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The War Party Wants a New Cold War, and the Money That Comes with It

By Ryan McMaken | Mises Wire | February 12, 2022

In perhaps the most predictable column of the year, the Wall Street Journal this week featured a column by Walter Russell Mead declaring it’s “Time to Increase Defense Spending.”

Using the Beijing Olympics and the potential Ukraine war to push for funneling ever more taxpayer dollars into military spending, Mead outlines how military spending ought to be raised to match the sort of spending not seen since the hot days of the Cold War.

Mead claims that “[t]he world has changed, and American policy must change with it.” The presumption here is that the status quo is one of declining military spending, in which Americans have embraced some sort of isolationist foreign policy. But the reality doesn’t reflect that claim at all. The status quo is really one of very high levels of military spending, and even outright growth in most years. This sort of gaslighting by military hawks is right up there with left-wing attempts to portray the modern economy as one of unregulated laissez-faire.

Rather, according to estimates from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, military spending is set to reach a post–World War II high in 2022, rising to more than $1.1 trillion. That includes $770 billion spent on the Pentagon plus nuclear arms and related spending. Also included is current spending on veterans. Keeping veteran spending apart from defense spending is a convenient and sneaky political fiction, but veteran spending is just deferred spending for past active-duty members—necessary to attract and retain personnel. And finally, we have the “defense” portion of the interest of the debt, estimated to be about 20 percent of total interest spending. Taking all this together, we find military spending has increased thirteen years out of the last twenty and is now at or near the highest levels of spending seen since the Second World War.

This, not surprisingly, is not enough for Mead, who would like to see military spending much closer to the Cold War average of 7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from today’s spending of a little less than 4 percent. To get this average back up would require at least an extra $300 billion in spending, and possibly even spending levels not seen since the bad old days of the Vietnam War. In those days, of course, the US was busy spending enormous amounts of taxpayer wealth on a losing war that cost tens of thousands of American lives. The spending was so enormous that the US regime was driven to breaking the dollar’s last link to gold and subjecting ordinary Americans to years of price controls, inflation, and other forms of economic crisis.

But none of that will dissuade hawks like Mead, who pound the drum incessantly for more military spending. Note also that Mead uses the “spending as a percentage of GDP” metric, which is a favorite metric of military hawks. They use this metric because as the US economy has become more productive, wealthy, and generally larger, the US has been able to maintain sky-high military spending levels without growing the amount of spending in relation to GDP. The use of this metric allows hawks to create the false impression that military spending is somehow going down and that the US is being taken over by peaceniks. In reality, spending levels remain very high—it’s just that the larger economy has been robust.

Yet even if we use this metric—and then compare it to those of other states with large militaries—we find that Mead’s narrative doesn’t quite add up. These numbers in no way suggest that the US regime is being eclipsed by rivals in terms of military spending.

For example, according to the World Bank, China—with a GDP comparable to that of the US—has military spending amounting to about 1.7 percent of GDP (as of 2020). Meanwhile, the total was at 3.7 percent of GDP in the United States. Russian military spending rose to 4.2 percent of GDP in 2020, but that’s based on a GDP total that’s a small fraction of the US’s GDP. Specifically, the Russian economy is less than one-tenth the size of the US economy.

Thus, when we look at actual military spending, we find the disconnect to be quite clear.

According to the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, in 2020 total Chinese military spending totaled approximately $245 billion in 2019 dollars. In Russia, the total was $66 billion. In the US, the total—which in the SIPRI database excludes veteran spending and interest—amounted to $766 billion in 2020.

In other words, total military spending by these presumed rivals amounts to mere fractions of total spending in the US. Moreover, as China scholar Michael Beckley has noted, the US benefits from preexisting military capital—think military know-how and productive capability—built up over decades. Even if the US and China (or Russia) were spending comparable amounts on military capability right now, this would not demonstrate any sort of actual military superiority in real terms.

But, as usual, Mead’s strategy is to claim that financial prudence is in fact imprudence with the usual refrain of “you can’t afford to not spend boatloads of extra money!” This claim is premised on the new domino theory being offered by anti-Russia hawks today. This theory posits that if the US does not start wars with every country that has pushed back against US hegemony—i.e., Iran or Russia—then China will see this “weakness” and start conquering countless nations within its own periphery.

The old cold warriors were telling us this back in 1965 also, insisting that a loss in Vietnam would place all the world under the Communist boot. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, and it turned out Vietnam had nothing to do with American national security.

But none of this will convince the usual hawks—for example, the Heritage Foundation—that there’s never enough military spending.

Prudence, however, suggests the US should be going in the opposite direction. At its most belligerent, the US regime should be adopting a doctrine of restraint—focusing on naval defense and cutting back troop deployments—while changing its nuclear posture to one that is less costly and more defensive.

The ideal solution is far more radically anti-interventionist than that, but a good start would be eliminating hundreds of nuclear warheads and freezing military spending indefinitely. After all, the US’s deterrent second-strike capability does not at all depend on keeping an arsenal of thousands of warheads, as many hawks insist. And geography today continues to favor US conventional defense, just as it always has.

Unfortunately, we’re a long way from a change toward much more sane policy, but at the very least we must reject the latest opportunistic calls for a new cold war and trillions more taxpayer dollars burned in the name of “defense.”

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Climate Lockdown – Beta version

The continued infantilisation of the population

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | February 19, 2022

Today, in the UK we are experiencing a storm, storm Eunice. Apologies to my American friends but I can’t stand the naming of storms, a recent phenomenon, which we have borrowed from the US. This personification of weather, makes it more scary, as if we have made a weather God angry and it is punishing us.

Anyway back to the storm. This was a powerful storm with winds up to 80-100mph and was given a red weather warning.

It is being called the worst storm in decades and No 10 called a COBRA meeting due to there being a risk to life and limb.

There will be a lot of damage and hopefully nobody will die but empirically and speaking to others around the country, this is no different to storms we get once every year or so. Even if it turns out that it is far worse, the points I am about to make still stand.

In previous years, if there was a storm, we all heard about it on the radio and arranged our lives accordingly. If I was going for a clifftop stroll, I would cancel it. If a tree surgeon had a tree to cut down, they would postpone it. The rest of life would go on as normal.

However, this time was noticeably different. The Covid hysteria that has been present over the last two years seeped into this emergency. The Covid induced anxiety floating around had not found a place to settle recently, as the population grew weary and they were told to start living with the virus. But when you reduce people down to shrivelling wrecks, that anxiety doesn’t dissipate, like a virus it seeks another host. And this time it infected people’s perception of a storm.

It is sensible to close exposed bridges, for example, I am not saying to ignore the storm completely but life is full of risks and we learn to live with them. A storm is a particularly small risk in the scheme of things.

Risks are becoming too much for people and micro-managing bureaucrats are seeking more and more areas of our lives in which to meddle. So today, in certain areas of the country, all trains were cancelled, most schools were closed, people were advised to work from home and the population in general was advised not to leave their homes unless absolutely essential. And the scariest part of it all was not the storm, it was that a lot of people complied.

You would expect this kind of response from a hurricane but not a storm.

Anecdotally, people said “actually the storm wasn’t as bad as I thought but I’m staying at home because we’ve been told to”. In the schools that were open, some parents had trouble getting their petrified children into the classroom from fear of dying. Other parents had second thoughts and took their children home just after dropping them off.

Yesterday, even before the storm started, schools began closing. Like dominoes, once one closed, a chain reaction happened with parents messaging their schools saying “why aren’t you closing and keeping my children safe”. Once this started, other schools started closing to avoid this kind of moral dilemma. As with Covid, once the emotive topic of dying is raised (however small that chance may be), all debate is off and the irrationally loud voices win.

So once again, children’s lives have been disrupted for no reason. And not just educationally disrupted. For some, they have been sitting at home, terror-stricken that they or one of their friends or family members might die in the storm.

There have been rumours and theories for a while that the next lockdowns will be due to climate change.

And Covid lockdowns were shown to have, understandably, helped the environment.

But you don’t need a conspiracy to bring in climate lockdowns, you just need a highly malleable and terrified population, ready to jump whenever they are told. Ready to stay indoors for their safety and the greater good. Unable to rationally discuss the pros and cons of any micromanagement of their lives.

The longer this goes on and the more interference people have from bureaucratic micro-mangers in bullshit jobs, the less people will be able to survive without being told what to do.

Let’s hope, this beta version climate lockdown fails and we go back to being told there’s a storm tomorrow and that’s it. Otherwise, whatever emergency comes next, people will blindly do as they are told and vilify those who question the wisdom of those decisions. And as we have seen with virus lockdowns, those decisions cause far more harms than good. Even if not in the short term, certainly in the long term.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

Was the Felicity Ace Fire caused by Electric Vehicle Batteries?

By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | February 18, 2022

What made the Felicity Ace cargo so flammable? “It was not clear whether the [EV] batteries first sparked the fire”.

Felicity Ace Car Carrier Continues to Burn in Mid-Atlantic 

A salvage team from SMIT is en route to the retreive the abandoned M/V Felicity Ace, which continues to burn near the Azores.

BERLIN/LISBON, Feb 18 (Reuters) – A ship carrying around 4,000 vehicles, including Porsches, Audis and Bentleys, that caught fire near the coast of the Azores will be towed to another European country or the Bahamas, the captain of the nearest port told Reuters on Friday.

Lithium-ion batteries in the electric cars on board the vehicle carrier Felicity Ace have caught fire and the blaze requires specialist equipment to extinguish, captain Joao Mendes Cabecas of the port of Hortas said.

It was not clear whether the batteries first sparked the fire.

“The ship is burning from one end to the other… everything is on fire about five meters above the water line,” Cabecas said. … Read more

We may never know if an EV started the fire, but even if the EVs didn’t start the fire, they are certainly making it a lot more difficult to extinguish the fire. EV battery fires are chemically comparable to thermite fires, hot enough to melt steel, so there may not be much left to analyse by the time the ship fire finally burns itself out.

This disaster could have real consequences for the EV market, both transporting EVs by sea or land, and consumer desire for a product which is potentially such a severe fire hazard. I would not be surprised if in the future, once insurers understand the hazard, owning an EV could make your home uninsurable, unless you can prove it is parked well away from your house.

At the very least insurers may start demanding strict end of use dates on the batteries. The hazard likely grows as the battery ages, though if the Felicity Ace fire was started by a new battery, you can never say the hazard is zero.

The following video demonstrates how ferocious EV fires can be in a home environment – and this fire is just an electric scooter. Automobile batteries are far larger. How much would be left of your house, how much time would you have to get to safety, if an electric automobile caught fire in a built in garage or car port? EV fires are not constrained by lack of oxygen. The battery itself contains everything necessary to initiate and sustain a deadly, white hot fire which is almost impossible to extinguish.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | | Leave a comment

How the Charter of Rights let Canada down

BY YUAN YI ZHU | UNHERD | FEBRUARY 18, 2022

If Canada has a sacred cow, akin to the NHS in the UK, it is the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — a constitutional bill of rights added to our constitution in 1982. As a national symbol, it is more popular than the national flag, the national anthem, and even hockey. Many Canadians can barely imagine that other, more benighted, lands might also have put some fundamental rights down in writing.

This would normally be harmless enough. Canada is after all a young nation, and nations need symbols. But the Charter, though full of admirable sentiments, has also infantilised Canadian politics and public discourse. A vague document full of broad promises coupled with important qualifications (rights are subject to limits as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society”) and exceptions (judicial interpretations of rights may be subject to legislative override under s. 33, the notwithstanding clause), it has enabled generations of Canadian judges to act as supreme legislators by interpreting it in all sorts of creative ways, striking down disfavoured legislation at a whim.

Only a few months ago, for instance, a Canadian court ruled that it was unconstitutional to require prospective schoolteachers to pass a basic maths test — the Charter, you see, forbids this, because equality rights something-something. No policy of any importance is implemented without the courts, and usually the Supreme Court of Canada, chiming in, which suits politicians admirably because they can fob awkward issues to the judges in that way.

This is where the Canadian trucker protests come in. Earlier this week, the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act to stop these protests, which have now lasted for almost two months. The Emergencies Act, which replaced the bluntly but honestly named War Measures Act in 1988, gives the power to the Governor-in-Council (in practice the Cabinet) to declare an emergency. Once an emergency is declared, the government can impose a host of drastic measures by executive fiat, subject to parliamentary review within seven days.

The measures the Canadian government have imposed make for uneasy reading, whatever your view on the trucker protests. They not only make it illegal to participate in or travel to the protests, but also to give money to any protester or to provide them with car insurance — while making it legal to freeze their bank accounts without a court order. In effect it makes it impossible for many of them to earn their livelihoods, or simply to live (Canada being such a large country, large parts of it are unliveable without an automobile, and driving legally requires car insurance). They also give the government the power to force tow truck drivers to provide their services to the government. Breach of these regulations carries a maximum of five years’ imprisonment.

The international reaction was distinctly queasy. Even outlets such as the New York Times, hardly the natural ally of protesters against Covid restrictions, saw those measures for what they were: a “temporary suspension of civil liberties”. But the Times quickly backed down after being bombarded with tweets by Canadian journalists and politicians angry with that description.

Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations who was once one of Canada’s leading politicians, tweeted out the following representative gem:

The Preamble to the Emergencies Act states clearly that it is subject to the Charter of Rights. Contrary to what the NY Times has stated, civil liberties have not been suspended in Canada. Get a grip. – BOB RAE, TWITTER

But by any definition, freezing someone’s assets without due process is a violation of civil liberties. Likewise depriving people of their livelihoods or taking away people’s right to refuse to perform work for the government. You may think that these violations are justified, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are violations.

But Canadians’ grasp of the constitutional facts have been so atrophied by decades of unthinking Charter worship that many are no longer able to think about rights independently of it, to see that rights do not begin and end with a piece of paper with an impressive title. Just because the emergency decrees pay lip service to the Charter doesn’t make them any less rights-violating.

Ultimately, the best protection for rights is not any particular piece of legislation, but a robust societal consensus in their favour, as well as active thinking and discussion about their parameters. Through the Charter, Canadians have gained a constitutional guarantee for certain rights formulated in abstract terms, but may have lost much of the cultural wherewithal necessary to sustain a broader culture of rights. Would-be constitutional tinkerers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere might want to take note.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular | , , | 3 Comments

Russian-led military bloc could send peacekeepers to Ukraine – top general

By Layla Guest | RT | February 19, 2022

With fears of an all-out military conflict in Ukraine’s war-torn Donbass region, troops from a major Moscow-led military faction could be sent on a mission to stabilize the tense situation if Kiev and the international community agree on the plan, the bloc’s secretary general has said.

Speaking as part of an exclusive interview to Reuters, published on Saturday, Stanislav Zas weighed in on which measures the Collective Security Treaty Organization could take if given the go-ahead.

“We have colossal potential in our hands. We all understand that we need to be very careful with this sharp instrument,” he said.

According to the lieutenant-general, the CSTO has the capacity for a large-scale deployment. “Believe me, we can send as many as needed.”

“If we need 3,000, we’ll send them. If we need 17,000 we’ll send them. If we need more there’ll be more. As many as are needed,” he continued.

However, he added the caveat that such a move would need to be given the greenlight from multiple sides, including Kiev, which is not a member of the bloc.

“Hypothetically you can imagine it … if there were goodwill from Ukraine – it is after all their territory – if there was a U.N. Security Council mandate, and if it was needed and such a decision was supported by all our governments,” he explained.

The interview, which was conducted before the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics began mass evacuations of civilians to Russia, comes amid clashes erupting in the Donbass in the past few days. Ukrainian soldiers and those loyal to the two self-declared separatist regions have accused one another of aggression along contact lines, with claims of heavy shelling coming from both sides.

In January, units from the multinational CSTO were sent to Kazakhstan after street protests decrying the government’s removal of price controls on liquified petroleum gas, a fuel that many use to power their cars, turned violent.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that Moscow could have ulterior motives with the troop deployment, stating “I think one lesson in recent history is that once Russians are in your house, it’s sometimes very difficult to get them to leave.” However, the forces left just days after their arrival having completed their mission.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

Canada wants to make financial aspects of Emergencies Act permanent

By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | February 19, 2022

Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wants to make permanent the invasive financial surveillance system introduced as part of the “Emergencies Act” to crush the civil liberties protests.

Freeland had announced the initial powers earlier this week to freeze the bank accounts of those who support the protests.

“As of today, all crowdfunding platforms, and the payment service providers they use, must register with FINTRAC and must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada),” Freeland said at the time. “This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds; increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by FINTRAC; and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades.”

“This is about following the money. This is about stopping the financing of these illegal blockades. We are today serving notice, if your truck is being used in these illegal blockades your corporate accounts will be frozen.”

Under the Emergencies Act, banks are required to freeze accounts without the need for a court order.

Freeland explained: “The government is issuing an order with immediate effect under the Emergencies Act, authorizing Canadian financial institutions to temporarily cease providing financial services where the institution suspects that an account is being used to further the illegal blockades and occupations. This order covers both personal and corporate accounts.”

But now, Freeland has announced that she plans to make some of the emergency measures permanent.

The government also intends to introduce new legislation to make new authorities for FINTRAC.

“We used all the tools that we had prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act and we determined we needed some additional tools,” Freeland announced in a panel interview on Zoom.

“Some of those tools we will be putting forward measures to put those tools permanently in place. The authorities of FINTRAC, I believe, do need to be expanded to cover crowdsourcing platforms and payment platforms.”

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | 5 Comments

NATO did promise Moscow it wouldn’t expand: former German defense official

RT | February 19, 2022

Despite their denials, Western leaders did make a promise to the USSR that NATO would not expand to Central and Eastern Europe when Moscow agreed to Germany’s reunification, Willy Wimmer, a former vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has claimed in an interview with RT on Saturday.

The veteran politician, who served as parliamentary secretary to Germany’s defense minister between 1985 and 1992, said that he personally witnessed this promise when he “sent Chancellor Helmut Kohl the statement on the Bundeswehr in NATO and NATO in Europe, which was completely incorporated into the treaties on reunification.”

Berlin’s decision at that time “not to station NATO troops on the territory of the former East Germany and to stop NATO near the Oder” was part of this promise, Wimmer added.

The bloc has long denied such a promise had ever been made, insisting it has always had an ‘open door policy.’ However, a document recently published by Germany’s Der Spiegel weekly purportedly shows that the pledge was made, supporting Moscow’s claims the commitments were later broken.

The minutes of a March 6, 1991 meeting in Bonn between the political directors of the foreign ministries of the US, UK, France, and Germany on German reunification appear to show that the Western nations made it “clear” to the still-existing Soviet Union that NATO would not expand further to the east.

Wimmer believes that the promises made by the Western leaders in the early 1990s were eventually dashed by the US ambitions formulated in the infamous 1992 ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine’.

The ‘doctrine’ was in fact a Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994–1999 fiscal years that was leaked to the New York Times at that time and sparked a wave of criticism even in the US itself. The document outlined the policy of unilateralism and pre-emptive military actions designed to suppress potential threats and prevent any supposedly authoritarian states from becoming superpowers. The official text of the guidance was then changed following the uproar but many tenets of the ‘doctrine’ still found their way into the former US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy.

Since that time, the US and its allies have been on the “wrong track” as they have been virtually doing everything to create a fairly “justified” impression in Moscow that the Western nations seek to “kick Russia out of Europe, to build a new wall between the Baltic and the Black Sea” and eventually to “destroy” Russia instead of cooperating with it, Wimmer pointed out.

The root of all the current security problems in Europe lies within America’s policy of continuously antagonizing Russia, according to Wimmer. “All the misery we are dealing with started with the United States conducting the policy aimed at kicking Russia out of Europe for the last 20 or almost 30 years,” he said.

As long as the US continues to “do everything to achieve this goal” both through NATO and bilateral agreements, Europe’s security problems can hardly be resolved, Wimmer warned, adding that it was Washington that should fundamentally change its ways.

The former OSCE vice president also echoed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, describing the present state of relations between Russia and the West as a conversation between “a mute” and a “deaf.” Moscow’s top diplomat made similar remarks earlier in February following talks with British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.

The US and its partners in Europe have been “certainly deaf” for decades since they “drew no conclusions” from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s landmark speech at the Munich Security Conference back in 2007, when he showed quite clearly “where the problems lie on the Euro-Asian continent,” Wimmer said.

At that time, the Russian leader warned that US unilateral hegemonism and “uncontained” use of force in international relations erode the global security system and weaken international law. It was also one of the first times he mentioned NATO’s promise to Russia not to expand to the east.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 1 Comment

LETTER TO MP ON EMERGENCIES ACT

Thank you Spencer Latu for writing this letter.

Friends, please consider sharing widely, & if Canadian sending the letter to your respective MP:

LETTER TO MP ON EMERGENCIES ACT

Please copy/paste the following letter, or add your own flair, and email it to your local parliamentary representative regarding the vote on the Emergencies Act in Parliament. Since we are in a minority government, emailing NDP MPs has a huge impact.

You can add any subject line. You can find the contact information of your representative here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/search

Letter-writing works, so please share widely and with your friends!

Dear [MP],

I write to you as a concerned citizen from your riding, asking you to represent me and many others in Parliament and to oppose Justin Trudeau’s federal invocation of the Emergencies Act, RSC 1985, c 22 (4th Supp) (“Emergencies Act”). This measure comes in response to demonstrations in Ottawa and across the country regarding COVID-19 restrictions, including vaccine mandates. I urge you to instead approach this situation by listening to the demands of countless Canadians and removing the restrictions provincially. Many provinces have begun doing so. I also urge you to vote against the Emergencies Act.

On February 15, 2022, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (“CCLA”), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to the defense of civil liberties and constitutional rights, wrote: “The federal government has not met the threshold necessary to invoke the Emergencies Act. This law creates a high and clear standard for good reason: the Act allows government to bypass ordinary democratic processes. This standard has not been met.” They noted that implementing the Act at this time “threatens our democracy and our civil liberties.”

Please defend our democracy and civil liberties. Canadian banks have begun freezing assets of those who have donated to the aforementioned demonstrations and their personal information is being shared. The Emergencies Act will legalize a further invasion of privacy, which is a dangerous slippery slope. Trudeau has also suspended Parliament, violating the law requiring uninterrupted debate concerning the implementation of a new emergency power.

You have the opportunity to represent Canadians in Parliament and defend us against a severe overreach of power. I urge you to vote against the Emergencies Act and to represent your constituents.

Sincerely,

[Name]

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , | Leave a comment

Trevor in Trimley’s letter to PM Justin Trudeau

(Since he claimed the right to freeze everybody’s bank accounts)

February 17, 2022

Dear Justin Trudeau,

How do you do it? It’s like you’re a psychic gifted with an intuitive capacity far beyond the range of normal people. I would never have known the truckers were racist just by looking at them, but apparently you can spot it from a mile away! And how did you know that they have “unacceptable views” without ever talking to them? Genius! Is this the result of special training or were you born this way? I must confess I’m so old-fashioned I still need racists to actually do or say something racist before I know I’m dealing with one. I was singing your praises to Mrs Trevor in Trimley only this morning and she agreed you have special gifts. (Actually she said you have special needs, she gets mixed up sometimes.) My Great Aunt Mabel had the gift too, but sadly those were different times and she was institutionalised. Perhaps when you die you should leave your brain to ‘the science?’

But I know you’re a busy man so I shall get to my point. I should tell you that it is Mrs Trevor in Trimley who prompted me to pen you this letter. She rightly brought to my attention that she has recently sent money (£20 as a birthday gift) to a cousin who emigrated to Canada in 1983, and she is now understandably concerned that Laurence may have gone off the rails since then and joined the ranks of the many hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have become racists, misogynists and terrorists during your premiership. Between you and me, I always had misgivings about “long haired Larry” and would not be the least bit surprised to see him flying a banner inscribed with provocative white supremacist language on it like, ‘freedom!’ (Yeah, sure Larry, freedom for whites like you but what about freedom for people who like to black up on social occasions?)

Mrs Trevor in Trimley’s concern, of course, is that her largesse may be mistaken for funding terrorism and that her bank account could be frozen, or worse, that she might be kicked out of the Women’s Institute if her name emerges on a list of supporters of working class struggles against the powerful, and all as a result of her being thoughtlessly generous to a person without first checking the acceptability of his current views. I offer my sincere apologies for my wife’s generous nature and would like to make a suggestion that I hope makes up for it.

To help us, and other non-Canadians, avoid making similar missteps in future, may I ask that you put in place a clear system that clarifies the views held by Canadian people we may come into contact with. My suggestion is that you ask Canadians to answer a simple “acceptable views” questionnaire, perhaps on a weekly basis? If their answers are published online we’ll be able to see whether or not we’re funding terrorism when we send them money for charitable causes they support, or money at birthdays and Christmas, etc.

My suggested ten questions are:

  1. Do you like Justin Trudeau?
  2. Do you admire Justin Trudeau?
  3. Are you now or have you ever been a member of a political party that opposes Justin Trudeau?
  4. Do you want Justin Trudeau to utterly destroy the Canadian economy to prevent you from feeling under the weather for a week or two?
  5. Do you think Justin Trudeau bears a passing resemblance to any notable Cubans?
  6. Do you think Justin Trudeau is right (they shouldn’t even need to read the rest of this question) that the truckers’ convoy is just as serious an emergency situation as World Wars 1 and 2?
  7. Do you think Justin Trudeau should stay in hiding for the rest of his life, yes or no? (This is a trick question Justin to confuse anyone who thinks they can cheat the test!)
  8. Can you, hand on heart, state that Justin Trudeau is right that there are ZERO treatments that work against COVID except for the glorious vaccines that will save the world?
  9. Would Canada be better off abandoning democracy entirely and installing Justin Trudeau as Supreme Leader?
  10. Would you like to see Justin Trudeau as President of a one world government?

_____

My grading system would be:

10 pro-Trudeau answers = Acceptable views.

Anything less = A gulag in Saskatchewan, or just Saskatchewan, whichever is harder to escape from.

Once again, please accept our apologies and know that I am fully in support of your stance AGAINST wanting people to die of COVID, and AGAINST racists, misogynists, transphobics, homophobics, terrorists, and everything else that’s impossible for anyone to publicly support, and that you’ve so cleverly founded your political ideology on. Who could ever argue successfully with any of that??!!

Please be assured that any unfortunate error made by Mrs Trimley was just carelessness with her innate human desire to give generously to people less well off than herself and should not be interpreted as a hostile act towards you personally or anyone else lacking those instincts. We’re on your side! To prove it, I have begun a fundraiser with GoFundMe.com to support your campaign to be Dictator of Canada! This is gonna be huge! I’ve kicked it off with a pound. You’re on your way!

Yours sincerely,

Trevor in Trimley

PS. I’ve just watched a couple of YouTube videos of the truckers and now you’ve pointed it out, it’s so clear they’re racist! The black racist truckers I saw were obviously the worst. Who are they even racist against??? Is it white people or themselves??? Please advise.

Trevor in Trimley writes open letters to people who should know better. You can read more of his work on his substack.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

Nearly 24,000 Deaths After COVID Vaccines Reported to VAERS, Data Show

By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | February 18, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,119,063 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 11, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 23,990 reports of deaths — an increase of 375 over the previous week — and 192,517 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,382 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 760,102 adverse events, including 10,909 deaths and 79,111 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 11, 2022.

Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 10,909 U.S. deaths reported as of Feb. 11, 18% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 23% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 60% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 546 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Feb. 11, including 321 million doses of Pfizer, 206 million doses of Moderna and 18 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 11, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

The most recent death involves a 7-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 1975356) from Minnesota who died 11 days after receiving her first dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine when she was found unresponsive by her mother. An autopsy is pending.

  • 16 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).
  • 29 reports of blood clotting disorders.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 11, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

The most recent deaths involve a 13-year-old male (VAERS I.D. 2042005) from an unidentified state who died from a sudden heart attack seven months after receiving his second dose of Moderna, and a 17-year-old female from an unidentified state (VAERS I.D. 2039111) who died after receiving her first dose of Moderna. Medical information was limited and it is unknown if an autopsy was performed in either case.

  • 68 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 639 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 627 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
  • 158 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 11, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:

Pfizer and BioNTech Omicron-targeted COVID vaccine delayed

Pfizer and BioNTech’s new vaccine specific to the Omicron variant was delayed by several weeks due to a “slower-than-expected” data gathering process, Ugur Sahin, BioNTech’s CEO said Thursday.

Once a new vaccine is ready the company said it will consider whether a variant-specific vaccine was still needed, Sahin said.

“If the wave ends, that does not mean it can’t begin again,” he said, adding BioNTech could create new vaccines as variants emerge.

“I really don’t see the situation as dramatic anymore,” Sahin said, referring to how the COVID would develop in future. Pfizer and BioNTech had originally planned to release a new vaccine by the end of March, but said it was dependent on how much clinical data regulators would require.

Autopsies show two teen boys died of heart inflammation caused by Pfizer vaccine

Pathologists who examined the autopsies of two teenage boys who died days after receiving Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine concluded the vaccine caused the teens’ deaths.

The three pathologists, two of whom are medical examiners, published their findings Feb. 14 in an early online release article, “Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in Two Adolescents Following the Second COVID-19 Vaccine Dose,” in the Archives of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.

The authors’ findings were conclusive. Two teenage boys were pronounced dead in their homes three and four days after receiving the second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 dose.

There was no evidence of active or previous COVID-19 infection.

The teens had negative toxicology screens (i.e. no drugs or poisons were present in their bodies).

Judge blocks Air Force from punishing officer who refused COVID vaccine for religious reasons

Federal judge Tillman E. Self III issued a preliminary injunction for an Air Force Reserve officer who was denied a religious exemption from the military’s COVID vaccine mandate, calling the military’s process for granting religious exemption “illusory and insincere.”

The judge said the Air Force likely violated the officer’s First Amendment rights when it denied her request for a religious exemption and subsequently appeal, and ordered the branch to refrain from taking “any adverse action” against the officer on the basis of “this lawsuit or her request for religious accommodation, specifically including forcing her to retire.”

As of Feb. 8, the Air Force had only approved 3,313 vaccine exemptions, but they were granted for medical or nonreligious administrative reasons. At the time the unnamed officer filed her lawsuit on Jan. 6, the Air Force had not granted any religious accommodations.

To date, the Air Force has granted only nine religious exemptions, denied 3,665 requests and is still considering 3,288 requests — 142 active-duty airmen have been administratively separated for refusing the vaccine, the branch said in its COVID update last week.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

Why Are Professional Athletes Collapsing on the Field?

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 18, 2022

With every passing day, the list of people suffering tragic consequences from the COVID mRNA shots grows longer. Data1 show 23,149 people have died after a COVID jab as of January 28, 2022. There also are 13,575 reports of people with Bell’s palsy, 41,163 who are permanently disabled, 31,185 with myocarditis, 11,765 who have had heart attacks and 3,903 women who have lost their babies after getting the shots.

Many of these people and their stories have remained hidden from public view. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms have censored the personal stories and videos of individuals documenting their injuries and permanent disabilities, so those who only read mainstream media are unaware of the overwhelming damage being done in the name of science.

However, there is a population of people whose injuries and death have been made public. In the past six months, a slew of professional and amateur athletes have collapsed and died on the field. Yet, mainstream media appear to take this in stride, acting as if what is happening is completely normal.

But, as described by Matt Le Tissier in the first seconds of the video above, this is far from normal. Le Tissier was a soccer legend2 (a sport called football in the U.K.). His prowess on the field earned him the nickname “Le God”3 before leaving the sport to become a sports commentator, most recently with Sky Sports.

As he describes in the interview, he lost that job for speaking out and bringing attention to the large number of unexplained sudden cardiac deaths happening to professional and amateur athletes around the world.

Athletes Are Dying on the Field in Large Numbers

Red Voice Media asks in a headline, “400 Athletes Collapsing & Dying Just in the Last 6 Months?”4 then mentions “small stories coming out about perfectly healthy athletes mysteriously dying.” During the interview, Le Tissier is asked about his thoughts on the surge of cardiac events in the sporting world, to which he responds:5

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I played for 17 years. I don’t think I saw one person in 17 years have to come off the football pitch with breathing difficulties, clutching their heart, heart problems …

The last year, it’s just been unbelievable how many people, not just footballers but sports people in general, tennis players, cricketers, basketball players, just how many are just keeling over. And at some point, surely you have to say this isn’t right, this needs to be investigated.”

Le Tissier acknowledges there may be other factors that have caused this massive rise in cardiac events in athletes. He mentions that the athletes may have had COVID, and this could be a consequence of the illness, or it could be the vaccine. But the point he makes is that it should be investigated and it’s not.

This may cause you to wonder why health experts are not placing blame on the infection, but are in fact ignoring the issue completely. It begs the question: Do they already know the answer?

Le Tissier goes on to talk about player safety and how the sport protects the players from playing too long or too many games, yet they are watching players collapse on the field and apparently are content acting as if this is normal. He calls it a “massive dereliction of duty” that no one in a position of power is calling for an investigation.6

“It’s absolutely disgusting that they can sit there and do nothing about the increase in the amount of sports people who are collapsing on the field of play. And it’s not just what I’ve noticed this season as well. Again, in my career, I don’t remember a single game being halted because of an emergency in the crowd, a medical emergency in the crowd …

I would like somebody to look into that and go well, hang on a minute, can we go back for the last 15 or 20 years and … have a look and see how many times it happened 10 years ago and then how many times it happened in the last year. I’ve been watching a lot of sports and a lot of reports on football, and I’ve never seen anything like it, the amount of games that have been interrupted because of emergencies in the crowd.”

The interviewer pointed out that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, to which Le Tissier agreed, but stressed that an investigation is required to find out if it does. “To my naked eye, this is happening a lot more than it has in the past. I can’t be the only one who is seeing this.”7

Sources and References

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | 1 Comment