking for kids
"YouTube has removed conservative columnist and author Michelle Malkin’s months’ old interview with two Colorado activists who are fighting against S.B. 163 – a Colorado bill that sets an “immunization rate goal” of 95% for every school and requires exemption data to be submitted to the state’s “immunization tracking system.”
The interviewees, Colorado lawyer and medical freedom advocate Robyn Charon and certified patient advocate and parent activist Holly Calvert, both expressed their concerns about the bill during the interview.
“This bill is actually about data tracking,” Calvert said during the interview. “They want our kids’ names, information, addresses, phone numbers so that they can harass us with our own tax money. They can say ‘OK, your kid is missing one vaccine. We are gonna send you letters over and over, phone calls over and over, trying to get you to do it.’ So it’s about pressure and coercion.”
Despite being posted almost a year ago in June 2020, YouTube recently took down the video for violating its “medical misinformation” policy and cited its rule prohibiting “claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from the World Health Organization (WHO).”"
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‘I’m f**kin inside!’: Capitol riot suspect busted after bragging to Bumble match
"As the old wartime adage goes, “loose lips sink ships.” Robert Chapman discovered this for himself in January during a conversation with a match on Bumble, a popular dating app. In no uncertain terms, Chapman told his potential lover that he “did storm the capitol,” and that he “made it all the way into Statuary Hall!” Not only did he share this information with his match, he also told her that he spoke to reporters with the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.
Chapman’s zeal for right-wing protest didn’t go down well. After telling him “we are not a match,” the unidentified woman turned records of the conversation over to the FBI, whose agents quickly dug up Facebook posts by Chapman boasting in all caps “I’M F**KIN INSIDE THE CRAPITOL!!!”, according to court documents filed this month.
After staking Chapman out, the FBI arrested him and charged him with entering a restricted building and disturbing “the orderly conduct of a session of Congress.”
Chapman isn’t the only Capitol rioter turned in by those closest to him. Out of hundreds arrested and charged, some were turned in by their families, and one was handed over by his scorned ex-girlfriend. Others have been tracked down by amateur online investigators, keen to help the US national security apparatus in their spare time.
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Though DC officials deny the allegations, some unlikely defenders have spoken up for the detained rioters. Democrat Senators Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Dick Durbin (Illinois) have both condemned the 23-hour solitary confinement that several dozen suspects are being held in.
“Solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is cruel and psychologically damaging,” Warren told Politico this week. “And we’re talking about people who haven’t been convicted of anything yet.” The progressive senator said that she was concerned that law enforcement officials are trying to “punish” the defendants or to “break them so that they will cooperate.”"
Elizabeth Warren has just advocated for these people more than Trump. You still riding the #TrumpTrain?